Hi, this is Andrew of Gamelectual Studios. I am working on deciding the next step of taking Gamelectual Studios to where I want it to be. Wondering if we should start implementing a brand ambassador program, selling game development assets, doing cross platform game collaborations, launching a course, or what is next? Should we setup a Patreon maybe? Should we start offering game design/development services? I am really stuck here trying to figure out what should be done…
Recently, for one of my other startups, I have hosted a game jam on itch.io for decentralized gaming. The game jam received no submissions (even with the influx of users). This was one of the many reasons why I was too busy to post on Gamelectual Studios for a while. This is also why I learned a valuable lesson. When making a GameJam, I need to 1) Don’t over-complicate the description. 2) Have a longer timeline (1 week may not be enough) 3) Try offering more of a marketing incentive to users who joined. | Hopefully if I decide to do something like this for a different startup, for them, or even here, it is more successful. ~ Andrew
So recently, I came across this “interactive storybook style” game maker/IDE and decided to give it a try. This is a program called Ren’py (in which not gonna lie, some people made some really strange games on it). However, none the less it is really intuitive, powered by Python and open source technologies, and is easy to use.
The community itself, also seems super helpful and lots of people on itch.io have made games powered by Ren’Py.
I haven’t went through the entire tutorial itself. Infact, I just discovered this tool recently and haven’t been too active on it. The built-in tutorial that Ren’Py comes with, seems to be anime focused. Although, not my go-to genre, Ren’Py is nice because it can be used to make whatever style interactive storybook and game you want. This means with many of its drag and drop features, you can make even a comic-like story or whatever suits your taste. Ren’py promotes itself as a “Visual Novel Engine”. ~ Andrew
So I just started utilizing Home Designer Architectural 2019 for creating “floor plans“, as this was something I done for fun. However, after finding out this program has a 3D perspective viewer among other things, it made me start wondering if there can be a possible way to export the 3D variations of these designs to “in-game assets” that you can utilize in Unreal Engine, Unity, or something similar?… Anyways, here is a template
Apple Motion (as mentioned previously) can be utilized to make a variety of different assets. Besides, an “intro”, there are lots of ways you can utilize special effects w/ Apple Motion. An example I did, was a particle emissions template I made with different pre-existing assets and presets Apple Motion has. Apple Motion can be “utilized” in this manner in the Indie Game development industry, as well as the film/cinematography industry. You can see the template here
OBS Studio is great for streaming or doing screencasts of your video game. This is a software that I recently discovered. My favorite feature, is the fact that the software allows you to do sound mixing to the stream/recording. So far, I am just getting the hang of it, but feel that it a nice find. ~Andrew
Dreamweaver is a great software for developing your Indie Studio or game’s website. It has an intuitive drag and drop interface that also allows you to utilize prebuilt templates or custom CSS and HTML to build your own “theme” or web page.
Paint 3D is a software that is extremely simple to use and almost up to the ranks of simple programs like Tinkercad. It is part of the MS Essentials package. I decided to make a bunch of different 3D objects using their generators, 3D shape creators, texturing, etc., and this is what I have came up with. ~Andrew
Utilizing the “Reference View” feature in Adobe Lightroom, one can edit photos real quick and export them in higher quality. This can be extremely helpful in messing around with backgrounds or assets during the game development process. Adobe definitely has these suite of tools that are helpful across a variety of areas.
Silhouette Studio is one of those programs out there that many haven’t heard of. It is like the paint of “Silhouettes”, and the user interface may not be the friendliest. However, for the process of color fills and exporting them later, this can come in handy. Utilizing this program for 2D concept art may help some indie game developers.
Gamelectual Studios 