Blog Post 14: Overcoming Technical Issues: Compilation Struggles
Just as we thought optimization had stabilized the project, we encountered a serious hurdle: compilation errors while building the project into an APK for Oculus Quest 2 testing. Unreal Engine threw multiple shader and texture memory errors, threatening to derail our timeline.
Joel led the technical troubleshooting, spending long hours debugging the Blueprint system and scene structure. However, some issues went beyond our immediate understanding, particularly problems related to texture streaming pools and asset packaging.
Thankfully, one of our classmates, Kevin, who had experience in VR deployment, offered his assistance. Together with Joel, they adjusted Unreal Engine’s project settings, increased texture streaming pool sizes, and cleaned unused assets from the build pipeline.
Meanwhile, I assisted by reducing additional redundant props and cleaning the environment layers to lighten the project file further. Every small fix shaved precious megabytes off the build size and helped stabilize memory management.
After two intense days of non-stop fixes and rebuilds, we finally succeeded: the project compiled cleanly and ran on Oculus Quest 2 without crashing.
This experience taught us resilience and reinforced the value of team collaboration during technical crises. No matter how polished an environment looks, technical bottlenecks must be overcome for the final experience to succeed.
