The Tools

Writing great games isn't all about writing good code, either. Although I don't want to imply that the code writing isn't important (because it most certainly is), there are quite a few things that go into creating these games. One thing all games need is a good set of tools that are used to create the game.

The majority of the games created today (even the strictly 2D ones) have most of the art created for them from a 3D modeling software package. These tools are invaluable to the artists who are working on your game, and make the ideas floating around in your head a reality. Although we won't be discussing how to actually create the necessary artwork in this book, the tools used need to be mentioned. Two of the more popular digital content creation applications used today are Maya and 3D Studio MAX, which you can see in Figures 1.5 and 1.6.

Figure 1.5. Using Maya to model a spaceship.

Figure 1.6. Using 3D Studio MAX to model a monster.

Creating art isn't all about the 3D models, though. Even a model with millions of polygons looks bland if it isn't textured. There are quite a few tools you can use for creating textures, such as Photoshop (seen in Figure 1.7) and Paint (which ships with Windows and is seen in Figure 1.8).

Figure 1.7. Using Photoshop to manipulate textures.

Figure 1.8. Using Paint to manipulate textures.

Development and art tools are pretty obvious tools that you would be using to help your game development. There are other types of tools that can be just as important that many people don't even consider, such as a good source control management tool.

Assuming your game will have sound, you will probably need a tool for manipulating sound files as well. This can be as simple as using the Sound Recorder that ships with Windows (seen in Figure 1.9) or as complex as WaveStudio, which ships as part of Creative Labs' Audigy software (seen in Figure 1.10).

Figure 1.9. Using the Sound Recorder.

Figure 1.10. Using Creative Lab's WaveStudio.

With all these tools creating content for your game, you will probably need a tool that can also store that content for your entire team. You will likely have quite a bit of information that needs to be stored and hopefully backed up periodically. Even better is a record of changes and additions that have been made. Most source control management tools provide at least some of this functionality.

Visual Source Safe is a tool that first started shipping with Visual Studio quite a few years ago, and it's designed to be a simple source control management tool for a team with very few people. This tool doesn't include many of the powerful features a large team would need, such as the capability to allow multiple people to work on a file and to auto-merge conflicting changes, but for a small project on a small team, it's normally adequate. There are plenty of other source control tools out there (such as Perforce), so do a little investigating and find out which tool is right for you and your group. Just about any tool you use is better than nothing.