Role: Technical Designer
Engine: Unity (C#)
Tools Used: Steam VR, FMOD
Team Size: 19
Project Description
Detour Bus is a casual VR game where players build ridiculous winding highways around themselves to take the dysfunctional Flowers family on a road trip across Post-Infrastructure America.
Learn more at https://detourbus.com/
Play the Demo and wishlist on Steam!
Responsibilities
❖ Developed and maintained game features and tools.
❖ Prototype and iterate core road building mechanic.
❖ Programmed mechanics including but not limited to; bus power ups, locomotion and menu functionality.
❖ Collaborated with design and art teams to build and implement 8 levels.
❖ Assisted sound designers in implementing sounds with FMOD.
❖ Maintained technical design documents.
Accessibility
Detour Bus is built with an accessibility-first approach so it was important to make the game as accessible to as possible. We collaborated with The AbleGamers Charity, to make the game as approachable as possible. I would meet with the accessibility team weekly and discuss any issues that occurred in playtests and what the best course of action would be in solving that issue.
With accessibility in mind we sought to give the player as many control options as possible. The result was a one controller mode that works with either hand along with a no reach mode. These two modes can be stacked for one controller no reach mode which allows players to play in a seated position. In addition various artificial locomotion options were made available as everyone has a different reaction with the movement and camera in VR so it only seemed right to give them the options that would make them the most comfortable in the VR space.
One Controller Mode along with No Reach Mode
Menu Implemented
Pause Menu
artificial Locomotion
Scale Power Up Piece
Power Up Road Pieces
We realized early into development that building from destination to destination could get a bit repetitive. Since we were aiming for a casual VR title we wanted to keep the road building mechanic at the core of the game and develop systems that are an extension of this mechanic rather than standalone mechanics. We thought it was best to keep the power up road pieces to a minimum to keep the game approachable. To this end 3 power up road pieces were created, a scale power up piece, a cannon piece, and a winch piece.
The scale piece allows players to scale up or down the road pieces they use to build. Any following road piece attached to a scale piece will match its scale to the size of the end of a scale piece. This allows players to scale up road pieces to travel larger distances with few pieces or scale down for more accurate road building.
The cannon piece allows players to aim and shoot the bus out of a cannon. It is reminiscent of playing with toy cars and launching them at any direction at max speeds.
The winch piece allows players to attach objects to the bus. We found through playtesting that as players got use to road building their speed and efficiency would increase. The winch piece is the next step in road building proficiency as objectives start to be less about driving the bus to a destination and driving objects to destinations.
The creation of the power up road pieces was a highly iterative process of testing interesting mechanics that could be an extension to road building.
Cannon Power Up Piece
Winch Power Up Piece
