With all that’s been going on in the world, its tough to see the high points with any clarity.

As its been pointed out, time is elastic. Its been a Groundhog’s Day year where every day seems to loop back into the next, yet somehow – here we are with the holidays upon us and facing a New Year, new administration; and with promising results from the big pharma industries, perhaps the promise of a return to normal.

My dev work had been slowed by a slew of marketing and promotional activities that seemed to hit all at once. The Youngstown Business Incubator announced a Virtual Pitch competition with a prize of $5000 and while my chances are slim, it was a great opportunity to see just how quickly I could mobilize a ‘get out the vote’ campaign of my own. I did daily reminders on my soc med accounts and got a lot of positive feedback from a few posts made on reddit.

Right on the heels of that, I got a comment on Twitter that blew me away:

VR Trend saw a post where I mentioned my game and saw a gif and sent me that message – so suddenly I needed to put together a 300-500 word article, 5 images of my game and a logo. All for an issue that should be coming out next month.

Right on top of that, I got a reminder that Unity for Humanity was looking for pitch submissions and needed a pitch deck, budget AND a timeline – all of which I never had attempted before – so in addition to all my daily dadly duties, I was furiously researching / making / begging for crits on a pitch deck.

AND on top of that – I get an email out of the blue asking if I wanted to be a part of the newest Big Indie Pitch. Which was happening in 4 days.

Sadly, I just had to turn down that one, as I had zero prep time for it – but the contact was understanding and very graciously offered me a guaranteed spot at the one in February; which I jumped on and now have a little time to practice both my demo skills (which I haven’t used since last February) and sharpen my pitch deck even further.

Now I just gotta wrap up my vertical slice for Oculus Launch Pad before then.

So, as I’m prepping my Thanksgiving dinner (gonna brine a duck here in a little bit) – I must say, I’m thankful for the opportunities even a pandemic will bring. I’m fortunate my family is safe, we’re all together, we haven’t driven each other nuts and there is a little brightness on the horizon. Even if in the meantime I have to rouse myself at 5:30 in the AM and setup a photo workshop in the basement, since the wife & kids have taken over my office:

So, with the advent of of my acceptance into the Oculus Launch Pad program and their generosity in providing me with Quest (1) – I’ve been trying to spend as much time seeing how I can port my Rift/ Vive game over to mobile VR.

Lemme tell ya’, it ain’t easy folks.

A common complaint among gamers is ‘how hard is it to make a VR port?’ often echoed by RPG fans who long to play their beloved 200 hour hack-n-slasher standing up, swinging their broadsword while hewing foes left and right… I just had a minor panic attack just thinking about getting that to work in VR.

I have come to the conclusion that I will slap people upside the head with a freshly caught haddock if they even mention porting games – I nearly burst several blood vessels in trying to port my VR game to ANOTHER VR system. It already HAD VR support built in! Just switching from PC build to Android caused me to have to rebuild dozens of systems that I thought should work with zero problems.

Playmaker? Hello? Why do I have to rebuild FSM’s that work in another project? I’m not changing anything! Why won’t my assets work? Why is Unity asking if I’m missing a reference or an assembly – I ADDED IT, NITZ!

All this time, I’ve been doing this because the launch of Quest 2 might just be a huge explosion of the VR market – since its cheap, easy to lug somewhere to show grandma and the folk at SideQuest make it ridiculously easy to sideload apps to the device. Since I’m doing this whole game dev thing to donate part of the proceeds to autism awareness, I gotta get the proceeds – and that means getting my game in front of as many eyeballs as I can muster.

I finally got it uploaded to SideQuest. yesterday. And already there are a dozen problems with it.

And my poor game languishes off to the back of the room, wondering when I’ll get back to it…

So just as I’m making the push to get my game onto the Quest, I noticed my Rift started blacking out. Kiddo #2 had pointed out that there were times this happened when he played Minecraft in VR. I hadn’t really paid attention to it – but it started happening every time I put on the headset.

Based on what I’ve found on the interwebs, its the cable that connects the Rift to the PC – a rarified piece of tech that is no longer being made, is impossible to find and even broken ones are sold on eBay for 50+ dollars.

Which is an absolute shame – I was super proud when it was delivered – it was part of the Oculus Start program – designed to give people the ability to create for this amazing new medium, and while I despise the practices of their parent company – Oculus has really been a boon to developers who otherwise could not afford the heft entrance fee.

With their abandoning the Rift line and focusing more on the Quest, Oculus is signaling the end of an era. One I’m not terribly thrilled over; but one I have to accept as the tides are changing. Desktop VR will be more of a specialty – cost prohibitive and bulky. Mobile VR will keep expanding as its cheaper, easier to transport and set up.

So, after researching what was happening – and the lack of solutions, I started asking around in the various game dev outlets that I’m a part of – and in the Oculus Start discord, I got a suggestion to reach out to the Developer Support team, which I did… and I’m now getting a Rift S in a few weeks. Again, Oculus is amazing at taking care of indie devs. I hope the new headset brings as much joy as the old one did.

In another ending – I finished off a tub of gesso I got back in NYC when I worked at Pearl Paint, some 24 or 25 years ago.

Many a painting started from this humble can, some I sold, some I’ve gifted, others languishing away in a closet. Yet another piece of NYC comes to an end. When I got this, I was living in the greatest city in the world, I was hugely into rollerblading, doing a whole host of chemical colorants and learning just how tough the art industry truly is. And how little it paid.

I wish the art I created with this lives on long after I’ve faded from memory.

So, last week – as I’m busy planning a family camping trip with our neighbors; as sort of a ‘end of summer / welcome school & fall’ getaway, I get an email that kinda slammed the brakes on everything:

This will be happening EXACTLY when we are supposed to be camping. Wife, 2 kids, Neighbors & their kids in the next campsite. Marshmallows over the fire. nature hikes.

$#!+.

So; after a brief conference with the missus, she decides that Launch Pad aside, she really wants to go camping (even if it is for just one night) and wants to give me a little free time so I can focus on this with no distraction.

I’ve been applying to this for the past 2 or 3 years; and OF COURSE I get it THIS year. Any other year, they would have flown me out to San Jose, free hotel, food, the works. I went out for Oculus Connect 5 a couple of years ago and it was simply amazing.

OH well – I will certainly take what I can get.This is too much of an opportunity, even if it is from the comfort of my desk (thank goodness my wife grabbed a couple of the high tech industrial chairs from her office when they were throwing them away – my back feels SO much better)

Even more exciting is that Oculus is sending us all a Quest for further development work; and I have been desperately wanting one for the longest time. It’ll be a pain in the ass to wrangle my game onto it (as I have just the tiniest amount of Android dev experience) BUT – if I can get this to work and the world doesn’t end; demoing my game will be several measures easier, since I won’t have to lug around a whole PC, VR headset, speakers, etc. OR… I could bring BOTH and be able to demo even more; since I usually end up with a line in front of my booth… Hmm.

In the meantime.. I’m joining the Discord channel they set up and their online hub and chatting with people – I got to share info about the Playmaker Slack, nice to add to our ranks of ‘non-coders’ Now I just need to network my @$$ off to see if there is any grant $$ to be had out there…

Back before the world came to a halt, I had set up a cork board with ‘big picture’ reminders, namely a weekly organizer so I didn’t let any aspect of dev work slip without giving it some attention.

I had:

• Marketing Monday – make some attempt at promoting my game
• Tech Tuesday – make backups, clean and organize my projects
• Writing Wednesday – blog, write marketing materials, grant proposals
• Texture Thursday – create assets and art
• Free-for-all-Friday – which I’m now considering changing to Followup Friday

When I woke up this morning, I saw my board and realized, I hadn’t written a blog post since JUNE, I felt it was high time to rectify that – even though I rarely get more than a glance or two (and most of my hits are bots and scrapers) I still feel its important to keep up with scribbling down hasty notes about my development journey – on the hopes that someone might find it useful.

The featured image is a book written by a friend of mine. I was totally flattered when he approached me to illustrate the cover. he wanted a ‘ Jules Feiffer’ styled loose sketch, and I did my best to deliver. I should be getting the paperback delivered tomorrow, it’ll have a honored spot on my bookshelf.