Django Supporting Virtual Reality Game Development

The App

Virtual reality in 2016 is moving closer to mainstream, especially with game development due to releases from multiple companies (Oculus Rift, Playstation VR, and HTC Vive). We decided to build an entertaining, accessible virtual reality game via Google Cardboard for iOS and Android based on a classic childhood game to find hidden objects in elaborate scenes.

Communication Issues

The tools and community around virtual reality development are still fairly new and come with a lot of rough edges. We decided to use Unity and C# to power our game to release on both iOS and Android. It only made sense to rely on Django, a technology we know well, for the backend of our game to store information about levels, add ons, etc. Having Unity communicate with a RESTful API via JSON, however, is not something that is straightforward and out of the box.

The Talk

From this talk you’ll get working code samples that show you how to have Unity and Django communicating with each other. We’ll cover some different libraries that we tried out and some special considerations for mobile platforms (iOS and Android) when selecting libraries to use with your Unity application. You should walk away with an understanding of how to use Django to create a full stack Unity game and learn some interesting tidbits about the state of current virtual reality development.