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Research

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Research Done Before Development:

Before researching anything, my partner and I had to brainstorm some ideas. We wanted to work on a game where your choices affect the outcome you experience with the interactive characters, so here are some of our sketches below. While this may be classified as development, we needed to put ideas on paper before we went further. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Software Developing Competitors:

Unity: 

Unity is a game developing platform created by Unity Technologies. The software is mainly used to develop both three-dimensional and two-dimensional video games for computers, consoles, and mobile devices.

Pros: 

  • There is a free version

  • Very well-known, so there are a lot of resources to turn to if an error occurs.

Cons:

  • A lot of their games are 3D, which isn't what we're looking for 

  • The free version is rather limiting

 

Costs:

Unity has three price points advertises as Personal, Plus, and Pro. Personal is free to use, plus is $35 a month, and Pro is $125 a month. 

 

This is a video of Unity representatives at the Game Developers Conference (GDC). This video is to show off a game made in Unity called "In the Valley of Gods."

TyranoBuilder: 

TyranoBuilder is a visual novel engine that boasts about its lack of programming required. It is designed for people who have less computer science scripting experience. 

Pros: 

  • More set towards visual novels than Unity

  • Real-time debugging 

Cons:

  • You have to pay to use it

  • Block coding

 

Costs:

TyranoBuilder is a one-time download payment of $14.99. Unlike Unity, the price isn't monthly, so we'd spend less overall if we opted to use it. 

 

This is the first TyranoBuilder add you see on their website. It briefly shows examples of games made in the engine and some of the features it has. 

Ren'py: 

Ren'py is a visual novel engine that uses Python-based programming to create the final product. The images used have to be uploaded (or drawn) by the user. Basically, just a platform to run code on.

Pros: 

  • Completely free to use

  • Coding required (in Python)

Cons:

  • No spell check/parentheses trackers

  • Minimal presets

 

Costs:

Completely free. No options for a professional level version like Unity.  

 

Ren'py doesn't have videos on their website, but this is a tutorial explaining the basics of the program and how to use it. 

Illustrator Software Competitors:

Adobe Photoshop: 

Adobe Photoshop is photo editing software that has lots of features. Mostly used to edit existing images instead of creating new ones. Because of this, probably not the best to make our sprites with. 

Pros: 

  • Well known

  • Lots of tutorials available

Cons:

  • High costs

  • Not the easiest to learn

 

Costs:

Comes at several different price points, each per month, for individuals:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Students get discount prices: 

 

I couldn't find a commercial for Photoshop, but here is a video where the basics are explained and summarized. 

GIMP: 

GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a photo editing program that also claims users can make their own images and artwork. 

Pros: 

  • Free to use

  • We've used it before in ICS

Cons:

  • Has limitations

  • Hard to draw on

 

Costs:

Completely free. No options for a professional level version like Unity.  

 

Here is a beginners guide on how to use GIMP, we won't be using it for our app development bit if you're interested this video will be helpful. 

ibisPaint: 

ibisPaint X is a drawing application where the user can use a variety of bushes and techniques to make original art. When you open the app, you get a blank canvas, so the final product is completely in the user's hands.  

Pros: 

  • Free to use

  • We've both had prior experience

Cons:

  • hard to use if you struggle with drawing

  • no pre-existing images 

 

Costs:

Completely free

 

One cool feature about ibisPaint is that it records your screen while drawing so you can play videos of your picture coming to life later. This is a video of someone's work done in the app. 

Conclusions

In the end, we ended up using Ren'py and ibisPaint to make T.R.A.S.H. with. Both of those programs are free, which is very convenient for our minimal budget. We like Ren'py because it lets us be so independent in our work. If we can code it the game will perform it, so we have minimal limitations compared to DynamoBuilder's drag and drop style. We like ibisPaint because it is basically just a blank canvas. We can draw anything we can imagine so we have nearly endless possibilities. T.R.A.S.H. can grow into anything because of how open-ended our game creation software is. 

 

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