More Tools
It’s been quite a while since my last post, but I did continue to research JavaScript games and development tools. A few more free, quality tools that I stumbled across are as follows:
- Blender – Everything you’ll need to do in 3D is in this application; modeling, texturing, and animation. It’s a bit daunting at first and uses a somewhat unconventional (non-Windows) control scheme, but it’s extremely flexible and powerful. It’s great for low-poly modeling for 3D rendering in the browser or creating highly detailed exported bitmaps for pre-rendered 2D animation.
- Synfig – This is something that I will try out when the need arises for more complex 2D animation. It’s been developed for creating TV show quality bitmap and vector-based cartoon animation. The only critical feature it seems to be missing is a bone (pivot/joint) animation system. However, it’s been recently mentioned on the forums that this feature is being implemented.
- Audacity – I’ve yet to try it out, as I’m not concerned with sound in my game development yet, but it’s easy to see where this tool compliments MODPlug nicely. I’m confident that it’s a competent sound editor.
- MyPaint – Though it lacks the flexibility to be a full image editing program, it does digital painting like no other. The wet brushes alone make this application more effective than GIMP for creating a painted look in my digital art. Of course, a graphics tablet is a must with this software.
Note: I mentioned earlier about using SoundManager for controlling audio in JavaScript games, but the support for sound in HTML5 may remove the need for it.
I recently purchased a NYKO Core controller for the PlayStation 3, as it’s wired with a standard USB cable and was quite affordable. I’m pleasantly surprised that the gamepad works without any need for 3rd party drivers; just plug it in and Windows recognizes it as a USB game controller. However, I do have to press the home button on the controller once for it to start working each time the computer boots up. (Also, the player 1,2,3,4 lights continue to blink.) I use JoyToKey to map the controller’s buttons and directional pad to keyboard strokes. If I decide later to use the rumble feature in the controller, MotioninJoy provides drivers and full configuration options for all PlayStation 3 compliant controllers and can even emulate it as an Xbox 360 controller… and, of course, it turns off the blinking lights.
