Dev Tools – Petri Lankoski

Game Blocks

Sheldon J. Pacotti has created a toolset for teaching game development, especially for “constructing non-linear stories, which in my mind comprise more than talk trees and branching conversations.” The toolset is build on Byob (which is based on Scratch). Pacotti explains Game Blocks on video: Download and tutorials available at: http://www.newlifeinteractive.com/main/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=40:cell&Itemid=60&layout=default.

Quick Intro to Spreadsheets for Game Designers

Claire Blackshaw gives brief intro to using spreadsheets in Opinion: Stop Being The Useless Designer – Excel and Formulas. Excel (and other spreadsheet programs such as Numbers and Open Office) has excellent tools to quick prototype game system behaviors, as Blackshaw points outs. For prototyping complex behaviors, writing simple computer programs in unavoidable, I think.Continue reading “Quick Intro to Spreadsheets for Game Designers”

Nice Introduction to Unity Approach

Gamasutra has a nice piece explaining the main ideas behind Unity approach titled The Six Misconceptions I Had About Unity.

Chat Mapper

Chat Mapper is a tool for writing branching dialogue. It is free for personal use and indie or commercial licenses are affordable. However, free version does not allow exporting dialogue to xml and use it within a game. The interface looks nice and how the branching is visualized is great. The Chat Mapper documentation saysContinue reading “Chat Mapper”

Dialogue Junkie

Dialoguejunkie.com contains clips of dialogues in video games. The site might be handy when searching examples of good dialogue writing.

Unity and FMOD Designer

Using FMOD with Unity without compiling your own plugin: http://www.fmod.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=46744

Game Engines

For the future reference… Free game engines for creating point-and-click adventure games: Adventure Game Studio (Editor in Windods; Engine for Windows, Linux, and OSX) Wintermute Engine (Windows) Commercial game engines for creating 3D Games: Torque3D ( Editor in Windows?; can used to publish for OSX, Windows, Linux, Wii, and XBox360) Unity3D (Editor in OSX; canContinue reading “Game Engines”