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Game Jam Prep: What are you using?
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HadBabits Oct 13, 2015
Hey guys, I thought it might be a good idea to create a thread so we can share what tools we're using for the upcoming Game Jam. I know there are some devs in our community, but I'm sure there are also tinkerers like myself who've only ever played with game engines and the like. Personally this will be the first game I actually finish (hopefully) and put up on the web :)

Right now I'm messing with GDevelop (as suggested by a helpful commenter here), a free (as in beer and liberty) engine which exports both to Linux and HTML5 and runs natively. It has a graphical interface that allows you to move your objects around in. It seems to be primarily 2D focused engine, though I do think there's some support for 3D graphics. As for scripting, there's no direct coding I've seen so far, but instead an event system that let's you select conditions and actions (and allows you to nest conditions as you would when programming). So if your familiar with core coding concepts, but aren't very strong when left to the terminal, this might be a good choice for you.

As for art, I've found a promising pixel art application by the name of Aseprite. I've used GIMP for pixel art in the past, but it takes some fiddling, and this app is way more intuitive in the animation department. It doesn't overload you with a lot of excessive features and cluttered menus, but has everything I personally need like layers and a proper animation timeline, as well as tools to create tilesets. They have a trial where you can play with it, but can't save, and there's also an old version in the Ubuntu repositories. The full version is $10+ and I think pretty worth it, considering the number of proper pixel art programs on Linux.

On a side note, also feel free to share your creative process before you actually get creating; for instance, I'm going through some of my favorite old flash games that had really simple, but clever ideas :)

Cheers!
wolfyrion Oct 13, 2015
I am playing with Godot and Unity3D, I have no clue what I am doing atm but is fun learning to do creative things

I am not good at creating things like art , graphics etc, is my nightmare so I usually using ready made graphics, sprites etc.

I am good at writing music and creating sound effects so I am using Renoise for this.
http://www.renoise.com


I am also searching for royalty free sounds,sprites,graphics and so many other things... so here is a list of what I have found on the web:

Sprites
http://spritedatabase.net/
http://untamed.wild-refuge.net/rmxpresources.php?characters
http://opengameart.org/
http://tsgk.captainn.net
http://www.hellsoft.net
http://www.videogamesprites.net/
http://www.bogleech.com/games.html
http://www.retrogamezone.co.uk/
http://www.spriters-resource.com
http://opengameart.org/content/lots-of-free-2d-tiles-and-sprites-by-hyptosis

3D models

http://www.3dm3.com/modelsbank
http://archive3d.net
http://www.turbosquid.com
http://www.3dmodelfree.com
http://www.digitalxmodels.com

Textures

http://www.textureking.com/
http://www.textures.com/
http://www.mayang.com/textures/

Tilesets
http://www.reinerstilesets.de/2d-grafiken/2d-animals/
http://hasgraphics.com/category/tilesets/page/2/

Music
http://www.renoise.com (personal favorite)
http://www.freesound.org/


Have fun!
tuubi Oct 13, 2015
Quoting: HadBabitsAs for art, I've found a promising pixel art application by the name of Aseprite. [...] The full version is $10+ and I think pretty worth it, considering the number of proper pixel art programs on Linux.
The source is available under GPL2 from github. No restrictions but you do need to compile it yourself. Go ahead and buy it if you want to support the developers though. Seems like a great tool for pixel art.
HadBabits Oct 13, 2015
Quoting: tuubi
Quoting: HadBabitsAs for art, I've found a promising pixel art application by the name of Aseprite. [...] The full version is $10+ and I think pretty worth it, considering the number of proper pixel art programs on Linux.
The source is available under GPL2 from github. No restrictions but you do need to compile it yourself. Go ahead and buy it if you want to support the developers though. Seems like a great tool for pixel art.

Ah, well I'm happy to support the devs, but good info :)
StianTheDark Oct 13, 2015
Godot & GIMP. The game will be shit, as I got school. And.. homework. And school. But I'll try my best.
Babouchot Oct 13, 2015
Hi folks, I am a developer and unfortunately I probably won't be able to participate in the Jam because that is just not the right moment for me but I would love to help those who are not used to programming.
I spoke about the event with some developer friends and they were excited about it as we are used to LD but a weekend is usually too short for us. Actually almost each dev I know is interested by game development but do not have art or design skills, so finding devs shouldn't be too much complicated if there are also art guys. Maybe a team making thread would be a good idea since such things are impossible on really short events like LDs.

For the tools I would suggest to use Unity or Unreal Engine. The Linux community asked for them to be released on Linux for a long time now and they are finally available. Even if they are not examples of stability, casual events like that are the opportunity for them to get feedback from the users (since companies never involve "unstable" labeled softwares) . I can't speak for Unity but I tried UE and, since the latest 4.9.2, it's running fine for me (Fedora 22). Actually I'm using it on windows right now (I know, I know but I don't really have the choice) and I get at least one BSOD everyday so I suppose it's "normal" not to get a rock solid experience.
Even if it can be painful going through the "compile from source" process on such a huge program (and yeah it's open source, good point right ?), it really worth it if it works. Just don't get into that if you don't have a good computer.

Here is my configuration :
OS: Fedora 22 TwentyTwo
Kernel: x86_64 Linux 4.1.10-200.fc22.x86_64
CPU: Intel Core i7-4700HQ CPU @ 3.4GHz
RAM: 3746MB / 7867MB
GPU : Nvidia GeForce GT750M
(ASUS n750jv laptop with bumblebee but it is even working with Intel integrated graphics HD Graphics 4600)

It can freeze the system a little for a few hours during the build but don't panic ! I think it swapped up to 2Go for me so you'll definitely need ram or swap.

For people who have really no knowledge in programming nor art, I really recommend UE as it brings almost anything you need :
- Visually edit your scenes
- Blueprint visual scripting language is really user friendly, and filterable elements avoid getting help from the internet anytime you want to do something (like browsing documentation pages, nobody want to do that)
- Embedded tutorials : there is a tutorial directly into the editor for almost each editing mode to explain you how to use it.
- A smart help bar that directly finds your issues either in above tutorials, epic wiki, or epic forums.
- Tons of free assets from Epic on the Marketplace that can help you play around with the engine. (landscapes, trees, rigged characters with animations, FX ...). It is, I think, the most interesting feature as it makes you avoid the 3D format conversion/import hell.
I am not a UE expert but in a few weeks I could make interesting things, it has a great learning curve.

For 3D modeling, obviously Blender (you can even make a game with the Blender Engine but that's the only thing I know about it)
For 2D animation fans, there is Synfig Studio that my team tested out during the last LD and it is quite amazing.

I think that is all ^^
good luck !
Avehicle7887 Oct 13, 2015
Wasn't very interested in this GameJam but that GDevelop looks interesting and I might hop in myself :)
Red Ring Rico Oct 13, 2015
I'll be using C++ with OpenGL, and SDL. As well as Blender and Krita for art, and LMMS for audio. I'll be using Friday and the weekend to get a basic framework together.
wolfyrion Oct 13, 2015
I cant find Unreal Engine 4 for Linux anywhere not even in github , any clues whats going on :o?
Red Ring Rico Oct 14, 2015
Have you linked your Epic Games account to your GitHub account for access? You should see the UnrealEngine and UnrealTournament repositories from: https://github.com/EpicGames.
wolfyrion Oct 14, 2015
ok got it!
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