For an independent developer seeking to develop a digital product, the seemingly endless task list can initially seem daunting.
Most applications, games and other digital products require basic skills and experience with: Coding, Graphic Design, Sound Design, Animations, Web-Support, Costumer Relations Systems and more depending on the project goals and type.
While there are many services and software products out the market today for professionals, these are typically very expensive and some independent developers, especially those new to developing, don't want to spend that kind of money for advanced features that won't really be useful to them early on.
Like many fellow independent developers, I try to stay updated on the free tools that are out there and I'll tell you something, you can probably find a free way to create almost any part of your product with these free tools. In most cases, these services are equal and sometimes even better (for the average user) than the more expensive options.
In this post I will tell you about the tools I'm using, what I'm using it for and where to get it.
As an iOS Developer, my experience with those tools apply for iPhone and iPad development, with that being said, most of those tools will apply to any OS development environment
Developing Fields:
- Developing Environment: Coding
- Game Engines
- Graphic Design
- Sound Effects
- Animations
- Cloud Space
- Web Development
- Web Promotion
- Costumer Relations (Push Notifications)
So let's kick off!
Developing Environment : Coding & Debbuging
In this field, whether you develop iOS apps, Android apps, Windows software or whatever, everything you need for your development environment can be found for free.
I develop mostly for the iOS (Apple) and the development software for that is called XCode.
XCode will be your "Home Base" for development, in this software you will write your code, arrange your components (graphic files, audio file etc...) and eventually compile them all to a single App file.
This is a link to Apple Developer website: https://developer.apple.com/xcode/
In here you can get a link to the XCode download in the Mac App Store and get additional information about the software and the tools that you can use as a developer.
XCode is free to download, you can install it, create a product and test it without paying anything.
A big limitation with this is that you can test your application ONLY on an iPhone/ iPad Simulator if you are not a registered paid user ($99/ year).
What it means is that if you are a new developer you can practice and learn until the stage when you feel that you have a project that is developed enough to be tested on a real device. Once you become a paid member, you will be able to install your project on iOS devices and test it to see how your project runs on a real device--this can often be very different from the simulator due to differences in the Processor Capabilities, Memory Size, Caps/Uncaps Coding and other capability differences between the Development Unit (computer) in your hands and the Mobile Device (iPhone) in your customer's hands.
Game Engines
Game Engines are pre-made frameworks and libraries that will make your life easier as a game developer.
Why should I use an open-source game engine?
Good question. If you were to build a 2D game for the iPhone (or any other platform) you will need a system to perform some basic types of actions like: Loading and Manipulating Images, Playing Sounds, Running Animations, Move, Jump, Display Alerts and Labels, Load and Render 3D Models, Create Explosions, Effects and much much more.
If you can create this kind of system on your own, you probably won't be reading this post. Game Engines are made to help us save time, effort and money to be able to perform all kind of basic (and advanced) actions we need for our game, without the need to understand all the things that happens behind the scenes or invest time to create them.
If you will do a simple search you can find all kind of free (and paid) game engines online:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_game_engines
Here are some of the free game engines I use.
"Cocos 2D"
http://www.cocos2d-iphone.org/
Cocos 2D is an open-source 2D game engine that will make your life much easier if you want to develop 2D games for the iOS (and other platforms).
Cocos2D is simplified, in most cases you will need one or two lines of code to perform actions that without Cocos2D will take writing an entire class (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_%28computer_programming%29) to perform.
Cocos2D is easy to install, simple to understand and is supported with a large and live community of developers just like you and me who constantly develop and maintain this framework.
"Unity"
http://unity3d.com/
"Unity is a feature rich, fully integrated development engine for the creation of interactive 3D content. It provides complete, out-of-the-box functionality to assemble high-quality, high-performing content and publish to multiple platforms"
Unity is a development environment that allow you to create 3D (and 2.5D) games in a high quality commercial quality.
In Unity you will be able to create a 3D world, load 3D models, load sounds, and combine them all together into a single game, almost like an interactive movie which can be exported in to many operating systems just by changing the development target.
Unity is relevantly easy to understand and is also supported by a large community that will offer answers to most of your questions.
You can download Unity for free, create your games and export them to several OS without spending a penny.
If you are into 3D Games Development and you haven't tried Unity- now will be a good time to try it, you won't regret it.
Some features of Unity require a paid license (like exporting to the iOS Environment).
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That's it for this post, I will continue this series of articles in the next few weeks so check in for updates every once in a while.
Feel free to comment and let me know if there you have any questions I can help with.
Thanks for reading!.
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