The Soul Power kickstarter has just finished, where we earned almost 20% more than the original target. It’s really excited to have so many people backing the project, and while I feel like I didn’t push the campaign as well as I might have, I’m very happy with the results. Asking for only $1500 to fund a video game’s production may seem like a relatively small amount, but I can attribute my low costs of production to all the amazing free tools that I’ve used to make the game. To elaborate, here’s a bit of an overview:
Unity3D: While Unity isn’t giving everything away for free, they do offer the basic license for free so that independent developers or students or hobbyists can play around to their heart’s content without paying for it at all. Thanks to Unity I was able to learn all their tools and will now release a full game for free. I think it’s a very smart and positive business model, because as soon as I can afford the full license I’d definitely want to invest having already invested so much of my time into learning everything. It’s also just a really easy to learn and easy to use game engine (as game engines go).
Inkscape: It’s basically an open-source version of Illustrator, only I think it is far better than it’s closed-source counterpart. Very intuitive vector graphics creation. I created almost all of my visuals for the game using Inkscape. It also runs on Linux, Mac and Windows – I can attest I worked across all three operating systems while making Soul Power and having all my art assets editable wherever I was working was a treat.
Gimp: The open-source Photoshop. Not yet a feasible replacement for the power of Adobe’s image manipulation software, but Gimp is the best open-source cross-platform graphics editor that you will find. As long as you’re not trying to do anything super fancy, Gimp is an effective tool for most needs. The hardest part is getting over that it’s not photoshop and doesn’t behave the same way.
Ardour: Technically I used the paid version of Ardour, Mixbus, but I could have just as easily recorded my soundtrack for free using only Ardour. It’s an awesome DAW for Linux and Mac. I’ve used it for years now. For smaller and quicker audio editing there’s always the useful cross-platform Audacity.
Hydrogen: An open-source and cross-platform drum machine. I programmed all my percussion using this tool. Syncs up nicely with Ardour so that both can run simultaneously.
Blender: I didn’t do a lot of 3D modelling for Soul Power, but when I did I used Blender. If you’ve ever wanted to try making something 3D, then I’d highly recommend Blender. It’s obviously got a bit of a learning curve, but there’s so much potential in this amazingly powerful tool.
Shoebox: A very useful tool for packing textures. Couldn’t have done my UI buttons without it!
iTween: It’s a free plugin for Unity that let’s you handle all sorts of basic animation really easily. I used this a lot.
prime 31 UIToolkit: The best free UI plugin available for Unity.
Smart Localization: A handy free localization support plugin for Unity.