Game Development Resource Superlist!

[Jagmaster]

I've been toying with game design for a few years now. In so doing, I've found many helpful, interesting, and downright cool websites and resources pertaining to game development.

So here's bunches of links!

Game development in general:

Tuts+ Hub.
http://hub.tutsplus.com/
Tutorials pertaining to all forms of digital media. They have a nice section on Game development, with some articles on theory, and various engines.

http://gamedev.tutsplus.com/
http://gamedev.tutsplus.com/category/ar ... -articles/
http://gamedev.tutsplus.com/tutorials/b ... ions-work/
Old site (mostly tutorials on flash and mobile games):
http://active.tutsplus.com/

GameDev.net
http://www.gamedev.net/

Found some pretty good posts on this site
http://www.gamedev.net/page/resources
http://www.gamedev.net/page/resources/_ ... nals-r1950
http://www.gamedev.net/page/resources/_ ... mentsStart
http://www.gamedev.net/page/resources/_ ... ocess-r273
http://www.gamedev.net/page/resources/_ ... mentsStart


A lot of neat stuff on this site.
http://www.odstudios.com/
I actually found this link on Dst's blog (which is currently offline)

Extra Credits - cartoons about game design theory.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/show/extra-credits
-Good stuff there. Fun and enjoyable to watch too.

Recently Added - Indie Your Face! - Video blogs about game development (recommended by Hares)
http://www.indieyourface.com/
Some great stuff there. Lachhh is a funny guy.
(There is some rude language, just a heads up. Nothing too serious)

Um... Regarding Crap games.
http://www.yoursinclair.co.uk/wiki/Main/CrapGame
It's just funny.

Books:
Ultimate guide to Game Writing
The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses

Handy things:
The Tiny Game Design Tool - A small worksheet to carry around.
The Art of Game Design: A Deck of Lenses - A companion to The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses Handy to check and balance your design practices. Download the free app, or buy the cards.
Physical cards|IOS app|Android app|How to use

Maths:
Linear algebra for game developers 4-part series (recommended by Monsterbrain)
http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/07/linear- ... rs-part-1/
http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/07/linear- ... rs-part-2/
http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/07/Linear- ... ers-part-3
http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/07/Linear- ... ers-part-4

A Mathematician's Lament - by Paul Lockhart
http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf

Scripting:
http://www.codecademy.com/ A cool interactive way to learn code.

Other various Gamedev links:
http://higherorderfun.com/blog/2012/05/ ... atformers/
http://www.designersnotebook.com/Design ... tabase.htm Bad Game Designer, No Twinkie!
http://makegames.tumblr.com/post/113662 ... ing-a-game How to finish a game (as told by the developer of Spelunky )
http://devmag.org.za/2011/01/18/11-tips ... latformer/ 11 tips for making a fun platformer
http://www.gamepitches.com/game-designs/ A small database of design docs and game pitches. Some of the games included are Metal Gear Solid 2, Tron (from 1981), Fallout, and others. Some neat stuff there.


Graphics: Pertaining to resources, software, and plugins

Free/Open source software:
Gimp Image editor (like photoshop)
Inkscape Vector art editor (like illustrator)
Blender 3D modelling suite
Sculptris Freeware sculpting
Freemind Mind mapping software
Mypaint Painting app
Synfig Vector animation software
Pencil Raster animation software
Espeak Voice modulator)
Alchemy Free minimalistic sketching tool
Notepad++ A pretty good open source code editor
Komposer A wysiwyg html editor (a little like dreamweaver)
Lmms (Linux multimedia studio) Music creator (a little like flstudio) -and yes, there is a windows version.
Audacity Audio editor
Sfxr Drpetter's free retro sound fx generator
Papagayo Lipsync utility (for planning animations)
7-zip zip utility
Camstudio Screen capture
Lightworks Video editor (like premiere)
Krita Painting and image editing.
Aseprite Pixel art and animation program
Hexels Freeware hexagonal art program
(Krita, Aseprite, and Hexels Review)
Recently Added - Graphics Gale A pretty popular sprite editor


Musagi - (thanks Monsterbrain!)
FlashDevelop - (Monsterbrain)
Flixel - An open source game development library for Actionscript3 (to go with FlashDevelop :p)

MakeHuman Generate human models (Suggested by GEuser)
Dia - Diagram Editor (thanks GEuser!)
FracPlanet (GEuser)
KolourPaint - Similar to MS Paint but with additional features, like alpha transparency support. Linux Only. (GEuser)
AMSynth A simple synthesizer. Linux Only. (GEuser)

GPS (Gimp Paint Studio)
http://code.google.com/p/gps-gimp-paint-studio/
Extra useful brushes and settings - useful for painting.

Change your gimp theme on windows.
http://gimper.net/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=626
This was built for gimp 2.6, I don't know if it works with 2.8. I never made the switch to 2.8 anyways (due to lack of tablet support).

Speaking of drawing tablets:
http://www.wacom.com/products/pen-table ... oo-capture
I've had mine (not this particular model) for a few years and it's still working like a charm!

http://libregraphicsworld.org
http://www.blendernation.com/

http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php ... imeline%29
It's in the Inkscape wiki, but there's lots of links to animation software.

Create your own hand drawn fonts (pay per download).
http://www.yourfonts.com/

Textures
http://texturez.com/
http://www.cgtextures.com/
http://free-textures.got3d.com/index.html

Art/Animation/Music Tutorials and blogs:

John K - This guy is madly funny. He's the original creator/animator of "Ren and Stimpy".
Nowadays, he blogs and makes flash cartoons.

http://www.blogger.com/profile/14033480276168015590
http://johnkcurriculum.blogspot.com/
http://animationresources.org/?p=3572
http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/

PIXEL ART ALL THE THINGS!
http://garmahis.com/tutorials/pixel-art-tutorials/

I found that link about 8 months after I wrote this:
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=12235

Photoshop tutorials:
http://www.instantshift.com/2013/02/01/ ... tutorials/

Blender/3dsmax/Unity3d/Concept art tutorials
http://cgcookie.com/

Music:
incompetech.com

Awesome music by our own "DST"
http://nosoapradio.us/

Good stuff from the Ge Community:

http://game-editor.com/Help Check out the advanced articles, they're pretty interesting.
http://game-editor.com/Tutorials
viewtopic.php?f=27&t=12665 General Programming resources
viewtopic.php?f=27&t=12526 Useful tips
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5826& Perfect Collision explanation (and demo)
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=6854 Thoughts about data control
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5851&p=40974#p40905 Feralx's "Stickto" function
viewtopic.php?f=27&t=6834 List of keywords and operators
viewtopic.php?t=7462 Lots of "if" replacements.
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11052 Discussion on arrays
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=10971&p=75884& Mathematics for Game Developers


Independent game developers:

http://www.tunahq.com/
http://2dboy.com/
http://gaijingames.com/
http://www.strangeloopgames.com/
http://www.wolfire.com/
http://www.doublefine.com/
http://www.reptile-games.com
http://amanita-design.net/
http://www.adamatomic.com/canabalt/

Discovered most of these devs through the Humble Bundles

Games for change
A collection of games that aim to be educational and/or have some kind of social impact.

This video is pretty much viral by now, if you haven't seen it then you should.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU1xS07N-FA

Have a useful link? Post it below and I'll add it to the list!

[sonicforvergame]

Are you joking?
my sister want to get a wacom and the cheapest one is 600 USD
I don't even think there is a wacom that cost only 99USd

IF SO please tell me where you saw that price CUZ i need a wacom

[MrJolteon]

Um... Regarding Crap games.
http://www.yoursinclair.co.uk/wiki/Main/CrapGame

Someone do this. NOW.

[skydereign]

Are you joking?
my sister want to get a wacom and the cheapest one is 600 USD
I don't even think there is a wacom that cost only 99USd

He linked to a tablet from wacom, that was 99usd. Bamboo tablets are about that cheap. Even the intuos 5 is under 600 now. Just google for wacom tablets and you'll find plenty of them under 600, the only ones I see above are cintiqs.

[Jagmaster]

I got mine for $70 about 2 years ago (the basic model)
Did you try amazon.com? I see that you're in London, so here's the UK link:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_nos ... ords=wacom
Looks like you can get the most basic model for £40.

[Jagmaster]

Um... Regarding Crap games.
http://www.yoursinclair.co.uk/wiki/Main/CrapGame

Someone do this. NOW.

Challenge accepted (once I find the time xD)

If anyone else has some good links, post 'em here and I'll add 'em to the list!

[RippeR7420]

Wow!

This is awesome! +1 for sure.

and on the tablet talk, I have to Wacom bamboo tablets, and they were both under $100 bucks..
I have the $70 dollar tablet(The basic one), and the $100 dollar one which has four buttons up the side.

But this is a really good post! I'll be reading it for days haha. Thank you!

[sonicforvergame]

actually i am back to lebanon and
first i don't trust amazon lebanon
and secondly the price are extremly high in lebanon 760usd for a good wacom
so yeah i can make a cross on getting myself the most epic drawing tablet

[GEuser]

Great list, jag. Like the font site. Wll need tto set sometime aside to vieew all the links (+1)

[Jagmaster]

Thanks all, did some cleanup work a little bit here (added descriptions and some more links, converted them all to actual clickable links, and removed some dead links)

I have the $70 dollar tablet(The basic one), and the $100 dollar one which has four buttons up the side.

Are the side buttons useful? I was wondering if the upgrade was worth the extra $30 (should my old one wear out).

actually i am back to lebanon and
first i don't trust amazon lebanon
and secondly the price are extremly high in lebanon 760usd for a good wacom
so yeah i can make a cross on getting myself the most epic drawing tablet

That's unfortunate. Can you order direct from wacom then (in the above link)? It seems odd to have the price raised so high (shipping costs shouldn't be that high at least).

Anyone have more links to add?

[RippeR7420]

I would say it saves me a lot of time while drawing/animating as you can set the buttons to shortcuts like Undo/Redo, Eraser, new frame/Previous frame etc.

But it really is all preference.

[monsterbrain]

Amazingly Superb List (+1) ! Will be highly helpful for me, & would be for anyone looking for Resources and Tutorials, and may i add some links i came across
as interesting other than what you've mentioned (for me), inspired by your huge List!

Musagi (music creation free Software, by maker of the cool SFXR)

FlashDevelop (for creating Flash Games)

4 part tutorial on "Linear Algebra on Games" on wolfire's blog.

Keep adding to the List !

[GEuser]

espeaker is cool, I use Gespeaker with gui (gnome version of espeaker I believe).

MakeHuman http://www.makehuman.org/
Another fantastic resource is MakeHuman. For creating anatomically accurate human models. It's gone threw several alpha stages but progress is good. This is going to be something special when released for the open source community. Cool thing is there is a blender plugin for this (alpha of course).

DIA diagram editor https://live.gnome.org/Dia
Good for when creating brainstorming stuff or organising your thoughts on a chart. Cool thing with this is that you can create .svg symbols/images externally (say with Inkscape) then import them in for use within it. So you could import all your latest game graphics stuff and organise them in here for all your planning stuff.

Fracplanet http://www.bottlenose.demon.co.uk/share ... /index.htm
A cool program for creating fractal terrains for planets or landscape (can export to blender).

Kolorpaint
A simple art program (think mspaint for linux). I find this good for doing pixel art (Linux only I think ).

AMSynth http://code.google.com/p/amsynth/
A very simple cool software synth (Linux only I think )

Will suggest others, later...

[Jagmaster]

@Ripper: Thanks, that's good to know!
@Monsterbrain: Those were some good suggestions, I've added them to the list.
@GEuser: Thanks, added your links too!


Great stuff, I'm excited to check out some of these new links myself!

[Jagmaster]

Found another resource : http://www.gamepitches.com/game-designs/
It's a small database of design docs and game pitches from some AAA projects. Some of the games included are Metal Gear Solid 2, Tron (from 1981), Fallout, and others. Some neat stuff to read and learn from.