Best Resources for Game Development

When you begin to build a game in Unity3D or any other engine, Framework, or SDK you are likely going to need resources to use (unless you want to build everything yourself which is admirable but can take a long time) so here is a running list of the best resources I have found so far.

Meshes

• Free Rocks –  just what it says it is
• Free Sci-Fi Fighter – just what it says it is
• Open Game Art –  a collection of free art (much of it is 2D)
• BlendSwap – a bunch of free and CC-BY art meshes
• AMAZING models here at the blender marketplace
• Beautiful Icons – CC license

Textures and Materials

• Polligon – a photorealistic library of textures and materials with many layers to make it look amazing
  • Here is an impressive marketing youtube video for Polligon
• A number of materials packages on the Asset Store
  • 42 Metal Materials
  • 18 Wall Textures
  • 30 Prototyping Materials (incl. measuring materials and all basic needs floors, walls, grass, etc.)
• A number of PBS (Physically Based Shaders) on the Asset Store
  • 36 Materials in PBS Variety Pack (just $0.99)
  • 26 Ground Materials in PBS Ground Materials Pack (just $5.00)
  • (Incredible) 269 Materials in Surfaces (just $20 as of this writing) (4 GB when expanded)
    • the quantity of materials keeps going up (as well as the price – so buy it now!)
    • You can get just 12 of them for free with Surfaces Lite
• Shader Frameworks
  • Alloy Physically Based Shader (Free at GitHub also on Asset Store)
  • Lux Physically Based Shader Framework (Free at GitHub also on Asset Store)
• Blendermada
  • A large database of free (CC0) materials for blender

Shaders

• A curated list of free shaders

Music

• Absolutely Free Music
• Procedurally Generated Chiptunes
  • https://pernyblom.github.io/abundant-music/index.html
• Procedurally Generated Tunes – Export to MIDI or MP3
  • http://tones.wolfram.com/generate/GBRfJxMC2bszyCvCDbuBZLMHX6NccJ4Q23w9moQIF
  • Note: Rumor has it you can’t use these tones

Sound Effects

• Procedurally Generated
  • https://www.leshylabs.com/apps/sfMaker/
  • https://www.bfxr.net

Level Design

• ProBuilder – 3D Editing within the Unity Editor
  • Here is an impressive video showing off the power of ProBuilder
• Kenney – Hundreds of free isometric tiles

Game Design

• Seventh Sanctum – this is generation for writers and game designers

Fonts

• FontSquirrel – They’ve already ferreted out the fonts that are free for commercial use

Model Creation Tools

• MCS – A really cool morphable character which you can change from within Unity (even from within scripts)
  • If you want to use this you will probably need this 2 minute tutorial
• UMA2 – make characters within Unity
• Mixamo – free from Adobe
• Daz3D – a whole world of professional character creation
• Blocks – Design 3D Models in VR
• Tiltbrush – Paint in 3D in VR worlds
• MagicaVoxel – Make models from Voxels
• Structure Synth –  with a specification language you can make some incredible odd models

Other Lists of Resources

• A curated list of free resources for use in Unity3D
• An extensive list of game development information of all sorts
• An extensive list of free unity scripts (mostly on GitHub)
• A list starting with the top free assets
• A large list of Game Development Resources
• A curated list of ‘awesome’ assets resources and more

Testing

• Test Driven Development with Unity

Entire Working Systems

• FPS Starter Kit – a good starting point if you are interested in making a first person shooter
• Angry Birds Clone
  • Its the mechanics of just one level but it works well for what it is
• Unity Pong
  • A simple Pong Game in Unity
• A large list of games on Github
  • This is a list of games that are open source and although many don’t use Unity they can be studied and examined.

Models – Not Unity Specific

Note: These aren’t as likely to be plug and play as ones purchased from the unity asset store

• Turbosquid – Thousands of 3D Models (You can use the filter to find free ones)
• List of Free 3D Models
• Googles Poly Library

2D Overhead Art (RPG Style)

• VX Resource Planet A blog with tons of posts of art to download and use
  • Look up “rpgmaker tile sets” for more
• RPG Maker Online Store

Sprites

• List of Free Sprite Downloads
• For Magic Manipulation of Sprites and sprite sheets and animations use shoebox
• Piskel A free way to create your own sprites.

Motivation and Support for Game Development

This site encourages you to release one game every month

It is a really encouraging site which is not a competition but a personal challenge

• http://www.onegameamonth.com/faq

This site hosts listings of gamejams

• http://www.indiegamejams.com
• so does this (plus has an advantage since its a hub of indie games)
  • https://itch.io/jams

This is a hub of indie games

Games can be sold here and they can even let the player name the price they want to pay.

• https://itch.io

Game Development Philosophy and Principles

• Game Programming Design Patterns (in Unity)

Modern Game Engines

There are getting to be a shit-ton of game engines out there in the world and some of them can demonstrate really freaking amazing technology, but there are some things to consider above and beyond the technologies that the game engine advertises and provides and the single most important of those imho being an extensive, significant, and engaged user community.  Without that you will have to figure everything out by yourself, and perhaps more importantly, if you have a major problem with the engine you could be the only one complaining to the developer.  With an extensive user community those things become less likely.

A few things:

• If an engine is not being regularly maintained I don’t want it on this list.
• Just because it has 3D support or 3D acceleration doesn’t mean its a 3D engine
  • To be clear those things are fantastic and important regardless of whether I label it as a 3D engine.
• A big part of my analysis about these engines is the quality of what has already been made in them.

Modern Full-3D Engines with significant user communities

• Unreal Engine 4
  • Native Asset Store
• Unity3D 5
  • Native Asset Store
• Game Maker Studio
  • “Making games is for everyone”
  • “Its fast to prototype as anything we can think of”

Modern 2D Game Engines with significant user communities

• löve2D
• Godot

Modern 2D Game Engines for Rapid Game Development

• Stencyl
  • Advertised as “the quickest and easiest way to build a game”
• Construct 2
  • Programming not required
  • Native Asset Store
• Defold
  • Solves technical problems so you can focus on building great games
• Corona
  • “Amazing learning curve” “You can go as fast as you want, learning and building game from ground up.”
• Bitsy
  • This is a tiny game engine thats just right for making super simple Atari level pixel art games where you explore and interact with people and things using text

Publishing Games

• Publishing to Mobile
  • Publishing HTML5 game to Android (would work similar on iOS)

 

Useful Asssets

• ProjectPrefs lets you store preferences for your game as a .ini file
  • This means that you can (in some cases) ship your game and allow your users to reconfigure it in the field.

Scripts

• A curated list of scripts
• Another curated list of scripts
• A curated list of editor scripts
  • These scripts affect the editor and the inspector