What's in your toolbox?

What are your go-to tools for game dev?

My toolbox is:

  • Unity
  • Adobe Creative Cloud (particularly Photoshop and Illustrator)
  • Ableton Live / Reaper
  • Sourcetree
  • Blender / 3DS Max

I know the courses also refer to GIMP. Are there any tools you can’t do without?

For me it’s:

  • Unity
  • Visual Studio Community
  • Paint.NET for basic image editing
  • github client

I should add Visual Studio Code to my list (Mac user).

Gamedev stack:

  • Pen & Paper (yes, really :wink: )
  • old standalone Photoshop license
  • Blender
  • Substance Indie Suite (Painter, Designer, Bitmap2Material)
  • Unreal Engine 4
  • Visual Studio 2015 Community
  • SourceTree GIT (+ private origin repo offsite)

More about my pipeline from asset to inGame object:
Low Poly Worlds, a good way to learn Blender and UE4


:+1: Fail Faster - there is no instant win :+1:
Twitter: @GamedevCala - Blog: nerd-time.com - Twitch: GamedevCala

Great topic @ninjachimp!

For myself…

  • Much like @GamedevCala, there is always a pad of paper and a pencil at hand… I personally like to believe that in thousands of years time someone will discover my scribblings and believe that I was indeed a genius, just too far ahead of my time… :smiley:

  • Visual Studio 2015 - wouldn’t be without it… just wish it would launch faster from Unity, sometimes it takes so long MonoDev actually loads?!

  • Macromedia Fireworks MX - old but trusty

  • Photoshop CS something or other - but lack the necessary skills

  • Blender - but not yet delved into it’s 3D wizardry

  • Subversion / Git Kraken

  • Interwebs - Google, Trello, GameDev.tv forums etc

  • GIMP - but only used it a couple of times for another course

I guess those are really the only game dev related stuff… a few others for other dev stuff…

1 Like

What I use :

  • Unity
  • Blender / Maya (student license so can’t use for commercial work but still)
  • Photoshop
  • AwesomeBump - Really useful tool to quickly generate many types of map from a color texture
  • Scapple - Awesome app for mind mapping; originally for writers but still great for organizing thoughts.
  • Source Tree
  • OBS Studio to record play sessions and WIPs

I would like to learn Substance Painter in the near future, it looks like a very powerful tool!

My most used tools:

  • Blender
  • Substance Painter
  • Substance Designer
  • Bitmap2Material
  • Unreal Engine 4/Cryengine V
  • World Machine (Terrain Heighmap generator)
  • Visual Studio
  • SourceTree
  • GIMP

There is a few others but they are additional ones, that i don’t use too often

Daz3D
Unity
xNormal

My toolbox includes but is not limited to:

Pen and Paper
Unity
UE4
Blender
Gimp
Sourcetree
BitBucket
Google Drive/Docs
Microsoft Office
Asana
Visual Studio

All of them are self explanatory. Not everyone may know what Asana is. It is project management software. I don’t use all of its power just for myself but it is useful for planning and giving myself deadlines.

PC
Unity
Visual Studio Community Edition
Gamemaker (Now moved to Unity so not used since)
Notepad++
Blender (not done a lot in it yet)
Spriter Pro
Paint Shop Pro X8 (great alternative to Photoshop and with coupons got it for £54!) very pleased with it.
Substance Painter 2, Bitmap2Material, Substance Designer 5
Aesprite
Sonar Steam Edition
Sonar Professional + VST instruments
Libre Office ( I use the draw program a lot for flowcharts)
GSRichCopy360 (for copying Dev stuff to my archive drive and NAS as regular intervals)
PostImage (essential for forum images)
XMind 7 (for mind maps, but not neede it yet)
4 note books with fineline pens (Essential!)

IPAD
Procreate
Sketchbook Pro
a couple of Sprite apps but I can’t be arsed to get my ipad and find out what they are called!

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