Global Game Jam happens this weekend! Participating in it is a great way to improve as a developer and meet others that share the passion for game design.
What follows is a list of tools that really help in a pinch. They are all free and, in many cases, open source. Some I’ve showcased here before, others are new!
Drawing
Piskel
- Draw and animate pixel art
- Onion skinning
- Support for multiple layers
- Live preview
- Custom color palettes
- Exports gifs and png spritesheets
PixieEngine
- Draw pixel art
- Essential tools like fill bucket and mirror
- Allows replaying the process of drawing the image
Sprite manipulation
Shoebox
- Extract tiles from images
- Pack sprites into a single file
- Split PSD files
- Creates spritesheets
- Creates bitmap fonts
ImageMagick
- Command line tool for image transformations
- Can copy, compress, resize and perform other operations on pre-existing images
- Ideal for doing batch jobs
TexturePacker
- Pack images into a single spritesheet
- Optimize PNGs with lossy compression
- Exports to multiple formats
- Capable of trimming/cropping images based on whitespace
SpriteCutie
- Instantly gives you coordinates for sprites within a sprite sheet
- Offers CSS and Canvas output
Fonts
Arcade Font Writer
- Create snazzy retro titles for your game based on Arcade gems.
Littera
- Converts TrueType Fonts (ttf) into bitmap fonts
- Allow for multiple effects (gradient, stroke, shadow)
Map editing
Tiled
- Amazing editor with support for orthogonal, isometric, hexagonal and staggered maps.
- Allows creation of object layers which can pass properties through a JSON file.
- Can draw polygons over tiles
- Automapping tools according to rules you set
- Stamp, fill and terrain brushes
Sound
bfxr
- Create simple 8-bit like audio samples
- Generate random effects
- Fine tune using the built-in sliders
- Exports into wav format
Audacity
- Record audio from your microphone
- Add effects like echo, reverberation and fade out.
- Cut and rearrange sounds
- Mix multiple audio sources
- Exports into multiple formats
Extra resources
Do you have an essential tool that is not here but should be? Is it free and cross platform? If so, let me know in the comments below and I’ll add it to the list!
Happy jamming everyone!