Click here if you are stuck in someone else's frames.
Tools of the Trade
When writing games, it helps to have a good set of "tools" that help
ease some of the burden of the artwork and sound editing and such.
In addition to a good compiler for the programming, here is a small list
of programming utilities that can help you in your game designs.
- Drawing programs
A good one allows you to select many different graphics modes
and choose from a wide range of colors and allows you to change the
palette. Windows Paintbrush will be suitable for creating images that
are to be used in Windows programs generated with Visual Basic, but
for images to be used in some of our C programs, you need one that
gives you more control of the system's palette. I've found that
Neopaint from a company called Neosoft does the job just fine for most
of my needs. You can obtain a free trial copy of their Neopaint program by
visiting their web site at
http://www.neosoftware.com/
- Not a good artist huh?
Well, not to worry, there are sites on the web that can help with that.
Here's a couple I've found interesting:
- Creating and editing sound
A sound editing program is a definate must if you want to add sound
effects to your games. Here you are pretty much free to use whatever
you can lay your hands on, but one thing I should point out is that
a good sound capture and editing file should allow for a wide variaty
of formats. Mainly formats like WAV (Windows), and VOC (Creative Labs).
A sound program that can make a raw binary file of the sound is a plus
but not nessecary in most cases. One program that I've included that
is shareware is a program called Blaster Master that's suitable for
most of our purposes even though it is crippled to only 30 seconds or
so of recording time. For those of you who use Windows sound recorder,
I've included a utility that can convert WAV files to VOC files and so
on.
Click here to obtain Blaster Master File size 283KB
Click here for the conversion utility File size 48KB
Send your questions, comments, or ideas to:
garyneal@geocities.com