Of course, you should have either a device or emulator for every platform you intend to compile for. An emulator is a piece of software that can mimic a device on the desktop of your computer. You'll need these devices and/or emulators to make sure your app isn't taxing the processing power and memory of a device too much. Although a game could test fine on your desktop, it may prove to be too much for a device to handle.

Additionally, you'll definitely need a Mac of some sort to compile for Apple devices. Unfortunately, the compiler for iOS, tvOS, and Macintosh only runs on Mac. We'll be developing (using Buildbox) on a PC, and compiling for Apple using a Mac Mini for the projects in this book.

To effectively develop a game, you'll also need some sort of image editing software. In this book, we'll be using Adobe Photoshop CC2015 and Illustrator CC2015; however, there are freeware solutions available (such as GIMP—available here: https://www.gimp.org/downloads/).

A worthwhile game absolutely must have good sound. Therefore, a developer must have a decent audio editing application. In this book we'll be using a combination of Presonus Studio One 3 Professional and Adobe Audition CC2015. Again, a freeware option known as Audacity is available from SourceForge at https://sourceforge.net/projects/audacity/.

Finally, to create animated assets (such as enemies, explosions, and so on), it's advisable to get a 3D animation program to speed things up. In this book we shall use LightWave 3D 2015; however, yet again, a freeware option known as Blender is available (https://www.blender.org/).

It is not entirely necessary for a developer to create their own graphic and audio assets. You could always hit up Fiverr (https://www.fiverr.com/) or similar services to have custom graphics and audio made for you. However, as this is a complete book on developing a game using Buildbox, we will be covering how to create these assets yourself.