Débris Noirs -- Postmortem

I have been developing *2D* virtual reality games for a long time. It's a hell of a niche, working with new technology and then ignoring the reasons so many people invest in that technology in the first place, but it's interesting (and that's why I do it).

Based on my commit history for Invertigo--the 2D virtual reality game that I set out to release--I started working on 2D virtual reality games around May 20, 2015. A long while later on April Fool's Day 2016, I posted the first video (a barebones proof-of-concept), and here I am three years later with my first completed game (not even the one I set out after).

It's difficult (and humbling) to work in a field like game development; you have to put in a lot of work just to make sure your game is usable, and even then you will always feel like you are missing something important. Débris Noirs took approximately eight months to develop (ignoring the three years I spent working on the underlying game engine framework), and it's not a super complicated game. I've also been working on game development for eight years, so it's not like during any of this time I was learning the technology.

Today's launch was a little underwhelming, part by design and part by market over-saturation.

The main disappointment was that my game "Débris Noirs" was 173rd on the Google Play ranking when searching for the exact title 17 hours after launch (and more recently it doesn't appear to be on the top 200 at all). Even so, I wouldn't change the title to try to make it more searchable (even to remove the accent).

The main things that I would change with more time are 1) the controls and 2) the Android permissions.

I tried fixing these last minute, but since I was running out of time on my arbitrary April Fool's Day launch I ended up delivering on neither.

The issue with the controls is not that I am using the player's neck/gyroscope as a controller, but that the game didn't have better on-screen indications and automatic calibration. Sure, the controls are difficult to understand, but the phone virtual reality market doesn't have a standardized controller, and developing without a controller was a neat technical challenge.

With respect to the Android permissions, I like the idea of my game requiring as few permissions as possible (and this game could have used none). I ended up spending some time fumbling with Unity to try to figure out why it was using USB external storage read permissions and network/internet permissions, but had no luck. This is another issue that I will try to address early-on in development of my next game.

I also learned that I only want to make original games from here on out. Don't get me wrong, the game was a lot of fun to develop and a useful experience that has certainly helped with planning my games better. If I started over, the main issue was the rigidity with which I kept to the core of Asteroids (1979) while trying to recreate the experience. I basically tried to take a donut-shaped universe and turn it into a sphere, which meant I had less motivation to develop because I felt creatively suppressed.

Other than that, I was really happy with my game (just playing it). Sure, it's niche enough that most people wouldn't pick it up, or would quit because of motion sickness, or would get frustrated with the controls and uninstall it, but I try to maintain intrinsic motivation throughout. It's not about creating some huge game/business and accruing wealth and fame; it's just about expressing who you are (sometime just to yourself) and learning something on the way.

On this journey, I've learned a lot, and will definitely have fun building the next game (and next time it will be an original game). And maybe I'll work with friends; only time will tell ^w^

Cheers!