An Amazing Holiday Weekend

Monday, July 07, 2014

One could say my holiday weekend started out kind of sad. It was Independence day weekend here in the states of course. A time when people get together with friends/family, watch some fireworks, barbeques, swimming, etc. But that wasn't on the menu for me. So at the last minute I figured I'd make a new VRChat room to have my own fireworks show, and I enjoy it with my online VR friends that are either rained out where they live, or maybe from another country. About 2 hours later it was ready, and I think people really enjoyed it! It has a nice atmosphere. Over the night I refined it more and more, and eventually a ton of people got to see it on Sunday at the weekly meetup, and even a few others got to see it on Bruces stream. There were a couple disappointing things about that, but still over all it was a great time and seemed well received! =)

But later on at that same meetup, things got even better! At least for me! The amazing Graham (gg67) and Jesse (Jespionage), the developers of VRChat, had a little announcement. Well, for me a BIG announcement! They decided that as a thank you for all the VRChat content I've been creating every week for the past few months, that they were going to buy me a Oculus Rift DK2! I know, that's crazy, but in a good way, right? =)

Thats probably the best gift I've ever been given!

It's probably common knowledge now among the scene that I'm poor, and despite creating VR content and being a active enthusiast in the scene, I don't own a DK1. I've never even used one! And I can't afford a DK2 either. I've been saving up for one with help from being commisioned to create VRChat avatars for people, and while that fund has been rising slowly, it's not certain that I would ever get there. A lot of my posts here lately have been in part about taking that avatar service more seriously in hopes of getting more contacts about it, and possibly getting there a little faster. But again it wasent the best situation to be relying on.

That said, well. I'll be thinking of how to re-purpose the fund. There are a few options to go with. Like Unity store assets, motion controllers (lol, not likely at the prices they're currently at, even if I "could" afford them), a new headset, quieter case fan (to annoy people less when I talk on the mic), maybe give UE4 a try, etc. Just to name a few things. I'm not going to rush into any one thing. And I should say that my avatar service is still going to be there. That's not going to change. I may adjust prices a bit more now, as many things weighed in on how I was doing my prices. But that's it! If you still want a custom avatar, send me a email at darkakuma [ at ] z-net.us and we can talk about it.

Some may be wondering how this might effect Project: Ocarina, if at all. And well, I can say that it does. Before now I was kind of thinking of just throwing together PJO with what I have now, ignoring things I wanted to add, and just release that with DK2 support once that SDK is released. It's been hard to get interested in PJO lately to finish it up, and I think a huge part of that is that I just cant enjoy it like everyone else would without a Rift of my own. Now that that's no longer the case, I'm starting to get a renewed interest in the project. So instead I'll hold off on that a little and try to get the things I wanted, done. Instead I will try to re-release Kokiri Forest with DK2 support! I didn't plan to touch that project again, but I don't mind. I may even fix a couple issues I noticed later while working on PJO. So yea. Here's hoping Kokiri Forest is among one of the first playable DK2 demos! =)