Game Development Tools

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:

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: