Dimension Drive

[Stilghar]

N.B. We are in the process of completely revamping the graphics, gameplay videos and previous beta still use old art style.

Download the beta

Open beta trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymlWGQwQDiw



Some screenshots:






62 MB, zipped file, no need to install (Unity game)

- This game is being designed for 16:9 resolutions. We recommend 1280x720 for slow computers (720p)

- Controls. The game is prepared to be played with the keyboard and the XBOX 360 controller with no extra configuration:

Keyboard:

* Arrows - Moves The Fliegende around space (Up/Down - Right / Left)
* Z - Shoots The Fliegende's weapons
* X - Jump between dimensions. Use the green dot (hint) in the other dimension to know where you will be jumping
* C - Change your weapon mode (primary / secondary)


XBOX 360 Controller:

* Left stick - Moves The Fliegende around space (Up/Down - Right / Left)
* RT (Rigth Trigger) - Shoots The Fliegende weapons
* A (green) - Jump between dimensions. Use the green dot (hint) in the other dimension to know where you will be jumping
* LB (Left Bumper) - Change your weapon mode (primary / secondary)


Gameplay video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OQheduunEo#t=66

FEEDBACK WANTED AND APPRECIATED.

Hi all!

We are an indie studio based in The Netherlands. We intend to bring Dimension Drive to Windos, Mac and Linux.

Dimension Drive is a vertical space shooter with a twist. The current version of the game is in beta, so expect bugs and missing features.
When we started discussing Dimension Drive quite some time ago the main target that we wanted to achieve was to create a vertical shmup that looked and played nice in a widescreen. We didn’t want to resort to TATE, so we started to think about this idea of playing two shmups side by side at the same time. However, something was still missing, something was needed to force the player to play the two sides. That is how the dimension energy concept came to be. The concept is simple:

- The player has an energy bar in each of the sides. It uses this energy for firing.
- Every time that the player fires energy is consumed from the bar of the current side.
- If the energy reaches zero the player will die.
- Killing enemies on one side recharges energy of the other side.
- The player can “jump” from one side to the other.

With this basic concept what we achieve is that effectively the player is compelled to jump frequently and play the “two vertical shmups” that are presented to him at the same time. This also opens the possibility to apply strategies on how to approach a level. For example, when confronted with many powerful enemies on one side the player may decide to flee to the other side or to stay and rack up more points (score system not implemented in this beta) and energy.

[Stilghar]

Two game modes to chose (let us know which one you prefer) and some performance improvements added. See first post for download link.

[laxa88]

I was gonna give this a try but I'm on a Mac. Sorry! But anyway judging by the description and screenshots, I like what I'm seeing. The idea of jumping between screens remind me of Ikaruga -- the concept of switching between two "modes" to avoid hazards from certain enemy types. But this is different no doubt!

Regarding game modes, I'm pretty sure any shmup fans will go with Arcade mode. "Modern" mode is a little too "hand-holding" IMHO, and even to the most casual/newbie players to the genre.

EDIT: it would be great if you have a demo video, so those with slower speed (like myself, haw haw) can just give it a look before downloading the full game.

[Stilghar]

Hi laxa88, thanks for the reply!

Let me know how you like it once you give it a try.

I will try to make a gameplay video. Thing is now we are working hard to have this and another game ready to be displayed on the 7th of April at Utrecht. I'll see if I have time. We'll try also to have a Mac version soon. In any case the game is only 60 MB it shouldn't take long to download. It is true that Ikaruga also has the possibility of switching to avoid hazards. But we weren't after that with DD (although we are more than happy to have DD compared with Ikaruga ). Our idea was to play two shmups at the same time using a teleportation feature, also to make a vertical 16:9 shmup that is fun to play.

Regarding the "Modern" mode I agree that it makes the game way easier but that was the target anyway. We are trying to cover a wider audience than just shmup fans with Dimension Drive, that is the aim of Modern mode. In any case, we plan to tweak it a bit, we are probably ditching the autojump... People doesn't seem to like it, instead you will not be able to fire when your energy is low forcing you to jump. Arcade mode will be left untouched (reach zero energy and you die).

[Stilghar]

We are working now on the scoring system. We have the following approach in mind. Any thoughts? Recommendations? Let me know what you think.

Score is computed using the following rules:

1. Each enemy type gives a certain amount of points upon destroying them (enemyPointsTypeXX)
2. A multiplier (chainMultiplier) is applied to the enemyPointsTypeXX for each successive enemy killed before adding the points to the score. Every enemy killed will increase the multiplier by 1. The multiplier can go from 1 to 100.
3. Getting hit (in Modern game mode) or getting killed (in Arcade game mode) will reset the multiplier to 1.
4. A low energy warning will also reset the multiplier to 1.

The current score is calculated based on the 4 points above using the following formula:

currentScore=currentScore +chainMultiplier*enemyPointsTypeXX

When reaching the end of the level the final score will be computed as:

1. The percentage of enemies destroyed with respect to the total ones that have appeared in the level will be used as a bonus score (destructionBonus) multiplier to the total score (destructionPercentage).
2. The remaining energy will be converted to remaining energy bonus score using a multiplier (energyMultiplier).
3. Remaining lives will be converted to remaining lives bonus score. Every life will give you a certain amount of points (remainingLivesPoints).
4. Achievements will be added to the total score if obtained.

The final score is computed using the following formula:

destructionBonus = currentScore*destructionPercentage
energyBonus = remainingEnergy*energyMultiplier
lifeBonus = lives*remainingLivesPoints
achievementsBonus = achievements not yet decided

Final Score = currentScore+destructionBonus+energyBonus+lifeBonus+achievementBonus

[Stilghar]

Gameplay video added to the first post:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OQheduunEo#t=66

[laxa88]

Thanks for the gameplay video! After seeing that I felt bad for taking so long to give it a try, so I went over to my Windoze desktop and downloaded the demo for a quick spin. I won't comment on aesthetics and other "bells and whistles" part of the game. Here are my impressions after about 15 minutes of playing:

- At first, I died a few times without realizing. It took a while notice that my ship exploded. That being said, sometimes I don't even know what hit me-- then I noticed, my ship's hitbox is pretty big. I touched a bullet somewhere near the wing and died. I think the ship's hitbox should be smaller... If you checked out the "common mistakes of new developers" link from this thread here, there's a part that talked about hitbox size. I think the typical player's hitbox is about the size of an enemy bullet.

- I thought the speed of the bullets were slow that I can easily dodge it, but it proved a real challenge when I had to jump to the other screen. It forced me to rely on the main mechanic of the game (jumping), so I thought it was fun!

- I have bad judgement of where I'll "land" in the other screen, so sometimes I jumped right into an enemy bullet. Although I commend the difficulty, I'm frustrated that I sometimes have to blindly jump from one side (because I have to avoid something) but die for landing into an enemy bullet. One way around this would be to have a "ghost" image or some sort of indication of where the player will land on when he jumps to the other screen.

- It's difficult to dodge bullets sometimes. It's mentioned in the thread discussed here, about "Inertia". That said, I quite often "ran into enemy bullets" even though I see it coming, because I tried to "move away" but there was a delay.

- The controls feel weird to me. I'm so used to "Z" being the fire button, and anything after that being buttons in priority, so I would expect this:
Z = fire
X = change weapon
C = jump
S = recharge shield (I tried using it but there was no effect. Or maybe I didn't notice)
... Or one good way would be to just allow the player to customize their key bindings.

- I'm used to hammering the fire button, so playing this game where I'm forced to only shoot when necessary, messes up my usual playstyle. As such, I had to think a little longer when I want to switch weapon/jump. It's just my personal experience. I got the hang of it after a few tries and now I can ... survive longer.

- I never managed to get to the end of the demo in Arcade mode, due to the issues above. For Modern mode, thanks to the shield, I was able to take about 10 hits before I reached the end... something that is impossible in Arcade since I can only afford to get hit 3 times.

In a nutshell, I think stuff that can be improved on are:
1) Hitbox size
2) Remove ship movement inertia/acceleration
3) Show indication of ship position in the other screen

Anyway I hope this is good enough feedback. Keep going!

[Stilghar]

Hi Laxa88,

Many thanks for the feedback!!!!! We got a ton of feedback last Monday at Indievelopment conference also.
My main take is that you like the JUMP concept, we really want to know if this mechanic is good or not. So far people seem to like the idea!

My replies to your main comments:

1- We already checked that thread on common mistakes quite many times hehehehe. Anyway, we are not after a bullet hell type of game here. We want to do something more similar to what Tyrian was in the day (even if many people here seem to hate that type of game). That being said we are thinking on reducing the hitbox a bit and making Arcade the main game mode. But for sure it will not be one of those really small dot like hitbox games. Your hitbox is and will be smaller than the ship but not that smaller.

2- Ship inertia is not there, that's a strange comment. Whenever you stop pressing the movement keys the ship stops. Maybe the moving background (it moves a bit left and right) confuses on that??? Otherwise I don't know what to say, we made sure no physics or inertia are there. Please let me know if you still see this problem.

3- That is a really good tip, and many people already asked for an indicator that tells them where they are going to land.

Other comments:

I will reorder the buttons as you mentioned. But being Unity you can actually change the buttons to whatever you like before starting the game, didn't you try that?
We plan on improve the art, music and sfx. It's true that we need something more visual when the player dies.
This weekend I will update the build, we did already some changes.

[Lord Satori]

TYRIAN!!!!!!!!!!


...ahem.

Anyway, if this game truly ends up like Tyrian, then you have my full support.

About the inertia thing, I think he's talking about the ship startup not the stopping.

[laxa88]

@Stilghar, @Lord Satori:
Yep I was refering to the ship acceleration. I thought there the ship slows down before stopping, but I went in and checked again and it seems there's a little "speed-up" period when the ship starts moving, which affects how well players dodge bullets on reflex.

I played Tyrian for a bit but can't remember anything from it so I can't comment on it yet. But if the hitbox is large enough that my plan explodes even if enemy bullets just graze my ship's wings, it still feels a little unforgiving to me. That's just IMHO.

Yes Unity allows you to rebind buttons before the game, but if I want to change the settings in-game? It's not a big issue, definitely, because it's only one-player (e.g. once I have a comfortable button binds, I won't change it anymore)

Good luck on the development! Looking forward to seeing more.

[Stilghar]

@Laxa88, @Lord Satori:

Thanks, I noticed what you mention of a speed up period when starting to move. I believe it has to do with how we have coded the ship banking. I have to say you are really really picky if you could feel that Then again many thanks for spotting it, it's a bug that we plan to correct now

Regarding Tyrian, the hitbox was pretty large but you ALWAYS played with shield and armour. Actually, your shield regenerated if you stopped firing and your ship had a good generator equipped. The plan is not to implement something like that, we will move arcade mode as the main mode and shrink the hitbox. What we would like to bring back from Tyrian is the shop and the feel of "design your own ship" that it had. At the moment, this is not even started and considering how many more things we still have to do I'm not even certain that we will be able to keep it if we want to release within a reasonable time frame.

I will remap the buttons to the default config you mentioned, and in next versions we plan to have this setup also inside in-game menus.

Thanks again for all the feedback, I will come back when we have another version for you to play. How's your own game going Laxa88? I think you were using Unity also but 2D, right?

[laxa88]

Yea I am quite the fussy player. Don't take my feedback too seriously though, because I don't represent the whole of your potential player demographic.

I'll post about my game dev in a separate thread later.

[Stilghar]

New beta available for PC and MAC to try on the first post. Let us know what you think!

Many things improved:

- Bugs reported in this thread above this message should now be fixed.
- Arcade mode is now the main game mode. Player hitbox reduced.
- Jump hint added to the game.
- New SFXs.
- Camera shake and bigger explosions when player dies. Things go boom!
- Increased game speed.
- New version for MAC users.
- Tons of other bugs corrected...

[buko-studios]

Cool Concept, played well on our mac!

Some thoughts/feedback..
We jumped in without reading the instructions..
Might be good for an in game prompt that lets players know that killing enemies recharges energy in the opposite field.
Caught us out first try - and we weren't sure why.

The 3d graphics are pretty good. But it would be nice to give better separation between the environment and enemies.

The enemy waves were all working nicely.

Thanks for sharing and good luck. Will keep an eye on this one!

[Stilghar]

Thanks for trying! Feel free to distribute the beta, the more people we reach with it the better.

Happy to see that the performance was ok on your Mac, we don't have a Mac to try ourselves

Regarding the instructions, we have a tutorial available from the main menu, but I agree that a playable tutorial is needed being the gameplay a new concept.

Regarding graphics, we have to say that NO artist has worked on Dimension Drive. We are 2 programmers in 2Awesome Studio. We have bought all the art assets from different sources (turbosquid, unity asset store...) and integrated them together so I agree that a more consistent look could benefit the game. We hope in the long run we can bring in an artist that can do that for the game.

Any specifics that you liked/disliked about the game? Did you prefer Arcade or Modern?

[Stilghar]

First post updated with new cool trailer for the Open Beta. Hope you like it guys

[laxa88]

Finally a Mac release! I just saw the trailer and gotta say it's a big improvement! I'll find time to playtesting the Mac version in a bit.

[Stilghar]

First post updated, the game is now on IndieDB.

BTW, we are looking for somebody that uses Linux to test that build. Please let us know if you can give us a hand on that.

[Eithrial]

I can test linux builds

[Stilghar]

I can test linux builds

Cool! The linux build is already publicly available on the website. Give it a try and let me know

[Stilghar]

New updated HUD concept

Less clutter, relevant information more visible and easy to see without losing focus of the game. The idea with this HUD is that it will "jump" dimension with the player ship.

What do you think?

[Stilghar]

First post updated. New betas will always be posted directly on the game website http://www.dimensiondrive.com

Many changes since last beta: faster gameplay, powerups, new art for weapons, new HUD integrated into gameplay, Windows, Mac and Linux versions, and much more...

[n0rtygames]

Noooo! This whole damned concept was on my "list of things to do". I've got it all written down and everything!!! It's a great way to make use of a full 16:9 screen while retaining classic 3:4 play.

Will download and try this out tonight!

What version of Unity did you make this in? Are you using the new 2D stuff or have you been at this long enough to have rolled your own 2d stuff?

[Stilghar]

Noooo! This whole damned concept was on my "list of things to do". I've got it all written down and everything!!! It's a great way to make use of a full 16:9 screen while retaining classic 3:4 play.

Sorry, man. We got it first
Actually we did a much smaller prototype with the same concept almost 5 years ago in XNA.

Will download and try this out tonight!

What version of Unity did you make this in? Are you using the new 2D stuff or have you been at this long enough to have rolled your own 2d stuff?

Cool, let us know what you think. Make sure to download it from our site to get the last version. We are trying to remove all the other links to have a single version available.

We use Unity Free latest version. The game is a mix of 2D elements and 3D. Ships are 3D, some scenario parts are also 3D, bullets are 2D, explosions are particle systems in 3D, HUD is 2D, space background is 2D. Total chaos! We have been at this before Unity had 2D tools but we didn't roll our own tech. For 2D we use 2D Toolkit and NGUI (for HUD and Menus). No need to do your own tech unless you have a very specific need.

[n0rtygames]

Sorry, man. We got it first
Actually we did a much smaller prototype with the same concept almost 5 years ago in XNA.

Oh this won't stop me...

No need to do your own tech unless you have a very specific need.

My needs are very specific! :p

I have a unity pro license and I basically just wrote my own sprite manager using planes. Don't really need much more than that. I do have ngui though! Useful little thing, but it's just as quick to create my own menu systems these days >.<

[Stilghar]

Sorry, man. We got it first
Actually we did a much smaller prototype with the same concept almost 5 years ago in XNA.

Oh this won't stop me...

No need to do your own tech unless you have a very specific need.

My needs are very specific! :p

I have a unity pro license and I basically just wrote my own sprite manager using planes. Don't really need much more than that. I do have ngui though! Useful little thing, but it's just as quick to create my own menu systems these days >.<

LoL I guess is only a matter of time before we start having clones

Nice that you got Pro, we are planning on getting it at some point. Regarding your sprite manager how do you handle batching and draw calls? The nice thing about 2D Toolkit is the Atlasing and batching that drastically improves the performance. I guess we could have coded that ourselves also, but in the end it's always a trade-off between: do I want to do a game or a tool to do games? Do you have any game done in Unity I can check?

[n0rtygames]

LoL I guess is only a matter of time before we start having clones

Nice that you got Pro, we are planning on getting it at some point. Regarding your sprite manager how do you handle batching and draw calls? The nice thing about 2D Toolkit is the Atlasing and batching that drastically improves the performance. I guess we could have coded that ourselves also, but in the end it's always a trade-off between: do I want to do a game or a tool to do games? Do you have any game done in Unity I can check?

I didn't really bother with any batching of sorts. When I say sprite manager I'm really just talking about creating my own sprite sheets and then having some friendly way to refer to them in code. I used a separate sheet packer to create sheets and generate text file atlases and that was pretty much it. Then rendered on to planes. Kinda just let Unity do its thing and shared textures as much as possible. Nothing particularly fancy.

Nothing downloadable yet, sorry. Next shmup project will most likely be done in Unity as its a hori and we have some ideas that are gonna be easier to work with in Unity than my current codebase. The rest of the stuff I have is just personal play things

[Stilghar]

Just to let everyone know that I'll be at GDC Europe and Gamescom in Cologne, Germany in one week in case anyone wants to meet, let me know.

[Stilghar]

Playing with bloom and JJAbrams flares, reworked space background. Changed from flat 2D parallax to 3D space scene.

[Stilghar]

Hey guys,

We have created a poll to collect feedback on the game. It would be great if you could spend a couple of minutes filling it in after you play the game.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1j29RY5 ... w/viewform

Thanks!