What I've been up to lately

Saturday, July 04, 2015

After the VRJam ended I needed a break from W.A.R.P. so I quickly moved onto a new project. I'm taking that project very seriously, so I'm trying not to tell anyone about it until I have it to a certain point where I feel certain that I'm going to finish it. So sadly I'm not ready to talk about that yet.

A few weeks ago I got that project to a point were I felt I could take a break from it and focus on creating a new website. This website here is fine, but its for my hobby side. It's a place I can post very freely and casually, and post any random stuff I tinker with. But I've begone to realize that I want a professional side to. And I feel a different website will help people take me more seriously, and I too will also take some things more seriously. Basically what I want is to create my own game studio/dev group type of website. It will just be me and I don't have plans for growing it to recruit anyone else for anything. I may be open to things in the future, but for now that's beyond my scope.

I wanted the most professional domain name I could get, and decided anything short of a .com wouldn't do. So I set out to come up with a game studio type of name in which the .com was not taken. I figured that wouldn't be easy... but I was not prepared for how much of a understatement that would be. It was terrible! Almost every .com, no matter how random, if it sounds remotely decent, it's taken already! I seriously poured over a word list I compiled, for weeks, and after that time my selection of non-taken domain names was just a list of "the best of the worst". My selection was terrible. Finally I stumbled into a random name that I think sounds good, and the few people I focus tested it with say it sounds good. It being available seems to good to be true! I haven't registered it yet, but after a couple weeks of letting the name soak into my brain, it doesn't sound any worse! So next I need to find a good pricing plan in which to purchase it. I want to buy a web hosting plan while I'm at it, and sometimes those offer a free domain name with it. Ideally I'd buy both for 4 years for now. But money for this is tight as always. I'll probably end up getting them for 2 years. I've looked around some, but after the domain name search the whole thing exhausted me. I also need to make sure I'm going to have the funds to spend on it that I've thought I had coming. Once I do have the funds, and purchase it I'll post it here and I'll have a link to the site from here. But I likely wont have a link from it to here. I want to try to keep the sites separate for the most part.

A couple other things have taken me away from my search for a new website the past few weeks as well. For one, I made the GearVR version of Kokiri Forest to help Mark launch SideloadVR. And I recently somehow got sucked in to working on Gunters talk show. Atm I've just been working on a camera system. It was right up my ally since I previously thought a bit about it back when I was working on my Gameshow idea. I've gone through 2 iterations of the camera system, and along the way I had to familiarize myself with some of the VRChat SDK additions and changes of the past 6 months. Particularly the its custom scripting support. To do that I decided to learn about it by revamping my Fireworks Island room that I did last year for the 4th of July. It sounded like a good idea as the 4th was coming up again and I could do this as a one time only comeback from my retirement from VRChat. As an aside, I still consider myself retired despite working on Gunters show. I was a big proponent of him moving his talk show to VRChat last year, trying to convince him to do so several times, and told him I would help make it happen if he ever did. I wasn't there from the start, but I always intended to live up to that sort of promise if he waned me to. My retirement is from making content for the general public/community. If a friend needs something, or if someone wanted to hire me, I'm open to it. But otherwise, no. The Fireworks Island thing was just going to be a one time only exception. I use the past tense there though, because despite all the work I put into revamping it and getting it ready for this weekend. Shit happens. In this case, Graham and Jesse didn't get lighting working properly, and I don't want to release something I feel looks like shit and not as I intended. It's sad and disappointing for me. All I can say is, maybe next year. =/

Despite the retirement, I found myself having a hard time fighting the urge to work on VRChat things. I always found it fun to do so despite the feelings that lead me to retire. I was going to release an avatar or 2 to help support Gunters show/events. And shocking as I found it, I was even considering and exploring resurrecting my gameshow idea. Sadly, things just haven't changed in more ways then one. Basic features that I've technically been waiting on for over a year now haven't been added into VRChat still. And the to often poor communication and respect haven't changed either. After talking with Graham, and him slipping me a quick proposal, I begone considering returning to VRChat, but issues like these are making me have to lean back more toward staying retired. It would be hard enough getting over or coming to some sort of terms with my real issue (that I'm still not ready to publicly disclose), but all these other issues alone seem to be enough. It's sad. I really liked VRChat. I was a clear #1 supporter. No one wanted to see it succeed more than me. No one tried to help it succeed more then me. Outside of Graham and Jesse of course. But even that might have been debatable. lol. I really gave it a lot of my time and effort! But as difficult as it is, I need to make myself move on. I want a future in VR! I want it to be my career. I can't spin my wheels in one place.

A quick note about W.A.R.P. is, it's still on the shelf. I've been so swamped with other projects that I haven't had time to even consider it, let alone work on it if I decided to.

To end on a better note. Recently I tinkered with a project that I've let sit dormant for 6 months. The one I tried doing a stream for on Thanksgiving. It still doesn't really have a name. Since then, the goals of the project shifted a little, and I've also abandoned some dead ends with it. It advanced quite well up to mid December. Then the project hit a snag. My constant pushing of the limits of my skill caught up with me and I just couldn't figure out a problem I ran into. Recently however I decided to look at it again. And after getting linked some code from Scripto, that I looked over for a couple days, I was able to better grasp the issue and solution. What wasn't working before now works! It works like crap, and I now have a new issue to figure out. But I'm extremely happy to see progress! It's going to be a bit of work trying to find time to resume this project, let alone resolve this next issue, but I'm hopeful! Once I solve this, it will be time to rewrite the code into its own class so I can do more with it. Then I'll also need to start working on proper Windows8-10 support. Along the way I might post some videos to my Youtube channel. No more streams! =)

That's it for now!

Have a happy 4th of July! =)