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game development tools
Game Institute
This is a membership site that teaches you in almost all aspects of game development. It is for anybody that is just starting out to professional developers of game development. It is broken up into the different aspects of game development and each area teaches you with an actual environment for game development along with projects, examples and videos. Believe me there is too much to list here. The only bad thing is it is a membership subscription site with a yearly fee. The yearly fee is for getting the latest updates during the year. If you don't pay the fee each year, you won't get the updates but you can still access the site and use it.
It would be far cheaper to go with one of the programs below such as Dark Game Studio or AGK for programming and TrueSpace for 3d designing of models and environments. They too have a great program and also supply a lot of tools. The language is also easier to learn. Also it is possible to complete the basics within the year. It is not as complex as this site.
UPDATE: I have signed on to this site and all I can say is it is worth the price. It does have video tutorials and ebook downloads. It is organized very well. It also trains you in Microsoft Visual C++ full or Express version. But it is not as easy as going the ebook route. One reason is because C++ is the industry standard for game development and can get very complex. Also it does give you the option of starting you at the very beginning and it will probably take you at least a year or less to just get through this. Then there is areas for training using the development tools that they offer. It is a big site but if you can complete the courses, you will be a game developer. I highly recommend it!
It would be far cheaper to go with one of the programs below such as Dark Game Studio or AGK for programming and TrueSpace for 3d designing of models and environments. They too have a great program and also supply a lot of tools. The language is also easier to learn. Also it is possible to complete the basics within the year. It is not as complex as this site.
UPDATE: I have signed on to this site and all I can say is it is worth the price. It does have video tutorials and ebook downloads. It is organized very well. It also trains you in Microsoft Visual C++ full or Express version. But it is not as easy as going the ebook route. One reason is because C++ is the industry standard for game development and can get very complex. Also it does give you the option of starting you at the very beginning and it will probably take you at least a year or less to just get through this. Then there is areas for training using the development tools that they offer. It is a big site but if you can complete the courses, you will be a game developer. I highly recommend it!
Here is information about the XGS Pico Game Edition hardware kit that is used with the Game Institute training.
Being a beginner visual C++ programmer I found this site helpful in looking for programming answers.
This section falls under my barryselkmarketing game development section. Even though the software below won't run on the iPhone, I decided that this software does come under game development topic on my advance topic section site. The following software is a open source software and it is free to download and use. It is a great tool for kids to learn the process of game development at all ages.
3D Game Programming All In One is a very great book for learning 3D game programming. It uses the Torque Game Engine to develop games in 2D and 3D. The book takes you into every aspect of game development for the beginner. You will learn the background in 2D and 3D design,shapes, texturing, lighting, modeling, animation, etc. The enclosed DVD has the various pieces of software that you will use in the tutorials. This book starts from the beginner to advance level in developing a complete game that will run on Windows. I highly recommend this book for anybody starting out. The link below gives you a preview of what is in the book. The other link is for looking on Amazon for the current listing for the book.
The game Creators has a high end game development software called Dark Game Studio Development software. It is based on their Dark Basic Game development software. The nice thing about it is the programming language is a form of Basic. This language is one of the easiest programming languages to work with. Their Dark Studio is an extension of Dark Basic. It has options for shading, lighting, animation, physics that is used in most high end programming languages. If you are serious about learning game development, I recommend this software.
Another creation of The Game Creators is called AGK App Game Kit. This software allows you to develop in Darkbasic and then generate the game for various platforms for Mac, IOS, Android and Windows devices. The language is similar to Darkbasic but is called AGK Basic. So basically you develop a game once and port it to whatever environment you want that is supported. The one cool thing is you can run it via your home network to see how it looks on the device environment before releasing the final program to put up for sale on the platform.
Digital Skills is a company that sells the manuals for The Game Creators software in physical books and e-books. They cover the Dark Basic and AGK Basic manuals, plus other programming language manuals. This is a highly recommended if you are going to use the Dark Basic software.
The 3 books I would recommend if you are going the Dark Basic direction is Hands On Dark Basic Pro 1 and 2, and Hands On AGK Basic. These will give you an overall great knowledge on game programming. These are all available on Digital Skills.
The 3 books I would recommend if you are going the Dark Basic direction is Hands On Dark Basic Pro 1 and 2, and Hands On AGK Basic. These will give you an overall great knowledge on game programming. These are all available on Digital Skills.
3D Modeling
One of the best 3D modeling development modeling tools available is now a free program. It is called TrueSpace made by Caligari. The company was taken over by Microsoft and later turned it as a freeware download. I personally use it to develop anything in 3d. It also allows for animation development and if you know Python programming you can write scripts. It allows for exporting and importing shapes in various formats. It also has features such as bones which make animation easier and LightWorks, Virtualight and V-Ray rendering for realistic lighting and shadows in animation scenes. There are tons of tutorials available to help you learn True Space. This software is great for game development of characters and scenes environments.
Below is some of the links I found for downloading the software and more information.
Below is some of the links I found for downloading the software and more information.
Blender
Blender is 3D creation for everyone, free to use for any purpose, model - shade - animate - render - composite - interactive 3d free Software, great community, and 100% open.
Since I have not used the software yet, it looks very promising. In my opinion since I'm more familiar with True Space, I feel it has more features that would fit from the beginner to the professional user. Also for a price of $600 when it was sold, that has lots of helpful information and plug-ins that is all over the Internet. It is now free, with 19 years worth of updates, it is worth looking at.
Since I have not used the software yet, it looks very promising. In my opinion since I'm more familiar with True Space, I feel it has more features that would fit from the beginner to the professional user. Also for a price of $600 when it was sold, that has lots of helpful information and plug-ins that is all over the Internet. It is now free, with 19 years worth of updates, it is worth looking at.
AutoQ3D
This software allows you to develop cad 3D models on either a Windows PC, Mac, Linux, iPhone and iPad. It doesn't have all the features such as AutoCad but it doe does have features that are basicly need for a cad program. The interface is designed for a mobile user on a iPhone or iPad but they do have it for an Android based phone. You can design on the iPhone and load it on the PC to continue editing at the office. It offers an easy to use interface, preset views, drawing tools, modification tools, snapping tools and grouping tools. It takes a while to get used to the phone interface but it is the same on the PC. This definitely falls under my category of the iPhone as a personal computer and I recommend it!
Links back to other areas.