Tools and resources for making an indie game

Developing my indiePostmortem, I’ve been slowly growing a list of programming libraries, art assets, and content-creation tools; hopefully it is useful to you!

Update (July 21, 2013): Updated the document with latest info!

Programming

ThePostmortem is coded entirely in C++ using Microsoft Visual Studio as the IDE and compiler, but relies on several 3rd party libraries:

My in- editor, showing collision boxes and navigation paths
My in- editor, showing collision boxes and navigation paths
  • SFML – awesome library that handles my graphics, audio, windowing, input, networking etc. Screw dealing with Win32!
  • Boost – an all around programming library that adds a tons of useful classes and features to C++ (shared and weak pointers being the biggest ones I rely on). Don’t code without it!
  • Bullet Physics – realtime, accurate 3D physics and collision library. Yes, in an isometric 2D . It’s more accurate and efficient than coding my own collision system.
  • PugiXML – small XML parsing library
  • Postmortem – I also have a built-ineditor for stuff like spawning/moving entities, designing the tilemap, previewing navgraph etc. Check the screenie on the right!

Creating Engine Assets

Don’t re-invent the wheel! If there’s a tool out there that nearly does what you need, then hacking or working around the extra features may save you more time than coding stuff yourself!

Postmortem Conversation System
My visual node-based conversation system with scripting
  • yEd Graph Editor – a robust graph editor. I use it for my visual conversations and scripting system, taking advantage of customizable nodes and metadata.
  • Notepad++ – More advanced notepad, with line numbers, syntax highlight, robust search and tons of plugins. My engine objects are stored in human-readable text files, so it’s invaluable for editing them!
  • OggDropXPd – an audio encoder to the OGG format used by SFML audio library (music!)
  • Adobe Photoshop / Soundbooth – for tweaking the art assets

Art Assets

Postmortem Sprite Concepts

All original art is made by our artists, Noah “HeartGear” Page and J. Flynn using tablets, Photoshop and Illustrator. The older placeholders were modified versions of sprites from Arcanum (objects) and Final Fantasy Tactics (characters). The temporary portraits are based on Public Domain Portraits assembled by qubodup from OpenGameArt.org.

The tiles I made myself using free textures from CGTextures, and some other temporary graphics (like viewable items, newspapers, etc.) are also taken from there plus some random google searches.

Music placeholders are currently from Arcanum plus one of my composer’s, Faetal, older tracks. SFX are custom made by our talented sound engineer, Felix Davin.

Other Resources

Here’s some other websites, tools and resources I found useful:

Hope this list proves useful to you and if you have questions about anything, just comment below. HappyMaking!