Resources
A list of resources to help you make games!
Game engines
3d
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Unity
Unity was one of the first free tools for making 3d games and has developed quite a following.
Cost: Free
Coding languages: C# (Unity script and Boo have been discontinued).
unity.com
Download Unity -
Unreal
An industry standard that has recently switched to the same direct-to-developer model unity uses. If you play console games there's a good chance you've played a game built with the Unreal Engine.
Cost: Free
Coding languages: C++
unrealengine.com
Download Unreal
2d
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Gamemaker
Gamemaker makes creating your first game easy. Gamemaker supports drag and drop editing that allows you to make games without learning to code. For more advanced things, gamemaker also supports it's own language, GML. However, this option is no longer free. Needs coding? no
Cost: Free trial, $99+ after.
Coding languages: No coding needed with drag and drop editor, supports gml (a programming language made specifically for game maker)
yoyogames.com
Download Gamemaker -
Unity
Unity wasn't originally designed to be a 2d game engine, but that has changed recently with native support for 2d games.
Cost: Free
Coding languages: C#, (Unity script and Boo have been discontinued).
unity.com
Download Unity
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Solarus
A free and open-source Action-RPG game engine for making Zelda inspired games. Needs coding? Yes
Cost: Free
Coding languages: Lua.
Download Solarus at solarus-games.org/ -
Construct 2
An event driven game engine that allows you to publish on multiple platforms including HTML5, Android, and IOS.
Cost: Free (some features limited), $129 for fully featured version.
Coding languages: none.
Download Construct 2 at scirra.com/
Interactive Fiction / Visual Novel
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Twine
No coding? No problem. Twine makes it easy to create text based adventures that run in your browser.
Cost: Free
Coding languages: HTML, Javascript (for the more complex stuff)
twinery.org
Download Twine -
Renpy
A fan of visual novels? Now you can make your own. RenPy is a visual novel engine that uses Python. RenPy has support for several features like menus, saving games, and dialogue out of the box.
Cost: Free
Coding languages: Python
renpy.org
Download Renpy
RPG
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RPG Maker
RPGs are hard to make no matter what game engine. However, RPG maker makes the process a bit more bearable with it's vast array of tools and scripts to help with world building, dialogue, leveling/exp, and combat.
Cost: Free trial, $79+ after.
Coding languages: No coding needed with a fully featured editor, also supports a proprietary RPG Maker scripting language.
rpgmakerweb.com
Download RPG Maker
Adventure
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Adventure Game Studio
Adventure Game Studio provides the tools to make your own adventure, for free! AGS provides everything you need from within one easy-to-use application. Create, test and debug your game, all in one place.
Cost: Free.
Coding languages: No coding needed with a fully featured editor.
adventuregamestudio.co.uk/
Download adventure game studio
Recommended books on game design
Art assets
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OpenGameArt
The open game art website is a great resource where several artists share their game art for others to use.
Visit the website TurboSquid
A great library of free and paid 3d models.
Visit the website
Sound
bfxr
Built to assist with game jams like Ludum Dare, bfxr generates sound effects for any game.
Visit the website-
soundimage
Free Music, Sound Effects and Images for Your Projects by Eric Matyas.
Visit the website
Source Control
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GitHub
GitHub is a well known web-based Git or version control repository. Github offers public (free) and private (paid) repositories.
Cost: Free / Paid
github.com -
Bitbucket
Bitbucket is a web-based hosting service for projects that use either the Mercurial (since launch) or Git (since October 2011) revision control systems. Bitbucket offers both commercial plans and free accounts. Bitbucket offers both public and private repositories for free for projects under 2gb.
Cost: Free / Paid
bitbucket.com
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Perforce
Perforce Helix is a commercial, proprietary revision control system developed by Perforce Software. Perforce is used by many AAA game studios. Use of the Perforce Helix server is unrestricted and free for up to 5 users, 20 workspaces and unlimited files, or unlimited users and up to 1,000 files, without a license.
Cost: Free / Paid
perforce.com -
Dropbox
Dropbox is a file hosting service. Using Dropbox on your computer is just like using any other folder on your hard drive, except the files you drag into your Dropbox folder automatically sync online and to any other computers or mobile devices linked to your account. Dropbox is technically not a source control system but can be used in a pinch. Dropbox is free for up to 2gb.
Cost: Free / Paid
dropbox.com
Project Management and Collaboration
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Slack
Slack is a cloud-based set of team collaboration tools. The primary use of slack is a chat channel that you and your collaborators can use to communicate and share files.
Cost: Free / Paid
slack.com -
Trello
If you've ever used notecards to organize tasks, or to plan out a game, you may want to check out trello. A Trello board is a list of lists, filled with cards, used by you and your team. I've found trello to be a great collaboration tool that balances simplicity and depth.
Cost: Free / Paid
trello.com
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Asana
Asana was built as an internal tool at Facebook to coordinate work. Each team can create a workspace. Workspaces contain projects, and projects contain tasks. In each task, users can add notes, comments, attachments, and tags. Users can follow projects and tasks and, when the state of a project or task changes, followers get updates about the changes in their inboxes.
Cost: Free / Paid
perforce.com
Tutorials
You'll be able to find tutorials here as soon as we make them.
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