In its actual form, Cubix is a pretty recent project, and its progressing quite fast for a solo project. However, if you take into consideration past encarnation of cubix, it very well may be one of the longest developments in the whole industry! Longer than Duke Nukem Forever, actually.

So, let’s take a trip back in time (thanks to a certain bionic cat), and learn how Cubix came to be!

Cubix the 1st: 1998

So, I was in highschool, and learning to program thanks to my first computer science class. We were learning in QBasic, and did some simple animations, the typical “guess a number” program, etc. I already knew I wanted to make games (like pretty much every highschooler who likes to play games), but actually went one step forward, and tried it.
Since QBasic was too “old” for me, I wanted to get the closest modern thing equivalent. In my case, it was Visual Basic (4).

Well…
As I said, I was learning programming on the go, so the inner parts of the game were just a bunch of mismatched widgets calling each other in the least efficient way possible, and the game looked like someone got creative with cell colors in an excel spreadsheet, but hey! It worked! And, most important, it was FUN. I was on the right track, apparently.

Cubix the 2nd: 1999-2000

Around 1998, while I was dabbling with widgets, a small game engine that would be a landmark on the spanish scene was released, called Div Games Studio. While it had some limitations (256 colors at 800x600px), it would suppose a revolution in the spanish scene, and the missing link between things like klick and play, and “real” game development, providing not just a programming language, but a complete suit including graphical and sound tools. I POUNCED into it.
Dozens of prototypes and hundreds of unused sprites later, I did a new Cubix version in Div (probably Div2 at the time). While only consisting in the basic gameplay, I even did a 4 player mode, which I never managed to test with more than two other people :p

By then, Uni had started, and I already had too many programming assignments to prevent me from habing any desire to do any more programming in my spare time. Thus, we make a short jump until…

Cubix the 3rd: around 2006

So, around that time, I’m doing “serious” (i.e. boring) programming for a living, finding the game industry too inaccesible, left my phd, not finding any subject interesting enough to devote to it, and postgrad student life too unstable compared to a standard job. Looking for an outlet, I decided to give gamedev a try once again. Wanting to do it “for real”, I went with DirectX. Oh, boy.
Let’s just say that the itch didn’t last for long, but I managed to get a working prototype of the core gameplay. I still flinch at the mention of a callback after that

Cubix the 4th: 2012

A shift in life, coincidentially with a shift in the market. I devote a couple of weeks learning libgdx, and of course, making a cubix proto in the process -this time for mobile-, in order to use it as a showcase for a job offer in the game industry. I got the job eventually, but they didn’t bother to check the proto.

Also, that proto made me realize that virtual pad controls wouldn’t work for cubix, because t’s a game to be played with controller / keyboard. I’d love to find the way to make precise controls in a touchscreen for the game, but it’s not in my lis of priorities, btw.

Cubix the 5th/6th: 2016

Another big shift in life, and I decid to give my pet project the attention it deserves. Armed with the knowledge adquired in the last 4 and a half years, I decide to make cubix once again, but for real this time. So, using Unity, I use a couple of consecutive game jams ( familiargamejam for 48h and lowrezjam for 2 weeks) to create the barebones version, known as Cubix LowRez Edition. The 48h game got the design award, while his 2 weeks counterpart got into the top 10% in ranking.

Seeing the positive reception, I started to work on the full-fledged version that I’m creating right now. (And if you haven’t yet, you can try the demo right now, go for it!)

http://gamejolt.com/games/cubix-hd/199143

So, what happens now? Greenlight is around the corner, and it can have a major impact on visibility. So please, if you like the game, vote for it on the greenlight page!

Thanks for reading the abridged memories of cubix (and my own alongside it), and I hope I’ll see you all playing cubix in the near future!

Best regards,

		
			      The Driller Dev