Indie Dev Freebie list!

As an independent developer we are faced with many more difficulties that large corporations can usually do with ease. At the same time we don't have the stress from the public or producers to get things out. I feel one of our major tribulations are the cost of reliable and functional tools on the market for independent developers. We are constantly wanting to use things like 3DS Max and Photoshop as well as professional development tools such as Visual Studio Pro. Sometimes you even fall into the downfall of the cost of learning something new. I am currently working on reviews of open source and free software that Indie Dev's get to work with that claim to allow us to do what the pros do.

On the list of alternatives are:
Visual Studio Express tools such as VC# Express and VC++ Express. Truespace and Blender 3D for 3D development and GIMP for 2D and Textures development. Too many of us have considered pirated software to grant us full power and control. This is not a good solution for our part of the industry because legal concerns are above and beyond the costs of just buying the software.

As far as SDKs we have obvious choices that are all free of charge including, but not limited to, XNA, OpenGL (if you can figure out their new site), DirectX, SDL, and Allegro. For those that do not know SDL and Allegro are modules built on top of the OpenGL technology I believe and provide a nice library for starter games, but from personal experience I think there is too much overhead that generates a heavy bulk on your code with larger games.

Free Education is everywhere if you know where to look, especially for the free stuff. Blender and Truespace have a larger community with tutorials right on their sites. GIMP has many resources throughout the Internet to learn the software. Visual Studio simply requires some free tutorials on the language of choice, but I will always recommend grabbing a few reference books from your local borders. OpenGL, DirectX, and XNA all have excellent books out on the market and plenty of tutorials if your willing to sit down and do them. Assuming you can get your hands on GLuT (an OpenGL collection) then GameDev.net has an excellent noob to pro tutorial by NeHe on their site. GameDev.net has many articles covering many topics for every aspect of game development.

A point I haven't had much chance to touch on yet is sound for games. I have done a little digging for this and have found simplistic programs like TabIt and Audacity can help you create simple but effective music for your games. I will continue looking for more applications similar to Fruity Loops in the free software world, but haven't found anything quite like that yet.

I am actively learning the two 3D software applications right now to give full reviews on them hopefully within the next week. Mondays article has not been decided upon yet, but I have a few ideas up in the air. Look for more coming soon.