I've long believed that art is human expression, and should be promoted and encouraged. Even the best artists started from nothing. In the current online age, an exceedingly large percentage of artists are self taught. I've had to teach myself how to do all the stuff I've done from graphic design, to coding, to game design. I'm experienced in trying to do things unconventionally, and I wanted to share my experience with others.
Hopefully, this page can give people a starting point to find resources; as oftentimes you don't know what you don't know. As I find new things, I will be adding them here. You can send me anything cool if you find it and I'll give it a look.
In 2023, FilmCow, known for animated series Charlie the Unicorn and Llamas with Hats, started to release SFX packs containing thousands of sounds that are completely free to use. Information about them can be found here.
Kenney.nl
Kenney.nl is a website that's full of a LOT of game assets from models to sprites to sound effects. They've been making free game resources for 15 years, and I've used some of their stuff in my work. There's also starter kits for Godot game projects.
Abandonware is a term that's used to describe previously commercially sold software that is either so old that the original copyright holders don't care to properly archive it, or said company that released it is defunct.
Visual Novels
Ren'Py
Ren'Py is a free, open-source engine intended for making Visual Novels. It's written in Python, which is one of the more accessible coding languages. It's also ready out of the box, with a new project easily able to be packaged up for distribution. There's also a very basic tutorial to show you how to use it included. It tends to get overlooked as "not being a legitimate engine"; but because the code is so simple, it's extremely easy to mess around with. You can do a LOT more than most people think (see my games Welcome To Oasis & Chihiro's Vore Harem).
The documentation is here, but there's also an extremely large number of user-made tutorials on YouTube. The creator of Ren'Py, Tom, has also gone on record to defend people's right to expression without censorship.
Vimi's Ren'Py Tutorials
Vimi has a LOT of tutorials that were essential to me learning Ren'Py. Whenever I'm asked how to do something in Ren'Py, I usually send one of his videos if he's done one on the topic. His videos aren't too long, are very informative, and have text documentation so you can replicate stuff in his videos yourself.
