This is a list of useful resources you can use if you are starting out as a game developer. If you are looking for a place to start, I hope this helps you.
If you wish to add to this list, feel free create a pull request.
This list is by no means an exhaustive list. It is meant to help give beginners a place to start.
All credit for the creation of the tools and content listed below go to their respective creators. This document is meant only to share their work to those who are interested.
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Extra Credits: A channel that takes a deep look into video games. How they are made, what they mean, and how you can make them better. (Bonus: They also delve into history & sci-fi)
- Making Your First Game: A playlist that will help guide you to take the right steps when making your first game.
- Game Design: A collection of videos that takes a deeper look at the principles of Game Design.
- Loneliness: This is a game that is mentioned in the 'Mechanics as Metaphor' video of the playlist, but I've mentioned this separately because it shows how deep stories can be told using simple game mechanics.
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Mark Brown: A former game journalist who has started his own YouTube series about game design.
- Game Maker's Toolkit: A series that analysis various aspects of game design, and takes a deep look into the design choices of many games.
- Boss Keys: A series that focuses on a game-by-game analysis of the dungeon design, and its evolution, in The Legend of Zelda games.
- Introduction to Game Design (Coursera): A short course on an introduction to the primary concepts of gaming, and an exploration of how these basic concepts affect the way gamers interact with our games.
- Gimp: A cross-platform image editor Linux, OS X or Windows. It provides a vast set of high quality image editing and art creation features.
- Paint.NET: An image and photo editing software for Windows with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools.
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Blender: A free and open source 3D creation suite. It supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline—modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, even video editing and game creation.
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Maya: A software that provides an integrated, powerful toolset for 3D animation, modelling, simulation, rendering. It has a free trial version, & is free for students for 3 years. It can be hardware intensive.
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3ds Max: A 3D modelling and rendering software that is more foucsed on modeling and design as compared to Maya. It has a free trial version, & is free for students for 3 years. It can be hardware intensive.
- Audacity: Audacity is free, open source, cross-platform audio software for multi-track recording and editing.
- LMMS: LMMS is a free cross-platform software which allows you to produce music with your computer.
- SFXR: SFXR is a sound generator, widely used for creating sound effects for Ludum Dare games.
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Unity Engine: An easy to use, cross-platform game engine to make 2D & 3D games. Primarily uses C# for scripting.
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Godot: A 2D and 3D cross-platform compatible game engine. Can use C#, C++ or its own high level scripting langualge, GDScript similar to Python.
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Unreal Engine 4: A powerful game engine used by many AAA and Inde games. Uses C++ as the primary scripting language, but also includes a powerful visual scripting engine. This engine has very high system requirements.
- MonoGame: An open source implementation of the Microsoft XNA 4 Framework. Allows for cross platform game development uses C#. This does not include an editor and requires decent knowledge of programming.
- Pygame: A library for game development in Python programming language. The high level programming of Python makes it is easy to learn and use.
- LibGDX: A cross platform, open source game development framework written in the Java.
- Git: A version control system, a tool to manage your source code. history.
- Github: A hosting service for git repositories.
--Both of the above are essential tools for any programmer--