video games

Creative Resources 7/9/2019

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

I haven’t posted one of these in a few months, so here’s the latest roundup of creative resources! I’ve added a few here and there, plus some game development tools.

Art Sources

Free

  • Pixabay – A source for art that is free as well as royalty-free. There’s a lot here, and much of it is professional.
  • Unsplash – A source for photos that are free as well as royalty-free. The quality is very high.

Royalty Free

  • Canstockphoto – A great source for royalty-free art, photos, and more. Has a subscription system and a pay-more-get-more credit system.
  • Shutterstock – The classic source for royalty-free art, photos, and more. Has both monthly and specific purchases available.
  • The Noun Project – A fee or membership-based site for downloading a huge selection of royalty free icons! Once you pay for it or download it, it’s royalty-free! Useful for all sorts of projects

Book Covers

Premade

  • Go On Write – Premade covers for books – pick one that looks right and the artist will change the title and author appropriately. A great bargain, and even has series of covers at discount! Will do custom work to.

Services

  • Paper and Sage – A reliable source of both premade and custom book covers.

Tools

  • 3D Book Cover Design – Makes 3D Mockups of book covers.
  • Canva – Book cover creator, though you will want to provide your own art if you don’t want to pay for rights to their stock photo. Also has other services.

Book Reviewers

Review Sources

  • Midwest book review – Will review books for free, but it’s a matter of choice.
  • Self Publishing Review – A classic paid review service (where a pool of reviewers is available) for books. Not always a guarantee of the best reviews of course, so you take your risks . .
  • The Indie Review – A large, constantly-updated list of indie book reviewers.

Color Tools

Collections

  • Color Tools – Plenty of useful online color tools.
  • HTML Color Codes – Useful color tools, with a focus on web-focused colors.
  • Material Palette – Useful tools for desginging palettes, finding icons, and locating specific colors

Color Schemes

  • Color At Adobe – A color theme creator that lets you create schemes, or even get one from a picture, and has a powerful interface.
  • Color Calculator – A color scheme creator that also has useful advice and guides.
  • Colormind – A color theme creator that creates schemes with simple clicking, or get one from a photo.
  • Colors at Halfpixel – A simple palette creator (with a mobile option) with intuitive controls.
  • Coolors – A useful and powerful color palette creator that’s easy to use and powerful.
  • Huesnap – A palette repository and creation tool

Contact Management

Mailing Lists

  • Mailchimp – Mailchimp may have some restrictions, but it’s the go-to for easy mailing list management, which is perfect for authors and artists. It also integrates well with other tools.

Professional

  • LinkedIn – The classic business networking site, and pretty unavoidable for most professionals.

Game Creation

General

  • Game Maker Studio – A powerful game creation tool, with free and paid options
  • Unity – A popular, well-supported game creation tool, not only popular, but one with many tutorials available.

Interactive Fiction – Graphics

  • Ren’py – A powerful game creation tool with an inclination to visual novels and life-sim, and capable of powerful customization.

Interactive Fiction – Text

  • Choicescript – A choice-based game system, both for fun and used commercially.
  • Twine – A web-based Interactive Fiction development tool with multiple options.

RPGs

  • RPG Maker – Game creation tools – the original was RPG focused, but the company has also expanded into Visual Novels.

Generators

Generator Sites

  • Chaotic Shiniy – A diverse source of generators in a variety of styles.
  • Darkest of Nights – Fantasy-oriented generators.
  • Donjon – Generators for a variety of genres and game systems, some of which provide graphics as well!
  • Dropping-the-form – Generators for various settings.
  • DunGen – A powerful dungeon generation tool!
  • Eposic – Generators – among other imaginative efforts.
  • Fantasy Name Generators – And there are a LOT of them here. About anything you could want, and a few you didn’t know you needed.
  • Feath – Generators of various types, conveniently categorized.
  • Generator Blog – Links out to many other generators.
  • Generatorland – Lots of generators and generator tools.
  • Mithril and mages – Generators for a variety of genres.
  • Name Pistol – Band name generators.
  • RanGen – Random generators, from fantasy to helpful writing tools.
  • Serendipity – A generator site with some setting and name generators.
  • Seventh Sanctum – A gigantic collection of generators founded in 1999, with a focus on writing and RPGs.
  • Springhole.net – A site of generators and other creative tools.
  • Squid.org – Home of a complex name generator with many, many options.
  • The Force – A powerful name generator with multiple options.

Graphics

Graphic Tools

  • Art Rage – A painting-oriented digital art program supporting many operating systems, tools, and formats.
  • Clip Studio – A comics, painting, and illustration tool with many options and features
  • Mediabang – A comic and painting application that’s free and multiplatform!
  • Paintstorm – A low-cost digital painting program with many advanced features.

Graphic Tools – Free

  • Gimp – Aka The GNU Image Manipulation Program. A free, open source graphic tool that will take care of almost all of your graphic needs (barring a few limits like CYMK conversion and the like).
  • Krita – A free graphic tool focused on professional workflows.
  • Made With Mischief – A quick, free sketching and brainstorming tool.
  • Sketchbook – A free sketching program.

Graphic Tools – Painting

  • BlackInk – A painting program, focusing on stylistic work as opposed to realistic

Mac

  • Pixemlator – A low-cost alternative to Photoshop for Mac, with lots of compatibility options

Helpful Tools

Relaxing Backgrounds

  • 4 Ever Transit Authority – Ride the bus through randomly generated art deco cities. A great program to run in the background or on your TV or monitor to relax you while you create.
  • Anomolies – A relaxing background display/artgame that creates surreal spacescapes, often with strange nebulas and sites that resembe anything from devices to lights to disturbing lifeforms.
  • Becalm – A relaxing journey via sailboat through surreal worlds with a relaxing soundtrack and audio. Can be run for a few minutes or in a loop and you can switch between multiple settings.
  • Panoramical – Available on Itch.io And Steam. Panoramical is an audio/visual remixer where you can tweak settings in multiple environments, turning them into audio/visual displays. Find your favorite setting, leave it on, and relax.
  • Station To Station – A simulated train ride through imaginary environments. Run it in the background or through your television while you create to help relax you

Portfolios

Services

  • Adobe Portfolio – The popular porftolio site – that comes with many Adobe subscriptions.
  • Artstation – Multimedia-focused portfolio and blog platform
  • Format – A portfolio site with store services as well.

RPG Resources

Random Charts

  • Chartopia – A site with a huge and expanding amount of charts for RPGs, easily sortable and classified.

Self-Publishing

Audiobooks

  • ACX – Amazon’s self-publishing audio platform
  • Audible – Another amazon audiobook publishing platform
  • Findaway – A wide-ranging audiobook distribution service.

Cards

  • Drive Thru Cards – Self-publishing for card games, both physical and downloads.

eBook

  • Itch.io – Itch.io doesn’t just do games – it also allows for people to publish books, and is very open-minded.
  • Kobo Writing Life – Distribute your eBook via Kobo
  • Nook Press – Distribute your eBook via Nook

eBook-Multiple

  • Draft2Digital – A service that distributes to multiple eBook platforms.
  • Smashwords – A wide-ranging ebook distribution service.

Physical And Ebook

  • Ingram Spark – Ingram’s eBook and physical book publishing platform. Wide reach, but may require some setup fees and has some limitations.
  • KDP – Amazon’s full-service print and Kindle publishing service. Warning, the eBook distribution is only through Amazon.
  • Lulu.com – A print and eBook creation and distribution service.

RPGs

  • Drive Thru RPG – Self-publishing for RPGs, both downloadable and in print. Also supports related merch like calendars.

Video Games

  • Itch.io – Itch.io is a supportive, indie-oriented game store site. It also has a lot of self-published resources for game development, as well as supporting books of all kind.

Website Creation

Services

  • Squarespace – The popular website creator with many options.
  • Weebly – Easy and simple to use website, blogs, and stores.
  • Wix – A simple And effective website source, though paid options are reccomended.
  • WordPress.com – The classic site, with free and paid options. Obviously blog-focused.

Writing Research

Maps

  • Old Maps Online – A way to find and view old maps of the world. Great for research and imagining.

Writing Tools

Ebook Creation

  • Calibre – A free ebook creation tool.
  • Jutoh – Not only converts your book to various ebook formats, it’s a powerful enough tool that you could even write books in it.

Word Processing

  • LibreOffice – A full, free, open source office suite. Beyond the free price, it’s fantastic ad using ODT format and creating PDFs.

Word Tools

  • Describing Words – Ideas for how to describe a given word.
  • Dictionary.com – The classic online dictionary.
  • Related Words – Helps find words similar to or related to one you’re using.
  • Rhyme Zone – A tool to help you find rhyming words.
  • Thesaurus.Com – The classic online thesaurus, with plenty of useful options and displays
  • Wordsworth – A tool to see if words you’re using fit the time period you’re writing

Writing

  • Scriviner – A writing tool that combines note taking, tracking, and writing into one application.

Writing Checking

  • Grammarly – A pricey but powerful service and software for checking grammar, spelling, and even plagarism if you need. There are free, limited options.
  • Hemmingway – A grammar checking tool with both web and desktop versions.
  • Pro Writing Aid – A subscription-based writing checker service/tool.

Steven Savage

Farewell To Overwatch

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

I stopped playing Overwatch. For those of you that know me, that was hard. It was my go-to relaxing game, lots of fun, great FPS.

What changed my mind was watching the layoffs at Activision Blizzard. It was unnecessary and it felt like I was somehow supporting that. I thought about how the company could be focusing on making the game better, wondered about how much of management pay should go to employees. It started to make me ask “why am I playing this?”

Then as I watched the Anthem mess and others, I began to realize I really needed to go back to more and more indie games. I needed to support people who were innovating. I needed to support innovation. I needed to ask where my money was going.

Something felt “off” among a lot of big games and big companies lately. Oh sure, I’ll play some AAA games, but I’m going to be more selective. But I’m also going to think about who I’m supporting and where my money and time goes.

After a week or two, I didn’t miss Overwatch. I rediscovered some Early Access Games I’d let slide, and I found new ones. I explored more weirdness and fun at itch.io.

I felt like I appreciated games again. I appreciated the diversity of the many indie games I played. I realized how fun Early Access was to connect with people. It was kind of like if you eat the same thing a lot, you remember what it’s like to taste different things when you change.

I’m sure there will be more experiences to report, but this made me think. I do miss Overwatch, it really is a well done game (that deserves more), but it’s nice to taste diversity again.

Steven Savage

Hyperspace Delivery Service – A Game That Works

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

Recently my gaming attention has been taken up by Hyperspace Delivery Service by Zotnip Games. This is one of those games worth analysis – and not just in game design.

At it’s core, Hyperspace Delivery Service is about a crew and it’s commander (that’s you) delivering important cargo to a distant world. It’s done in a retro-DOS style that hearkens back to games that realized they could “fuse” genres together. Thus several game modes are linked together to form a space adventure game that’s sort of “Oregon Trail” in space – travel and survive. Well, travel, survive, deliver.

Your ship travels from world to world in linear fashion. Managing resources is paramount, from buying them to harvesting them in various ways. Some missions and events may result in space adventures, zooming through asteroid fields or battling pirates arcade-style. Other jobs and events may lead you to FPS adventures fighting robot pirates. Events and options may appear, leading to accidents, benefits, or Choose Your Own Adventure type choices.

These different elements are tied together so they influence each other. A mission may let you get resources you need to travel to another world. The choice of who to send on a mission may yield useful parts or have a special ability that lets them survive the challenge. You can push your crew, but prepared to take time for them to relax before they stress out. Every choice has results, some of which will impact you later in the game.

This is all done in an almost too-close-to-history DOS style, down to the text styles and sound effects. There’s a commitment to an aesthetic that carries through the entire venture – as well as a fantastically spacey soundtrack.

The game itself is therefore a tight fusion, where everything comes together, and not just stylistically. Everything you do matters, every action has consequences, and you’re constantly engaged moment by moment.

In many ways, it’s a spiritual brother to Star Traders: Frontiers. ST: F is a modern-style game where multiple games and rules and modes create a galaxy-spanning space adventure where you manage a huge and diverse crew. Hyperspace Delivery Service takes past styles and setups, but also fuses game elements together, to create its own space adventure and its own feel.

The simple retro elements of the game play well to this – because none is overly complex, their interactions are understandable and clear. This doesn’t mean the game is easy – it’s quite challenging. It’s just understandable (which might lure you into a false sense of security). There’s a lovely sense of precision to it.

On top of this, the game’s developer is incredibly responsive to fans in Early Access. As of this post I’ve seen the game go through multiple updates, the developer listening carefully to feedback while asking questions. Thus the game isn’t just fun to play, there’s an additional level of enjoyment as playing it lets you connect with your fellow fans and the creator.

If you work in any form of media, this is another game to pay attention to because you’ll learn a lot about combining elements and engaging fans.

Oh, and it’s fun!

Steven Savage