I see that there are a number of people that are interested in learning more about how to develop apps. I specialize in 3D game apps and I am willing to help people who wish to get started. I can work with a team if others would like. I can do coding, sound engineering, 2D and 3D artwork, animation, game design, publishing, and marketing. For simplicity reasons, I will only work in unreal or unity engines. There is enough work that needs to be done that I cannot take the time to create a game engine. I will not be able to help much until my current app is completed, which will take a few weeks for me to do. I just have the programming for the missions and narration.
I do need to let people know that if you have never created a 3D game before, it is certainly possible, but you need a lot of time and at this point you will need people with time or a lot of money. It takes a lot of time. It has taken me a full year of working everyday in the software I have (I use about 6 different programs- See below) to really understand them and be proficient in them. I am not posting this to discourage people. I understand very well the discouragement that you can face as you begin such a large project, but if you are persistent and dedicated, you certainly can bring some good products to people. My app is not yet ready, but when it is a trial version will be available in all the major platforms. I do have a blog spot, but I will post what I shared there for people looking to learn more.
Here is a list of software that can be used for mobile app development:
1.Unity- a free game engine for people and companies making less than $100k annually. Animation, Game production, Coding, and deployment can all be done in here. For 2D and 3D games.
http://www.Unity3d.com/unity
2. Gimp2 - photoshop type program but free. Open source
http://www.gimp.org/downloads/
3. Inkscape - a vector image program. Free Open source
http://www.inkscape.org/en/
4. Blender.org - A 3D image, movie, animation, and game engine. I use this mostly for animations and modeling. Free Open source
http://www.blender.org/download/
5. Audacity- Voice recording software. Free Open source
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
6. LMMS- Sound production software. Free Open source
http://lmms.sourceforge.net/home.php
7. It would also be good to start a free Copy account. This is 15 GB of Free cloud space to backup projects in case your computer crashes and then you can share the projects with other people who may also be working on your team.
https://www.copy.com/home/
8. I had better put this in here too. Freedcamp is an easy to use program management software you can use to track the progress of the milestones. You can use it for free and it helps assign tasks across team members in an easy and effective way.
https://freedcamp.com/
Those are the programs that I currently use for my app development.
Here are some things that you would probably like when you start to develop:
1. A Good Computer:
These are the current specs my computer:
Windows 8.1
8 core processor 3.11 GHz
32 GB Ram
nVidia GeForce GT 640 video card
1 TB harddrive
Now other specs can work as well, but this gives you an idea. I have had no issues running the software on this computer.
2. Microphone- I use Blue Mic Snowball, 2 condensers, and it records well, but any computer microphone could be used. I have even recorded sounds with my ipad Mini.
3. keyboard with MIDI Input/Output with MIDI to USB adapter will work too with the LMMS software.
4. Keyboard with number pad. The number pad is very important for blender
5. 3 button mouse(wheel is usually the third button). This is critical in blender as well.
6. Monitors- I have three Monitors. It really helps with testing and development, but you can get by with one. Once you start using more, you will see why I love having multiple monitors. It allows production to go faster, i.e. I have coding on one screen, asset placement on another and the actual game testing on the third.
Other hardware that I do not have, but would get once the business grows:
7. Render Farm- This is a series of PC boards linked with CPU, RAM and shared hard drives. It allows multiple images to be processed at once. This is very good for animated movie production. These can be as expensive as you would like them to be.
8.Drawing pad. This will help with the modeling and texture creation. You can get apps on ipad or android that have same functionality, but a pressure sensitive pen is also critical and they do not work as well as a bamboo drawing pad or equivalent, from what I understand.
There are some other good gaming engines and programs out there. The only other one that I will mention to you is the Unreal engine. This engine does not transfer to all the mobile devices, but is a very beautiful game engine. There is a fee to use it, but I am keeping an eye on it, as I may change over to that engine as they open up to more devices. Right now it only works on higher end devices, but the fee is $20 a month and %5 royalty on sales, but it has the complete game engine, where unity free has many limitations with it. I can go over all those with you another time if you would like, but for now, Unity is easy to use and learn. Always make sure to read the terms and conditions with the software you use! I would start with the following links and tutorials. You can see how easily you can make a game.
This is a simple roll-a-ball set of tutorials:
http://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/projects/roll-a-ball
This is to help with scripting if you are very new to programming and will go over programming basics:
http://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/modu ... /scripting
I do have some youtube tutorials that you can watch on blender. The tutorials are okay and teach some of the more basic things in blender. I need to make some more, but I have not had time.
http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC653Y5bO_f4-Yg1T_p7rXrw
I hope that this helps. I have not worked so long hours in my life since I started doing this, but I am excited everyday to work on the projects I do.