The Tools I Use For Full Time Indie Game Development

[@FirebelleyGames]

🎉 Big thanks to ClickUp for sponsoring this video! Go to tryclickup.co/firebelley to sign up for free and get started! Leave a comment telling me what most stood out to you and if you're going to try any of the tools presented here. 🌐 For your convenience, here is a list of everything covered in the video: Godot: godotengine.org/ VSCode: code.visualstudio.com/ Obsidian: obsidian.md/ ClickUp (Sponsored): tryclickup.co/firebelley Git: git-scm.com/ GitHub: github.com/ ChatGPT: chatgpt.com/ Aseprite: www.aseprite.org/ Aseprite Community Scripts: community.aseprite.org/t/aseprite-scripts-collection/3599 Sonniss GDC Audio: sonniss.com/gameaudiogdc UltraSearch: www.jam-software.com/ultrasearch Itch: itch.io FreePD: freepd.com Fiverr: www.fiverr.com/ Upwork: www.upwork.com/ BeepBox: www.beepbox.co/ DaVinci Resolve: www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve OBS: obsproject.com/ HandBrake: handbrake.fr/ Lossless Cut: github.com/mifi/lossless-cut NVIDIA GTX 4070: www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/graphics-cards/40-series/rtx-4070-family/ Microphone: www.shure.com/en-US/products/microphones/sm7b?variant=SM7B Audio Interface: us.focusrite.com/products/scarlett-solo NAS: www.amazon.com/Synology-Bay-DiskStation-DS220-Diskless/dp/B087ZCBWFH Backblaze: www.backblaze.com/cloud-storage

[@AppMaker728]

That's why I use Godot

[@AppMaker728]

I learned GDscript in a day

[@AppMaker728]

That's why I use Godot

[@royalemiko9020]

I just clicked on this video because of the thumbnail. I'm also using Godot, Aseprite and Obsidian for game development.

[@sandmasterflex]

I love Aseprite. I found a good open source plug-in recently that links the 2 programs allowing live sprite edits in Godot.

[@Ibadullah]

Same, I love obsidian.

[@jjm232a]

@@sandmasterflexsounds great! what is the name of the plug-in?

[@sandmasterflex]

@@jjm232a it's called aesprite wizard.

[@DonBaker-sg3ll]

Name of the plug in?

[@Any_key404]

Glad to see you touch on all of the other skills and tooling you need when going solo. Someone has to manage the project, do marketing, make art, manage IT assets, etc. and that’s all on you as a solo developer. I wish you the best of luck with this endeavor.

[@vrts]

7:12 Aseprite is also officially made available for free if you compile it yourself. You can decide for yourself if it suits your use case, but do consider supporting the team regardless!

[@nostalgianinja]

There's also the Libresprite fork if you're interested in going that way. Definitely worth throwing $20 towards the Aseprite team as it's the most advanced pixel art editor I've found so far.

[@tigwykplaysgames]

Me: I'm gonna watch this video and learn about new tools! Also me: I already use these tools. I should finish my goddamn game.

[@frackinfamous6126]

Shiny 😂

[@vikingzeppelin]

One other thing you need for game development is Time. I've got everything you listed in this video, but It's taken me almost 10 years to find the time I need for development. I'm not having fun if I have to stop what I'm doing and clock onto my slave job instead. Maybe next decade I'll figure out how to clock off for good and start making games.

[@panagosu]

I’ve been using your Obsidian Kanban board too. I use it as a glorified todo list for my game, my PhD and work. It is awesome!

[@sporeolegy]

Thanks this is a great video not just for game devs but for people looking at useful modern tools

[@okamichamploo]

Obsidian is great. After using various other options it has become my main method for game planning as well as just general organization. Be careful with community plugins though, I spent a few weeks getting very little game dev done because of all the tutorials I watched on all the crazy setups you can do. In the end I kept things as simple as possible with mostly just the core functionality so that I spend more time in game dev and less time organizing my organizer.

[@philsp26]

Great, solid video and fantastic opening for an indie dev. Hit all the important things right out of the gate! Good job

[@attentivenettle7643]

It's nice seeing other people use obsidian

[@lunarcoregames]

Aseprite is my favorite tool of all time

[@FirebelleyGames]

I'm not quite there but it's certainly one of the best!

[@Its_Rezaa]

I'm just starting my journey as an idie game developer and this was such an amazing video to stumble upon😮 Thanks for sharing your wisdom sir❤

[@GraniteFaun]

damn boi, your mic setup is pretty premium, rode prices appear cheap compared to that. Also keep some Offline Backups justin case with the sync tool of your choice. These are safe against a ransomware attack. Since this could infect your whole network including your nas, in the worst case.

[@breckheck]

great video! Some tools in here I'll definitely be checking out!

[@veldtwalker]

I love obsidian since it also has a mobile app. There is also zettlr that I like but I needed the mobile options Obsidian offers. I also find the Johnny.Decimal system is a good way to organize a project. Thanks for this!

[@kalikkalam884]

yay new video. Will buy your game for sure

[@francescocalvi7096]

Great recommendations! Thank you!!

[@Emerlduck]

Super helpful video. I've been doing music for a long time but I'm brand new to trying to develop on my own and I'm taking anything I can get right now lol

[@Aerionix1]

With that mic and the scarlet solo, youre also going to want a cloudlifter or similar device. Try it first but theres a good chance the gain wont go high enough without distortion unless you have one.

[@FirebelleyGames]

You're right if you're talking about the raw signal - however I just apply digital gain in OBS and it works fine. The main time I feel the pain of lack of proper gain is in online games with voice chat, since I can't apply my typical digital post-processing in that context.

[@Aerionix1]

@FirebelleyGames Ya you're totally right. I forgot that you can adjust all that in obs since was using the stuff for podcasts and a bit of voiceover work where I needed the raw. For the purpose you're talking about, it would work perfectly. Side note, grabbed your survivors course. I kinda shifted it down my list a bit until I wrapped my head around a few more fundamentals but I am really looking forward to getting deeper into it. Best wishes.

[@bengamedev1872]

Obsidian is the bomb 👌

[@maingrought6906]

i knew a lot of those tools, what actually surprised me was the cloud thing at the end, i quite don't understand the usage of that, whats different from a hard drive ?

[@FirebelleyGames]

It is just extra redundancy in case the physical drives fail or get destroyed simultaneously

[@eddorneles]

Is there any particular reason for the C# adoption in your new project? I want to start a simple project and I want to use C# on it because im alrady used to the language but I found it lacks more content on tutorials and documentation. What are your thoughts on that? Even for a simple project would it worth start using C# on it?

[@FirebelleyGames]

If you're comfortable with C# then I'd go ahead and use it, it's not terribly difficult to adapt GDScript tutorials to C#. It's mostly a matter of personal preference too, I didn't choose C# for any reason other than I thought it would make the code cleaner and easier to design.

[@gdomjan83]

Great video, thanks. Is there a reason you will switch to GDScript in your future project from C#? I also use C# because coming from a Java background, that language is more familiar to me, and it is a more complete language. Is there something major GDScript offers compared to C#?

[@itstruce.]

There's no web export for it in Godot 4+ and iirc addon interaction is worse. I still use C# anyways, it's a great language and GDScript feels very off.

[@FirebelleyGames]

I think GDScript is just a lot quicker to write, it's less verbose, lower start up times when playing from the editor (due to no C# compilation time). Recent updates to GDScript actually made it a ton of fun to use, and I think for the type of game I want to make after Gunforged I won't need a lot of the stuff C# offers.

[@kevintrueblood1057]

Other thing is that there is more documentation, tutorials, and community support for GDscript just due to it being used more often. Much easier to find a question rather than have to answer it yourself.

[@itstruce.]

@@kevintrueblood1057 personally I am yet to encounter any problems where translating GDScript oriented solutions to C# has been a large issue

[@kevintrueblood1057]

@@itstruce. For someone familiar with C# or programming in general its less of a concern. For someone learning programming through gamedev as a hobby I wouldn't recommend it. That extra step of translation when reading docs or following tutorials would be ill-advised for a beginner.

[@mentalsmoge1128]

What Obsidian plugin do you show on 3:25?

[@FirebelleyGames]

That's actually just the normal canvas functionality that comes with vanilla Obsidian!

[@mentalsmoge1128]

@FirebelleyGames oh, I got it wrong then. I use Obsidian too, but I never tried canvas. Thanks!

[@Redping32]

ty so much i love this vidieo so ty

[@AppMaker728]

That's why I use Godot yep

[@bohdan_zoshchenko]

I use Everything (it has filtering) instead of Ultrasearch (not sure whether it does).

[@FirebelleyGames]

Everything is also a great app!

[@jayegamer8172]

When using Godot, what happens when you're planning to port to NINTENDO or other consoles

[@baggedlunchen6465]

You can either pay a group to port it switch like lonewolf, or you can reach out to Nintendo and ask for resources yourself but you'll also have to sign a NDA with the stuff they'll provide to help you port it

[@James-e4q3c]

You forgot to mention that although aseprite is paided it’s open source so you can compile it yourself if you want

[@pagadess]

i like ducks

[@JohnnyJiuJitsu]

LibreSprite vs Aseprite?

[@MuhammadHatem-kt7ng]

10:32 did you just say you have a...GTX 4070???

[@eliteengineer7340]

Great video the only thing i don't understand is the nvidia gpu part, why would you reccomend nvidia specifically when it comes down to personal preference what gpu brand you prefer? It would make sense if you gave reasons but this way its just a little meaningless. Obviously this is just nitpicking , greak work keep it up.

[@FirebelleyGames]

Yeah definitely understand where you're coming from. The reason I recommend NVIDIA specifically is that NVIDIA cards are better supported in many applications (like Davinci Resolve) which results in better performance compared to AMD. NVIDIA is generally a better choice for media production for this reason, however that doesn't mean that AMD performs horribly in these tasks.

[@eliteengineer7340]

@@FirebelleyGames Yeah that makes much more sense, also, i found out about pixelorama, it's an aseprite alternative that's free and made in godot, it's pretty cool.

[@felixabbott126]

Everything about the video is personal preference, what’s makes the gpu part any different?

[@kaminekoch.7465]

AMD is just objectively bad when it comes to video encoding and decoding.

[@eliteengineer7340]

@@felixabbott126 because he didn't give a reason or gave any opinions

[@ZachariahMJ]

I like neovim

[@Dkerza]

Nice works there! Are your game jam submissions using GDScript by any chance open source that people interested in them can look at? Thank you.

[@FirebelleyGames]

Some of them are, but not all. You can see everything I've open-sourced at github.com/firebelley

[@futuretrunks6927]

daang

[@Manthan_ampersand]

10:32 it's RTX 4070 😂😂😂

[@capitalistamalvadao4278]

Godot? Still?

[@lout160]

Why not? It works and it's FOSS.

[@PySnek]

It's improving every single day and a perfect tool for 2D indie games.

[@kipa_chu]

Godot is actually tough. Unity have more "Out of context" functionality and it makes no sense for someone to use Godot if they are trying to make money. Most indie games dont become popular. And if by chance it becomes popular then nothing wrong in paying a small percentage to unity (because you're already rich). I have 600 hours in Godot. When I tried Unity it felt like I was living under a rock.

[@szu7422]

What makes unity so much better than godot

[@runnerup15]

I'm not sure what you mean when you say it makes no sense if you're trying to make money, I would expect the developers of slay the spire for example have a pretty good handle on that and they have not mentioned any similar outlook

[@kipa_chu]

@@szu7422 Just try making a simple game in both of them.

[@kipa_chu]

@@runnerup15 Every argument in the world will have a outlier example that doesn't fit well with the argument. Ofcourse there will be outliers when it comes to Godot as well. That's not the point.

[@user-xsn5ozskwg]

@@kipa_chu In my experience Unity's 3D and runtime tools are more extensive than Godot's while Godot excels in prototyping thanks to how nodes work and 2D stuff. Like with any tool it depends entirely on familiarity and purpose.

[@PhanPlan-dq5iw]

Not Godot, no. They killed themselves

[@Xero_Wolf]

Like Unity did last year? Unity isn't going anywhere and the same goes for Godot. Most users like myself who have projects working on just care about making games.

[@IPlayKindred]

are you twelve?

[@kiryonnakira7566]

Not really. The engine itself is not impacted by dramas as it is made by all of us working together, not one or two corporates or board that dictate everything that happens in the engine

[@qpangfreak]

You people are insane snowflakes, going apeshit crazy over 1 joke tweet

[@CaptainMagni]

No mature adult really cares about that drama

[@cryelectric]

Wow! Thank you very mutch for this!