Developers Poll Thread

I am doing this survey to find out what is the most important "tool or service" they use while developing a new game, modificiation, skin, map, or whatever it is that you develop. I thought that this would help others know what they should look for, who want to attempt this (dev), allowing them an inside scoop.

Also I am doing some research.... so either way an answer would be great!

I don't get what you are looking for here. The question seems to me all over the place.

Well, for indie dev starting out, usually they aren't developing mass multiplayer games, unless they've already made a few games and know their way around.

In my opinion, I think one of the hardest tasks is learning to juggle all roles. There's enough free tools and assets on the internet to easily get people started, and then some. But most of the time, indie game developers are coming from a background where they only have a small set of skills, if that. Programmers who can't draw, for example. Or artist who can't code. In my case, I can code and model 3d assets, but no real eye for design.

A service that could help developers hone these skills would be highly beneficial to the indie game community.

I've been a modder, skinner, level maker and finally developer but I never find any need for web services, mass server storage and servers. Maybe I need any of them sometime but what I really need are art, music and SFX or stuffs which are beyond my skills. Of course, I can make those myself but if there were tools which could help me making those, I'd be grateful

Definitely Tools, at least assets. I've spoken to more than a few Professional Indie Developers who are surprised teams I'm on can develop a product for less than 50K. Rather than use a larger team involving composers, modelers, and artists, we are able to use assets, specifically Unity's, to greatly reduce our overhead costs. For people just starting out in game development, the option to build a game cheaply is sometimes overlooked but greatly appreciated once you start realizing the costs involved.

Fleenyworks wrote:

Definitely Tools, at least assets. I've spoken to more than a few Professional Indie Developers who are surprised teams I'm on can develop a product for less than 50K. Rather than use a larger team involving composers, modelers, and artists, we are able to use assets, specifically Unity's, to greatly reduce our overhead costs. For people just starting out in game development, the option to build a game cheaply is sometimes overlooked but greatly appreciated once you start realizing the costs involved.

Wow, that's kind of funny. To date, the most money I've ever spent on a game I've developed has been $3.75, for a shader I didn't really even need. Outside of publishing and advertisement, funds aren't really ever a problem. There's enough free stuff out there to build almost any game you can imagine, if you know where to look.

I do agree with you, by the way.
Not enough developers know their way around to really get things rolling.