In your journey to making your first game, you may be surprised as to all the elements that go into making a game. For many games you will have code, 3D models, animations, textures, 2D art, pixel-art, video, music, and sound effects. If you plan on making a game on your own, these are all things you will have to learn how to do. If you plan on making a game with help from others, it’s still important to understand the processes involved in creating each of these things.

In this post I will be talking about my preferred tools for each of these things, some alternatives, and why I chose what I did. I will discuss the process of creation for each of these elements in future posts as they come up later in the development process, but for now we’re just going to talk about choosing the right tool for the job.

Code

To write code, you’re going to need a code editor and/or IDE (Integrated Development Environment) there are many you could choose from, but I personally think this is going to be the easiest choice. On both Mac OS and Windows, Unity comes bundled with MonoDevlop. MonoDevlop is a very capable, full-fledged IDE. You don’t really need anything other than MonoDevlop.

HOWEVER, because Microsoft Visual Studio recently released Visual Studio Community which is a free, full-fledged IDE in the Visual Studio environment, I am going to recommend this. It should also be noted that Microsoft JUST released Visual Studio for Mac. The Mac version is still in preview, and I haven’t tried it yet, so for now I’d stick with MonoDevelop on Mac, but keep Visual Studio on your radar.

If you already have Visual Studio Professional or Visual Studio Enterprise for some reason, or if you can get it free as a student, do that. The extra features are nice, but not worth the $500 price-tag if you are paying for it yourself.

Conclusion: If you’re working in Windows use Visual Studio Community unless you have access to Visual Studio Pro or Enterprise. If you’re working in Mac OS, use MonoDevelop but keep Visual Studio on your radar and maybe try it out. I use Visual Studio on my PC, and MonoDevlop on my Mac.

3D Modeling

There are several 3D Modeling programs worth considering. Which one will suit you best depends on your needs, so I will rate each on a scale of 1-5 in each of the following criteria (5 always being the most positive measurement): Learning Curve (5 being the easiest to learn), Power (5 being the most powerful), cost (1 being expensive and 5 being free), and Features (5 being the most feature-rich.)

Sketchup

Sketchup has the advantage of being extremely simple and easy to learn. However, this ease of use comes at the cost of being able to make more advanced models. For that reason, I recommend Sketchup to anyone needing quick models for prototyping or someone who only needs very simple models. It’s great for environments, buildings, etc. But not so great for characters due to it’s inability to create animations.

Learning Curve: 5

Power: 1

Cost: 5

Features: 1

sketchup.com

Blender

Blender is my personal favorite modeling program. It is available on both Mac and Windows. It is fairly simple to learn, and you are really only limited by your own abilities. Plus, it makes animation fairly simple. There are some amazing things that have been created in Blender.

I recommend Blender for anyone willing to take the time to learn, but whose main focus is on something other than 3D modeling.

Learning Curve: 3

Power: 4

Cost: 5

Features: 3

Blender.org

AUTODESK Environment (Maya)

Maya has long been one of the most popular programs for 3D modeling. In 2005 they were purchased by AUTODESK (the creators of AutoCAD) and they recently incorporated it into their new Indie Game Maker environment as seen on the Indie Game Maker Hub, this environment incorporates SketchBook (for 2D art), Maya (for 3D Modeling) and Mudbox (for texturing). I will discuss the rest of the environment in their respective sections, but for now we will just be discussing Maya.

Maya is feature-rich, lightweight, and fairly easy to learn. If you’re familiar with working in AutoCAD, this will be an easy transition for you.

Maya is a great program and it would be my number one choice if not for it’s price. So, if you plan on making a large budget game, can get it free of charge through school or work, or don’t mind paying $185/mo or $1470/yr, I would recommend Maya.

Learning Curve: 3

Power: 5

Cost: 1

Features: 5

AUTODESK.com

Rhino3d

Rhino is an interesting program. It really only exists for very specific use cases. If you are creating a lot of models that need very mathematically precise curvatures and don’t mind paying a lot to get it, then Rhino is perfect for you. But I don’t really see it having a place in Game Development.

Learning Curve: 1

Power: 4

Cost: 2

Features: 2

Rhino3D.com

3DS Max

3DS Max, like Maya, is owned by AUTODESK. It’s uses are better suited toward modeling for video rather than games, but you can get it free if you are a student or educator. If you aren’t a student or educator, it’s pricing model is the same as Maya.

3DS Max is feature-rich, intuitive, and well-documented. I recommend it to anyone who can get it for free. Try it for yourself and compare it to Blender.

Learning Curve: 3

Power: 5

Cost: 1 (or 5)

Features: 4

AUTODESK.com

Cinema 4D

Cinema 4D is not intuitive, and it’s not cheap… That said, it’s a super powerful modeling program. You’re looking at around $200/mo, but if you’re willing to pay it, you will be getting a program similar to Maya and 3DS max with much better integrated texturing tools.

Learning Curve: 2

Power: 5

Cost: 1

Features: 5

Maxon.net

Conclusion

If you don’t mind paying exorbitant amounts, or if you can get ahold of one of them for free, Maya or 3DS Max is the clear choice. For the average developer, Blender is an amazing free program and should be the clear choice. If you haven’t figured it out yet, I use Blender and I love it.

Textures

Many of the 3D modeling programs I discussed have built in tools for creating textures. For most instances you probably will not need a separate program for textures because you will be texturing your models. However, there are times when you will want to create independent textures to apply to a number of things in game (e.g. ground and wall textures). For these instances, and for quick prototyping, it’s nice to have a separate program in which to create textures.

I don’t want to discuss any particular programs in this section, because I think it’s important that you use one program for general 2D art AND textures. So skip ahead to the next section to learn more about the programs you should use for texturing.

2D Art

MSPaint

This was a joke. Don’t use MSPaint for your game art unless your game is also a joke.

ADOBE Photoshop

Photoshop is the best option by a long-shot. If you are a student (or just have a student ID) you can get an Adobe Creative Cloud membership (which also includes Lightroom CC) for only $9.99/mo. A super reasonable price for such a robust piece of software. OR you can buy the software outright by getting an older version (cs4, cs5, or cs6) or get cs3 for free (but you will be missing out on a lot of features, and are better off using Gimp.

Photoshop

Gimp

Gimp is the free, open-source, long-time competitor of Photoshop. For a majority of small game-developers, Gimp will be more than good enough. It’s not quite as intuitive as Photoshop, but that’s a small price to pay for free software.

Gimp

AUTODESK Sketchbook Free

Sketchbook free is a great tool for drawing concept imagery. Especially if you have a drawing tablet. I wouldn’t advise using it for in-game art, but to each his own. Perhaps a sketch-style in-game could be really cool, but I’d still advise using Gimp or Photoshop.

Sketchbook Free

AUTODESK Sketchbook Pro

Sketchbook Pro has a huge list of features that it boasts over the free version. It fits into the AUTODESK environment and isn’t too pricey. ($4.99/mo or $29.99/yr). I still wouldn’t use it for in-game art, but it’s a great concept-art tool.

Conclusion: if you can get it free through school or work, or don’t mind paying, use Photoshop. Else, use Gimp. They are both available on both PC and Mac. I have gone back and forth between the two and while I like Photoshop more, Gimp is certainly sufficient.

Sketchbook Pro

Pixel Art

PYXEL EDIT

There is a free version and a paid version ($9.00) of PYXEL EDIT. It is currently in Beta, so it is always growing and changing. I really like this program for editing tilesets and animations. Another big advantage to this program is that its UI is similar to Photoshop, so it’s intuitive to anyone coming from the Adobe Suite.

PYXEL EDIT is available on both Windows and Mac.

PYXEL EDIT

PISKEL

PISKEL is free, open-source, and in-browser. It is nice for making quick sprites for prototyping, but an in-browser editor just lacks the convenience needed for large-scale projects.

Fortunately, there are offline builds as well (for both Mac and Windows) but the program lacks many of the features found in other free editors.

PISKEL

aseprite

aseprite is the most feature rich pixel-art program available. At only $14.99, it is very reasonably priced, and it’s retro UI is very charming. This is the program I use for pixel-art, and only on rare occasion have I needed to import pixel-art into Photoshop to accomplish something I couldn’t do in aseprite. For most uses though, it is much quicker to start in aseprite rather than Photoshop or gimp.

aseprite

Tile Studio

Tile Studio is an older pixel-art program and it is the one I used to use. It has most of the features one would need, but it hasn’t been updated in several years. Feel free to try this one out, but I recommend against using it as your primary editor due to its stagnant state. Also, it’s only available on PC.

Tile Studio

Conclusion: Shell out the $14.99 for aseprite. The program is evolving quickly due to a great dev team. Help them out and get a great program in return. If you’re absolutely against paying for this program, stick with Gimp or go with the free version of PYXEL EDIT.

Video

When the time comes that you want to make an ad for your game or implement pre-rendered cutscenes, you may need video editing software. There are far too many to choose from, so I’m just going to discuss a few of my favorites.

ADOBE Premiere

ADOBE Premiere is my favorite video editing tool and it will allow you to do anything you need to do. Unfortunately, it’s a bit on the pricey side.

Premiere

Final Cut Pro

Final Cut Pro is just as capable as ADOBE Premier, and it has a more intuitive interface. Unfortunately, it is also on the pricey side and only available on Mac OS.

Final Cut Pro

iMovie

iMovie doesn’t boast near as many features as ADOBE Premier or Final Cut Pro, and it is only available on Mac OS, but it is extremely capable compared to other free video editing software.

iMovie

Sony Vegas

Sony’s Vegas is the editor portion of the Catalyst Production Suite. It is extremely feature rich like Premier and Final Cut. Also like Premier and Final Cut, Vegas comes at a premium price. It should also be noted that Vegas is available on both Mac OS and Windows.

Sony Vegas

Lightworks

Lightworks is available on both Mac OS and Windows and boats features that put its potential somewhere between iMovie and the premium products. Lightworks is free, but has an expensive premium option that allows for more output formats. It’s only disadvantage over iMovie is that Lightworks has a much steeper learning curve.

Lightworks

Conclusion: If you are looking for a free product that’s easy to learn and you have a Mac, go with iMovie. If you are looking for a more robust experience and want to take the time to learn, go with Lightworks free. If you are willing to pay, I recommend Premier, but you’ll likely want to try all the premium options’ trials and figure out which one you like best. I use iMovie for most of my stuff and shell out for a month of Premier whenever I need to do something I can’t accomplish in iMovie.

Music

There are too many Music creation programs for me to discuss. For this section I will give brief explanations for some of the top editors and discuss the ones I use.

Audacity

Available on Mac OS, Windows, and Linux, Audacity is by far the best free audio editor, but creating music in Audacity can be a pain.

Audacity

Garageband

Garageband, part of Apple’s iLife suite, is a fantastic free music creation tool available only on Mac. I usually use Garageband for making music because of the virtual keyboard option and the massive virtual instrument library.

Garageband

Abelton Live

Abelton Live is paid (though inexpensive compared to most of the software on this list at just $79 for the intro version), it includes a lot of built-in sounds, and has a relatively steep learning curve.

Abelton Live

Fruity Loops Studio

Fruity Loops is certainly one of the most popular music creation softwares. It is costly, but has a large variety of feature you can read through here.

Fruity Loops Studio

Apple Logic Pro

Apple’s Logic Pro is basically Garageband with all the features of a full-fledged music creation software. It is the go to for many professionals in the music industry and my personal favorite music creation program. That said, it is costly at $200 for the software license.

Logic Pro

Avid Pro Tools

Avid Pro Tools is my favorite program for interfacing with real instruments. Pro Tools if great for recording. The only disadvantage is the price, at $599 for a perpetual license, it isn’t cheap.

Pro Tools

Avid Pro Tools | First

First, the free version of Pro Tools is certainly my favorite free software to use when recording. It has most of the features from Pro Tools that the beginning user would need. Comparison

Pro Tools | First

Propellerhead Reason

At $399.99, Reason is another premium product with a premium price. Its fans praise its UI and collaboration tools.

Reason

Sony Acid

Starting at $59.95, Acid is much less expensive that other premium tools, but I would say it compares most closely to Avid Pro Tools | First.

Acid

Steinberg Cubase

Cubase is the only software on this list that I haven’t personally tried, but I have heard a lot of great things about it in the last few years, so I felt it necessary to include it on this list. At $549.99, it is not cheap. I’ve read great things about its MIDI editor and Score editor.

Cubase

Conclusion: If you are like me and want to make game music with a lot of built in instruments and don’t feel the need to pay for premium software that would take years to learn how to get the most out of and you have a Mac, you should use Garageband. If you don’t have a Mac, you should use Audacity. If you’re primary need involves a lot of recording, go with Avid Pro Tools | First. When I’m creating music for my games I use Garageband almost exclusively.

Sound Effects

Audacity

Again, Audacity is by far the best free audio editor. For most of your sound effect needs, this should be sufficient.

Audacity

bfxr

bfxr is an amazing, free tool for creating retro sound effects.

bfxr

Conclusion: The unfortunate fact of the matter is that there aren’t a whole lot of tools out there for creating non-retro sound effects outside of typical music-editing tools and sound effect creation is something that’s very difficult for a beginner to learn. I create some sound effects with modulations of instruments and recordings in Garageband and Pro Tools | First, but honestly, your best bet is probably going to be buying sound packs or hiring a sound designer. So instead of recommending a program in this section, I’m going to recommend some of my favorite places to get royalty free sound packs.

Kenney Assets

Noise for Fun

99 Sounds

Freesound

I hope that this was of some help to you. Full-stack game development can be daunting at first, but breaking it up into small parts makes it doable.

If I left off any tools you think belong on this list, let me know. And don’t be afraid to question my preferences. After all, this entire post is essentially an opinion piece. Try several different products and figure out what you like best.

Until next time… just keep making games.

Cheers!