Mobile Apps for Art & Design #
| Name & Link | Description | Demo/Screenshot |
|---|---|---|
| Pixlr | phone version of https://pixlr.com | |
| Fragment | Add some neat geometric reflections into your art | |
| Mirror Lab | ^ | |
| Spiro, Tilemaker | Makes some interesting tiled patterns | |
| Easyposer, plenty of other alternatives | Decent app for poseable character models. Some presets and models require a $5 pro version | |
| Fraksl, Fractal Eye, MandelBrowser | Neat Fractal Explorers | |
| Glitch Lab | Tons of glitch effects, including some really nice pixel sorting | |
| Euclidea | Not sure this one counts. It’s a game about making various geometric shapes using circles. It’s useful for learning some art techniques though. | |
Working with other artists #
Orions Arm Universe - Collective, shared setting for art and stories
Events that can help you with art #
Inktober, Swordvember, Smaugust
Game Design #
https://www.gameuidatabase.com/index.php
https://www.riotgames.com/en/urf-academy/curriculum-guide
Engines & Frameworks #
Both 2d and 3d #
fine. I’ll mention Unity and Unreal, but, like, I hate that the two make up such a huge chunk of the market
2d #
LEd engine - “LEd is a modern and open-source 2D level editor, specifically designed for indie devs”
OGMO Editor - “OGMO Editor is a free, open source 2D level editor built by indie game developers for indie game developers.”
LÖVE - “Hi there! LÖVE is an awesome framework you can use to make 2D games in Lua. It’s free, open-source, and works on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Android and iOS.”
Pyxel - Pyxel is a retro game engine for Python.
3d #
pwnfps engine - “An incomplete game engine I made for 7DFPS 2014 using C and a bit of Lua. It’s a realtime raytracer that happens to be pretty shiny.”
noeuclid by CNLohr - A Non-euclidean GPU Raytraced Engine
euclider - A higher-dimensional “non-euclidean” ray tracing prototype written in Rust.
Bevy - “A refreshingly simple data-driven game engine built in Rust Free and Open Source Forever!”
‘Non Euclidean’ is a super mathy term and I’m really into it, basically it just means that space doesn’t quite work as you expect. The shortest distance between two points doesn’t have to be a line, portals connecting spaces, walking in circles takes you new places, etc. Here’s a decent blog post about some.
Heads up, not all 3d systems use the same coordinate systems. It’s a bit of a pain. Here’s a good chart for that (source - @FreyaHolmer on Twitter)
A very long thread on … stairs? Yeah. Look up advice on DND level design if you need general level design or architecture design n advice. The same twitter (Tommy Norberg, @the_Norberg) has many other good posts
#leveldesign tip of the day! STAIRS 🪜
— Tommy Norberg (@the_Norberg) February 10, 2021
A Long Thread about stairs! Wohoooooo!
1/12 pic.twitter.com/Z3TcWwOSaH
Interesting ideas #
Procedural Animation: #
Did you like it?
— Makan Gilani (@Makan_Gilani) October 28, 2020
Another creature made using only Procedural Animation
with a focus on 3D Navigation. We call it the Tetrad.
Big Stuff Coming Soon👀👀
🧬Follow us here for more🧬: @SynthSelection#madewithunity #unity #indiegamedev #gamedev #indiedev #SyntheticSelection pic.twitter.com/FatzMuyyc6
RougeLikes #
Tons of Simulation #
Notia - Rougelite where every pixel is simulated
Cogmind - Ascii art game with a similarly extreme amount of environment destructibility
Photography #
Filmulator accepts raw files from cameras and simulates the development of film as if exposed to the same light as the camera’s sensor. This brings about several benefits:
- Large bright regions become darker, compressing the output dynamic range.
- Small bright regions make their surroundings darker, enhancing local contrast.
- In bright regions, saturation is enhanced, helping retain color in bright skies, brighter skin tones, and sunsets.
- In extremely saturated regions, the brightness is attenuated, helping retain detail e.g. in flowers.