I figured it would be a good idea to have a list of free resources for the community
If you have something to add to the list, leave a comment!
Game Engines
- Godot is free and open source
- Unity is free unless you make over $100k but is not open source
- Unreal engine is free unless you make over $1 Million but is also not open source
Asset Creation
- Blender is a powerful free and open source 3d modelling program
- Krita is a free and open source art program
- Gimp is a free and open source image editing program
- Laigter a free program for creating normal maps
- Tiled is an open-source 2D level editor.@AppelTrad@hexbear.net
- LMMS a Digital Audio Workstation similar to FLStudio - @ForkedStill@hexbear.net
- Inkscape a vector graphics editor (.svg and other) - @ForkedStill@hexbear.net
- Paint.net a simple image editor - @ForkedStill@hexbear.net
- Pixelorama a pixelart editor, fully FOSS, unlike Aseprite - @ForkedStill@hexbear.net
- Material Maker as the name implies, a tool for creating materials for 3d graphics - @ForkedStill@hexbear.net
- LibreSprite is a fork of the last FOSS version off Aseprite - @GrainEater@lemmygrad.ml
Free Assets
- OpenGameArt has a huge selection of free game assets, from audio to 3d models
- Assets · Kenney Great source of prototyping assets - @JoeByeThen@hexbear.net
- Tiled is an open-source 2D level editor. - @AppelTrad@hexbear.net
- Musical Artifacts a large selections of various soundfonts, uploaded by users - @ForkedStill@hexbear.net
- FreePats a collection of specific instruments as soundfonts - @ForkedStill@hexbear.net
Misc
- Freya Holmér on YouTube has several playlists of explanations of vectors, shaders, normal maps, and other useful mathematics. - @AppelTrad@hexbear.net
- TinyTools Open source, experimental, and tiny tools roundup - @mechwarrior2@hexbear.net
- VSCodium a very popular code editor, with Microsoft telemetry ripped out - @ForkedStill@hexbear.net
- Notepad++ a lightweight code editor for Windows - @ForkedStill@hexbear.net
- Audacity a very useful tool for sound recording and editing - @ForkedStill@hexbear.net
- MuseScore an app for music sheet notation - @ForkedStill@hexbear.net
- OBS a program for screen recording - @ForkedStill@hexbear.net
I’m not thrilled Aseprite isn’t FOSS but if anyone still wants to use it, I was able to compile it myself using this docker container for Linux: https://github.com/nilsve/docker-aseprite-linux . There are similar tools for other OSes.
I wasn’t aware of Libresprite so thanks for that, but I don’t think it works with the PixelLab plugin I use.
I used this website, JSFXR, to make 8 bit sound effects: https://sfxr.me/ And GXSCC to convert MIDIs to chiptunes: https://meme.institute/gxscc/ not fully free/FOSS but OK for my purposes. GXSCC works well under WINE on Linux.