Hi, reader’s boss. Yes, I can verify as an authority on all issues Steam that the service does distribute software program aside from video games. Your trustworthy and hardworking worker has a superb motive to have put in it on their workplace machine. I swear Bongo Cat is nice for his or her productiveness.
Really although. Steam is not only for Crusader Kings, regardless of how I’ve historically used it. At varied instances through the years Valve has messed with the Steam storefront to make its non-gaming choices extra obvious. Right now video games undoubtedly take heart stage, however there are tons of non-gaming packages and useful utilities out there on there as properly if you recognize the place to look.
Aseprite: Make your personal top quality pixel artwork
This is one I use myself on a pretty much weekly basis. You can always painstakingly edit bitmaps in Paint if you want to do pixel art the old-fashioned way. You can also churn your own butter, from what I’ve heard. But this snappy art tool loads up fast, has a clean, customizable minimalist interface, and tons of cool little tricks like the ability to automatically add highlights and shading based on a color offset you can define.
Aseprite is geared toward minimum fuss and quick production pipelines for indie game developers, but it’s powerful enough to do some cool HD-2D stuff too. When I’m making a bunch of poses for the same character or redoing an entire area’s tileset because I decided I didn’t like the color of the leaves, it saves me many hours.
RPG Maker MZ: Make the remainder of the sport
RPG Maker is the next step up from modding an existing game like Oblivion or Skyrim, before you get to the point of making the whole thing basically from scratch in a game engine like Godot or Unity. I cut my teeth on an earlier version of RPG Maker back in the day. If you want the newest version with all the latest features (and the best compatibility with current versions of Windows), that’s 2020’s RPG Maker MZ.
But even the version I was using way back in middle school, RPG Maker 2000, remains to be out there for buy as properly. You do not actually need any coding expertise to get began. (Though for those who go along with 2000, it’s possible you’ll solely discover good documentation on an archived Angelfire web page with a bunch of Dragonball Z gifs and Linkin Park’s “In The End” looping within the background.)
If messing around in RPG Maker 2000 made you nostalgic for a time when your computer would have a bunch of neat stuff going on when you weren’t using it, like the iconic Windows 3D pipes screensaver, you may enjoy Wallpaper Engine, which lets you create all kinds of unique static or animated desktop wallpapers using simple, easy-to-use tools. You can even make them interactive and design simple games. So I suppose this is also kind of a game development utility.
I swear some of these don’t have anything to do with games, reader’s boss. Just hear me out.
Crosshair X: Never miss a shot (except you are simply unhealthy—I am unable to aid you with that)
Okay this one can be game-related. But you are on PC Gamer. Honestly I’m doing my finest right here to assist your case given the circumstances. Crosshair X helps you to design customized crosshairs that may then be overlaid onto nearly any sport. I can consider a pair communities the place this is likely to be thought-about virtually dishonest, however individuals have been taping a dot to the center of their monitor for ages, and this not less than will not harm the end.
Color, form, dimension—it is all as much as you. Never let anybody inform you that it’s a must to be taught to make use of iron sights. It’s your life.
Soundpad: Play anime opening themes over voice chat when you cost into battle
Sometimes I’m playing Pyro in TF2 and I just want to make everyone around me listen to Sparks by Takanashi Kiara. Or I’m main an enormous bayonet cost in Holdfast: Nations at War and it would not really feel proper with out getting anybody who’s streaming demonetized by blaring Iron Maiden’s The Trooper. Sometimes you simply wish to mess with individuals utilizing an Arnold Schwarzenegger soundboard like within the good ol’ days.
For all this and extra, Soundpad makes it fast and simple so as to add information, edit them with out an exterior program, and assign them to hotkeys.
I’ll be honest. I didn’t do a very good job convincing your boss that you had a good reason to install Steam at work, and you’re probably looking for a new job right now. Well, if the previous entry made you listen to Sparks on repeat and awakened an idol dream inside of you, getting started with vtubing is free with the intro version of VTube Studio (though you do have to pay to remove the watermark).
It even comes with some practice models to try out if you haven’t spent hundreds of dollars getting your own custom one drawn and rigged up yet. Who has time for that? Haha…
So, you see? Steam isn’t just for playing games. It’s also for making them. Or modifying them. Or streaming them with a cute avatar. Look, the wallpaper one wasn’t really game-related. You’ve gotta give me that one, at least. I’m sure the reader was going to use it to make interactive spreadsheets or something. Not about EVE Online prices, either.
Real work stuff. Quarterly reports. Okay, you know what? I did my best. Better start practicing your vtuber intro.