Tools for game development?

News & General Discussion
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I’m thinking about getting myself some tools that could make game development in general easier. Knowing that I’m currently doing all the jobs and I’m most likely staying on the programming and graphics side, I don’t want to spend too much into “out of my specialization stuff”, but I can’t help but notice that some things like a midi keyboard, a sound recorder, video recording software, video editing software etc. could indeed help me, I think.
I know I don’t “need” those things, they would just make the process of creating unique content for those areas alot easier unlike alot of the freeware I have tried.

So In general I’m interested, how do other game devs, specially solo ones are equipped? only unity? or is there more? and if so, what are the reasons etc. and did it actually make your work easier? Did you maybe regret buying something?

Would be nice to hear some experiences regarding that, maybe it helps me getting a better picture of what is helpful specifically for game development. Of course it’s very different from person to person, but hearing some experiences has some value to me and might be worth more, than reviews and experiences from specialized fields, where I don’t understand half of what’s being talked about, because they are not focused on game dev, but their specific skills and knowledge :slight_smile:

Thanks upfront :smile:

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We use Max, Maya, Zbrush, Logic Pro, Photoshop, Unity, UE4, NotePad, Visual Studio, Substance Painter, and a few more tools and apps for various development related things :slight_smile:

I guess it’s more about what you have access to and what works for you!

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For my games (in my sig), I used Blender, aseprite, Photoshop Elements, GIMP, Paint.NET, audacity, resonic, and Python for pipeline scripts if that counts.

Additionally, for promotional work like marketing images and video, add on Premiere Elements, iMovie, and inkscape.

Other notes: I experimented with some music with FL Studio, but didn’t get to ship anything with it, but I plan to in the future. You’ll also notice above that I’m using 3 different paint programs. I’m using GIMP only because Photoshop Elements doesn’t have pen tools, and I’m not willing to shell out for PS full. Paint.NET is good only for quick transformation edits, as the drawing tools are quite crap. I’d throw in Krita here too, but have had no need for it yet.

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Audacity is a free audio editing suite and fairly decent for a free program.

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Unless you plan on creating music, a midi keyboard is an odd addition to add to the list. If youre not already several years deep into making music, or have several years music background, I wouldnt go down the make my own music route.

Having done it several years, I know it takes that long to make a decent sound, and I’ve been playing instruments most my life. Its in a category of its own (to create something good - anyone can turn out a turd - kind of like gamedev!)

Useful software for gamedev: Photoshop, 3D tool of choice (or affordability), sprite packer, visual studio, video editting software, likely Premiere, since they are available on subscription basis.

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Plenty of different coloured pens and paper. A white board with multiple coloured markers is also useful. And a camera to take photos of the whiteboard.

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yeah, currently I’m using unity, trello, notepad, visual studio, blender, photoshop, audacity, l3dt, lmms as main tools and hardware wise I’m using a small wacom screen tablet, microphone, sketchbook (and various other papers) aswell as clay for rough shaping of 3d forms (have not used it much though), camera and white board :smile:

What I’m planning on eventually buying is midi keyboard, because it feels awful and difficult to come up with anything music wise when trying to use computer keyboard for making music, but I also know I probably won’t need it that often.
Then Bandicam for recording videos and maybe filmora for editing videos, since that will be a marketing thing that I will need. But I’m unsure as example about the recorder, because theya re not only expensive but also, there are sound libraries on the internet I could use and I’m not very good with editing sound yet…so I’m torn between making original sounds and taking some from free services. it might be useful to first figure out how to edit sounds properly.
I was also thinking about Substance Painter, specifically because I think I will do many handpainted texures in the future and that could help, but is not of concern at the very moment.

:roll_eyes:

lmms is btw. similar to fl studio and good for beginners :slight_smile: and regarding photoshop, since they have monthly subscription it’s alot easier to just get it when you need it, not to mention that photoshop is in my opinion definitely worth it, but I also don’t like gimp…it didn’t like my graphics tablet and alot of the controls feel unintuitive to me.

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Fo’ realz!
Whiteboards are critical. :wink:

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I would recommend fraps as my video capture. Its best.

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I’m slowly learning this. While I have done a couple of really cool sounding tracks for an old game, using Acid years ago (I know, Acid’s not really making music, but they were good to my ear), I haven’t had the time to fully invest in FL Studio. I know I can generate some music that I want, but it takes me a considerable amount more effort since I’d rather devote the time to programming and art. I’ll most likely have to contract this out at some point or another.

Regarding MIDI keyboards, I also was looking at a cheaper Akai keyboard, but have not yet brought myself to get one. For FL Studio, I actually use the Rock Band 3 keyboard, which serves its purpose pretty well for my amateur level “noise making”. I specifically bought Rock Band 3 knowing that the keyboard had MIDI ports on it.

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biggest points for a midi keyboard are : velocity for keys and less worrying about hitting shortcut keys while trying to just experiment XD

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lmms looks pretty cool, and I would probably be using it too if I didn’t already have FL Studio, which I bought about 7 years ago (FL has lifetime licenses) as a future investment, so by not using it, I wouldn’t have really invested well =).

10 bucks a month for Photoshop definitely sounds reasonable. I’ll go that route when I absolutely have to. As Under the Weather is not quite fully afloat, I’m running on shoestring for now.

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Yup. The RB3 keyboard is no joke. The annoying part is it only covers 2 octaves, but I can’t be picky, I just shift up and down with the X and B keys. Not sure if it’s even available for cheap any more. Most of the ones I see on Amazon are by Mad Catz, and I doubt it’s the legit keyboard that was bundled with the game.

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velocity for keys sounds good but unless you go with a real top end keyboard with midi support the actual keybed used in most midi keyboards is kinda naff… sure it works… but the quality is ehh generally unless you pay the price for high end keybed.

my recommendation for a multitalented indie who feels like a dabbling in music… get the smallest effing midi keyboard that will fit on your desk possible inbetween you and the screen, with kb/m still readily accessible because you spend more time in the DAW clicking stuff anyway… and you won’t use the damn keyboard unless its convenient to access most the time… velocity can easily be adjusted in post with any daw.

if you ever get into more then sure go for better keyboard.

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I use a Casio keyboard it’s 61 keys & I hook it up via USB to Midi to my computer. There are several free programs that can use the input. It is fun.

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Thanks for the heads up on lmms, that does indeed look interesting.

For me, I tend to try to go as cheap as possible route, so for everything modeling, animation, video edits, sound edits it’s blender.

For art, I’m subscribed to adobe, but if I was not, recommending something with a one off fee, it would definitely be affinity designer, affinity photo (for macs only at present.)

Sound design is no walk in the park like Leenz said, and I guess a keyboard would help somewhat, if you can play read music. I also found I can use sounds effects off youtube, using youtube2mp3, then basically take them into blender and pull out the ones I need, layer the music.

Scripting sublime text with snippets (free)

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2612466--183207--mash_hammer.jpg

This can be useful when Unity’s Console log starts saying “Object reference not set to an instance of an object” but refuses to explain itself any better than that… Or for when you try to create a follow camera script but the screen keeps jittering just a teeny bit and you have no idea why but then you just have to make the camera a child of the object you want it to follow because oh well…

You simply place your computer on a sturdy surface, such as a concrete slab or maybe a very old rustic wooden table, and you just start smashing your computer. Smash it until it it starts to smell funny. Until you see the last bit of life fizzle out.

2612466--183208--flame_thrower.png

If you plan on participating in any part of the gaming community, don’t leave home without one of these.

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As far as hardware is concerned, something that has become an intregral part of my tool set is an audio recorder.

You don’t realized how valueable good sound is in a game until you actually add sound and realized just how much more well polished it feels. And digital sound recorders have pleanty of uses beyond that, especially if you get a good one.

Personally, I use a Zoom H5. It seems expensive at first until you realized just how powerful of a tool it really is. The ability to use different propriatary mics, as well as connect to XLR or instrument cable sources, not to mention the fact that it can work as a USB audio interface on your computer (It’s not the best one in the world, but it works), and also work as a USB SD card reader? The amount of utility it has has made it a vital tool for me.

Along with that, you would want a good set of studio headphones. With my recorder I bought the Sony MDR-7506 headphones. They are often used in radio stations and recording studios. And are cheap, at least compared to the crazy Sennheisers and (god forbid) Beats by Dre of the world. Having a good set of headphones is good not only for recording, but also editing your sounds in something like Audacity.

These two things together should allow you to not have to rely on skeevy websites for sound effects, you can custom make just about any sound you want, depending on how creative and resourceful you are. Recording foley can be actually quite fun if you can find a good quiet place, especially if you need like, smashing sounds. Very theraputic.

I saw that you also have a wacom tablet. A great free program to use with drawing tablets is Krita. It’s something of a reletive to GIMP in that it’s also from the Linux/Open Source world. It seems very much optimized for use with a drawing pad compared to something like GIMP, which has it’s uses as well.

And, while I pretty much rely on people around me with much greater aptitude for music than myself for my music, I do know of one little interesting program for that. If you want to make something with a Chiptune sound, theres a program called Famitracker that allows you to do that. It emulates the Nintendo sound card, and allows you to make pretty much anything that could have been made on the original NES, including some special soundchips that came with some Japanese Famicom games like the VRC6 chip that came with the Japanese version of Castlevania 3.

I probably know a few other little tricks, but thats all I can think of right now

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Everything by voidtools ("Everything" version 1.4 Beta - voidtools forum) I’ve used it for years as the only fast way of finding files fast… invaluable for windows file searching and now in content search… its latest beta has instant size sorting and folder sizes along with thumbnail/preview support… it takes giant dumps over windows built in crap and other search tools.

Just one of the many power user essentials I suppose and that always goes to help with development in whatever.

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So err, this may take a while:

Modo (use it for Pre-Viz / concepts), Visio (level layouts), Word (for text of course :)), Maya LT (used to use 3DSmax, I’m happy with it for 3D modelling and animation).

Substance Designer / painter (which is great, has a few shortfalls like SP’s export system), Quixel (it’s good, but has it’s fair share of issues, it’s pretty flaky which is a shame). World machine (great), UE4 (main engine), Stingray (concepts / level testing) just because it comes with Maya LT? So why not? I do use Unity for other concepts though. Just depends what I’m doing… Z-brush (if I’m doing some serious scultping or I’ll do it in Maya).

Photoshop (which is defacto really), Adobe After Effects (which is good).

Visual Studio (for coding) I really like Xcode in Unity though? I might be the only one. SpeedTree (no issues), Pro-tools for sounds, I find logic just as good if you’re on MAC… Or actually Samplitude is one of the best PC based DAW’s.

There’s all sorts of other little programs I have like Shader2map (I think it is?) It’s actually really cool. A lot of people use CrazyBump too.

As for equipment, there’s a metric ton from hypercardiod mic’s to mocap camera’s and of course dev machines.