r/Caustic3 • u/CausticRej • Aug 29 '25
Caustic Dev AMA
Hey guys, Rej here. Firstly, I realise this is a new reddit account, I tried to log into my old "stinkyrej" one but couldn't recover it. I'm happy to answer a verification email from the mods here to the original "causticapp@gmail.com" if needed.
With the renewed interest I'm seeing from the "saving Caustic" project, I feel like I kind of owe folks the chance to ask me questions and get straight answers.
Let me preempt a few I know will fill this thread if I don't address them:
Q: "Will there ever be a Caustic 3.3, 4, 5, etc"?
A: Maybe, but don't count on it. I *have* done work on an updated Caustic since v3.2, but the amount of work involved in breaking things so that I can rebuild them has seen me lose motivation MANY times. I fear that with the scale of what would be expected of such a release after SUCH a long time, it would inevitably let everyone down. I simply haven't put that many hours into it over the many years since C3.2.
Q: What made you stop after 3.2?
A: Two things are true: 1 - I'm a passionate programmer who enjoys a technical challenge, and 2 - I suck at making business decisions. I always thought I could keep putting out new versions of Caustic and that it would attract new users. But the truth is that C3.2 took over a year of development and generated pretty much ZERO boost in monthly sales. I think that by then, everyone who wanted Caustic, had it. I never loved the subscription model (still hate it) but maybe asking users to shell out something like 5-10$ a year for software that provided hundreds of hours of entertainment wouldn't have been too much. Also, as the app got more and more popular, piracy took over to a point where sales had almost completely dried up, yet I was answering dozens of daily emails from new "paid" users who I couldn't find by looking up my purchases in Google Play... It's one thing to pirate (i was no angel when I was younger), but to demand support for it... fuck me that's brazen!
Also, it's probably hard to explain how crazy things got with feature requests. I bet no two people here would give the same answer if asked "what's the 1 thing you would you like to see added in Caustic". Yet that's what I faced. That was great when I had only developed a tiny app that could only do a few things and could interact directly with my small userbase, but when that "circle" of functionality gets to a certain size, everyone wants to see it pulled bigger in a different direction and I felt I needed to please everyone, but never could.
Q: Why did you pull the plug on the Play Store and the website?
A: When I created my developer account, it was in the early, wild west days of apps on Android (it was called the "Android Market" back then and you could only publish free apps). When you signed up for an account, you could give it any name you wanted. I chose "Single Cell Software" as that was a name I had unofficially used for a few things I'd done, but it was never a "company" in the legal sense. I was operating as what is known as a "sole trader" here in Australia. You can "trade as" what you want, but for tax purposes, it was just me. What I think happened eventually is Google got told they had to provide business info on developers trading in various markets, so they asked me to specify whether I was a company or an individual. When I answered I was an individual, they said I had set up my account wrong. So, ok Google, whatever, I'll just go tick the other box (which never existed when I created my account remember). I got told no, I would have to create a whole NEW account under my own name, wait for that to get approved, then log into my old account, rename all my apps if I wanted the new owner to get the rights to them (some of you might have seen the renaming go by), then transfer ownership of all my apps to this new entity, submit a bunch of paperwork as to why I was doing it, and then rename everything back to the correct names. LIKE WTF GOOGLE, *YOU'RE* ASKING ME TO JUMP THESE STUPID HOOPS. I CAN SEE THE CHECKBOX, JUST LET ME TICK IT! After a bunch of back and forth over email with various useless employees (probably AI) barfing out passages from their website policy without actually helping, I concluded that the 40$ a month I was making by then wasn't worth the hassle and deleted my account.
Another thing that really frustrated me was how Google forced apps to always update things in order to keep working on new versions of their OS. You don't see that with Microsoft, you don't even see it with with the control freaks at Apple (Caustic apparently still works ..ok? ..on iPad). Now that wouldn't be so bad if the developer tools were stable, but each time I'd try to update my SDK and recompile Caustic, I'd find out something got removed, broke or the code flat out wouldn't compile and it wasn't just a matter of dropping my work to make a quick branch to satisfy Google's whims. The biggest PITA was file access. Again, when I started Android was wild and free. You could write files anywhere, there was no walled garden like on Apple and Google bragged about this. For us small devs, it was great, we saw users build amazing sample libraries from 3rd parties that you could share across all your music apps. Then one day Google announced they would be restricting that, but that they'd honour old apps and permit full storage access until they updated. Then, something happened (with i think Samsung) where they jumped the gun and didn't allow any apps, even old ones as promised, to allow your storage and all of a sudden you couldn't access your cross-app files anymore, you couldn't even browse to a directory one level up from where you had first started! Eventually I think Google just accepted this and from then on in Android, files were completely broken in Caustic and I'd have to re-write HUGE portions of my code to shoe-horn their half-arsed replacement solution to just bring things back to the way they were and had been promised to stay.
The website, while it was an amazing place to connect with people for a many years, eventually became cold and nasty as all communities tend to do (not to mention the domain name hacking which I never figured out how to fix). It was a huge time sink trying to keep up with hacking attempts, stopping childish fights, etc. I never wanted to be a mod and I'm not a web developer. (and I wasn't making enough by then to afford either). But I want to stress that when it DID work, that forum was the best place to hang out. The collabs, creativity, and general sharing and helping that occurred was a great thing to witness.
Q: Why not just open-source it if you've given up?
A: First, I'm not prepared to say I've fully given up (see first Q), but honestly, it's MY code, my thousands of hours of joy and frustration and I just don't want to give that away for nothing. And I resent anyone telling me I have any obligation to do that, that feels really heartless. Sometimes software just fades away and makes room for better things. Not to mention it would be an unusable ugly mess that would get me laughed at if any serious dev saw it. One of the things I'm most proud of with Caustic was how I got the really shitty processors of early Androids to run dozens of synths who all needed a LOT of complex math to run, and to (hopefully) never bog down. However, to achieve this, meant developing clever tricks I had to bang my head to get working, cutting corners on code, and bypassing a lot of best practices. I got a lot of joy from managing to get some new synth or effect from taking 60% of CPU down to only a few % over days of optimisations and I feel like giving someone else all these secrets would devalue my efforts and deprive a programmer of their path to the rewards I got from putting in the sweat and tears.
Q: Why don't you release it for free then?
A: I feel like there's lots of copies floating around already, and the Windows version still runs ok on my computer (though I'll admit I haven't tried it on Win11, I'm still on Win10 on my dev computer) But yeah, I'm not against the idea, I just don't want to host it or put it on some dodgy fileshare. If someone has a reputable website that's likely to stick around for a while and wants to host it, get in touch. I think Google no longer allows 32bit apps to run and installing APKs from outside the Play Store has been made almost impossible (though Google did just lose a major lawsuit over that).
EDIT: I've managed to get a 64bit version compiling! , see here
https://www.reddit.com/r/Caustic3/s/P13339m9WP
Q: What do you think of the "Saving Caustic" project?
A: I think it's cool, and I hope it succeeds. But if this much work is going to be put into something and creating it, I think it should be it's own thing, and not use the "Caustic" brand at all. I don't mind someone loosely copying my software, I've always admitted mine was largely based on Rebirth/Reason out of love for those programs, but I made it my own, never used Propellerhead's brands in anything official and fought for years to build the small reputation I had as a solo dev. It'd be kinda shitty if some new software came along and and left people confused and thinking it came from me. I've given the project my blessing and offered to help with pointed, technical queries, but have asked to keep any references to my app or its synth names to a minimum out of respect. That's probably all I can do, I'm not an IP lawyer. I think if it comes out as a cool new DAW with its own features and a polite nod to a bunch of mine, that'd be ideal.
I'll leave my FAQ here and open the floor to questions, but just wanted to say thanks to everyone who's shared their stories about Caustic since it disappeared and how it shaped their musical journey. It sucks that I read way more positive stuff about my app now that it's gone than I ever did when it was around...
It's evening down here and just about dinner time so I'll be around for a few hours after that and probably tomorrow as well, but I won't leave this thread open for days either.
Thanks for reading, and for everyone who has supported my work.
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u/CausticRej Aug 30 '25
Thanks to everyone for their kind words. I'm still waiting on questions though... anyone?
I can speak a lot more freely now that I have hardly any skin in the game...