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Scirra’s game development toolkit Construct is gaining more popularity as it’s drawing closer to its first official release. For those of you who still aren’t familiar with the software, it’s an open-source combination of established commercial development applications that a lot of designers have been turning to in their game making endeavors.
Head on over to Scirra.com for more info!
Some of you are already aware of Scirra’s little project Construct, but for those of you who aren’t—or haven’t checked on it in awhile—here’s an overview of the tool as well as a little information regarding its future.
Construct is an entirely free open-source game development tool that boasts a DirectX 9 rendering engine. It is currently only in beta, but looks quite promising.
Construct uses Python as a scripting language, and while that may sound daunting to some users who aren’t interested in learning a serious programming language to create their games, don’t worry, because Construct also features an extremely powerful event editor that allows users to create their games using a sort of drag-and-drop interface. Users already familiar with YoYo Games’ GameMaker (www.yoyogames.com) will find this fairly intuitive at first, and will be pleasantly surprised at how powerful it can actually be by comparison.
That comparison might mislead some people as to how extensive Construct really is though. Features are being added or improved upon all the time, but currently you can look forward to using:
For a full list head over to Scirra’s website.
Few people are going to describe Construct as “limited” or “lacking,” but for those who somehow still feel restrained, Construct’s open-source nature may provide some relief. Construct can be fully expanded upon using custom plugins written using its C++ SDK, there are already roughly 60 plugins available to use.
The team at Scirra seems very dedicated to their project and you can only expect to see two things at this point: [more] and [better]. Updates come fairly frequently, but they are needed. Construct still has a lot of bugs and the Python implementation is a bit screwed up right now, however it is barreling towards a version 1.0 release in the coming months which will be a milestone in its development cycle.
For anyone interested in stepping beyond the limitations of other 2D game development tools: keep an eye on Construct!
Platinum Arts Sandbox is a free, open source 3D game maker based off of the Cube 2 engine and is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. It hasn’t gained too much popularity in the indie gaming community, but the software has been featured in a few games festivals and is used in schools around the world.
The learning curve isn’t steep, as the interface relies heavily on point-and-click maneuvers as well as typed commands. Currently, the game supports several modes including “cart, sidescroller, movie (machinima) and RPG.” Beginners and kids will find enough to do by just creating their own maps and playing around with the built-in modes, while advanced users can dig in to the Cubescript programming language (similar to C). The upcoming 2.4 release will include support for many multiplayer modes as well as an improved RPG mode.
You can download the current 2.3 version here.
A public beta of Milkshake was announced to be released soon. This drag-and-drop editor is based on the open source 2D framework IceCream, which enables users to create XNA games for Windows and the Xbox 360 with ease.
You can follow the progress over at icecream.epsicode.net.