9/12/2021, jeff

i left my job last year, and since then, i've been making games. outside of tooling around in rpg maker 2000 when i was a kid, i had no experience in making games. now i've got sixteen published games, with a seventeenth releasing later this week. i used a number of different tools, a bunch that i wanted to share here in case others weren't sure where to start. items within categories are listed in the rough chronological order of when i started using them.

engines

unity: an industry standard used by millions. it's free, or was, but it's bloated, commercially-focused, and the company has some ties to the us military.

godot: free, open-source, and the devs are active within and listen to their community. unless it's about changing master/slave terminology in the engine.

bitsy: open-source and web-based, designed to create small experiences with a set of very specific technical constraints. flexible, but really only makes one type of game.

löve2d: yet another open-source engine, with a focus on simple two-dimensional games. good wiki, simple development process, clunky interface.

most of my games are published in godot. i like bitsy and löve2d a lot, and as my eyes wander towards making smaller games, i hope to explore them in more depth in the future. unity was okay, but i wasn't a fan. it's good if you want to get a job in the games industry, i guess.

other software

audacity: sound editing and mixing. i heard they were going to start using telemetry within the official release, so you might want to find an older fork instead.

microsoft visual studio code: a text editor. pretty powerful, or so i've heard. i just use it for coding and writing stuff like this. switched a while back to vscodium, which is pretty much exactly the same but without telemetry.

blender: A 3d modeling software. i'm including it because i have technically used it in one of my games, but it is something i've barely touched. it's probably pretty good.

krita: a photoshop/illustrator alternative. free, open-source, and has been capable of doing every single thing i've wanted to do with it. a big upgrade over ms paint.

beepbox: a very simple online music composition tool. if i knew anything about making music, i wonder if i would still use it, but i don't, so i do.

aseprite: creating pixel art sprites and animations. i've only used it a handful of times, but it got the job done.

discord: how i track all of my projects, schedule, working hours and so on. honestly the best organizational tool i've ever used.

tutorials and classes

complete c# unity game developer 2d: a course on udemy dedicated to teaching c# and unity by digging into the tool and making games. pretty good, but i think the slow pace and deliberate hand-waving of coding concepts turned me off. only made it about halfway through, but would recommend.

how to make a platformer in godot in 10 minutes: a youtube video that solves all the problems i had with the udemy course. the creator, miziziziz, has a number of godot tutorials along these same lines, and they are the reason i picked up godot so quickly. no bullshit, just information.

a bitsy tutorial: a quick jump-start guide to using bitsy. though bitsy doesn't need a ton of explaining in the first place, this sets you up right away with a place to start.

complete beginners guide to blender 2.8: another collection of youtube videos for learning blender. i really haven't used blender all that much, but these tutorials were very handy for explaining the software and its capabilities.

lua programming and game development with löve: another udemy course for teaching löve2d as well as lua. a little slow, a little dry, but now i know lua and löve2d, so i can't really complain. a cool aspect was how often kyle used mods and packages to demonstrate how the capabilities of the engine could be expanded.

documentation, forums, and wikis

godot docs: the official godot documentation. lots of great explanation, lots of missing information. a year on, i still find myself returning to the docs to learn about something i've never used before.

godot engine q&a: a place to ask and answer godot questions. when i couldn't find something on the docs, i'd pop it in a search engine, and more often than not, someone else had already asked the question here. i wasn't always able to find an answer, but it happened much more often than not.

alternativeto: search for a software and get a list of other similar software. helpful when i was replacing a lot of my proprietary or licensed software, as well as when i switched to linux.

open source, experimental, and tiny tools roundup: a directory by everest pipkin showcasing tools that can be used to create outside of the grasp of consumption-first software companies. this is where i learned about löve2d. lots and lots of neat stuff here.

löve2d wiki: contains all the functions recognized by löve2d. helpful for understanding all the function arguments, and understanding the capabilities of the engine. also some tutorials, which i think i've perused, but never fully dug into.

for the big stuff, that's as much as i can remember for right now. my goals and methods changed repeatedly during this year, and so too did the software i used to meet them. please feel free to get in touch if you have any questions.