I need a BoofVR Development break.. and to move forward! (Patreon)

Hello everyone!

I wanted to put up this update the last few days but had to mull over some thoughts and weigh out the decisions that lay before me, but basically, I am at the moment stuck and incapable of certain game design limitations on BoofVR, including the ability to test different VR sets that are bumping into issues with trying to play the game. There's a lot to consider and without access to some of these equipment others may have, it's hard to find solutions and test these issues properly.

With that said, I'm deciding to put a pause on BoofVR until further notice, and instead, have been thinking to move on to the next project being a traditional ol' Desktop PC with mouse and keyboard game, specifically looking at an action/adventure RPG fantasy genre. This will be similar to BoofVR in which will be a side project I make during my free time between 2D drawings as well.

So with this big decision, there's a couple of things I'd like to talk about as sort of a post-mortem set of notes of where things went wrong and went well!

BoofVR was a very fun and exciting project, I love the idea of having a VR game where you get to touch and rub all around these big huge muscular characters, especially planned out to have charm and stories onto them. However, the technical side of this project was the huge challenge and something that should've been taken more into account - yes, there are other furry/non-furry VR games that already do this, but this does not mean it's "easy" just because there are other games that were able to achieve these features. I'm an artist at heart and skill, not a programmer, so my knowledge of this was very limited - I had thought that it'd be a neat project to dive into to learn and see if I can pull it off, but realistically, it would never have ended up becoming overtly polished until I have *more* experience with this medium. Testing the game in VR as well proved to be extremely challenging, and also limited because I, like many other people, cannot stay in VR for too long without motion sickness kicking in after some time. So as you can imagine, popping into VR, then out to desktop, then back into VR, vice versa constantly could be a nightmare to some people, and is what I had to do quite often that I'd always end up needing to take consecutive breaks each time.

The decision to pause this project until a later time does weigh heavy on my mind and I do feel like I've failed, but after talking to some people, yeah, I did fail on many of these aspects and I acknowledge that I did, and apologize greatly for not meeting up to expectations of you lot giving me support all this while. But in retrospect, I think putting my skills and knowledge into something I'm more suited for whilst considering the perspective of accessibility for myself and others, would lead to a much better and enjoyable experience for all of us. There's a lot of things I've learned from the course of this development, which also includes planning, gameplay loop and features to be nailed down first, accessibility, and the more backend stuff.

The important takeaway as well; All of this is not given up on, I'm taking a break from the project to do something else so I don't get burnt out and end up giving up on developing furry games. I still want to make a great experience, and still want to make something "finished" as well. Not all is lost either, I plan to reuse assets made and visual style that people now enjoy from the latest visual updates in the new side project.

Again, I understand a lot of people may or already felt frustrations towards BoofVR, and I'm very sorry, but I am addressing this now and making the effort to do better by moving on to something I'm actually capable of making instead.

Moving forward;

I'll be focusing and continuing with my 2D art whilst I lay out gameplay design work for the next project.

BoofVR related tiers will be changed to follow and support the development and preview art/design of the next project instead of BoofVR, and I can understand if people choose to unsubscribe for the time being until they get to try out the demo for the next project - so totally understandable!

Thank you all for your amazing support, and I hope you're well in health and taking good care. BoofVR will come back in the future, again, I'm not choosing to cancel the project.

Cheers,
Werethrope