Friday Night Funkin' VR
Roles | Date | Engine |
|---|---|---|
Project Lead, Main Programmer | 17 months (4/21-9/22) | Godot |
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with The Funkin' Crew Inc.
Friday Night Funkin' VR is a fan-made VR recreation of the upcoming indie rhythm game Friday Night Funkin'. As Boyfriend, you challenge various opponents to a rap battle to keep them from messing with your girlfriend, Girlfriend. You hit arrows to match Boyfriend's notes in a DDR-esque manner, using your hands in VR instead of a keyboard or controller.
Contributions
I recreated the original game from the ground up to be able to do this. The original framework the game is built upon, HaxeFlixel, is meant for 2D games only.
I developed an original implementation of a "conductor," or a system that keeps track of and emits events based on the BPM of a music track.
After the project was done, I spun this into an addon that will be open-source for anyone to use and improve.
Via releasing it to social media early on and gaining traction on TikTok and YouTube, I was able to rapidly iterate on the game to adapt the controls of the game into something that made sense for more people.
Takeaways
This was one of my first VR projects! Developing for VR takes an entirely different design skillset, as adapting to a free-moving camera and positional controllers takes a lot of thought and playtesting. It also takes a large amount of endurance, as the friction of testing with a VR headset cannot be understated. Even so, I can't wait to develop more compelling titles for the platform, and for VR headsets to become more convenient to use.
This was the first time a project of mine went viral on the internet. That was both cool and scary. It helped me meet people who could help me advance the project further than I could have imagined, and some new friends for the long run. It even got me in touch with the Godot developers. For all the opportunities this project gave me, I am incredibly thankful!
Developing live with an audience who can give feedback in real-time is both incredibly useful and incredibly daunting. Managing a community, via Discord, social media, etc., is a ton of work on top of making a game. In the future, I would definitely want help with this, as while I think I could do it on my own, it would be way easier with someone who know what they're doing.
