Happy 2024 everyone! 2023 was a big year for me: I moved from Virginia to Hawaii to finally be with my long-distance girlfriend, which has been going great!
I’m also the proud owner of a cute little puppy named Kuma: 
I also made my first-ever release to a big storefront via Gabber on App Lab. I made just over 1300 commits to GitHub and contributed to more open-source/WebXR-related
projects, including Servo’s WebXR implementation and (finally!) Chromium’s via adding WebXR hand tracking support on desktop (this patch still technically needs to get reviewed but it’s almost certain to land now).
So now that 2024 is here, what are my goals? Put simply: backlog elimination.
From the time I began my journey into WebXR back in late-2020 I’ve had a number of projects that were started but never got finished, sitting in limbo for years in some cases. I’ve taken stock of all the ones I started, narrowed it down to a select few that I think still have promise, and will make it my goal to get all of these finished and released. One important limitation I’ve given myself is that I cannot add any new projects to “the list” until the backlog is emptied. I have a couple things listed as “prospective” that I either was planning on but hadn’t actually started yet or haven’t really started in earnest: those can get moved to current if the scope isn’t too large and I’ve knocked something else out, but I’m going to try and stop myself from making the list grow longer until I’ve finally pruned it a bit. Hopefully with this I’ll be able to get some more practice bringing my ideas to completion and finally having more of my work put out there. For those curious, here’s what the backlog looks like:
Backlog (as of 2024-01-01)
- Solitude
- Built with: A-Frame
- The first in a series of more experimental, narrative-focused WebXR experiences under the umbrella of my shared universe, “The Unseen City.”
- Xanthum’s Den
- Built with: Undetermined frontend, Hathora for matchmaking
- A location within the Unseen City where players can play various card and table games. Currently prototyped with an implementation of Pazaak.
- Hand Toss
- Built with: A-Frame, PhysX
- literally just a recreation of that one pushmatrix tweet where he throws the hand in the prison cell
- Unnamed Escape Room Game
- Built with: React Three Fiber, Rapier
- Inspired by the then still-in-development game The Escape Artist, made it up to a basic inventory system but had put it down due to React frustrations.
- Grapple Gunners
- Built with: React Three Fiber, Hathora for matchmaking
- Initially began prototyping for a Hathora game jam, would feature players grappling around a map trying to reach the top while battling others
- wait is this just an extraction shooter?
- Uppity
- Built with: Threlte, Rapier
- literally just an only up clone but in WebXR
- MRtian Manhunt
- Built with: three.js, Rapier
- An ambitious mixed-reality portal-hopping game where I also was attempting to shove in shooting mechanics on top of what would already be a narratively driven thing
- Maybe should tone this one back a bit, it could honestly stand on its own with just the portals and VRM support I have already.
I might still end up choosing to drop one or two of these, but I’m going to finish at least one of them. I’ll keep current and prospective projects a secret for now, but you might see posts about them here as the year goes on!
So to whatever readers might be out there, thanks for taking the time out of your day to indulge my rambling. Let’s make 2024 a great year for WebXR!