ONE YEAR ON THE ROAD
One year ago we began work on Detour Bus, as a partner project in a USC Games class. To celebrate the anniversary, we’re looking back at how far we’ve come from then.
At the end of the Fall semester, our prototype was Unity default lighting and lots of cubes, and looked like this:
But our core road-building mechanic was tuned and well-tested. It was strong enough to feature at Dreamhack Anaheim, win a grant from the Oculus Launchpad, and get accepted into our university’s games capstone program. Twelve months later, that core mechanic is the only thing that hasn’t changed.
Ezra and Zach at Dreamhack Anaheim 2020
a recent team ‘stand up’ meeting online
We’ve now grown from a pair of two to a team of twenty, that has been operating completely remote since May, and have done a lot of really cool things with the game:
We extended the journey:
Starting by overhauling the two scenes from the original prototype, we built six levels to a functional point, for over 90 minutes of gameplay. Challenges in these levels include herding bison, sneaking past security cameras, fighting off 5G weather machines, and puzzling your way out of Infrastructure Hell.
We upgraded your abilities:
Throughout each level, the player may get a special road piece in their hand. With it, they can choose to change the size of roads, launch the bus out of a cannon, or tether to parts of the environment.
We paved our roads:
our prototype road visuals
our new spline-based smooth roads
Road pieces are now smoothed out into a continuous twisting highway as you build your way through the road trip.
We got groovy:
Our art director, concept artist, and team of 3D modelers, have defined what our game will look like and started building out Post-Infrastructure America.
Even though a lot has changed with Detour Bus, we are still committed to delivering an approachable, easy to learn VR game about building roads. In the near future, look out as we start work on accessibility features, more game polish, and a whole ton of art. Starting full production for a VR title entirely remote has been a challenge, but we can’t wait for the project to keep growing from here. Make sure to stay tuned!
Peace and love,
Zach and Ezra
