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What tools do you use for Game Development?

A topic by GamerPlayz created Jan 27, 2022 Views: 1,232 Replies: 15
Viewing posts 1 to 11

I just wanted to know what tools everyone uses to make their games so I can check out the tools. I'm a complete beginner in game dev so it would help.

Depending on the graphics, I use either GLFW + OpenGL, or SDL2 with its builtin renderer.

Open Dynamics Engine as my 3D physics engine or Box2D for 2D, SoLoud as my audio engine.

Blender 2.79b is for modelling. LMMS if I need sounds or music humans can’t pull off, like synths.

That must be difficult. The engine and stuff uses only C++ for making games.

I personally think people overstate the difficulty. If I decide to start a project without carrying over my previous code, it only usually takes me around three weeks to get it to a nice state, which is very little compared to making the rest of the game itself.

In my current project, just modelling my overworld has taken me almost a year at this point.

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Pixel art - Aseprite

3D modeling - Blender (latest version is 3.0.1, although I'm using 2.9x)

Game engines - Godot, Unity, Unreal Engine (I'm not using any of these currently, but they're arguably the 3 most popular).

Programming language - QB64

Explosions and smoke effects - Embergen


It really depends on what type of game you want to make though since some tools are better suited for that particular game.

As I've found out, using a programming language gives you maximum freedom to do what you want, but can be incredibly complicated. For a beginner, a game engine would probably be a better choice.

Your best bet is to find games similar to the one you want to make, and just see what tools they used.

I want to make retro games.  Like 8 or 16 Bit games.  And hopefully,  some 3d and 2d.

For the game I’m working on at the moment:

  • Programming language: C
  • Libraries: None :) (unless you count operating system stuff and single header utilities)
  • Pixel art: GIMP
  • Audio: Haven’t really made any soundtracks for this game yet, so not sure what I will use. All the SFX currently are made with sfxr.
  • Map creation: Tiled, with a custom export format that I made.

Here’s the game if anyone was interested in taking a look.

Making your own engine takes a little while, but it is worth it in my opinion.

start free scratch D courses by Nkiko Hertier

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCz25UMtm7PVg6BLX2HvrJig

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That's an interesting question we thought to answer you guys.

We use,

Game Engine - Unity

Coding (C#)  - Visual Studio/Rider

Cloud Save & Repositories - GitHub, Plastic SCM

2D Art - Photoshop, Illustrator

3D Modelling - Blender, Cinema4D

3D Modelling  (Voxel Art) - Magica Voxel

Sculpting - ZBrush

Texture - Substance Suite

3D Animations - Blender

2D Animation - Adobe After Effects

Audio - FL Studio, Audacity, BFXR

Trailer & VIdeos - Adobe Premiere Pro, Wondershare Filmora

Hope this helps. However, as we have our in-house developers and artists to make required assets, we craft it from scratch than searching it from anywhere else. Also, as we found it really difficult to get one from the internet, we have a growing library of Free Game Assets that you can check for uplifting your game project to new heights and boosting your Game Development journey. 

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I have a pretty old yet powerful PC. I'm also solo. Unity runs on my PC but it's so sloowwww.

Yeah, it might be too much for your processor and RAM.

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ik I am a bit late in answering but here goes nothing 

I use unity as my game engine (some time ago when I made games still do but lately didnt get much time)

But yeah I use unity and unity's asset store mainly since I didnt learn blender yet to make my own models, and as for 2D games i use simple shapes given default by the unity's editor (because why not) and apparently use the color scheme to give simple colors etc

So yeah unity and visual studio (an ide to write c# for unity's code to work) is what I use for game dev  

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Sprites and textures - GIMP

3D models - Blender

3D engine - Unity3D

Audio - Audacity

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2D - Clip Studio Paint (much better than Photoshop for drawing/painting) ... I still use Photoshop for post processing and "graphic design" though

3D - Blender

Audio - Cubase

Game Engine - Unity/RenPy

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This is a great question. Thank you for asking it.

I am also a beginner, and I decided to start with SDL2 and the Odin programming language. I first got interested after starting with the Handmade Hero series, and the idea of working without much 3rd-party code or tools appeals to me. 

How is your learning going so far?

In nearly all my game projects I've used:

Unity game engine
Blender for 3d modelling
Photoshop & Illustrator for textures/pixel art
Materialize for more texture stuff
Audacity to make SFX (I am really new at this!)