One of the more cumbersome parts of making a game or app is creating the basic structure such as level layouts / maps, user interfaces, creating animation and so on. I’ve listed a collection of tools, apps and utilities that I have found useful below:
- Goji Editor – Game editor and integrated development environment
- Booty5 – HTML5 game maker
- Texture Packer – Create sprite sheets / atlases easily
- Spline – Brilliant 2D animation editor
- Glee2D – Generic 2D editor
- Tiled – 2D tile based map editor
Creating and modifying art work is also an essential part of game and app development. I’ve listed a collection of art production packages that I have used in the past or found interesting below:
- GIMP – Free 2D pixel art editor
- Inkscape – Free 2D vector art editor
- Blender – Free 3D art editor
- Serif DrawPlus – Paid 2D vector art editor
- Autodesk Maya – Paid 3D art editor
- Clara.io – Online 3D art editor
- 123dapp – Free 3D art creation tools from Autodesk
Code editors and IDE’s:
- Visual Studio Express – Free IDE for Windows (C/C++, C#, HTML5, Visual Basic)
- Xcode – Free IDE for Apple Mac OS (Objective-C, C/C++)
- Netbeans – Free cross platform IDE (C/C++, PHP, HTML5, Java and more)
- Eclipse – Free cross platform IDE (Java)
- Notepad++ – Free code editor for Windows (supports a range of languages)
- TextWrangler – Free code editor for Mac OS (supports a range of languages)
- Aptana Studio – Powerful open source web development IDE
And a collection of other interesting / quirky tools that I’ve come across that may provide useful:
- Tridiv – Create 3D models in CSS3!
- Normal Map Online – Create normal maps online