/* Shoot the core while enjoying this */

Boss Music

Hey there,

Jose here to talk a bit about music!. I’d like to talk today a bit about the boss fights music, because every boss needs an epic music right? For the boss fight music, besides trying to make it very intense, I’m also playing around with the beat subdivision and with the time signatures. This means that instead of having regular accents, you’ll feel irregular or changing accents in the rhythm. For example, you’ll hear a 3+3+2 beat subdivision in most of the following track:

For other tracks I’m also planning on using different time signatures like 7/8 or 5/8 and also combining different time signatures to give the music a bit more of variety. I believe having this sort of irregular rhythm, gives a sense of struggle and urgency to the music that works really well in boss fights. I’ll be posting more music in the future so stay tuned.

Thanks for supporting us and keep on spreading the word about the game, we still need support!

Meet Jose Mora

1. Tell us a bit about you :

My name is Jose Mora-Jimenez and I’m a music composer. I’ve got degrees on music composition and classical guitar, although nowadays I write mostly at the piano/keyboard. I come from Costa Rica but I’ve been living in the Netherlands for almost a decade. My musical taste is very diverse, from metal to very weird modern classical stuff.

2. What brought you to the Dimension Drive project?

I found about the project on the Unity forums when the project was still on an early stage, I loved the whole concept and the game mechanics and immediately got in touch with David and Alejandro. Having such a great team as the one we have now I’m even more excited to be working on this game!

3. What part of Dimension Drive are you most excited about?

In the first place, I’m very excited about the comic book art style of the game and in second place I love like idea of puzzle levels. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun to make your way through those levels!

4. What do you do in Dimension Drive?

I’m responsible for all gameplay music. All sounds and cut scenes will be done by Daniel Polman. Dividing tasks is great because I get to concentrate on writing music, which is the part that I love doing the most! We’re planning on having 3 types of music to match the 3 types of levels of the game.

5. What’s your favourite game? What are you playing the most right now?

Hmm difficult question, I like a lot of different genres, for example I love adventure games and platformers. Back in the day I loved playing all games from the Sierra era: Space Quest, King Quest, Hero Quest and every other Quest series! I remember spending weeks trying to figure out how to advance in those games! Nowadays I tend to play mostly indie games, lots of amazing and very artistic projects coming from the indie scene. As for the game I’m playing now, I just bought Ori and the Blind Forest so I think I’ll be playing it a lot in the coming weeks.

6. If you could ask our community one question, what would it be?

Being music my area, I’d love to hear what they think about the music so far and what would they like to hear in the game.

/* A bit of Dimension Drive streaming / podcast */

Today we would like to share some podcast were Dimension Drive either has been or will be soon.

We will be at the next Indiehaven podcast talking about Dimension Drive.

For our Spanish or Spanish speaking backers we were yesterday night at antihype a Spanish podcast were we had a really funny interview ( around 2:19:00 ). If you have some time we strongly recommend to listen this podcast.

Past live Streams!

Finally, in case you missed it, we share below the last live streams we have been into. We joined our friends at Starr Mazer TV, the Space Game Junkie and the Average Giants super show at Indie Game Magazine. Those streams happened during the last campaign, but we still think are really amazing ones about our game.

/* The light at the end of the tunnel */

Hi all!

Today we want to share our happiness with you, we are finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. You made us reach 90% funding and Dimension Drive is getting closer to becoming reality. Please keep helping, we updated the main page with links to Facebook and Twitter if you all keep spreading the word there we are sure we’ll reach that extra 10% in no time. Let’s do this!

Also Max has been hard at work creating one of the alternate skins for The Manticore. You can see it in all its glory here:

Enjoy the weekend!

The Dimension Drive team

/* Twice the work = twice the fun! */

Hey everyone,

I’m David Jimenez, Lead Game Designer for Dimension Drive and today I want to talk to you about how we go about designing levels. Instead of boring you too much with a big pile of text, I’ll be brief and then point you to some videos where you can see it for yourself. And if you like the process I would like to invite you every Thursday at 10 PM CEST to our Twitch channel.

In summary, what we do is have two scenes side by side (one for each side of the game). We split each side in several areas and we populate those areas aligning them with the same area on the other side. That way everything ends up working in perfect sync (unless when I mess up, that also happens 😛 ). Check out these videos of past live streams if you are interested.

Meet David Jimenez

1. Tell us a bit about you :

I’m David Jimenez, I’m 33 years old and I’m a Satellite Radio Navigation Engineer. That’s a mouthful but it basically means that I work on the satellite technology most people use to navigate nowadays, it also means that I like to tinker with computers… a lot. I’ve worked with lots of programming languages (C, C++, Pascal, Visual Basic, Java, C# and even Cobol!). Even if I can code what I really like is game design. I like to come up with crazy ideas, implement a quick prototype and then play it.

2. What brought you to the Dimension Drive project?

Alejandro and I are friends from a long time and we have played many games together. At some point he kind of tricked me into game development. He basically pointed out that I had the required math and coding background. So, I then took several courses and read a ton of books on game design. We started developing games together and one of those ideas turned out to be Dimension Drive.

3. What part of Dimension Drive are you most excited about?

Two things: the teleportation mechanic and Jack! Regarding the teleportation I’m really excited about all the gameplay opportunities it opens. Every time I design a level or I tweak values on the game I try to do it thinking about how can we make the player teleport more and more and have fun while doing it. The second feature of the game I’m really excited about is Jack and her story. I want that this becomes an epic space opera and that by the end of Dimension Drive players want even more of Jack!

4. What do you do in Dimension Drive?

I’m the Game designer of the team, that means that I’m tasked with coming up with the gameplay features of the game, creating the levels and making sure all things work well together. For example, you can’t imagine how much a simple number can affect the gameplay. 0.1 seconds. That’s the value that we currently use for the teleport cool-down. If we make it shorter players can abuse it and the game becomes a cheat and unplayable. Make it longer and people will not be able to teleport frantically and have fun doing so. What do I do? I deal with trade-offs. Also production, social media, management and whatever else is needed to do, that’s the life of an indie developer.

5. What’s your favourite game? What are you playing the most right now?

My favourite game is probably Super Castlevania IV. Although, I would say that Monkey Island, Halo and R-Type are really close contenders.

Obviously, Dimension Drive as I have to replay every level I design a lot! Besides that I recently played Ori and the blind forest and Geometry Wars 3,

6. If you could ask our community one question, what would it be?

As my main task in Dimension Drive is game design I would like to know from you what is your favorite part of the current alpha. That would help me a lot in deciding where should I put more weight when designing the levels for the final version of Dimension Drive. So, please do let me know 🙂

/* Introducing “meet the team” with Alejandro Santiago */

Hello everyone,

Today we would like to introduce you a new set of “interviews” we will be doing within the team that we call “meet the team”. Basically all team members ( one at the time ) will be answering a standard set of questions to begin with, and if you have any further questions, just post it in the comments section below and they will be answering you. There will be no particular order in how the team members will answer this set of questions.

So let’s begin today with Alejandro Santiago:

1. Tell us a bit about you :

“I am Alejandro Santiago, a 36 years old Computer Software engineer that loves coding in C++ and video games. I have been developing games since I was 13 years old and got my first computer, an old 286. Back in the time I was programming in Q-Basic and just having some fun auto-learning the language with a programming book that came with the operating system. Years past but never stop developing games in my free time while working as a software engineer for over 13 years the last 8 in the European Space Agency. I also have worked in 2 professional games, Run Sheldon an endless runner and Ultramagic Balloons target both for IOS and Android.

Besides programming, all kinds of Scify and playing videogames, I also like Triathlon and running the Iron Man, 3.8kms swim, 180kms bike and 42 kms run. If we finally get funded during this Kickstarter, … I will do something  special for all our backers  when I will cross the line in the Iron Man I am planning to do this year…:) ”

2. What brought you to the Dimension Drive project?

“Before partners at 2Awesome Studio David and myself were friends. We were brainstorming one day on what game could we do together while playing and old shoot’em up (I can’t remember which one exactly). When we saw how much space was wasted in his big wide screen, we thought … why don’t we try to develop a new shoot’em up and come up with new mechanics to do something new, and use all that wasted space. I think that was the exact moment when Dimension Drive was born (at least the initial idea) and how I became one of the fathers of this game”

3. What part of Dimension Drive are you most excited about?  

“I am really excited about developing this game with you, the community. We have been doing so since the beginning while showcasing the game and giving public access to our alpha builds. Receiving your feedback and support while developing the game, its a big deal for us because we want to make the best game possible !!! ”

4. What do you do in Dimension Drive?  

“I am the lead programmer and the one in charge to implement all the crazy ideas David has for the game :). Also I develop an in-house “engine” that we will use for Dimension Drive and all future projects (generic score system, I/O, XML generic serialization, …). I also try to help with the game design, social media, management, and everything else ”

5. What’s your favourite game? What are you playing the most right now?

“My favourite game of all time will be … a list of them 🙂 I can’t choose only one. The Mass Effect Saga (but that ending…), X-COM (the original series and the new one), R-Type, Halo saga, Resident Evil I (I played that game in one go without saving in my old PS ONE). Currently I’m playing The Order 1886, Fifa 15, Clash of Clans, Watch Dogs, Destiny, and of course, Dimension Drive (pre alpha).”

6. If you could ask our community one question, what would it be?   

“My one question would be, what is that feature that is not yet there but you would like to see it in Dimension Drive? ”

If you have any other questions for Alejandro, throw them into the comments section and we’ll get some answers for you all!

/* Let’s live stream development again! */

Look me in the eye!

As you know our last LIVE stream was a huge disappointment and this week we didn’t have time to come back to Twitch. But we are happy to announce that tomorrow we will be back! Tune in tomorrow (Friday 22nd of May) at 12 noon CEST to our Twitch channel and spend some time with Max Heyder as he goes about the process of creating the amazing art of Dimension Drive.

Feedback form

We also have created a form to collect all your feedback. We have been receiving some comments about Dimension Drive from different channels, and we would like to centralize all of it, so we do not loose track (your comments are really important for us).

If you would like to tell us anything about the public alpha demo, please use the form at the following link (we would love to hear from you):

feedback form

More videos!

Some youtubers were kind enough to make some cool let’s plays of our game. Want to see it? Check here:

/* What a second day! */

Hey all!

What an amazing second day! Just some numbers of what you did:

• Almost 70% funded
• More than 20K in funding
• 750+ backers

Incredible! But let’s not shout victory just yet, there’s a long way to go. Here’s another number: 9500€ That’s a big number and it’s the amount of funding that we are still missing. We’re going to do everything in our power to get there but we need your help. So, we want to ask you something, please spread the word on Facebook and Twitter as much as possible. Feel free to use that cool hashtag, #jackisback , and any of the images you find in our Kickstarter. If you have any idea or suggestion that may help us improve the campaign we are all ears 🙂

Finally! These are the *news* you are looking for!

In the past days, we got lots of media attention due to the despicable act of somebody we prefer not to describe. And we know many of you are here because you found us there. But now articles are talking about how cool the game is:

And if you are more onto podcasts, David had the pleasure to participate yesterday to the live DT Radio Show. In case you want to hear it, here you are:

/* 50% funded in less than 24h! */

Hi all,

You are going to hear this a lot from us, but it doesn’t make it any less genuine:

THANK YOU!

What you have done in the last 24 hours is beyond our wildest dreams. We know some of you are here without even being fans of shooters. The best way we have to thank you is to make you this promise: make this game awesome, so you’ll be proud to have helped in its creation!

We’ve already received some feedback on our early alpha and we would love to receive more from you. We’ll take all of it and use it to deliver on our promise. People is talking about what happened to us and how we decided to rise and stand to the challenge. We’ll work with all our heart and soul to also make the news for having a really good game. We owe you that much!

Finally, we have achieved a lot today but we are still far from our goal, please keep spreading the word at every opportunity you have to make this game, your game, a reality!