I’m a student, not rich, without a second job, and without a publisher, but I love to create games.
\nSo my project-budget for Grappling Hook was almost zero, but fortunately, there are some great freeware and open source projects.
\nI will present you every tool that I have used during the development of Grappling Hook.<\/p>\n
Java<\/a><\/strong> Eclipse<\/a><\/strong> jMonkeyEngine<\/a><\/strong> Thanks to every developer and contributor of this projects! You are doing great work and make dreams possible!<\/p>\n What is your favorite programming language, IDE, engine, or 3d tool and why?<\/p>\n To be continued.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m a student, not rich, without a second job, and without a publisher, but I love to create games. So my project-budget for Grappling Hook was almost zero, but fortunately, there are some great freeware and open source projects. I will present you every tool that I have used during the development of Grappling Hook. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[11,9,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.speedrungames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.speedrungames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.speedrungames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.speedrungames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.speedrungames.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=496"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.speedrungames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":699,"href":"https:\/\/www.speedrungames.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496\/revisions\/699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.speedrungames.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.speedrungames.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.speedrungames.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nI already wrote an article about, how great Java is for game development and my opinion has not changed since then.
\nYou can find the article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\nEclipse is a great free IDE. It offers syntax-highlighting, code-completion, refactoring-tools, a debugger, Java-doc-generation, good search-tools, code-formatting, neat-project-overviews and a lot more.
\nI had to work with Visual Studio and I wished every day, that it would be at least half as good as Eclipse. With Visual Assist X things get a lot better, but you have to pay for it.
\nGood alternatives: NetBeans<\/a><\/p>\n
\nThe jMonkeyEngine is a general purpose engine written in Java. It is build on top of LWJGL and offers a scene-graph and many cool features, for example shaders, terrain, particles, shadows, many model formats .
\nSome features are missing like a good physics integration, but the community is working hard on it. The community is one of the best I have ever seen. They are active and very helpful.
\nBeside Grappling Hook, there are other commercial projects using the engine, like Mad Skills Motocross<\/a> or Bang Howdy.
\nWhen you are looking for a free engine to develop a game, you should definitely evaluate the jMonkeyEngine.
\nGood alternatives: Unity<\/a>, Panda3D<\/a>, Ogre3D<\/a>
\n
\nBlender<\/a><\/strong>
\nBlender is a free 3d tool offering all features you can dream of as a 3d artist: modeling, uv mapping, shading, rigging, animations, rendering, compositing, and also physics and a game engine.
\nWhen you are used to 3D Studio Max or other commercial 3d tools, Blender will feel a bit strange. But you will get used to it soon and it will pay of, because you can do everything with blender, that is possible with commercial 3d tools.
\nAlternatives: Wings 3D<\/a>, GMax<\/a><\/p>\n