00:00 hey everyone thanks for joining me for
00:01 this walkthrough of the tools I'm using
00:03 for indie game development as we kick
00:05 off 2024 I made a similar video about 3
00:08 years ago and as you can imagine a lot
00:10 has changed since then so I'm excited to
00:11 walk you through my new setup just as
00:13 before we'll run through both the
00:15 software and some pieces of Hardware
00:17 that I've been using consistently as
00:18 part of my daily Game Dev workflow and
00:21 of course it's important to note that
00:22 none of the choices I've made here are
00:24 absolutely required to make games for
00:27 almost all these tools you could spend
00:29 way less sometimes even nothing to make
00:31 a game far more technically demanding
00:34 than what you see me working on on this
00:36 channel instead I'd just like this to be
00:37 a resource if you're looking to fill a
00:39 gap somewhere in your workflow or are
00:41 looking to make a fun change in the new
00:42 year with that said let's jump right
00:44 into the software beginning of course
00:46 with my game engine of choice the gdau
00:48 engine it's somehow already been more
00:50 than 3 years now since I converted the
00:51 initial 6 months of progress on my
00:54 current project from Unity to gdau and
00:56 I'm happy to say I've never regretted
00:57 that decision since making that change
00:59 I've I've written more than 10,000 lines
01:01 of GD script building a ton of
01:03 experience with the engine along the way
01:05 I've also gone through conversions of
01:06 this huge project to new major versions
01:09 of gdau and ultimately I've made
01:10 significant progress building out my
01:12 massively scoped dream RPG that I'm very
01:14 proud of now I could and probably should
01:16 make an entire video on why gdau has
01:18 ended up being a great fit for me but
01:20 for the purposes of this video I'll just
01:22 try to come up with a few of the most
01:24 important reasons that I think gdau has
01:26 stuck for my workflow first and foremost
01:28 of course is that the engine is open
01:30 sourced with an MIT license there are a
01:32 lot of great things to unpack about this
01:34 but something important to me here is
01:35 that the engine is entirely 100% free to
01:38 use and I Own 100% of what I build with
01:41 it no Revenue sharing or strings
01:43 attached the engine itself is also
01:45 incredibly lightweight I actually just
01:47 went and redownloaded the most recent
01:49 version to see what size it was took
01:51 less than a minute to download and came
01:52 in at just over 220 mbes this is a STK
01:56 contrast to my most recent experience
01:58 with unity which granted was about 3
02:00 years ago but that felt like I was
02:02 downloading a whole new copy of the
02:04 engine for every minor version that came
02:05 out which seemed weekly at that point
02:07 and the last thing I'll mention for now
02:09 is that I've always been very happy with
02:11 the development velocity I've been able
02:12 to achieve with gdau I realize this is
02:15 probably something that just comes with
02:16 time and experience with any engine but
02:18 there are a lot of things about gdau
02:19 that just make sense to me and help me
02:21 turn my ideas into features very
02:24 efficiently things like GD script being
02:26 a concise and easy to learn scripting
02:28 language and gdo seem and node Paradigm
02:30 and how it pushes you to embrace
02:32 composition over inheritance and
02:34 effective patterns like calling down and
02:36 signaling up all these things seem to
02:38 come together in a way for me that lets
02:39 me dream up the next big feature that I
02:41 want to build and very quickly be able
02:43 to understand how I want to approach
02:45 architecting that feature and get
02:47 started right away with
02:50 development when it comes to actually
02:51 writing the code for my games I find
02:53 myself most frequently using the editor
02:55 built right into the gdau engine and
02:57 there are things I like about this and
02:59 things I don't I think if you want to
03:01 have the best integrated functionality
03:02 with the engine itself as your coding
03:04 the built-in editor is definitely the
03:06 way to go intence has never been a great
03:09 experience for me with gdau but I seem
03:10 to get the most out of it in the editor
03:12 I also really like support for little
03:14 things like dragging a node from the
03:16 scene tree into a script and having its
03:18 path populated for me and I suppose as a
03:21 side node not really related to the
03:22 software itself because I have one large
03:25 48 in display here with no curve I
03:27 prefer to have the content I'm focusing
03:29 on which is most often the code in the
03:31 center of my screen rather than having
03:33 the engine and editor side by side that
03:35 said this approach does have some
03:37 downfalls for whatever reason my brain
03:39 just really can't resolve the fact that
03:41 scenes live in tabs on the top of the
03:43 editor and scripts live in this vertical
03:45 tab on the side so I don't get a whole
03:47 lot of use out of that the editor here
03:49 is also just not as fully featured and
03:51 easily customizable as others you may be
03:53 used to you won't find things like
03:55 built-in Source control support
03:57 browsable themes or oneclick toggling
03:59 for Vim keybinds in addition if you're
04:01 ever moving files around in a big
04:03 project and need to edit the source of a
04:05 corrupted scene which does definitely
04:07 happen you won't be able to do that from
04:09 within the editor for all those things I
04:11 always have trusty VSS code on the side
04:13 mostly to edit those tscn files when
04:16 needed and try to teach myself Vim
04:18 motions now since I mentioned the large
04:20 monitor I use on my desk I think it's
04:21 only right to shout out the window
04:23 manager tool that I use given how
04:25 essential it is to making effective use
04:27 of all this space on Mac I use an app
04:29 called better snap tool and on Windows I
04:32 use the fancy zones feature of Microsoft
04:34 power toys in a vast sea of window
04:37 management tools these stand out to me
04:39 because they allow me to lay out custom
04:41 snap zones on this giant monitor meaning
04:44 that I can use every inch of this 48 in
04:46 4k display exactly how I want without
04:49 settling for just having this space
04:51 split into two or four default regions
04:53 better snap tool is worth every penny of
04:55 $3 on the App Store and power toys is
05:01 next up we have my planning tool of
05:03 choice which for years now has of course
05:05 been notion both for everything related
05:07 to my software projects and everything I
05:09 do for this channel now I try to keep
05:11 sponsorships on this channel to a
05:13 minimum but whenever notion is willing
05:14 to partner I'm always game because it is
05:16 a service that I have so consistently
05:18 relied upon and can genuinely recommend
05:21 you at least consider giving a try based
05:23 on my experience with the tool so I'm
05:25 happy to say notion did sponsor this
05:27 upcoming segment but what we'll be
05:28 talking about is my genuine experience
05:31 with the tool so thanks notion for
05:32 supporting the channel if you've never
05:34 heard of notion before the best way I
05:35 could probably describe it is as a
05:37 database driven organization and
05:39 productivity tool it's not only very
05:41 easy to populate notion with information
05:43 about your goals projects school and
05:46 anything else but it's also very easy to
05:48 visualize all of that data in very
05:51 helpful ways by creating all types of
05:53 different customizable views that
05:55 describe that data now I don't want to
05:56 make this a notion tutorial but I do
05:58 want to describe how I use it for game
06:00 development back in the middle of last
06:02 year 2023 I think is when they released
06:04 notion projects which is essentially a
06:06 streamlined collection of templates to
06:09 help you manage projects and their
06:10 Associated tasks and subtasks and when
06:13 this was released I pretty much reset up
06:15 everything I had for my main game
06:17 project to take advantage of this new
06:19 system the results has been really nice
06:21 to work with under the hood My Dolphin
06:23 project is just a big database of tasks
06:26 and subtasks with Associated
06:28 descriptions C some tags and Status
06:30 trackers from this information I've
06:32 created this really nice looking
06:34 homepage that has a bunch of really
06:35 helpful views I can see my Global
06:38 backlog filter on what I'm currently
06:40 working on and track the status of tasks
06:42 that are tagged as defects or just ideas
06:45 to explore further in these views down
06:47 below when I sit down and get to work I
06:49 just open up the page associated with my
06:50 in progress task and pick up right where
06:53 I left off I also have something very
06:55 similar in place for tracking all of my
06:56 video projects which conveniently is
06:58 where I've prepared all the information
07:00 I needed for this video you're watching
07:02 right now now notion has come up with
07:03 some really cool new stuff since their
07:05 launch of projects last year one of the
07:07 most interesting in my opinion is notion
07:09 Ai and notion Q&A notion AI is an AI
07:12 assistant that lives right within the
07:14 notion app that you can kind of sprinkle
07:16 in to help you with small tasks for
07:18 example it can summarize insights from a
07:20 large body of research or if you've
07:22 written out a description of all the
07:23 functionality you want for a certain
07:25 feature in a game it can create a list
07:27 of tasks or action items for you one of
07:30 the coolest ways I've actually used this
07:31 in my project is asking it to brainstorm
07:33 ideas for a feature I'm working on as an
07:35 example the questing feature in dolin is
07:38 something I've yet to build and
07:39 something I need to do a lot of ideation
07:41 on if I don't happen to have any
07:42 creative juices flowing at 6:00 a.m.
07:44 when I sit down to work on this I can
07:46 have notion AI brainstorm ideas on
07:49 building a questing system for an RPG
07:51 and you can look at all the ideas it
07:53 spits out here I think this is such an
07:55 interesting feature and one of the
07:56 things I like about its implementation
07:58 is that your data is not used to train
08:01 any AI models without your consent by
08:03 default notion Q&A kind of Builds on
08:05 notion AI letting you ask questions
08:07 about data that's already in your own
08:09 repository so I could ask it something
08:11 like how many days do I have left to
08:13 finish my tools I use for Indie Game Dev
08:15 video it'll sweep through my notebook
08:17 and figure out the answer as my dolin
08:19 project continues to grow over time I
08:21 anticipate using this feature more and
08:23 more to dig up information about content
08:25 I'm taking notes on now and plan to
08:27 introduce to the game later overall if
08:30 you're looking for a new way to manage
08:31 all the data and documents and tasks
08:34 related to your game projects I would
08:36 recommend giving notion a try it's free
08:37 to use if you're an individual and I'll
08:39 be sure to leave a link down in the
08:42 below next up is artwork if you're a fan
08:44 of the channel already it should be no
08:45 surprise that pixel art is kind of my
08:47 jam and has been my primary art style
08:49 for every game project I've released so
08:51 far my go-to tool for pixel art is the
08:53 ever popular aprite now I'm not the
08:56 person to be teaching you about aprite
08:57 as I probably only use about 5% of the
09:00 features it offers and I'm trying to
09:01 learn more each time I boot it up but I
09:03 will say that despite its complex
09:05 capability I have found it to still be a
09:07 great tool as a relative beginner to
09:09 pixel art all the core functionality I
09:11 need is presented to me right in the
09:12 default interface without me needing to
09:14 configure anything to get started from
09:16 the pallet to the easy to understand
09:18 layer and frame system and various tools
09:21 including little nice to haves like
09:23 helpers for drawing Pixel Perfect lines
09:25 aprite has been a great companion as
09:27 I've improved my pixel art capability
09:29 and created some art that I'm actually
09:30 quite proud of I personally purchased
09:32 aprite on Steam for $20 which has been a
09:35 very worthwhile investment for me but if
09:37 that's not an option for you or you just
09:38 want to try it out you can either
09:40 download a trial version of the app or
09:42 build the app from its source on GitHub
09:44 yourself you'll just miss out on getting
09:45 updates delivered to you if you do
09:49 that software in the category of music
09:51 and sound is a bit weird for me as it is
09:53 by far the area of my game development
09:55 Journey where I'm furthest behind I
09:57 really only have a handful of sound
09:58 effects in place for dolphin and have
10:00 very roughly composed two pieces of
10:03 music for Dolphin soundtrack but to
10:05 complete those jobs I've relied on two
10:06 different pieces of software for sound
10:08 effects I've always found myself falling
10:10 back to audacity mainly because it's
10:12 lightweight pretty quick to understand
10:14 without too much bloat in the interface
10:16 and of course it's free it has not
10:18 failed me yet when it comes to importing
10:20 a simple audio file trimming it up and
10:22 applying some basic effects for music
10:24 composition I chose to make the $200
10:26 investment in logic pro for my Mac and
10:29 although I still need to spend a ton of
10:30 time learning how to use it I've been
10:32 happy with what I've accomplished with
10:33 it so far the only other tool I really
10:35 tried in this space was Reaper and I
10:37 just found that logic gave me more as a
10:39 total beginner to digital audio
10:41 workstations things like being able to
10:43 configure a drummer to lay out a basic
10:45 percussion track for me and the vast
10:47 library of instruments that I just get
10:49 right out of the box now if that sounded
10:51 to you like the recommendation of
10:53 someone who has no idea what they're
10:54 talking about that's probably exactly
10:56 what it was my real recommendation here
10:58 would be to try out all the big digital
11:00 audio workstations and see which one
11:02 works best for you if you're on a Mac
11:04 like I am I always recommend just
11:05 starting with Garage Band which is
11:07 really just a pair down version of logic
11:09 pro that's what I started with for my
11:10 previous two games and of course like
11:12 most of the other tools I've mentioned
11:14 it's completely free and comes installed
11:15 on your Mac so that's going to wrap up
11:17 the core pieces of software that I use
11:19 for all the game development you see on
11:21 this channel if you're keeping track at
11:22 home this particular toolkit cost me a
11:26 $220 with no attached subscription ions
11:29 if you were to compile a Sprite yourself
11:32 and use a free digital audio workstation
11:34 like GarageBand this toolkit would cost
11:36 you nothing now before we wrap things up
11:38 I want to quickly talk about the two
11:40 pieces of hardware on my desk that truly
11:41 are essential for my Game Dev work the
11:44 first of these is of course the machine
11:45 itself that I use to develop games this
11:48 is a 2021 M1 Max MacBook Pro with 32 GB
11:52 of RAM now many of you will probably ask
11:54 why Mac and that's a reasonable question
11:56 the simple answer for me is that I'm
11:58 primar an iOS Developer by trade so I
12:01 spend a lot of time in this ecosystem
12:03 I'm very comfortable with it and by
12:04 using a Mac I get the bonus flexibility
12:06 to export my projects for Mac OS and iOS
12:09 on top of that these Apple silicon Macs
12:11 are extremely performant especially when
12:13 you compare them to the old Intel Max
12:15 which I also owned and used extensively
12:17 for work now I obviously mostly work on
12:19 2D pixel art games here but whether I'm
12:22 doing Game Dev or exporting one of these
12:23 videos I have never heard the fan spin
12:26 up on this machine everything I do on
12:28 here is fast and and because it's
12:29 somehow just a laptop when I travel or
12:31 want to work away from my desk I'm not
12:33 sacrificing any of that power you can
12:35 call me a fanboy and you're probably
12:37 right but I do think Apple has achieved
12:38 something very special with their M
12:40 series chips in these laptops now all
12:42 this unfortunately comes with an
12:44 asterisk because this big fella back
12:46 here cost me a whopping
12:48 $3500 which is a ton of money I do feel
12:51 very confident saying that if you wanted
12:53 to create a 2D pixel art RPG like
12:55 dolphin and use pretty much every tool
12:57 I've already talked about in the this
12:59 video with the exception of Mac
13:00 specifics like logic or Garage Band you
13:03 could absolutely do so with a lot of
13:04 success with a much more Affordable
13:07 Windows or Linux laptop probably coming
13:09 in around $500 to wrap things up and as
13:12 our last piece of quote unquote Hardware
13:14 I want to give a shout out to one of my
13:15 favorite little tools for gamedev which
13:17 is a notebook in a shoe box somewhere I
13:19 have a bunch of mol skin notebooks all
13:21 filled up with daily logs of what I want
13:23 to accomplish in my game at work and in
13:25 my personal life at the start of this
13:27 year I picked up one of these traveler's
13:29 notebooks which is really just a leather
13:31 cover that can bind various types of
13:33 notebook inserts I'm really digging my
13:35 setup so far which is a bullet Journal
13:37 style weekly planner insert paired with
13:40 a simple do grid notebook insert I use
13:42 the planner as a daily bullet Journal as
13:44 I have before and the dot grid notebook
13:46 for brainstorming for Dolphin now
13:48 obviously I could capture all this stuff
13:50 in notion or a similar tool but I have
13:52 always just like having something that I
13:54 can do away from the computer since
13:56 that's where I spend so much of my time
13:57 already and that's exactly why I love
13:59 keeping a little notebook like this all
14:01 right I hope you found this list useful
14:02 and maybe learned about a new tool you
14:04 hadn't heard about before that could be
14:05 a great addition to your workflow I'm
14:08 certainly happy with my setup but I
14:09 always enjoy trying new things so leave
14:11 me a comment if you have a favorite tool
14:13 that I've skipped here as always thanks
14:15 so much for watching and I hope everyone
14:17 has a wonderful year of Game Dev in 2024
