By Kyle Kulyk
Hi all, and welcome to my weekly developer blog.
As we get closer to our first game’s completion, I took a moment to reflect back on some of the sources that have proved helpful to us as indie developers. As a startup company and like many other indies we’ve had to bootstrap it when it comes to financing. Money invested comes from within the group and our most precious commodity is time and talent. Time spent from our core members, time and talent volunteered by our friends and the support of our families along the way.
So when it comes to sourcing assets, be them sound assets, music or 3D models, free to use is often the only choice indie developers have to start their projects off. I thought I’d take a moment to share 4 important resources I’ve personally relied on for free to use assets that helped me as a student learning the art of game programming and design and sites we continue to rely on as an indie development studio today.
The FreeSound Project, as their website will confirm, is a collaborative database of creative commons licensed sound files, contributed by members throughout the internet. It’s your one stop shopping center for all the zings, biffs, pops, pows, clashes, zaps and hopefully anything else your non-sound producing self could need.
Like the FreeSound Project, CCmixter also provides a database of creative commons licensed material free for use, this time with a focus on full musical tracks. A word of caution though, please make sure to read the fine print. While all the tracks are free to use and remix – some are restricted from appearing in commercial works.
While only a fraction of 3D models available on TurboSquid are actually free, it never hurts to check if you need a model and don’t have the time (or expertise) to produce one yourself. As well, plenty of the models are reasonably priced and there are certainly a few gems available that really make you go “Wow! 2 bucks for that?”
Digital Roar Studios Maelstrom Assets
As a way of giving back to the indie community that helped them along, Digital Roar Studios has created an asset package ranging from skyboxes to sound effects to full 3d fantasy models that is now open source. There’s certainly some cool stuff in here. Worth taking a look. You can download their asset package here.
Hope you find this short list helpful. If you have any suggestions of your own, please feel free to leave us a message via our Facebook page. Game on!