With a plethora of reference material available showing John Kerry circa 1969, we had no trouble finding photographs from which to design our character model. When possible, we like to have digital source material from which to work. For example, to design Captain Brian R. Chontosh and his crew for Freedom’s Heroes: The Road to Baghdad (our exclusive retail mission), we took digital pictures of their faces at various angles when they were here in New York City. But for a mission where the main character is unavailable in person (because the mission is historical), we work from images taken during that time.

As with Kerry’s appearance, the look of Vietnam has also been well-documented. This has its advantages and disadvantages. On the plus side, the artists have access to a large amount of reference material on which to base their work. To create the layout of the area in this mission, we used satellite imagery of the region as it is today, plus a real navigational map used by the Swifties during the Vietnam War. On the downside, the artist is dealing with expectations. In this case, the user already has a good idea of what a river in Vietnam looks like. So the artist has to consider the user’s preconceived notions and work within those parameters as well.

We were incredibly fortunate to have Thomas Forrest working with us on this mission. He is a Swift Boat veteran who served in Vietnam and documented his time in country in great detail. He has a personal collection of photographs, maps, charts, audio recordings, and film that he was generous enough to share with us. He also talked us through the details of Swift Boat missions so we could make your experience as accurate as possible.

We made a first draft of Kerry’s Patrol Craft Fast 94 based on photo reference. Then we presented images of the 3D model to Thomas Forrest for his comments. He was very thorough, even annotating a screenshot with comments such as “shrink the air duct” and “add a blue and white star to roof “(The boats had the star so that they could be identified by air support).

Making a water-based vehicle was new for Kuma, and to refine gameplay, we made the decision to keep the action on the boat as much as possible. Also, with the new boat comes a new weapons system. Now that we have the .50-cal built, we can use it on land vehicles in future missions.

Finally, if you look downward when exiting the boat in shallow water using the “E” key (as if diving into shallow water), your character may take damage. Be careful.