]]> http://redbrickgames.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=146 http://redbrickgames.com/blog/?p=144 http://redbrickgames.com/blog/?p=144#comments Sat, 30 May 2009 19:24:19 +0000 geom http://redbrickgames.com/blog/?p=144 Blog technical difficulties :-/

I feel cold just by looking at those.

This is a really good time to be an indie game developer. So many quality tools and resources are available for free, or for nearly-free.

Tools and resources such as:

• Audacity - free (a VERY nice tool!)
• Blender - free (amazing…though hard to learn)
• Blender Torque DTS exporter - free (the docs for this are FANTASTIC!!!)
• Freesound.org sound files - free (mostly)
• Ogg Vorbis tools and codecs - free
• OpenAL drivers - free (x-platform audio spec)
• OpenOffice - free (ok, so it’s not about game dev, but ya gotta do project management!)
• Paint.net - free
• Perforce source control - free (up to 2 users)
• RTS environment pack - $40 (for the indie license; bigger projects=more $)
• Torque 1.5.2 Game Engine - $150
• Torque Showtool pro - comes free w/ Torque 1.5.2
• Visual C++ 2008 Express - free
• WinMerge - free

- - - - -

The costs to break into the indie game industry are mainly just one’s own labor. (Although, that there is a considerable expense!)

A big thank-you to anyone who has contributed to the open source tools in that list! They’re much appreciated. And great quality! Thanks!

With this tile set I’m aiming for a realistic, detailed look to the ground cover. But a look that’s still clean, and not confusing in terms of the gameplay.

Unlike the other tile sets, I’m creating some of the textures in this one myself. Fun!

By the way, I don’t mean to give the impression I created this artwork myself–I’m just coding it into the game. Nearly all the textures and 3-D models in the game were created by other individuals.

In the future, though, I do plan to make some efforts in that direction myself. Using this diabolically-challenging-to-learn piece of software. :-P

Here’s the old “Desert” tile set, but now with a gorgeous new sky texture, and two-toned water.

Basically, each tile set can now have its own, customized Torque “.mis” file. That means each tile set can have customized ambient lighting, fog color, cloud appearance, water choppiness, etc. Basically, everything that a Torque .mis file specifies.

So generated maps now have just as much customize-ability as hand-made maps have.

On a slightly different subject, I’ve tweaked the blog format a little to allow for 512-pixel-wide screenshots. Before, pix were limited to 450 pixels. Which was just a little too constraining, I thought. A blog about game development needs decent graphics, after all.