[Archives] Game Development Tool First Impressions – Pickle: Pixel Art Editor

Archives, Art, Game Development, Review

While I typically work on pixel art and animations using Graphics Gale (mentioned in my Favorite Gamedev Tools post) , I like trying out new tools.  Pickle caught my eye when I saw its terrain mode – a live-updating tilemap editor that displays all possible combinations of tiles at once.  I knew I had to try it out, so I downloaded the 7-day trial and gave it a whirl!

Pickle Pixel Art Editor

[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