Tools and resources for Game Jammers

The Defoldmine
#1

I thought it might be a good idea to collect some useful resources for people participating in game jams. I guess most of us are coders which means that the coding part of making a game under pressure and with constraints isn’t an insurmountable task. The problem, at least for me, is creating art, sound effects and music. Some jams allow you to use art and other assets created by others, while some jams require that both code and assets are created during the jam. Since you’re working under pressure the tools should also be easy to use and learn but still allow you to create something reasonably useful and coherent.

I usually also struggle with making my games fun, but that is something else than providing a collection of links to tools and assets. Still, if someone has some really solid links to articles about game design, specifically for game jams, feel free to share them here as well.

Ok, let’s start.

ART

FREE ART

There is already another forum post about that topic. Please contribute to that topic.

TOOLS

Pyxel Edit - Tile, tilemap and animation creator ($9, Win and Mac)
Aseprite - Animated sprite editor and pixel art tool ($14.99 or build it yourself, Win, Mac and Linux)
Piskel - Browser based pixel art editor
Pixen - Pixel art editor ($9.99, Mac)
GIMP

SOUND & MUSIC

FREE SOUND EFFECTS

I don’t know of any good sites. Anyone?

TOOLS TO CREATE SOUND EFFECTS

ChipTone - Browser based sound effect creator. Easy to create sound effects that bring you back to the glory days of the 8-bit consoles and computers.
Bfxr - Browser and desktop (Win and Mac) based sound effect creator. This one is also based on Sfxr.

I’ve also come across the following tools but from what I can tell they are inferior to the ones listed above (please correct me if I’m wrong):
as3sfxr - Predecessor to ChipTone. Browser based. Based on a tool called Sfxr which was created for Ludum Dare 10.
SFMaker - Yet another browser based sound effect tool inspired by Sfxr.
LabChirp - Windows only sound effect creator.

TOOLS TO CREATE MUSIC

BeepBox - Glorious browser based chip tune creator
SoundBox - Browser based music tracker
PulseBoy
BassonTracker - Browser based music tracker for Amiga-like tracker music

8 Likes
Debeat - Helping you sound good
Sound effect maker?
#2

hi! can you write down which tools are free and which arent? o.o aseprite is paid as far as i know *but an old, almost ancient version is free ~
by the way great post!

as for music, check overclocked remix and newgrounds, they have paid stuff, but they also got free to use music :]

1 Like
#3

Good point! I added prices to the pixel art tools.

#4

OCRemix seems to focus on remixes of existing game music. Is it legal to include those in your own game? It feels a bit like using ripped sprites from a SNES game.

Do you have a link to Newsground?

#5

oc remix allows users to post pretty much anything, some songs dont really make it seem like a remix at all, it really deppends on the author, but yes still considerated derivative works
as for newgrounds:
http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/

1 Like
#6

Just bumping this because of Global Game Jam coming up this weekend. Also, check out Oleg’s post if you’re fairly new to Defold, but want to try it out during GGJ.

2 Likes
#7

For those who are not aware of it, I believe that GIMP https://www.gimp.org/ would be useful to add to the art tool section.

2 Likes
#8

Stumbled across this one this morning:
http://www.sonniss.com/gameaudiogdc2017/

5 Likes
#9

Free music! Haven’t tried the listed resources, but from skimming the original post it looks like a lot of it is free—with attribution.

https://themission.co/10-awesome-places-to-find-background-music-for-video-14dd93d0d2f3

2 Likes
#10

There is a choice of music for games, a different style, look. http://audioluck.com