Topic: What software you use to make your BEST Adventure Game.

[Arcangel]

I'm just curious.

Egine :
I think here use AGS...

Storyboarding (if any):
Paint Backgrounds:
Make Sprites:
Make Animations:
Sound Effects:
Music:

Installer?

Any else. (Pay or free)

[CaptainD]

I find draw.io extremely useful for creating puzzle dependency flowcharts - if that counts as storyboarding?

I use Goldwave for SFX.

I leave art and music to those far more talented than me so can't really comment much on those.  One day I will get to grips with Aseprite though!

[ManicMatt]

Engine : AGS indeedy.
Storyboarding (if any): i used paint to draw out my rough ideas of rooms and typed out my puzzles under each room.
Paint Backgrounds: Asesprite.
Make Sprites: Asesprite.
Make Animations: Asesprite.
Sound Effects: Either royalty free ones or I'll try and record it myself if possible. I might also use Audacity to tweak things.
Music: Logic Pro X. The only thing I use my mac for in developing my game.

[abstauber]

Well, Software can only assist to make better games. The tools today are already 1000 times better than what gamedevs had in the 90s.
Also it totally depends on the style you're after.
For retro looking low res games, this is what I would use.

Storyboarding (if any): Notepad, offline
Paint Backgrounds: Photoshop
Make Sprites: ProMotion
Make Animations: ProMotion
Sound Effects: Audacity
Music: FL Studio

[Blondbraid]

Storyboarding (if any): I don't really do any storyboarding per se, most AGS projects I've worked hon haven't needed any
Paint Backgrounds: Firealpaca, since it's almost as good as photoshop, but free and doesn't take nearly as long to start up
Make Sprites: Firealpaca
Make Animations: Firealpaca, using the onion skin mode
Sound Effects: Whatever free ones I can find
Music: Royalty free music from the web

[dbuske]

Gimp, 2dimageresizer, shoebox, Xnconvert, PhotoSketcher and AGS

[Danvzare]

Storyboarding (if any): I use yED for my puzzle-dependency charts, as well as notepad and Microsoft Word for writing down the basic plot and any ideas I might have.
Paint Backgrounds: Paint.NET.
Make Sprites: Paint.NET
Make Animations: Paint.NET, sometimes Asesprite to help with the visualisation.
Sound Effects: I either use Bfxr and edit it slightly with Audacity, or I simply record something straight onto Audacity
Music: I've got this brilliant midi music generator called Diatonic Composer, which I usually use to make my music before I edit it slightly using Anvil Studio.

[Retro Wolf]

Engine :
Wintermute engine

Storyboarding:
Twine

Paint Backgrounds:
Make Sprites:
GraphicsGale - pixel art.
Inkscape - vector art.

Sound Effects:
Audacity

Other useful software:
LICEcap - animated gifs from grabbing part of the desktop. Useful for promotional stuff, I've used it to make reference animations from youtube videos (walk cycles).
Pixelator - take an image and try to turn it into pixel art.
Paint of Persia - manually trace over anything on your screen, such as a YouTube video to create pixel art with a reference.
Image resizer - resize images using various algorithms.


You don't even have to spend a penny!

[ManicMatt]

Thanks Retro Wolf, I'm going to try out that pixelator program. I'm not going to use it for my game as it is commercial and then would require me to spend actual money, but it gives me an idea for a music video! (Kinda like this interesting sounding Paint of Persia thing but quicker, eh!)

[Cassiebsg]

Engine : AGS
Storyboarding (if any): AGS (or paper and my head, which probably explains a lot )
Paint Backgrounds: Blender
Make Sprites: Blender
Make Animations: Blender
Sound Effects: Free sound effects or help from others (like CaptainD)
Music: Free or help from others

[Danvzare]

Ooh that "Paint of Persia" looks useful. I might see about using that one day, and actually try my hand at rotoscoping.

Thanks Retro Wolf, I'm going to try out that pixelator program. I'm not going to use it for my game as it is commercial and then would require me to spend actual money, but it gives me an idea for a music video! (Kinda like this interesting sounding Paint of Persia thing but quicker, eh!)

I tried using Pixelator once. I found that it required more time and effort to perfect the settings so you got something that looked as good as the examples shown on the website, than it did to just scale it down using nearest neighbour, and edit it yourself.
But that was just my experience.

[ManicMatt]

I had a quick go on it with a photo of me, and it looked like something I could do in my video editing tools anyway. It's either too detailed or not enough detail! By hand it is then.

[Radiant]

Well, I do my storyboarding in MS Word, but for the bigger games I also use graphs (either on paper or in Word) to determine which puzzle has to be solved before which other puzzle. These can get pretty complicated but that does give the player more freedom and options.