[{"meta":{"slug":"09-happy-new-year-once-again","date":"2025-1-11","title":"Happy New Year Once Again!","description":"Looking back on 2024, seeing how my plans went, and making a new plan for 2025.","categories":["webxr","gamedev","beton","hyperion","godot"]},"path":"/../posts/09-happy-new-year-once-again/","content":"

Happy New Year Once Again!

Published: 2025-1-11

A belated happy 2025, everyone! I only ended up posting a single blog post over the course of 2024, so I’ll take some time to reflect on the year as a whole.

My Own Work

True to my word, I did in fact finish one of the projects on my backlog: Solitude.\nThe overall concept for the experience has shifted a few times over the years, but I’m pretty happy with how it turned out and have added it as the first completed project in the universe of The Unseen City.\nAs for the others, well, I’ve decided to put them all on ice for now. Too many disparate ideas that I don’t have strong conviction behind.\nMaybe that’ll change someday, but for this year I want to clear my slate and refocus on two primary ideas.

The first idea I’ve had will be another contribution to The Unseen City, specifically The Outskirts.\nI want to create a very stripped down exploration game inside a giant concrete megastructure. Think the architecture of NaissanceE, with the vibes of The Aether from Vertigo 2.\nMore than anything I want to nail the feeling of having stepped into an unknowable space, something you can tell was built with a purpose but one that you can’t possibly fathom.\nI believe The Utility Room also does something in this vein (based on the few clips I’ve seen of it), so I might play that as well for further inspiration.\nThis should be a good opportunity to flex my music and sound design chops as well, so I’m definitely looking forward to digging more into this one.

The second idea I’ve had is a bit more ambitious, but one that I really want to try and commit to this year: Creating a native VR game to be released on Steam and other storefronts.\nIt’s honestly something I’ve wanted to do since I first got into VR in 2019, and with the XR tooling available now in Godot I think I’m at a point where I could actually start executing on this.\nThe premise of the game is very much a Half-Like, where the player finds themselves deep in a sci-fi prison facility and has to find their way to freedom while battling strange and varied threats.\nI’m very much looking towards Half-Life: Alyx and the Vertigo series as my main sources of inspiration, and I’m hoping to create an experience that can strike that balance of both mechanical and narrative satisfaction.\nAdditionally, I want to look into the idea of creating a WebXR demo of this game as a form of promotion. With Godot having support for WebXR baked in, I’m fairly confident this will be doable.

These will be my primary creative focuses for 2025. Keep your eyes out for updates! As for names, it’s obviously very early days and these could change, but for now I will call them BÉTON and HYPERION respectively.

…

Okay, I did have one more idea.

Growing up, I played a lot of escape room games made with Flash. One series I remember was from Afro-Ninja Productions, which had these small, contained escape room scenarios.\nThe one I’m specifically thinking about is AN Escape Series #3, where you have to escape from a phone booth. I think this would be a great fit for VR and want to try my hand at adapting it, so at some point this year I want to see if I can get in touch with the original creator and get their blessing to do a WebXR remake.\nIf not, I won’t stress too much about it, but it would be very fun for me. Fingers crossed!

My Work With Others

I don’t often work with others, but there were a couple things to highlight from last year.

Firstly, I worked with my girlfriend to provide programming and audio assistance for her capstone project, a visual novel titled The Mystery of Beaumont Manor! You can play the Chapter 1 Demo online on itch.io. We’d originally planned to do a full 4 chapters, but had to scope back to finish in time. We’re hoping to work on it more this year though!

Secondly, I was made a maintainer on the Servo project! This is definitely the most notable open source project I’ve been a part of, and I’m looking forward to doing more with it in 2025. After finishing my current work on the SubtleCrypto implementation I’d like to work more on the WebXR side of things again, maybe even attempting to finally get Linux support added. And of course there’s plenty of other interesting problems to tackle, so we’ll just have to see how the year shakes out.

In Summary

To sum it all up, here’s my tentative plans for 2025:

An aesthetically striking WebXR exploration experience, tentatively named BÉTON.
A native VR (with WebXR demo), sci-fi Half-Like game, tentatively named HYPERION.
A (potential) WebXR remaster of an old Flash escape room game where you’re stuck in a phone booth.
Continuing to work on the visual novel my girlfriend and I started.
Continuing to contribute to the Servo project.

I’ll try and make sure to post a little more often than once a year! Until then, thanks for reading!

"},{"meta":{"slug":"08-happy-new-year","date":"2024-1-01","title":"Happy New Year!","description":"Looking back on 2023 and making a plan for 2024.","categories":["webxr","gamedev"]},"path":"/../posts/08-happy-new-year/","content":"

Happy New Year!

Published: 2024-1-01

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!\nI’m also the proud owner of a cute little puppy named Kuma: $\"Kuma\"$ \nI 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\nprojects, 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).\nSo 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.\nI’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.\nOne important limitation I’ve given myself is that I cannot add any new projects to “the list” until the backlog is emptied.\nI 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.\nHopefully 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.\nFor 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.\nI’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.\nLet’s make 2024 a great year for WebXR!

"},{"meta":{"slug":"07-explorations-and-integrations","date":"2023-8-05","title":"Explorations and Integrations","description":"Making more open source contributions and doing some fun game audio integrations.","categories":["webxr","gamedev"]},"path":"/../posts/07-explorations-and-integrations/","content":"

Explorations and Integrations

Published: 2023-8-05

Hello again. Back with some updates on some goings-on in the past few months. I made a couple of forays into the wider open-source sphere again, most notably to SerenityOS and Servo, and worked on (probably the first-ever) integrations of FMOD and Wwise into a WebXR project!

Serenity is a project I’ve been aware of for some time now since watching the browser hacking videos from Andreas Kling, and it felt pretty neat to finally add my name to the list of contributors. I stubbed a bit more of the Web Audio API and fixed a bug where the no-store cache control directive wasn’t being respected, fixing the random button on XKCD. Aside from that I just did some small string fixes and changes to WebIDL bindings, but overall it was also good practice with writing C++.

Servo was another big one for me, as the changes I made were directly related to its WebXR implementation in the servo/webxr crate. As of writing the only WebXR implementation I have yet to make a patch to is Chromium (and I’ve got my eyes on a potential candidate issue). The changes to Servo were geared around getting WebXR to work on Windows (most Windows-related XR code was related to Hololens), which I did eventually manage to get working with some controller support:

$\"A$

An exciting project for me the last week or so has been getting these FMOD and Wwise + WebXR integrations working, as it’s been forever since I had an excuse to open up anything game audio related. I’d say for the most part that working with FMOD was pretty enjoyable, in part because they officially target the Web as a platform and have the necessary resources easily available to access. Wwise was the much trickier one, but also the one I especially wanted to get working, as I did a lot with Wwise back in college and have a particular fondness for it. The biggest hurdle (after getting access to their Web platform, which is currently behind a technical preview) was writing the necessary bindings for their SDK to be able to generate a standalone WASM blob that I could then use in the WebXR project from JavaScript. I honestly wasn’t sure I was going to be able to pull it off, but thankfully I made the necessary breakthroughs and got it up and running, with a public repo sharing progress/instructions here. There’s still some more work to do on it of course, but as it is right now I think it provides most of what you’d need for basic Wwise integration.

So what’s next? Well for one thing I have a big move coming up within the next month, assuming everything goes to plan, so I expect some interruptions to any big projects I decide to start in the next couple weeks, but short-term I’m probably going to try and tackle that previously mentioned Chromium bug and do a bit more updating of the Wwise bindings (I promised I’d chat with their web platform folks over at Audiokinetic after my demo was finished too, so I’m looking forward to that). I’ll also ideally get back to my escape room game that I began a while ago but got repeatedly sidetracked on (mostly by the things you’ve read about in this blog post!).

Anyways, that’s all from me for now, will (hopefully) post again before 2024.

"},{"meta":{"slug":"06-testtools-vs-output-also-comments","date":"2023-03-22","title":"Tools vs. Output. Also, comments!","description":"A reposting of some thoughts I had regarding working on tools vs working on games. Also, there are comments now!","categories":["website","gamedev"]},"path":"/../posts/06-tools-vs-output-also-comments/","content":"

Tools vs. Output. Also, comments!

Published: 2023-03-22

I originally posted this on the WebXR Discord, but I thought it might make good blog material too so I’ll repost it here:

What do you prefer: building out your own tooling to have fuller control over the development process itself, or choosing existing tools (be it a library, framework, engine, etc) and working within them to build out the experiences you want to make?

As I come close to finishing up the remake of one of my earlier games in A-Frame + PhysX, I’ve found myself thinking about my next potential project already, where I was thinking of using three.js + PhysX and an ECS like Miniplex to get real nitty gritty with how my whole project is structured and architected, basically building out my own little mini-engine in the process. And then recently I caught myself, thinking I’m going to spend so long working on the tooling for this that I’ll probably never even get to the actual game development part. And actually making games is supposed to be the whole point! So I’ve been taking a look at Godot again and am thinking about making an optimized build template for my own needs, that way I can still produce web-friendly bundle sizes while taking advantage of Godot’s massive plugin ecosystem, including godot-xr-tools (which have been used in this game here).

/repost. Newer developments now:

Of course, trying to go to Godot wasn’t as seamless as I was hoping either. I seem to be having issues utilizing godot-xr-tools in my test project, and there are some odd quirks that didn’t exist in prior workflows (issues loading with the preview web server, meaning I have to export every time), so it’s not the “quickly get up and get going” cureall I was hoping it might be. At this point now I’m considering two things: either experimenting with react-xr (another option with a rich existing ecosystem) or just going through with my original idea of three.js + PhysX + Miniplex. I haven’t decided yet, but I’ll probably make an update on that in a future blog post.

And lastly, there are comments on here now! Given that my audience is almost certainly nothing but techy folks and developers I’m using giscus to power the comments, which in the background just connects to discussion threads on the repo for this blog. I figure the auth requirement will likely also help prevent spambots from running rampant in the comment section too. Plus, you can react to posts! That’s pretty neat! That’s all for now though, talk to y’all again in the near future.

"},{"meta":{"slug":"05-test-post-please-ignore","date":"2022-12-02","title":"Test post please ignore","description":"Just a little test.","categories":["website"]},"path":"/../posts/05-test-post-please-ignore/","content":"

Test post please ignore

Published: 2022-12-02

This is a test post to check that I’ve updated my GitHub Actions deploy properly.

"},{"meta":{"slug":"04-fediverse-gamedev-updates","date":"2022-11-12","title":"The Fediverse, game dev, and other updates","description":"Another irregularly-spaced update into my daily goings-on.","categories":["fediverse","gamedev","webxr"]},"path":"/../posts/04-fediverse-gamedev-updates/","content":"

The Fediverse, game dev, and other updates

Published: 2022-11-12

Hello again! I truly have no idea how many people actually check this blog with any frequency, so anyone subscribed to the RSS feed: you’re very cool.\nSo what have I been up to lately? Taking a look at my last post it looks like half a year’s gone by, and I suppose a fair bit has happened since then.\nTurns out I had the right idea on the whole Mastodon thing, so +1 point for Daniel, though it’s been nice seeing more curated and less toxic spaces develop out of the whole Twitter exodus.\nAlso, since the big migration to Mastodon and other federated services, my BookWyrm instance has gotten an absolute surge of users! At the time of writing I am the fourth most populated instance with 215 users, and I feel like it’s gonna be a while before the growth rate levels back out.\nIn my last post I also mentioned I was working on a WebXR experience that was going to have some fediverse incorporation through Immers Space. That’s definitely still planned, but I am absolutely terrible at working on my own projects consistently so I have yet to really get back to it.\nThat does provide me a bit of a nice segue into my next topic though, which is a project I have been working on: Solitude.

Solitude is the name of the first game/experiment/weird interactive thing(?) in my shared universe of The Unseen City (more on that later).\nI initially started working on it with the goal of keeping it small and avoiding scope creep, but of course I knew it was gonna happen regardless.\nOver the past few months I’ve worked on it in fits and starts, but it’s only been recently that I think I’ve gotten a fairly solid idea of what I actually would like it to be and what I need to do to finish.\nI’m in the process of writing a script for the sole speaking role of the game, which I don’t anticipate to be too long.\nI don’t know that I’d call myself the greatest writer in the world but I’ve got plenty of folks I can run my dialogue by beforehand to make sure it’s not unbearably cringe or pretentious, so as long as I can clear that bar I’ll be satisfied.\nAfter that I’ll need to flesh out the main game mechanic for progressing the story, which I’ve tentatively decided will be sound-based, then it’s just a matter of a bit more environment design and then the music, which I’m really looking forward to working on.\nIt’s been a while since I’ve done anything music-related and having my own game to finish is the perfect excuse to get back into it.\nLots to do, lots to look forward to. I think when it’s done it’ll be pretty great.

As for IRL stuff, I recently had the chance to visit Lisbon for AWE XR and got to meet a bunch of WebXR devs! It was a pretty great time.\nI’d like to do something similar at some point on the east coast, but there’s probably a ton of planning that would need to go into that.\nJust something to keep in mind I guess. Anyway, that’s about all from me for now, talk to you all again hopefully in less than 6 months.

"},{"meta":{"slug":"svelte-svelte-svelte","date":"2022-05-03","title":"Svelte Svelte Svelte","description":"Making some barely visible upgrades to transition from Gatsby to SvelteKit. Also, plans!","categories":["fediverse","site","webxr"]},"path":"/../posts/svelte-svelte-svelte/","content":"

Svelte Svelte Svelte

Published: 2022-05-03

Once again, I return with a new update about the website! I’ve been experimenting with Svelte recently and I’m finding myself more and more drawn to it. The way it’s just a step or two removed from writing regular HTML/CSS/JS is really appealing, plus it’s way lighter than Gatsby + all the React boilerplate, plugins, etc. The difference in overall project size is something like 350 MB down to just over 40 MB!

You may also notice the new Mastodon logo down in the footer. With the drama surrounding Twitter ownership I saw more than a few people moving to Mastodon and had my curiosity piqued enough to try it. Though initially I made my account on the standard mastodon.social instance, I soon migrated it over to an instance run by Trevor Flowers over at Wider Web. It’s meant specifically for Web and XR peeps and I find it much cozier than sharing an instance with however many thousands of randoms, but I digress.

So what’s next, now that I’ve managed to spend another weekend basically making the same website again? Well, this recent foray into Mastodon (and Lemmy) has got me thinking about what ways I could incorporate federation into some of my future projects. There’s a group called Immers Space that have been working on federated immersive web experiences, and it looks like they have some stuff built out already that will let me be able to authenticate users through a combination of ActivityPub + OAuth, which is exactly what I’m looking for for my next project. I won’t get too into detail now (that can be saved for a later blog post) but I’m very interested in supporting multiple methods of verifying and persisting identity in my app, whether that be through traditional OAuth through Google + my own DB, an Immers server, or web wallet signing for those that would prefer to confirm their identity on-chain. There are of course various other games, projects, and hacks I have cooking, but nothing too close to completion yet. I’ll make more noise about em when they’re closer to being done.

That’s about all from me for now! I’ll be back, hopefully in the near future, with more updates. Stay tuned.

"},{"meta":{"slug":"second-post","date":"2022-04-01","title":"Second blog post: I'm alive!","description":"Finally getting back to this blog and adding an RSS feed.","categories":["site"]},"path":"/../posts/second-post/","content":"

Second blog post: I'm alive!

Published: 2022-04-01

Hey everyone! Finally coming back to this blog after spending a day setting it up a few months ago.\nI’m playing around with the post styling on the main page and I’ve added an RSS feed.\nI figure that’s probably the easiest way for anyone who’s actually interested to keep up with new posts here.\nI’ll try and post on Twitter also if it’s anything of note, but the RSS feed will be a sure thing.

So what’s the deal? What am I actually going to be posting here, assuming I actually start making use of this?\nI think I’ll try to make this a place for devlogs and maybe just some general thoughts I’ll have from time to time.\nThere’s a couple projects I’ve had shelved for a bit that I’m looking to revive, so expect to hear some news on that soon.

Anyways, I don’t know how to end blog posts, so thanks for reading. I hope I’ll have more to share with you soon.

"},{"meta":{"slug":"first-post","date":"2021-09-22","title":"First blog post","description":"My first test post with this markdown blog.","categories":["site","webxr"]},"path":"/../posts/first-post/","content":"

First blog post

Published: 2021-09-22

To anyone that happens to be reading this, hello.\nAfter much delay I’ve finally gotten around to making a simple blog on my website.\nI’m not quite sure yet what I want to post here; I think I’ll use it post some devlogs and occasional thoughts.\nI’ve been thinking about making some instructional WebXR videos in the future, so I could potentially post some text versions here as well.

"}]

Posts under "beton"