github

notpresident35 / learn-awesome-gamedev

  • среда, 17 августа 2022 г. в 00:30:38
https://github.com/notpresident35/learn-awesome-gamedev


A curated collection of game development resources



Learn Awesome Gamedev Awesome

A Mega-List of Learning Resources for Game Creators

Contents


A cat illustration that Hazel uses as her profile icon :3

💜 Curated by Hazel Kennedy 💜

Got resources? Notice a broken link? Email me, shoot me a DM, or make a pull request! I like chatting too - don't be shy! ^^


About

For a few years now, I have been hoarding every gamedev resource I can get my grubby paws on. This is the result!

My list is mostly for learning the craft of game development at a high level and getting hired for it. For lists of tools, communities, and assets, as well as more granular lists geared towards individual tools like Unity, check out the gaming category of awesome

Nearly all resources are free, and anything with a price tag will be clearly marked. I only include paid resources if either I have personally used them or I have seen other industry professionals use and recommend them.

Suggestions and future-proofing efforts are always welcome!

These resources made my career possible. I hope they are just as helpful for you!

Disclaimer: I'm a technical artist and gameplay programmer, so most of my role-specific resources are geared towards the art and tech disciplines. However, there should be something for most disciplines, particularly in general materials and other curated lists.

🟪 Purple Resources are “most useful” links. These include highly influential courses/books, resources I've personally found invaluable, and other entire mega-lists.


General


🟪 New to game development? Start here

Game Development Cheatsheets - 2018 Edition by allurious



🟪 My mega-playlist of great gamedev videos (conference talks, tutorials, analyses, etc)

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLwMDKo-0Eku3TxVg2Ye9dgW0jtUgkWRn

🟪 A huge list of professional game developers you can contact for advice! Be courteous - these are real people! Curated by Joe Hobbs - @JLHGameArt on Twitter https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRYveFAl_GuvBo0iuy3EvgPm0fWAGci-Z8e5CZ6hoYz9n8gcoK4dgE0RML-x0pWqRNjGqte-V7phtqB/pubhtml

🟪 MIT Open Courseware - classes and materials from MIT (free to access)!

https://ocw.mit.edu/

🟪 More huge lists of resources! Some of these are older so beware broken links and the like, but there's many, many more incredible things in here!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G0YTvNM8pzqjy_paxvEyVQSfb7KAJFGxJ5fY2ui8FEI/edit

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/audio/38-great-resources-for-game-developers

https://github.com/Kavex/GameDev-Resources

https://github.com/Hengle/gamedev-resources-1

https://community.gamedev.tv/t/wiki-free-cheap-indie-gamedev-resources/1948

https://letsmakegames.info/game-dev-resources

https://www.gamesparks.com/the-ultimate-list-of-free-and-low-cost-developer-tools-and-resources/

https://www.tomlooman.com/game-development-learning-resources/

https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/wiki/index/

https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedesign/wiki/index/

Another mega-list of game development videos (primarily aimed at game design and programming)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb5oIIPO62g&list=PLZQDJJp3vTmB6awcmhFc9V6HG2bd9vofo&index=58

A massive list of assets, with a focus on Unity development

https://www.procedural-worlds.com/blog/best-free-unity-assets-categorised-mega-list/

A list of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) for every aspect of gamedev

https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1HMtvSenYvd9SN58gTmRNs-FqiHhbnnVgkMEV5mqKKaQ/mobilebasic

A list of workshops and resources from the Video Game Development Club at the University of California, Irvine (VGDC at UCI)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yGzqp1Cq8emRasH0JHYMXE4-Z6xYxQ0GDe6ZyemctVM/edit


Programming


🟪 The Open Source University - a complete study plan for a computer science education

https://github.com/ossu/computer-science

🟪 Another complete study plan aimed at software engineers

https://github.com/jwasham/coding-interview-university

🟪 The single best way to learn Unity. Trust me when I say this is the best $12 I have ever spent, or will ever spend. Wait for it to go on sale, then go pick this up.

https://www.udemy.com/course/unitycourse2/

🟪 Same as above, but with Unreal 5. This course is invaluable - I know several full-time developers who learned from gamedev.tv, they are a gem. Wait for it to go on sale, then go pick this up.

https://www.udemy.com/course/unrealcourse/

An introductory python course taught at MIT (free to access!)

https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-0001-introduction-to-computer-science-and-programming-in-python-fall-2016/

🟪 A C++ course taught at the University of California, Irvine (free to access!)

https://www.ics.uci.edu/~thornton/ics45c/Notes/

🟪 A course on data structures and algorithms taught at the University of California, Irvine (free to access!)

https://www.ics.uci.edu/~thornton/ics46/index.html

🟪 Game Programming Patterns - A free book on programming patterns for games

https://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/

🟪 A study path for game programmers - A huge collection of game programming book titles and covers organized by specialization, with fancy flow charts between each title for a recommended reading order! Note that the books are not included - a quick search should help you out with that ;]

https://github.com/miloyip/game-programmer

🟪 How to Learn Software Design and Architecture - A list of resources

https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/software-design/

Interactive tutorials for math and algorithms

https://www.redblobgames.com/

Introduction to Algorithms - A book on algorithms. Pricey, look for it in a library or something (wink) first

https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262046305/

Math for Game Programmers - A free book on math for game programmers

https://gamemath.com/book/intro.html

Mature Optimization - A free book on structuring code for performance

https://carlos.bueno.org/optimization/

🟪 Data Oriented Design - A free book on data-oriented design, an alternative to object-oriented programming

https://www.dataorienteddesign.com/dodbook/dodmain.html

generatingfunctionology - A free book on generating functions

https://www2.math.upenn.edu/~wilf/DownldGF.html

C++ for C# Developers - An extensive tutorial series

https://www.jacksondunstan.com/articles/5530

🟪 Game Engine Architecture - A book on game engines. About $25 for the e-book, but probably worth the investment if you plan to be an engine, tools, or graphics programmer.

https://www.gameenginebook.com/

Design Patterns - A free book with very pretty illustrations (and also, an interesting criticism of said book - I believe there is a response to this on the design patterns site)

https://refactoring.guru/design-patterns/

https://blog.codinghorror.com/rethinking-design-patterns/

Making a Game Engine (for the engine programmers and the insane: save yourself some trouble and watch this instead of making yet another game engine ^^)

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlrATfBNZ98dC-V-N3m0Go4deliWHPFwT

C# for beginners - A free book

https://www.robmiles.com/c-yellow-book

Gamedev in Rust for beginners - a collection of books, tutorials, articles, and a community to boot

https://arewegameyet.rs/#resources

A blog with lots and lots of programming, graphics, and math tutorials and breakdowns

https://blog.demofox.org

Essence of Linear Algebra - A video series meant as a supplement for a class on Linear Algebra, made by 3Blue1Brown

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?app=desktop&list=PLZHQObOWTQDPD3MizzM2xVFitgF8hE_ab

Understanding ECS https://www.gamedev.net/articles/programming/general-and-gameplay-programming/understanding-component-entity-systems-r3013/

A (slightly outdated) list of programming tutorials from the VGDC at UCI https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VxoJGdBmRrsYLx9MnaVmZ0iFc9Vcx4xGSqOuW2bisVM/edit#gid=2006991768

Optimization tips for Unity (I fully expect this link to break lol - if it does, ask me for the pdf!)

https://images.response.unity3d.com/Web/Unity/%7B5dc4de9b-9e59-4860-b933-eb6daae82ecd%7D_Unity_Games_Optimization_Best_Practices-v5.pdf?utm_campaign=___&utm_content=2019-11-Gaming-ISS-eBook&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua


Gameplay

🟪 A study reference sheet for gameplay engineers - perfect for intermediate programmers looking to shore up their technical knowledge to get hired (note: this is currently being migrated. It is incomplete at time of writing, but I have also included the future-proof link)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qIkaxtSfrtmgvO_yh-h187by7EIyrl61a3EaF40xBLs/edit#heading=h.ejywv1aotlnc

https://www.mrventures.net/get-into-gamedev.html

🟪 Game AI Pro - 3 free books, or more accurately volumes of short papers on game AI. Notable authors include Steve Rabin, a DigiPen professor who teaches AI for games.

http://www.gameaipro.com/

AI Game Dev.com - An AI development community with lots of resources. It only exists on the internet archive - be wary of outdated knowledge and broken links.

https://web.archive.org/web/20190107192021/http://aigamedev.com/page/free-features/page/3/


Graphics

🟪 A Megalist of Graphics Programming and Tech Art resources

https://guerilla-tactics.com/hats/graphics/

GPU Gems - Three (3) free books by Nvidia about GPU programming and architecture

https://developer.nvidia.com/gpugems/gpugems/contributors

🟪 An overview of graphics and everything rendering for programmers. Has lots of references to books and other resources, letting you dig as far as you would like into the nitty gritty or stick to an overview

http://simonschreibt.de/gat/renderhell/

How GPU memory works in D3D12

https://therealmjp.github.io/posts/gpu-memory-pool/

A comparison of modern graphics APIs (namely, Vulkan, DirectX, Metal, WebGPU, and OpenGL)

https://alain.xyz/blog/comparison-of-modern-graphics-apis

A comparison of 3D file formats

http://liu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:462098/FULLTEXT01.pdf

How SDFs work

https://jasmcole.com/2019/10/03/signed-distance-fields/


Networking

🟪 A course on multiplayer and networking in Unity. Gamedev.tv is an incredible resource - wait for it to go on sale, then go pick this up.

https://www.udemy.com/course/unity-multiplayer/

🟪 A course on multiplayer and networking in Unreal. Wait for it to go on sale, then go pick this up.

https://www.udemy.com/course/unrealmultiplayer/

🟪 A bunch of articles on netcode for games

https://gafferongames.com

Deterministic Netcode

https://yal.cc/preparing-your-game-for-deterministic-netcode/


Fun

Music for Programming

https://musicforprogramming.net/latest/

Good advice repeated ad nauseum: swallow your pride, and optimize out busywork

https://www.techwell.com/techwell-insights/2013/12/why-best-programmers-are-lazy-and-act-dumb

http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2005-08-24-n14.html

https://kilon.org/why-good-programmers-are-lazy-and-dumb/

https://blog.codinghorror.com/how-to-be-lazy-dumb-and-successful/

A very interesting breakdown of a particularly tricky bug in Destiny and how it was found and fixed

https://www.bungie.net/en/Explore/Detail/News/50140

An article on why C is not a low-level language, and performance as a result of that

https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3212479

Pore over this for a good laugh :P

http://sigbovik.org


Technical Art


🟪 A list of tech art resources, communities, and professionals, curated by Heart Machine (the studio that made Hyper Light Drifter and now Hyper Light Breaker)

https://heartmachine.notion.site/Tech-Art-Learning-Resources-d2eb63aeca624cf59faab5a19b4a732d

A blog by a developer for Crash Bandicoot discussing its rendering tech and the hardware limitations of the PS1

https://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/04/making-crash-bandicoot-part-3/

An extended breakdown of the procedural art tools of Hyper Light Breaker

https://heartmachinez.tumblr.com/post/690221520736387072/proc-gen-hyperdec-part-1

https://heartmachinez.tumblr.com/post/690221567668568064/proc-gen-hyperdec-part-2


Shaders

🟪 An Introduction to HLSL Shaders using Unity by Freya Holmer

Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfM-yu0iQBk

Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mL8U8tIiRRg

Part 3:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4PHFnvMzFc

🟪 The Book of Shaders

https://thebookofshaders.com/00/

🟪 Catlike Coding - Unity and HLSL Tutorials

https://catlikecoding.com/unity/tutorials/

Shadertoy - An online shader editor and hosting/sharing site

https://www.shadertoy.com/

🟪 Render Doc - A program that breaks down a frame rendered from a game and allows you to analyze processes that created it

https://renderdoc.org/

A Detailed Introduction to Shader Graph in Unity

https://www.cyanilux.com/tutorials/intro-to-shader-graph/

Lots of shader breakdowns and great tutorials (same blog as above)

https://www.cyanilux.com/contents/

Shaderquest (a guide series from a blog about tech art)

https://halisavakis.com/category/shaderquest/


VFX

🟪 Getting Started in Real Time VFX - Also check out the rest of this website (realtimevfx.com) to find a thriving community filled with useful knowledge and amazing people

https://realtimevfx.com/t/getting-started-in-real-time-vfx-start-here/3415

🟪 A fantastic list of VFX talks at GDC (this one is about Diablo, and is very insightful)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPy2hytwDLM&list=PLdiateg_U8PFnlScGDJDQeHUX9qmYvsxv

🟪 A full 2D FX animation course (completely free!)

https://chluaid.gumroad.com/l/bcafx

Several VFX courses geared towards developing a professional portfolio. Very pricey, but may be worth your while if you are serious about VFX - it is a hell of a lot cheaper than art school.

https://www.vfxapprentice.com

A Houdini tutorial series

Houdini Isnt Scary - Part 1: Basics

Unity VFX Tutorial

https://stylizedstation.com/article/realtime-unity-vfx-tutorial-the-3-core-elements-you-need-to-know/


Art


🟪 A Megalist of Art Resources!

https://www.notion.so/Art-Industry-Resources-86e6733162f24c26829aa65961f461e3

🟪 Fantastic pixel art animation tutorials by Saint11

https://www.patreon.com/saint11

https://saint11.org/blog/pixel-art-tutorials/

https://saint11.org/pixel_articles/

More art resources

https://cubebrush.co

Extremely professional-looking art, animation, and VFX courses - seems aimed at film with a large overlap in games. Beware of hefty price tag

https://www.thegnomonworkshop.com

Smithsonian Open Access - A massive repository of 3D and 2D digital resources from the Smithsonian Institute archives, such as photos and 3D scans of historical objects. Perfect for reference and creative commons reuse!

https://www.si.edu/openaccess

Resources for Commissions

https://www.nadiaxel.com/post/free-ressources-for-commission-artists


2D/Illustration

🟪 A curriculum for self-teaching art. If you want to really hone your skills, this will undoubtedly be worth your time.

https://www.brendanmeachen.com/soloartist

🟪 An exhaustive course for the art fundamentals (completely free!)

https://drawabox.com/

🟪 A Pixel Art gold mine (Job Board, Pallette Database, Tutorials, Resources, and more)

https://lospec.com/

🟪 Figure Drawing Fundamentals

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLR2KBLDDnZz3Ec8LZ66IDS--P9g3TdwOM

A fantastic guide to digital painting, for beginners and intermediate painters (also, check out this entire channel! Sinix tutorials are best in class)

How to Learn Digital Painting (Beginners)

A list of art resources, primarily human figure reference material

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DLccwkSK1B8fJ3TV4X1-8ktiDmzgnelkNMamZfz3hYE/edit

Drawing the Head and Hands - A book on figure construction by Andrew Loomis. Free in the public domain!

https://www.alexhays.com/loomis/Andrew%20Loomis%20-%20Drawing%20the%20Head%20and%20Hands.pdf

And a backup link to the above

https://ia601608.us.archive.org/8/items/andrew-loomis-drawing-the-head-hands/andrew-loomis-drawing-the-head-hands.pdf

Figure Drawing for All its Worth - A book on figure drawing by Andrew Loomis. Free in the public domain!

https://illustrationage.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/andrew-loomis-figure-drawing-for-all-its-worth.pdf

And a backup link to the above

https://archive.org/details/loomis_FIGURE_draw

A good guide to sharpening your technical skills

Clean Line Art! Digital Inking Tips

Good figure references

https://www.vishopper.com/cut-out-people

Human Anatomy for the Head

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T7cDY7YDsg

A neat style guide for using edges and lines effectively

https://bryan-sturm.github.io/articles/lines-and-edges/

Need a quick confidence boost? Watch this :3

What Level Is Your Art? [Scribble Kibble #39]


3D

🟪 The best resource for thinking about 3D art, possibly ever

World Building in Blender - Ian Hubert

🟪 Sculpting in Blender

https://www.artstation.com/learning/courses/3Va/intro-to-sculpting-in-blender/chapters/8OjR/intro

🟪 Photorealism, explained

Photorealism Explained

Royalty Free Textures, Models, HDRIs, and Assets!

https://www.textures.com/

https://publicdomaintextures.com/

https://polyhaven.com/

https://poly.pizza


Animation

🟪 An essential resource for any animator - has a price tag, but if you want to get a job in industry, it is well worth your money.

http://www.theanimatorssurvivalkit.com

A visual tutorial series on the 12 principles of animation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haa7n3UGyDc&list=PL-bOh8btec4CXd2ya1NmSKpi92U_l6ZJd

A good (and free!) Maya humanoid rig

https://oninationsquad.gumroad.com/l/hybrid02

A great humanoid body and face rig by Chris Jones ($200 license, but would be very worth it for serious animators)

https://cjones.gumroad.com/l/JJuKG


Resources for Non-Artists

Note that there are many, many more resources out there - these are primarily included as a way to build a polished-looking game even while learning a different discipline.

Royalty Free Game Art!

https://opengameart.org/

http://www.kenney.nl/

https://game-icons.net/

A great post/thread with lots of free art assets and tools

https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity2D/comments/3dfi5k/lets_create_a_list_of_all_100_free_2d_assets_with/


Design


🟪 The Art of Game Design - An essential book on game design, basically mandatory reading for designers. Has a price tag, but is well worth the money

https://www.schellgames.com/art-of-game-design/

🟪 The Design of Everyday Things - A book on design in everything, basically mandatory reading for designers

https://www.sunyoungkim.org/class/old/hci_f18/pdf/The-Design-of-Everyday-Things-Revised-and-Expanded-Edition.pdf

🟪 Game Accessibility Guidelines

https://gameaccessibilityguidelines.com/

🟪 A Game Design class taught at MIT (free to access!)

https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/cms-608-game-design-fall-2010/

A tutorial on writing Game Design Documents (GDDs)

https://www.gamedesigning.org/learn/game-design-document/

🟪 The Evolution of Trust - An interactive walkthrough of some game theory. Would probably be mandatory reading in a game design class

https://ncase.me/trust/

🟪 Extra Credits - A channel on game design that was far ahead of its time, though their more recent content is more controversial. Their whole backlog is fantastic, but start with this video, and then dig into their playlist of game design videos

So You Want To Be a Game Designer - Career Advice for Making Games - Extra Credits

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pm8KdLPOm2c&list=PLhyKYa0YJ_5BkTruCmaBBZ8z6cP9KzPiX&index=1

🟪 A playable video essay/game, giving an overview on platforming mechanics, game feel, and tuning by Mark Brown from GMTK

https://gmtk.itch.io/platformer-toolkit

GDKeys - A collection of articles and tools created by Nico, a senior game designer

https://gdkeys.com/

MDA - Mechanics -> Design -> Aesthetics, or a formal approach to game design and research

https://users.cs.northwestern.edu/~hunicke/MDA.pdf

Hooked - An interactive article on the psychology of gambling and addiction

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/datablog/ng-interactive/2017/sep/28/hooked-how-pokies-are-designed-to-be-addictive

Tuning the sniper rifle in Halo

https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1012211/Design-in-Detail-Changing-the

One of my favorite design and art writers - breaks down games and writes about them (check out the ones on the balance and economy of Destiny)

https://docseuss.medium.com

A breakdown of the design thinking and solutions that went into an extremely specific 3D camera

https://etodd.io/2017/11/28/poor-mans-3d-camera/


Level Design

A great level design tool

https://www.mapeditor.org/

Level Design and How To Get Into It

https://80.lv/articles/level-design-tips-tricks-and-how-to-get-into-it/


UI/UX

🟪 A huge list of UI/UX resources!

https://www.notion.so/onewithmachines/WE-CAN-FIX-IT-IN-UI-9f588869324a45e2b2d0595546ce77d1

🟪 A database of UI from many different games

https://www.gameuidatabase.com/index.php

Best practices of UX design

https://lawsofux.com/en/

A 100-day daily UI design challenge

https://www.dailyui.co/


Reference

A collection of design documents from completed games - links have been ripped and placed below

https://gamedocs.org/category/design-document/

A collection of UI/UX documentation from Destiny (a great game that won awards for its UI :3)

http://www.cand.land/destiny

The design doc for Sam and Max Hit the Road

https://web.archive.org/web/20180219004603/https://samandmax.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Hit%20the%20Road%20design%20document.pdf

The pitch document for Mythos

https://mega.nz/#!3aImBa6D!QUKtZYf_frlIgSUk2A096KNCQ9cfijr_38son-N4AGo

https://web.archive.org/web/20220815160302/https://mega.nz/file/3aImBa6D

The original vision document for Wasteland 2

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxMevjNSr2EjbDBpZ2ZMdmNnc28/view?resourcekey=0-2-ybLxFeJk2R5ROLOAB3oQ

https://web.archive.org/web/20220815160247/https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxMevjNSr2EjbDBpZ2ZMdmNnc28/view?resourcekey=0-2-ybLxFeJk2R5ROLOAB3oQ

The design document and art book for Dirty Bomb

https://www.dirtybomb.com/news/the-design-of-dirty-bomb/

https://web.archive.org/web/20220815160634/http://db-design.splashdamage.com.s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/dirty_bomb-game_design_document.pdf

https://web.archive.org/web/20220815160724/http://db-design.splashdamage.com.s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/the_art_of_dirty_bomb.pdf

Concept document for What Remains of Edith Finch

https://www.giantsparrow.com/blog/news/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Finch-Original-Concept-Doc.pdf

https://web.archive.org/web/20220815160819/https://www.giantsparrow.com/blog/news/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Finch-Original-Concept-Doc.pdf

A repository of lots of maps and top-down views of levels

https://gridpaper-maps.tumblr.com/


Audio


🟪 A megalist of game audio learning resources!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fcuhGEesLC_PWCwY3dIwLgF774sKswOwIcZECWiH7Xo/edit#gid=0

🟪 The Sound Effects Bible - A book on sound effects

https://postproduciendoenlaeav.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/the-sound-effects-bible-ric-viers.pdf

🟪 Another list of resources!

https://twitter.com/chiragmachhar/status/1511446337639927811

Direct links to said resources, in case the above thread goes down:

The Bible of Getting a Job in Game Audio (link in career section)

Audio Reel Reviews: Power Up Audio - YouTube

Courses on audio implementation in Unreal: https://twitter.com/TheNewTeed/status/1505820433005826049

In case the tweet gets deleted, this was a few different courses from Unreal: https://learn.unrealengine.com/

A course on Wwise, an audio middleware program (there are a lot more courses from audio kinetic too! Same link, go to the home page): https://www.audiokinetic.com/education/learn-wwise/

A tutorial series on integrating Wwise in Unreal: Wwise 2019.1.4 Unreal V4.23 Game Audio Implementation Guide Series - YouTube

A great program for generating simple sound effects

https://sfxr.me/

A simple but fun web-based music program

https://www.beepbox.co/

A very simplistic and limited but fast, free, and fun audio program for chiptune music!

https://boscaceoil.net/

Royalty free SFX samples from GDC

https://sonniss.com/gameaudiogdc#1605030813191-c5a1f3d0-8baf

Royalty free music! Just be sure to check the license

https://pixabay.com/music/

DOVA-SYNDROME YouTube Official


Writing


🟪 Inkle - a writing tool for games (that integrates well with Unity!)

https://www.inklestudios.com/ink/

A simple cross-platform dialogue graph editor (free with MIT license!)

https://github.com/etodd/dialogger

A Workshop to Write Better Dialogue

https://gutefabrik.com/craft-writing-better-dialogue-a-2-day-workshop/

A template sheet for an exercise to write "Barks" or simple dialogue lines - good for emphasizing character variety and attention-to-detail personalization

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16WoJik9w93FHNOw8GrE4L0UAwTYJMsBQ6QSxZ1MYr9A/edit#gid=0


Marketing and Business


🟪 How to Market a Game - A blog and a collection of resources (of special note, a few GDC talks) about marketing for games by Chris Zukowski - this is the only mailing list that I have ever willingly signed up for and gotten mileage out of :P

https://howtomarketagame.com

Show the Dream, Not the Job - advice for showing the selling points of your game in a trailer

https://www.derek-lieu.com/blog/2020/2/25/show-the-dream-not-the-job

Figuring out how viable your budget is for your game

https://ltpf.ramiismail.com/budget-viability/


Job Hunting and Career


🟪 A huge list of job-hunting resources - multiple blogs with everything from building a portfolio/resume to searching for and applying to jobs and even salary negotiation and relocating

https://www.gameindustrycareerguide.com/video-game-job-hunt-guide/

🟪 Another huge list of career documents and resources!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pGglICnig6oZ1IABXLMuwAEN1azPP5pnZUvdrYwbyGs/edit

A big list of portfolios from industry professionals

https://www.plusonewisdom.com/post/industry-portfolios

Gamedev Jobs List (2022)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1H34_z043mJrLahXw7fCgwf5w4ZWyrB2GBE9XAXufjmQ/edit

🟪 The Reverse Interview - questions to ask a potential employer (aimed at tech, but most questions apply to any discipline)

https://github.com/viraptor/reverse-interview

🟪 A guide to game art portfolios and job hunting

https://www.artstation.com/blogs/kierangoodson/mY0N/guide-to-game-art-applications-portfolios-and-job-postings

🟪 The Bible of Getting a Job in Game Audio

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sAd8xOdngsdLJqKfcOnyL8xRhPi3Uitys6fEXU9O2X0/edit

Tips on getting an internship

https://helpful-clover-96f.notion.site/How-to-get-an-internship-v-2-d906cdbf321c4986ae46bd43282b1a84

Game Industry Portfolio Best Practices

https://docs.google.com/document/d/14jsiaFOXuBi9QsXOF2DJVFXCRP4RwqGY3xmMHlqf3y4/edit

A map of game development studios

https://www.gamedevmap.com

A short thread of cover letter tips

https://twitter.com/JeanLeggett/status/1354615348071460865

Why you need to clearly label personal work as personal work and not make your developer name seem like a studio name if it is not: a thread

https://twitter.com/MemoPotato/status/1550209887401017344?s=20&t=6Kp0ZGR8XuZukP5eAz2MGA


Other


🟪 Important productivity fuel (and what I used to hoard this list :P)

https://obsidian.md/

🟪 A series of game jam post-mortems - these are more valuable than they let on, because they show you the whole game-making process, start to finish. Not only will this help you avoid common pitfalls, it will help you know how to follow that process for your own game. Watch a couple before entering your first jam or starting your first project!

“PONY!” – A Ludum Dare 33 Time Lapse

Game Developer (previously known as Gamasutra) - a site filled with post-mortems, gamedev news, blog posts, and other articles with a focus on game developers and their communities.

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/

Blog by Rami Ismail (seasoned developer and consultant with sound advice)

https://ltpf.ramiismail.com

A devlog for Papers Please

https://fguillen.github.io/PapersPleaseDevlogScrap/

Tips, Tools, and Tutorials for privacy and online self-defense

https://ssd.eff.org/en

A big list of localized words across many different languages that can be used to loosely translate simple phrases such as UI buttons or tooltips.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17f0dQawb-s_Fd7DHgmVvJoEGDMH_yoSd8EYigrb0zmM/edit#gid=296134756

A collection of tiny, usually fun tools for various purposes!

https://tinytools.directory/

Good general advice, both on all disciplines (especially programming) and on life

http://paulgraham.com/articles.html

A dyslexia-friendly, accessible font!

https://opendyslexic.org/

Is This Arabic? A friendly guide to not borking Arabic script

https://isthatarabic.com

The Stranger Things (or Montauk) pitch bible - useful as reference for what a great pitch can look like, albeit in the context of film rather than games

http://www.zen134237.zen.co.uk/Stranger_Things/Stranger_Things_-_Bible.pdf



A cute drawing of Asriel from Undertale reaching for a heart