Stationwagon and Bus Controls
One unusual feature of Vietnam Romance is that the tour bus and stationwagon are able to drive in full 3D from a side-on perspective.
The heading from the joystick always corresponds to the vehicle’s apparent motion on screen. To put the vehicle in reverse, players simply tilt the joystick opposite the way the vehicle is facing. Worldspace directional input is mapped to engine torque and steering angles on the wheel colliders.
Combat
The armored personnel carrier (APC) is outfitted with a huge variety of weapons including mortars, grenades, machine guns, battering rams, and an animatronic rambo that shoots a variety of arrows.
Unlike the bus and stationwagon, this vehicle travels in a 2D plane to simplify aiming in combat.
Each weapon is manned by a passenger on the tour. Passengers each have their own health meter, so if they die, the weapon they operate becomes unavailable. In earlier versions, healing items had to be used on one character at a time, but this made healing during a heated moment in combat too cumbersome.
Boating
The PT boat is similar to the APC except that it always travels down river. The player is able to accelerate or slow down, but never stop or reverse. In addition to the vehicle controls, I did the texture mapping for the boat, particle systems, and animation.
Flight
The player begins their adventure by flying a small plane across the pacific. Along the way, the refuel over Hawaii and must avoid seabirds. I did a lot of the technical art for this scene, and designed and developed the plane’s flying mechanics, including a brief midair refueling mission.
The helicopter can fly vertically for a limited distance, and automatically avoids colliding into the ground. It is armed with a machine gun like the APC, but has a missile launcher which fires rockets in a straight line (as opposed to the mortars which fire in arcs). We also prototyped other interactions like dropping “Psyops” propaganda leaflets and dropping a swinging rope for rescue missions.
This clip shows a prototype for a reenactment of the “ride of the valkyries” scene from Apocalypse Now. The player controls one helicopter, and the others fly in formation matching it’s altitude, while the camera cuts between different angles at random.
Attract Modes
Every scene includes a short title screen (attract mode) to set the tone for the level. Almost all of these involve a ‘self-driving’ version of the vehicle, which drives forward for a limited time, and then rewinds back to the start.
Ebay Shopping
An ironic computer-within a computer interface controlled with the joystick or WASD keys. This clip demonstrates browsing by item type
The interface also features the ability to buy and sell items on your own ebay store and read emails from other characters.
This is effectively also the “loadout” and “level select” menu - players purchase their next tour through this interface, and then print out a receipt including items that are required and recommended for each tour.
UI Mockups
We went through many iterations on vehicle status overlays. Our first pass at these features, Eddo wanted to explore a line diagram design with white text with solid lines connecting information to its relative position on the vehicle. This was basically functional, but as we built out more features and started to test combat mechanics, a more legible, streamlined solution became necessary.
We had gone through many iterations by actually building things in Unity first, which was very time intensive. I realised I needed to push for more design process with Eddo, and decided to spend some time mocking up ideas in illustrator to explore ideas instead. These iterations were focused on legibility, using familiar icons and color coded radial meters to indicate vehicle status in a legible, flavorful way. I wanted to try a dark transparent background, thinking it might reduce visual clutter but still help the icons read on various backgrounds. I like our environments a lot, and wanted to avoid overwhelming them with UI overlays.
Going back and forth with Eddo, it became clear the visual ‘data overwhelm’ of the original design was a really important part of his aesthetic vision for the game. Geeking out about Vietnam, seeing the names of the M113 APC, or characters and actors from Vietnam Movies visible on screen all the time, was really the point of all this.
Colorful meters still give an instant read on critical information like engine status and health, and neutral gray bounding boxes keep the names legible.
Relevant information is grouped together with more considered spatial relationships: weapons can’t be used unless the operator of that weapon is alive, so each weapon is ‘nested’ inside that character’s status box. The status bubbles have a robust placement system that prevents them from overlapping eachother, but they only appear when they’re relevant, for instance when the machine gunner runs out of ammo, or when the tank is running low on fuel.
Modular Building Generator
To help with environment design, I created a modular building generator, which assembles a variety of buildings out of prefab pieces. There is a complex system that attaches various awnings and balconies to the sides of buildings. Balconies can spawn additional decorations like potted plants and clothes at predetermined positions.
Animal Minesweepers
We had plans for having human as well as elephant, a monkey, and a tiger minesweepers. I rigged and animated these characters myself, and did some trickery with animation playback speed to allow them to stop mid-stride. Longer animals like the tiger and elephant rotate to match the slope they are standing on.
Human minsweepers use the word bubble system to indicate when they are in danger, but it seemed silly to do the same for animals that can’t speak. Instead, I used a woodblock sound effect that increases tempo with proximity, borrowing a dramatic sound cue from kabuki theater.