Game Design is a broad field of study, and one never stops learning in the games industry. Thankfully, there are many resources available to the aspiring game developer. Two such resources are the Game Design courses running here at Clane College. They are designed to provide you with a well-rounded introduction to the core technologies and principles of game development. And to help you get started, listed below are some of the most noteworthy and useful tools available to learners.

Unity 3D

Unity 3D is an industry standard, feature rich Game Engine. Apart from the obvious advantage of the basic version being completely free, Unity 3D also sports some outstanding features such as a highly optimised asset pipeline, the PhysX physics engine, build-in Beast Lightmapping, a bespoke terrain editor ect...

Unity Learning resources

http://learnunity3d.com/

http://infiniteunity3d.com/category/tutorials

3D Studio Max

Autodesk 3D Studio Max has long been a cornerstone of the game development world in terms of 3d asset production. And now, amazingly, it's available to students freely for download! And with thousands of tutorials and training videos at your fingertips (use google...), there is nothing stopping you from getting started with this battle-hardened game design axe.

Blender 3D

Blender is an open source, free to use 3D production package -- comparable to programs like 3D Studio Max or Maya. And don't let the absence of a price tag fool you, this is becoming quite the exceptional little software program. What's more, blender integrates very well with Unity 3D, and due to it's FBX import/export functionality, is interoperable with most 3D software programs and game development environments.

Blender Learning resources

http://gryllus.net/Blender/3D.html

Unreal Development Kit (UDK)

UDK is the latest iteration of the worlds most powerful game engine -- now freely available for all to develop on. When publishing commercial projects, a licencing agreement must be reached with Epic Games, the developers of the engine. The standard terms for indie developers are that after you have earned more than $50,000 in revenue from your published game, you begin paying Epic 25% of all additional revenue earned.

UDK Learning Resources

http://www.3dbuzz.com/

For further information please email enquiries@clanecollege,com