Indie Friendly Development Tools

[Dim]

And fortran! Any ide that would let me code everything through macros?

 

[Vikter]

I would like to recommend LÖVE.
It is yet another barebones engine, but it works well, and uses Lua instead of Python or stuff like that. It's actually pretty simple, so it's not something you'd set up for a full fledged RPG, although there are examples of guys making roguelikes on it. It's also zlib/libpng, so you can use it commercially free of charge. The compiling system is also very nice (you zip the folder with the files, rename it from folder.zip to folder.love and run it). And it's cross platform too.
I'm using it for an amateur project and it is really fun to use.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

I've probably mentioned this a lot of times, but again, I have to recommend wz4. It's a powerful tool to generate textures/simple meshes/some other cool stuff, but it's also really messy to use, so feel free to bug me or the tutorial to learn how to do shit.
Code and binaries: https://github.com/farbrausch/fr_public
Community Edition with PhysX implemented and some other stuff: http://werkkzeug4ce.blogspot.com/p/downloads.html (it also offers a GREAT tutorial)

This tool is an ace up my sleeve when it comes to textures.

 

[kaizoku]

What your mom didn't told you about hexagonal grids

http://www.redblobgames.com/grids/hexagons/


Found this by chance and it looks to be really really good.

 

[pakoito]

What your mom didn't told you about hexagonal grids

http://www.redblobgames.com/grids/hexagons/


Found this by chance and it looks to be really really good.

I've been using this for years in my pet projects, even have a saved mirror of the whole webpage sitting on my dropbox. It's really really good.

And according to twitter, he's going to impro ve it soon with code examples.

 

[Galdred]

For my game, I have used the following tools :
Moai engine, open source, multi platform 2D engine. It is quite flexible, but hard to get into, as it lacks tutorial, and the documentation is rather Spartan.
For making maps, I strongly recommend Tiled(open source) : It supports standard, isometric, and hexagonal maps, and have some awesome automapping features. It also allows you to easily tie in your game level logic through objects (you can give them custom properties, place them from a tilemap...).

For drawing complex animations, my team have been using Graphicsgale(16.5$), which made it possible to build our paperdolling system.

And then, for automatizing the work of asembling and optimizing sprite sheets, Texturepacker(40 euros) has been invaluable.

 

[Dim]

Alternative To. My most favorite site. Find similar software or browse a category.
http://alternativeto.net/software/unity/

 

[LESS T_T]

RPG Maker 2003 released on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/362870

Apparently it's not just localization, they've updated it with compatibility and bug fixes.

And they kind of teased a new version of RPG Maker (at 00:04). Looks like it will be released this year, huh. Hope it will be more flexible this time.

 

[Ninjerk]

Buy all the versions!

 

[LESS T_T]

http://jp.itch.io/playscii

Playscii
Playscii is an open source ASCII art and animation program. It runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OSX.

More info: http://vectorpoem.com/playscii

Hardware requirements:

• OpenGL 2.1-capable video card with Vertex Array Object support*.

Please note that Playscii is open source, still in development, and is offered as a pay-what-you-want download here on itch. Pay something if you want to support the developer, but don't feel obligated to! Testing and bug reports are appreciated; you can file bugs on the project's Bitbucket page.

Playscii's development is now underway and the program is usable for creating artwork, though you should expect some bugs as it's not ready for a stable release yet. Download the latest build here. Theproject's readme file has info on using Playscii, running it from source with Python, and other stuff.

With the executable builds (Windows-only for the moment) you don't need to have anything else installed - just download, unzip, and run. If you're running from source then you'll need the dependencies listed in the readme.

Mac OSX support is still early, so if you run into any issues then please feel free to file a bug. Right now you can only run from source on Mac, I'd like to provide a Mac application bundle but I don't have a Mac to build one with, or much knowledge of what's needed... if you're interested in helping with this, let me know!

 

[Severian Silk]

Anyone have experience with Shadowrun Returns? Is it possible to de-Shadowrun this game by renaming skills and spells? I don't want to set my game in the Shadowrun universe.

 

[LESS T_T]

For those who still unaware, Humble Bundle is doing Game Making software bundle: https://www.humblebundle.com/

It contains Game Guru, Axis Game Factory, Stencyl 1 year license, RPG Maker VX Ace (with a script set called Luna Engine), Game Character Hub, Spriter Pro, Sprite Lamp, App Game Kit 2, along with some games and resource packs.

Some tools are awful, but Spriter Pro is a steal for that price.

I have spare Steam keys for RPG Maker VX Ace (Just VX Ace key, I redeemed Luna Engine) and Game Character Hub. PM me if you want to try them.

 

[Vikter]

So recently I tried Unity because I got a Google Cardboard, and decided to make something with it. It's actually a pretty good engine, although it seems easy to get the project out of hand (you can build in the cloud, but you can't really have a shared repo).
Personally, I found it great if you want to deploy to different platforms or want something 3D that requires learning the tool and not programming by itself, but for 2D games, it's just too much. It's so easy to just put sprites in LÖVE or in any Javascript engine, yet in Unity you have to treat 2D as 3D everytime.
Still, I need to learn more. The tutorials are pretty intuitive.

 

[Alchemist]

For those who still unaware, Humble Bundle is doing Game Making software bundle: https://www.humblebundle.com/

It contains Game Guru, Axis Game Factory, Stencyl 1 year license, RPG Maker VX Ace (with a script set called Luna Engine), Game Character Hub, Spriter Pro, Sprite Lamp, App Game Kit 2, along with some games and resource packs.

Some tools are awful, but Spriter Pro is a steal for that price.

I have spare Steam keys for RPG Maker VX Ace (Just VX Ace key, I redeemed Luna Engine) and Game Character Hub. PM me if you want to try them.

Pro Motion is also a pretty nice tool - for pixel work, and it retails for $78 so this bundle deal is pretty sweet. That and Spriter Pro are enough to make me jump on this. Sprite Lamp looks interesting / useful too.

By the way, did anyone else notice there's a month-long game dev contest running in conjunction with this? http://contest.gamedevfort.com/page/guidelines
Pretty nice cash prizes (The current prize pool is about $55k) - the deadline to get a game in is August 7th. The contest started on July 7th, so I'd be starting late but I'm kinda tempted to put something together. At least it will get me off my ass and I'd actually make a game. If I'm really lucky I could win some cash. But about 3 weeks left of dev time, and part-time at that... yikes.

 

[kaizoku]

Found this, maybe it's of interest to some of you
http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2014/12/21/rooms-and-mazes/

moar dungeons!

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/AAdonaac/20150903/252889/Procedural_Dungeon_Generation_Algorithm.php

 

[DavidBVal]

It was already very promising, but in the last year LibGDX has evolved into a dream of a framework to develop multi-platform (PC - Android - iOS - HTML5) games. This is for programmers that want to build a project in which they have full control of the underlying architecture. Efficiency is great, the community is very active, and updates are constant.

Multiplatform works seamlessly. Built-in classes solve everything that would need to be platform dependant, like for instance, opening files, which is solved via a FileHandle class. Still, you can specify platform-specific code via interfaces, if you want (for stuff like Google Play Store or Apple Store, for instance)

And it is absolutely free, and opensource. I already modified some of the engine classes, like the isometric tiledmap renderer, to adapt it to my game needs. Or you can write your own stuff, if you prefer to go low-level for some reason.

Now that my game is ending the Alpha stage, I can only recommend libGDX to others. Never once I regretted choosing it over other options.

 

[pakoito]

Did you use Ashley or Artemis-odb for the ECS? Or you wrote another arch or your own?

 

[DavidBVal]

I did my own entity system. And I am glad, too much custom stuff and tweaking here and there.

 

[pakoito]

I did my own entity system. And I am glad, too much custom stuff and tweaking here and there.

OSS that project without the assets

 

[DavidBVal]

I'd never do that! Parts of the code are too embarassing hahaha!

Serioualy, maybe one day, when it's been cleaned.

 

[LESS T_T]

Epic released "more than 7,600 assets" from (cancelled) Infinity Blade: Dungeons for free (as long as you use them in UE 4 project): https://www.unrealengine.com/assets?lang=en-US&q=Infinity Blade

• Infinity Blade: Grass Lands is the earthy citadel adorned with stone set pieces and beautiful props.
• Infinity Blade: Ice Lands is the wintery fort set deep within a glacial enclave.
• Infinity Blade: Fire Lands is the radiant castle interior laced with unforgiving paths, dramatic props and flowing lava.
• Infinity Blade: Warriors includes loads of assets for crafting fierce heroes.
• Infinity Blade: Adversaries has even more content for a making wide variety of rivals.
• Infinity Blade: Effects gives you visual effects ranging from fire and smoke to lightning and magical reactions.
• Infinity Blade: Sounds includes thousands of raw audio files and sound cues.
• Infinity Blade: Weapons presents a vast array of melee weaponry, including never-before-seen swords and axes and also a few Infinity Blade fan favorites.

 

[theSavant]

That landscape looks kinda plasticky

 

[DavidBVal]

Too bad they're not available for Unity!

Too bad they didn't just release the models an textures as CC-BY so we all can use it, even if we don't use propietary engines...

 

[Niektory]

GameMaker: Studio Pro is available for $6 in the Humble Weekly Bundle.

 

[curry]

That landscape looks kinda plasticky

Yeah but you can change the textures. What's valuable is the models.