Thread by @lzsthw

Today is Saturday and I just finished Zelda Breath of the Wild, so I'm going to drop some game development links:

One of my favorite game development systems is the whole "Fantasy Console" genre like PICO-8:

lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php

And also TIC 80:

tic.computer

And LIKO-12:

liko-12.github.io/#/

These are purposefully limited to simplify game dev with an old school feel.

For a lot many game systems you'll need to use a language called Lua, which is *very* nicely designed language and used in tons of game development systems:

lua.org

It's also one of the few open source projects that does zero propaganda style promotion.

Next up we have Love2d:

love2d.org

This is for doing 2d style games like platformers, dungeon crawlers, and anything pixel based, rather than model based. It's open source and runs on a *ton* of platforms. Again, it also uses Lua but Lua is a great language.

Love2d comes with everything you need to make good 2D games and the documentation is complete. Here's the Physics:

love2d.org/wiki/love.phys…

Graphics:

love2d.org/wiki/love.grap…

and Audio:

love2d.org/wiki/love.audio

The next level would be the Godot game engine:

godotengine.org

Godot is able to use multiple programming languages, 3D and 2D, pixels or rendered, and has a dev environment.

Docs are pretty good:

docs.godotengine.org/en/3.1/

Those three projects go in a progression from "old school simple" to "modern rendered post-DOOM" capabilities, so you could build up your game dev skills by learning each in order.

Next you need something to make art and Krita is free:

krita.org/en/

If you're doing pixel art then Krita works but it's much better at the comic/anime style. I haven't found a good pixel editor, but these seem to work:

aseprite.org

and

piskelapp.com

My main problem with all pixel editors is they make me click too much.

I'm a painter so I much rather work in something like Krita, then export it with a "pixel cruncher" then touch it up in a program like aseprite. Honestly I just need to figure out how to make Krita do it.

When you make a game there are a *ton* of assets that are just boring to make yourself. Here's where you can get free assets:

All free:

opengameart.org

Itch.io is a great community too:

itch.io/game-assets/fr…

High quality:

craftpix.net/categorys/tile…

Audio tools for games is something I haven't researched yet, mostly because I can do my own music production. Some folks like Audacity:

audacityteam.org

If you're into trackers:

openmpt.org

And most MIDI composers are garbage. No idea why midi is so bad.

If you really want to get into programming to make games then I highly recommend starting out with PICO-8 or TIC80 and following tutorials. These are all enclosed game dev systems and you can share the games easily. They're also simple enough to learn.