[Archives] 3 Places I go when I’m out of Gamedev Inspiration

Archives, Game Development

Sometimes it feels like you’ve either run out of ideas, or you have an idea but you’ve got zero motivation to work on it.  This is especially prevalent if you work on a large volume of games – like if you’re participating in #1GAM, or during a game jam.
I think these slumps are normal to the creative process, as long as they don’t stick around for super long.  Everyone has an ebb and flow to their creativity and it’s okay to have a dry spell.  Here are some places I go if I want some inspiration and motivation.

[Archives] Favorite Tools for Game Development

Archives, Game Development

Hey everyone!  I thought I’d make a short post about my go-to game development tools.  These are things I use by default, and things I turn to during game jams, when time is limited and I need to know my tools like the back of my hand.  Sometimes I’ll branch out and use other things, but these are tools I use with consistency.

I use Construct 2 for scripting

I like using Construct because it allows me to execute game ideas without having to worry myself with coding and syntax.  I can code, and occasionally still do, however I just find it frustrating and prefer not to.  Construct 2 is a 2D HTML5 engine, which means I can create nearly any 2D game I can think of and export it so that it runs native in a web browser.  I can also wrap the game into an executable using NW.js to create a downloadable game.  Limitations come from it being a 2D engine – I can’t create anything 3D using this, so I tend to mainly design 2D games.  

I use Graphics Gale and Photoshop for art

Graphics Gale is a Japanese pixel animation program that I’ve been using for at least six years.  It has a strange, and potentially steep, learning curve and looks relatively outdated, but it has every feature I could think of needing and more, and I enjoy the ability to arrange windows in a way that allows me to have any reference images I need next to the main animation window (I currently only have one monitor). Photoshop is pretty self-explanatory.  I use it for some pixel art, but never pixel animating – Photoshop’s animation feature is awful.  Any other art that isn’t pixel art also gets done in Photoshop.

I use SFXR for sound effects

SFXR (and its browser-based counterpart BFXR) are free-to-use chiptune-based sound effect editors.  They’re pretty straightforward – they have buttons on the side for categories such as “powerup” “jump” “hit” and other common game sounds, and sliders to change specific attributes of the soundwave.  Generally I end up hitting “random” until I get something close to what I want, and then fine-tuning the sound using sliders. I was recently introduced to another browser-based sound editor called Chiptone, and I may migrate to that instead – it’s much more visual and user-friendly.  I haven’t had a need for creating sound since discovering Chiptone, but next time I have a need for some sound effects I’ll probably use that instead of SFXR.

I use Abundant MusicLMMS and GXSCC for music

Of all the things I’m a “jack of all trades” of, music is absolutely not included.  I have zero concept of composition, and even the “easy” programs like Terry Cavanagh’s Bosca Ceoil seem monumentally difficult to me and nothing I make sounds good. So my solution is to use a procedural music generation tool.  I’ve tried a few, such as CG Music, but the best one I’ve found so far is Abundant Music.  It’s algorithms are designed in a more classical way, so for the most part it tends to generate things that sound like “generic RPG” music, but with some tweaking, you’re able to generate some more interesting melodies.  It exports to MIDI, which I then take to the next step:  I’ll import the MIDI file into one of two programs depending on the style of music I want to produce. 

For chiptune music, I’ll open the MIDI with a Japanese program called GXSCC Midi to Chiptune.  There are very few options to play around with in this program, so for the most part what you hear is what you get, but it’s easy to use (despite being Japanese and poorly translated) and produces results very quickly. 
If I want to make music with real-sounding instruments, I’ll use a sequencer called LMMS.  I don’t compose using this program (though occasionally I’ll cut or copy-paste bits of the MIDI I import) but I use this program to assign instruments to the song I made in Abundant Music, and add effects (like a bit of reverb to make the song sound more “real”).  I know I don’t use the program to its full potential, and to be honest, I have no desire to learn how, but it does what I want and for now that’s all I need. 

So those are the programs I turn to most often.  I’d love to hear what your favorite tools are too!

Also remember that if you enjoy my work, I would love some support for my Patreon.

[Archives] Vertex Meadow First Impressions – 3D Terrain Editor in your Browser

Archives, Art, Game Development, Review

Recently I’ve been experimenting with a tool called Vertex Meadow by Ian Maclarty.  It’s a wonderful browser-based terrain editor that uses height and color maps, meaning anyone, even without 3D modeling skill, can make explorable 3D environments with relative ease.  It features an exploration mode, where you can move freely in your environment, and an edit mode, where you can paint heightmaps in black and white (lighter = higher) and view your results in real-time.  You can also edit attributes such as the height of the sky, the ambient light of the area, fog, specularity, and more.
When you’re done creating your world, you can set a title and then share it, creating a unique URL for your world.

Vertex Meadow Editor Mode

[Archives] Using my Microsoft Surface Pro for Game Development

Archives, Game Development, Review

My big splurge of 2015 was getting a Surface Pro to replace my poor, zombie, 5-year old laptop.  That lappy carried me through all my college work, died the day I got home after graduating, was resurrected, and has been on a steady decline since.  After spending a month traveling to visit family over the holidays, I knew I needed to replace if if I had any plans on working outside of my home.
I’ve had my Surface for about two months now and used it during Global Game Jam, and aside from weird issues now and then and some Windows 10 quirks, it works great.  I have a Surface Pro 4, i5 processor, with 256 GB hard drive and 8GB RAM.  

Here’s how my Surface Pro is faring so far for game development: