Tools of the Trade

This is a rehearsal for making-of posts. I'll start writing about the software tools I use and their roles in the game development workflow.  They are all free software. Some as in "free beer", others as in "free speech" (it's a quite geeky distinction, more about it here if you are interested). 

 Graphics (Blender, DAZ Studio, GIMP)

My least favorite tool is DAZ Studio. It has a clunky user interface, a sluggish 3D viewport and renderers with poor performance and bad looking shaders (or maybe it never encouraged enough to learn more deeply about it). However, DAZ features a big content network and performs very well a few good tasks: load, morph and pose characters. At the end of those tasks, I just export the pre-posed models to use into Blender. 

It's hard to believe in the existence of Blender. A free full featured 3D modeling, digital animation and visual effects tool par to most "professional tools" in the market. 

Importing properly models from DAZ Studio to Blender is not an easy out-of-the-box operation (I had even to write scripts to automate solutions for some importing problems), but it totally worth. A good quality render is much more about the quality of lightning and materials than the model's mesh details, and Blender is much more lighter and flexible in this tasks. 

I also use Blender sculpt tool to "fix" several problems brought from DAZ like clipping in clothes and others models. It renders much faster with very good looking shaders, fast global illumination settings and countless others options that makes me a  Blender little bitch...

I do a lot of render postwork on GIMP. Hack'n Stalk games have several 'sprite sheet' based animations, all set up in GIMP. Finally, it's also used to create UI elements. It's a handy tool that made me forget completely how to use Photoshop. 

Sound

I use Audacity to mix and cut all the game's sound effect (most got from freesound.org). I don't know much about sound mixing and edition, and Audacity is simple enough to do the basic operations I need.

Game Engine

Now... If I needed to name the most amazing software package ever created by man it would be Unity all the way. You can be use it to create from small mobile games to hardcore AAA titles. It isn't simple to put in few words, but Unity is the real enabler that makes possible a single person create games with a reasonable size, animations, screen and sound effects, and much more. Most of making-of posts will be about Unity, and how it makes possible to create Hack'n Stalk!

This post is just an introduction. Feel free to comment on what do you want read more about in the patron exclusive making-of posts series.

PS: First version is progressing ! Release probably next week !