Contents
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Graphics
These are some tools that are used to make graphics in your games. As graphics are very important in making of a game, there are a number of resources that can be used to help create them.
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Raster-based drawing
Old-fashioned, pixel based drawing
- Adobe Photoshop
- A highly sophisticated image manipulation program, the standard of all professional graphic engineers (commercial)
- Autodesk Sketchbook Pro
- Award-winning Autodesk SketchBook™ Pro is a nimble, high-quality paint and drawing application designed specifically for use with Tablet PC or digitized pen tablets. (commercial)
- Corel Painter IX
- Painter has been the world's pre-eminent Natural-Media® painting and illustration software. (commercial)
- Genetica
- A powerful seamless texture editor that comes with over 500 preset textures of all types. (commercial)
- The GIMP
- Image manipulation program, on the level of Adobe Photoshop, but free. Many advanced plugins, writing new ones is rather easy.
- GraphicsGale
- Great for pixel art, GIF animation. Freeware and shareware versions available.
- KolourPaint
- A very simple image manipulation program which is very similar to MS Paint, only built for KDE.
- Paint.Net
- A commercial grade image and photo manipulation software. Originally intended as a free replacement for the MS Paint software that comes with Windows. It is designed to be used on computers that run Windows 2000, XP, Vista, or Server 2003 and written primarily in C#.
- Paint Shop Pro
- An image manipulation program that aims to have features like Adobe Photoshop, but with a cleaner interface. Also does simple Vector graphics. (commercial)
- Pixia
- An image manipulation program, mostly aimed at truecolor illustration, with transparent layers and outstanding support for gradients, palettes and fill patterns. Old versions in many languages; Japanese, English, and German are up-to-date.
- PhotoSEAM
- Special purpose image editor for creating seamless textures and tiles from digital images, or from scratch.
- Skencil
- Skencil is a Free Software interactive vector drawing appliction. Known to run on GNU/Linux and other UNIX-compatible systems, it is a flexible and powerful tool for illustrations, diagrams and other purposes.
- Tile Studio
- Graphics editor for 2D tile-based games, contains a sprite editor and a map editor, programmable output with examples for several languages
- Krita
- An image editor, part of the KOffice suit, Krita is relatively new, but has almost all the features of the GIMP and other alternatives.
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Vector-based drawing
Drawing using shapes that contain properties.
- Adobe Illustrator
- A very powerfull but easy to use vector graphics application from the team at Adobe. (commercial)
- Corel Draw
- A nice vector editor, often used to design printouts (commercial)
- GameBrix
- A powerful free web-based vector graphics and animation tool from GameBrix generates industry standard SWF format with seamless photo capture editor. (commercial)
- Microsoft Acrylic, formerly Creature House Expression
- A powerful vector and bitmap editing suite with many revolutionary features not seen in other apps. It exports to all the major formats (EPS, AI, PDF) available for Windows and MacOS (commercial).
- Inkscape
- An SVG editor with a "Corel Draw"-like interface
- Moho
- A vector-based drawing and animation tool. Has a skeletal animation system that greatly simplifies 2D animation. (commercial)
- Skencil
- An interactive vector drawing application. It is a flexible and powerful tool for illustrations, diagrams and other purposes. (Not for Windows)
- Sodipodi
- Also an SVG editor but with a more "GIMP"-like interface
- Synfig
- A great 2D animation studio, relased under GNU/GPL license.
- Xara Xtreme
- A very good software for vector drawing, which will soon be OpenSource software and ported for Linux and Mac
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3D Modeling
Utilities that are used to create 3-dimensional figures.
Freeware/Opensource
- Anim8or
- Modeling, animation, and rendering. Very simple yet powerful tool, free, runs only on windows
- Art Of Illusion
- a full featured 3D modelling, rendering, and animation studio. It is written entirely in Java, and can run on almost any operating system.
- Blender
- A free 3D animation suite that can be used for modeling, uv-unwrapping, texturing, animation, simulation, particles, and rendering. Very powerful program with a very obscure interface which, once mastered, is indispensable. Multi-platform
- BRL-CAD
- Modeling, geometry processing, collision detection, rendering, networking, mathematics, etc. BRL-CAD is a powerful cross-platform open source solid modeling system.
- Biturn
- Converts between several game model formats.
- DoGa
- Odd Japanese modeler. 3 versions available, L1 is free and produces sci-fi models from building blocks.
- Google SketchUp
- A free version of SketchUp, limited to saving Google Earth objects.
- K-3D
- Up and coming 3d modeling package, features engine based animated tutorials.
- Misfit Model 3D
- Open source modeler, with skeletal animation. Support for MD2,MS3D,3DS,LWO formats. (Win/Linux)
- OpenFX
- Powerful free 3D Modeler similar to 3ds
- Q2Modeller
- Quake 2 Modeler. Create/convert .md2 for pickier apps (e.g. Cube/Sauerbraten)
- Q2Modeller
- Quake 2 modeler link 2. Maybe link above is broken
- trueSpace3
- Modeling, animation and rendering. It's now free!
- Wings 3D
- Modeling and rendering.
Commercial
- 3D Studio MAX
- Modeling, animation and rendering. Used very often in professional game productions
- 3D World Studio
- A constructive solid geometry (CSG) modeler with support for object placement, terrain, and lighting.
- AC3D
- Linux-friendly 3D modeler, with simple click-and-drag interface
- Cheetah3D
- Simple but elegant modeler for Mac OS X (Cocoa) with integrated raytracing.
- Cinema 4D
- Modeling, animation and rendering. It has one of the most intuitive interfaces.
- ClayWorks
- 3D Modeling software. ClayWorks is a procedural modeling program.
- DeleD
- 3D Level-Designer.
- Freeworld3D
- Terrain Editor and World Editor for creating large terrains, placing meshes into the scene, creating skyboxes, skydomes, and skyplanes, water reflections and much more. Price is very low but (commercial).
- GameSpace
- Low poly modeler from the makers of TrueSpace.
A free 'lite' version is available which still supports saving. - Grome
- Professional landscape and level editor for games and visual simulations.
Demo version is available which doesn't support saving. - LightRay3D
- A 3D modeling, rendering, animation and game creation application for Windows 95/98/Me/2k/XP. (shareware)
- Lightwave
- Modeling, animation, rendering. Good modeler with a great renderer.
- Maya
- Modelling, animation and rendering. Preferred by many modelers and animators because of its intuitive interface and its scripting ability.
- Milkshape
- Modeling and animation. Nice tool that can handle many formats natively. (shareware)
- Realsoft 3D
- Modeling, Solid modeling, animation and 64bit per channel rendering. Win, Linux, Mac?
- SketchUp
- Quick Modeling. Aimed at architects but useful by modelers of all sorts for quickly fleshing out basic shapes. Brilliantly simple!
- SoftImage XSI
- Professional 3D suite used for games, but more commonly used movie special fx. Bargain priced at $500 versus Max and Maya.
- T.Ed
- T.Ed Professional Terrain Editor. A full featured editor for designing mesh or 'dynamic LOD' terrains. (shareware)
- Ultimate Unwrap
- A UV mapping utility. (commercial)
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Specialized Graphics Tools
Art tools that don't quite fit into any section.
- AutoTrace
- Converts bitmap to vector graphics.
- ImageMagick
- Convert and edit images from the command line.
- Image Packer
- Put multiple images into one and generate code.
- LHFire
- A script based Particle Renderer, good for creating explosions, flares, and other sprites.
- povray
- A free ray tracer for creating 3 dimensional graphics. For Linux, Mac and Windows.
- obj2ogl
- Converts .obj model files to OpenGL C code. Crude shell script but sometimes useful.
- Scythe Physics Editor
- A modeler for constructing physics-based objects, such as vehicles, buildings, ragdolls...(official site attracts trojan !!)
- Terragen
- A tool for rendering landscapes, good for background graphics eg. the skybox.
- YafRay
- The preferred ray tracer for Blender users. It creates very good renderings. Looks very promising.
- XImage2Mesh
- A tool that takes a 2D image and generates MAXScript code. This MAXScript code is then used in tools such as Discreet's 3DS MAX or gMAX to generate a Multi\Sub object material and a 2D plane mesh. The material is also applied to the mesh.
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Font Tools
Need to make bitmap fonts?
- bfontmaker
- BMP->BFont font for use with SFont and BFont (SDL).
- sfontmaker
- An improved bfontmaker that can output PNG with an alpha channel.
- Bitmap Font Generator
- Makes a grid bitmap from TTF fonts. Optimizes placement of the characters in the bitmap to make efficient use of the space.
- Bitmap Font Builder
- TTF -> TGA,RAW,BMP for use in OpenGL and Direct3D.
- Codehead's Bitmap Font Generator
- Build bitmap fonts for OpenGL/DirectX applications. Supports 8, 24 and 32 bit font images, export to BMP and TGA. Default output to custom file containing texture and character width data. Example source code included. (Freeware)
- Font Mechanic
- Built for the mainly for the Goblin 2D+ Engine, this tool is written in VB.Net and offers options like shadow and optionally omitting some characters. The created textures could be used in basically any 2D or 3D application as the bitmap is saved as a 32 bit PNG and the font definitions are saved in a separate text file. This program has 100% unicode support so bitmap fonts for Chinese, Russian, etc are supported. Also, unlike a LOT of other bitmap font creators, the characters are positioned on the texture to optimize all free space. Basically create a bitmap font from any Windows True Type font.
- FontMaker 2
- Import a .tif image (can have alpha channel, shadows, etc) and mark up the position and spacing of the letters. The project file is stored in .fmk (xml file). Then you can export a .rft (rasterized font file(xml)) with a compressed and texture-sized .TGA file.
- ppFonter
- Makes packed bitmaps (TGA,BMP,PNG) from TTF files from zips/system fonts. (shareware)
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Screenshot/Video Capture Tools
Get some media to show friends or put on your website.
- BB FlashBack
- Screen recorder that allows you to export movies to Flash, AVI, WMV or EXE formats. Enhance movies with sound, text and images. Perfect for software demonstrations, screencasting, presentations, tutorials and training. (commercial or 14 day free trial)
- CamStudio
- Free Program that captures all Screen and Audio activity to AVI
- Fraps
- Full version lets you record videos for OpenGL and Direct3D, but it costs money.
- Taksi
- Taksi aims to provide an open source alternative to Fraps.
- ScreenCap
- Nice little screen capture program.
- SnapShooter 2007
- Impressive screen capture software with plug-in support.
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Audio
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Sound Effects
Programs used to create special sounds.
- Ardour
- Ardour is a digital audio workstation. You can use it to record, edit and mix multi-track audio, produce your own CD's, mix video soundtracks, etc for Linux and OS X.
- Audacity
- An excellent free audio editor, for Windows, Mac and Linux.
- Audition (formerly Cool Edit Pro)
- Audition is Adobe's tool in the sound department of their multimedia suite. It provides a professional audio editing environment at the quality come to expect from Adobe. (commercial)
- Coagula
- Bizzare image-based synthesizer. Creates sounds from scribbles on images.
- ReZound
- ReZound aims to be a stable, open source, and graphical audio file editor primarily for but not limited to the Linux operating system.
- sfxr
- a minimalistic 8-bit-ish sound generator
- Spark Audio Converter
- Freeware for sound conversion between popular formats.
- Sweep
- Sweep is an audio editor and live playback tool for GNU/Linux, BSD and compatible systems.
- WavePad
- Free, Easy to Use Audio Editor, Plenty of features. Version for Windows and Mac available.
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Music
Music Libraries.
- NEO Sounds - Royalty Free Music Library
- Premium Royalty Free Production Music Library from community of professional composers and producers around the world. Thousands of music tracks and loops for any type of audio/visual production available for instant licensing and download. (commercial)
Programs used to make music.
- Acid Music
- Loop and sample based music creation tool. (commercial)
- Ardour
- Ardour is a digital audio workstation. You can use it to record, edit and mix multi-track audio, produce your own CD's, mix video soundtracks, etc for Linux and OS X.
- Beast
- Beast is a powerful music composition and modular synthesis application for Linux only.
- Buzz Tracker
- Buzz is the original machine based tracker. Hundreds of machines available (generators and effects), and it's free.
- Cakewalk musical software
- Highly professional and sophisticated MIDI and Audio sequencing software with score editor, audio effects and movie import/export as well as support for a wide range of MIDI gear, from Twelve Tone Systems. Expensive, but also offers cheaper versions for home musicians that provide a solid foundation. (commercial)
- Cubase
- Cubase is a professional level tool for every task in music composition and production. It has a long history and a large user base. Steinberg, the company that makes Cubase, is also the company behind the VST standard and the ASIO protocol. (commercial)
- FL Studio
- Easily create and arrange music. (commercial)
- Garritan Personal Orchestra
- GPO is a full, standalone commercial music suite featuring an orchestra's range of instruments and allowing very fine control over how those instruments effect sound. The suite has also been developed to work with existing music arrangement interfaces, including Cubase, GarageBand, Pro Tools, and FL Studio, among others.
- KMidiTracker
- KMidiTracker is a Midi Tracker for the KDE Environment
- LMMS
- The Linux MultiMedia Studio "aims to be a free alternative to popular (but commercial and closed- source) programs like FruityLoops, Cubase and Logic giving you the ability of producing music with your computer by creating cool loops, synthesizing and mixing sounds, arranging samples, having more fun with your MIDI-keyboard and much more... LMMS combines the features of a tracker-/sequencer-program (pattern-/channel-/ sample-/song-/effect-management) and those of powerful synthesizers and samplers in a modern, user-friendly and easy to use graphical user-interface." It is open-source, linux only.
- ModPlug Tracker
- MPT is a freeware tracker that supports most common tracker formats.
- MusE
- MusE is a MIDI/Audio sequencer with recording and editing capabilities.
- Noteworthy Composer
- A low-cost, easy-to-use midi notation program with many great features. Evaluation version has the full features of the retail version, including being able to import and save midi files, and really the only catch to using the evaluation is when you print, you always get the ugly Noteworthy sentence on your pages and an order form.
- Psycle
- Psycle is a free, open-source music creation studio with a tracker-like interface, many native instruments, and support for external plugins.
- Reason
- All-in-one studio emulation software
- Renoise
- Tracker software for Windows and Mac. (commercial)
- Rosegarden
- Rosegarden is a professional audio and MIDI sequencer, score editor, and general-purpose music composition and editing environment.
- Skale Tracker
- A free tracker in the style of FastTracker with support for XM and MOD. Windows and Linux versions available.
- SoundTracker
- Sound Club
- A free easy to use tracker based on a piano roll interface
- Hydrogen
- Advanced drum synthesizer. Features a pattern based interface and multi layer instrument support. (open source)
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Game Tools
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Animation Tools
Sprite and tile animation editors.
- JSprited
- Supports tile and multiple-image-based animation. Currently exports only to .spr format used in Holotz's Castle.
- Sprite Slicer
- Written in C#/.NET and fully featured. Includes per-frame times, hotspot editing, and multi-level collision spheres. May not be updated because last contact with author was early 2007.
- Tile Studio
- Supports tile animation and programmable output.
- Kyra Sprite Editor
- Slightly clunky console app that lets you define Sprites, Actions and Frames with Hotspots and movement between frames.
- Allegro Sprite Editor
- Primarily for Allegro users, you can draw and animate and save in the custom .ase format. Looks like a long-standing project, but documentation is still catching up.
- Sprite Builder (commercial)
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Tile Map Editors
Various levels of control for tile map creation.
- Mappy
- Tiled
- A generic tile map editor.
- Tile Studio
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Other tools
- GameBrix
- A free web-based tool suite to create and publish Flash Games. (commercial)
- Phoenix Sentry : Phoenix Game Protection | Standard Edition is FREE
When your game is running, Phoenix Game Protection™ Systems (PGPS) protect your game files by extracting them using our FolderHop™ technology. Your files are never extracted to the same folder twice. In-Game, your customer/player has access to Task Manager, most ALL third-party commercial applications to include Windows Messenger, AIM, etc. The only limitation on your customer is that they do not try to browse file folders during game play.
- Castalius : Currently Unavailable
A donationware application that allows you to keep track of your characters, chapters etc.
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