lefthandblack
Arcane
I thought that it might be a nice idea to compile a list of development tools that are friendly (read: price, licensing) to independent developers.
I'll start with a list of tools that I use/have used.
Engines:
Unreal Development Kit
http://www.udk.com/
- No licensing fees for freeware projects. 100$ initial fee and 25% of
all profit above 5,000$ for commercial.
Panda 3d
http://www.panda3d.org/
- modified bsd licnese
- Uses python as it's scripting language
- powerful, but bare-bones, no fancy level editor or anything like that.
Wintermute Engine
http://dead-code.org/home/
- 2.5d engine intended for Adventure game development, but robust enough that other types of games are definitely possible.
- uses a scripting language very similar to javascript
Tools:
Blender
http://www.blender.org/
- Once you make up your mind that you are going to learn how to use it, you may find that you will soon be throwing rocks at 3dsmax.
Makehuman
http://www.makehuman.org/
- Open source character model generator. Remember all the body mods for Oblivion and Fallout3? I'm fairly certain by looking at the models that at least some of them used this at some point in development.
GIMP
http://www.gimp.org/
- What Blender is to 3dsmax, this is to Photoshop.
Pixie
http://www.nattyware.com/pixie.php
- A tiny little program that offers a very useful function:
It provides RGB, CMYK, HEX and HTML color values for whatever is under your mouse pointer.
ATI/AMD Normal map generator
http://developer.amd.com/gpu/radeon/arc ... fault.aspx
- generates a very basic normal-map from a TGA file
Nvidia Melody Normal Map Generator
http://developer.nvidia.com/object/melody_home.html
- I haven't tried this yet but it looks sexy.
Audacity
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
- Open source sound editor. Free, powerful and easy to use.
Code Blocks
http://www.codeblocks.org/
Cross platform IDE
Notepad++
http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm
The programmers notepad. I do 90% any programming I do in this.
I'll start with a list of tools that I use/have used.
Engines:
Unreal Development Kit
http://www.udk.com/
- No licensing fees for freeware projects. 100$ initial fee and 25% of
all profit above 5,000$ for commercial.
Panda 3d
http://www.panda3d.org/
- modified bsd licnese
- Uses python as it's scripting language
- powerful, but bare-bones, no fancy level editor or anything like that.
Wintermute Engine
http://dead-code.org/home/
- 2.5d engine intended for Adventure game development, but robust enough that other types of games are definitely possible.
- uses a scripting language very similar to javascript
Tools:
Blender
http://www.blender.org/
- Once you make up your mind that you are going to learn how to use it, you may find that you will soon be throwing rocks at 3dsmax.
Makehuman
http://www.makehuman.org/
- Open source character model generator. Remember all the body mods for Oblivion and Fallout3? I'm fairly certain by looking at the models that at least some of them used this at some point in development.
GIMP
http://www.gimp.org/
- What Blender is to 3dsmax, this is to Photoshop.
Pixie
http://www.nattyware.com/pixie.php
- A tiny little program that offers a very useful function:
It provides RGB, CMYK, HEX and HTML color values for whatever is under your mouse pointer.
ATI/AMD Normal map generator
http://developer.amd.com/gpu/radeon/arc ... fault.aspx
- generates a very basic normal-map from a TGA file
Nvidia Melody Normal Map Generator
http://developer.nvidia.com/object/melody_home.html
- I haven't tried this yet but it looks sexy.
Audacity
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
- Open source sound editor. Free, powerful and easy to use.
Code Blocks
http://www.codeblocks.org/
Cross platform IDE
Notepad++
http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm
The programmers notepad. I do 90% any programming I do in this.