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[JoeHonkie]

Just some updates:

(1) Caligari claims to be releasing trueSpace for free: http://www.caligari.com/products/trueSpace/ts75/Brochure/solutions_games.asp (look at the bottom). It requires an evil registration where you have to enter all kinds of personal information, though, so I haven't really felt like trying it yet. Anyone?

This is now totally free and can be used to make Microsoft-format 3D models.

Pixen just totally crashes all the time for me now, which is too bad because it was an amazing program.  Is there anything else like that for the Mac?

[MrChocolateBear]

You may want to remove DevjaVu from the list because it's shutting down.

[JoeHonkie]

This is cool if super specialized:
http://www.nand.it/nandeck/

It's a scripting language for generating playing cards.  Handy for card games, obviously.

[Triplefox]

Hardware recommendations:

Wacom tablets. They have the patents, and therefore they have no equal. I have their cheapest and smallest one (Bamboo) and it is just fine for my crude, unskilled hands. (The bigger ones let you do bigger lines, but they are also bulkier)

C-Thru Music AXiS MIDI controller. I spent months wondering whether I should get an AXiS 49, because I thought it might help me do better/faster music compositions. I finally got one recently, and proceeded to spend about 16 hours with it, with one break for food. I can confirm: it is not hype.

It is quite expensive for a MIDI controller, and it has zero bells+whistles beyond the unique layout, but unless you are willing to build your own controller with this type of layout(there are a bunch of variations on the theme), there is nothing comparable out there. You can play a scale in any key by learning one pattern for the scale; similarly, you can play chords in any key with one shape. So there's much, much less to learn. Ease of learning subsequently also makes it easier to play and compose with, which in turn makes the entire idea of playing music more fun, so if it is technique that has kept you away from music this is really worth considering.

Even if you're experienced on other instruments, playing on this lets you "see" a lot of patterns from music theory more easily and come up with things you wouldn't naturally try when playing other instruments. So if your studio is already kitted out, it's a better buy than another plugin or effects unit. This one can improve your work across the board.

[Hima]

Metasequoia
It's a 3d modeler mainly for 3DCG and game development. There are both freeware and shareware version, and the shareware one only cost like $45.

http://www.metaseq.net/english/index.html

[Innerscope]

I just released a beta version of my Tile-Based level editor "Buildeft2D":
Windows Download
Mac OSX Download

I would really appreciate it if you gave it a try. (not sure if I should post this here or in feedback?)
As of now it has all the basic features I wanted to implement.
Read the wiki for more info: Wiki Link

[peligro]

what do you think about power game factory?
http://www.sawbladesoftware.com

[Strom]

2D Graphics

Allegro Sprite Editor - www.aseprite.org

ASE (Allegro Sprite Editor) is an open source program to create animated sprites. Sprites are little images that can be used in your website or in a video game. You can draw characters with movement, intros, textures, patterns, backgrounds, logos, color palettes, isometric levels, etc.

[NandoSoft]

Maybe these tools will be of some use to someone around here


Tile Map Editor and Sprite Animation Editor

links at:

http://nandosoft.com/downloads.html

[Kekskiller]

http://colorfilter.wickline.org/

It's a colorblind filter of webpages and images. Don't you think it's important to know if colorblind people can play your game? Best opportunity to check it out! Just paste the URL of your screenshots and you will see.

[thedaemon]

GRAFX2
Website: http://code.google.com/p/grafx2/
License : GNU GPL v2
Platform : Cross-Platform

"It's a bitmap paint program that allows you to draw in more than 60 video resolutions (from 320x200, including most of the standard Amiga resolutions : 320x256, 320x512, 640x256, 640x512, etc... provided your videocard knows how to handle them). It was written to run under DOS, but the code you'll find here was modified to use SDL and modern operating systems. "

I must note that I use OSX, and Pixen, which is listed is a terrible program that is no longer being developed. I use Grafx2 now, it's being updated frequently and animation will be added soon.

[JamesGecko]

ArrayPainter
It's a simple level editor which exports levels to an array you can copy and paste into your game. Looks like it would be very nice for things like Ludum Dare.

[Hima]

Maybe these tools will be of some use to someone around here


Tile Map Editor and Sprite Animation Editor

links at:

http://nandosoft.com/downloads.html

I got system.io.filenotfound exception when I tried running both of your editors. I tried installing XNA redistributable 3.0 and it still doesn't work

[Entity]

Stomper Hyperion
Download link (Run Stomper32 for the latest version)

Originally a program written for drum sounds, but can be used to create other sounds. It's quite an old program, but it's second to none for creating oldskool sound effects. 

[Robc]

Back in May of this year I announced in this forum that I was starting up a new website called IndieGameTools.com.  Right after that I ended up falling off a retaining wall and spending some time in the hospital, but I got better over the summer and I've done some work on the site since then.  While still a work in progress, it is definitely becoming a resource for game development tools. I am always looking for feedback from tool makers and tool users to make it better.

[Triplefox]

Leo, a code editor/outliner/doc-generator/more:

http://webpages.charter.net/edreamleo/preface.html

If you want.....

• Tree-organized project documentation
• Change histories organized by tasks and events like "features" or "bugs," rather than "files"
• "Literate Programming"
• New views on program structure; structure beyond what is explicitly supported in your source language

Leo has features for all of those things in one app. I'm just starting to find out what it can do an hour or so in, but the potential looks really cool. Install it and open some of the example files to see. It's amazingly friendly to get started with.

[kiwi]

I'd like to add two more entries to the list, I personally think they are great

Synfig Studio
Website: www.synfig.com
License: GPL (I think)
Platforms: Windows,Linux

Like they state on their website, it's kinda buggy on Windows if you have a Hyperthreaded or multi-core CPU, but it works just fine on Linux

Linux MultiMedia Studio
Website: http://lmms.sourceforge.net/
License: GPL
Platforms: Windows,Linux

It's a free music authoring tool,worth checking it out

[westquote]

Mercurial SCM
Website: http://mercurial.selenic.com/
License: Free
Description:

Mercurial is a popular distributed SCM, similar to SVN.  It is engineered around branch management, is written and extensible using Python, and is excellent for revisioned source code repositories.  It is the SCM used by the following noteworthy projects: Python, Mozilla, OpenOffice, SymbianOS, and Google's Go programming language.

I use this for all my source code management, at home and at work.  I use it in conjunction with SVN for management of large assets such as textures, meshes, and sounds.  On Windows, I use TortoiseHg, on Linux and OSX I use the command-line.

[amro]

For version control, there's also Bazaar (and git). Being distributed, they (along with Mercurial) are infinitely better than SVN. The main advantage for small or solo teams is the ability to make offline commits and ease of setup.

http://bazaar.canonical.com/en/
http://git-scm.com/

[NandoSoft]

Stomper Hyperion
Download link (Run Stomper32 for the latest version)

Originally a program written for drum sounds, but can be used to create other sounds. It's quite an old program, but it's second to none for creating oldskool sound effects. 

Ups last time Ive updated the tools to work with XNA 3.1 & probably did not update the readme

sorry