I figured it would be a good idea to have a list of free resources for the community
If you have something to add to the list, leave a comment!
Game Engines
- Godot is free and open source
- Unity is free unless you make over $100k but is not open source
- Unreal engine is free unless you make over $1 Million but is also not open source
Asset Creation
- Blender is a powerful free and open source 3d modelling program
- Krita is a free and open source art program
- Gimp is a free and open source image editing program
- Laigter a free program for creating normal maps
- Tiled is an open-source 2D level editor.@AppelTrad@hexbear.net
- LMMS a Digital Audio Workstation similar to FLStudio - @ForkedStill@hexbear.net
- Inkscape a vector graphics editor (.svg and other) - @ForkedStill@hexbear.net
- Paint.net a simple image editor - @ForkedStill@hexbear.net
- Pixelorama a pixelart editor, fully FOSS, unlike Aseprite - @ForkedStill@hexbear.net
- Material Maker as the name implies, a tool for creating materials for 3d graphics - @ForkedStill@hexbear.net
- LibreSprite is a fork of the last FOSS version off Aseprite - @GrainEater@lemmygrad.ml
Free Assets
- OpenGameArt has a huge selection of free game assets, from audio to 3d models
- Assets · Kenney Great source of prototyping assets - @JoeByeThen@hexbear.net
- Tiled is an open-source 2D level editor. - @AppelTrad@hexbear.net
- Musical Artifacts a large selections of various soundfonts, uploaded by users - @ForkedStill@hexbear.net
- FreePats a collection of specific instruments as soundfonts - @ForkedStill@hexbear.net
Misc
- Freya Holmér on YouTube has several playlists of explanations of vectors, shaders, normal maps, and other useful mathematics. - @AppelTrad@hexbear.net
- TinyTools Open source, experimental, and tiny tools roundup - @mechwarrior2@hexbear.net
- VSCodium a very popular code editor, with Microsoft telemetry ripped out - @ForkedStill@hexbear.net
- Notepad++ a lightweight code editor for Windows - @ForkedStill@hexbear.net
- Audacity a very useful tool for sound recording and editing - @ForkedStill@hexbear.net
- MuseScore an app for music sheet notation - @ForkedStill@hexbear.net
- OBS a program for screen recording - @ForkedStill@hexbear.net
Tiled is an open-source 2D level editor.
Freya Holmér on YouTube has several playlists of explanations of vectors, shaders, normal maps, and other useful mathematics.
there's also the "awesome-gamedev" list on GitHub, although I obviously can't vouch for most of it
thanks!
i'll add it to the list after i get some time to check through a chunk of it
https://tinytools.directory/
Open source, experimental, and tiny tools roundup
This is a list of small, free, or experimental tools that might be useful in building your game / website / interactive project. Although I’ve included ‘standards’, this list has a focus on artful tools and toys that are as fun to use as they are functional.
The goal of this list is to enable making entirely outside of closed production ecosystems or walled software gardens.
Some Free and Open Source software I use:
- VSCodium -- a very popular code editor, with Microsoft telemetry ripped out
- Notepad++ -- a lightweight code editor for Windows
- Audacity -- a very useful tool for sound recording and editing
- LMMS -- a Digital Audio Workstation similar to FLStudio
- MuseScore -- an app for music sheet notation
- Inkscape -- a vector graphics editor (.svg and other)
- Paint.net -- a simple image editor
- Pixelorama -- a pixelart editor, fully FOSS, unlike Aseprite
- Material Maker -- as the name implies, a tool for creating materials for 3d graphics
- OBS -- a program for screen recording
- 7zip -- an archiver, much better than WinRAR
Some useful FOSS resources for music:
- Musical Artifacts -- a large selections of various soundfonts, uploaded by users.
- Specifically, Touhou Soundfont is an imitation of instruments used in Touhou games. It is popular for a good reason
- FreePats -- a collection of specific instruments as soundfonts
I'm not thrilled Aseprite isn't FOSS but if anyone still wants to use it, I was able to compile it myself using this docker container for Linux: https://github.com/nilsve/docker-aseprite-linux . There are similar tools for other OSes.
I wasn't aware of Libresprite so thanks for that, but I don't think it works with the PixelLab plugin I use.
I used this website, JSFXR, to make 8 bit sound effects: https://sfxr.me/ And GXSCC to convert MIDIs to chiptunes: https://meme.institute/gxscc/ not fully free/FOSS but OK for my purposes. GXSCC works well under WINE on Linux.
