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TIGSource ForumsDeveloperTechnical (Moderator: ThemsAllTook)Developer Tools (WIP)
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Shaheen
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« Reply #40 on: November 12, 2007, 03:30:46 AM »

Installed! I would definitely be down for some of that. Always wanted to try it out.
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BenH
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« Reply #41 on: November 12, 2007, 01:22:21 PM »

Having a TIGS OC session would be awesome Smiley
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PHeMoX
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« Reply #42 on: December 12, 2007, 01:05:03 AM »

As far as music recording goes, I have yet to hear electronic versions of real instruments which sound remotely like the real thing, and I have yet to hear software replacements of some hardware effects, such as compressors or pre-amps, which have the same response as their hardware counterparts.

Some software reverb effects which are impulse response based sound pretty great, and I enjoy certain synthesizers a lot, but in my experience, you're not going to get a particularly good sound for anything besides strictly electronic music with only a computer and software, and even then genuinely useful music software is going to set you back at least a few hundred dollars -- that includes multitrackers with a decent feature set.

I disagree, the days of using only hardware to get top-notch sounds are definitely part of the past for quite some years already. Countless bands use both hardware ánd software nowadays and a big bunch of them use hardware mainly because otherwise the only one on stage actually performing something interesting would be the vocalist. The actual sounds are often way more software based than one would think. (lol, ow and Fruity Loops is hardly what I'm talking about here Wink )

A lot of excellent virtual synths are cheaper and sound better (or have vastly more options) than their hardware equivalent, same goes for some newer modeling instruments (think of Line6 guitars with really accurate sound modeling in the high-end versions, but also keyboards/synthesizers that really are able to reproduce sounds in great detail and with great accuracy), but also think of full software applications with a whole range of professional sound effects and plug-ins.

The problem is that both the actual top-notch hardware (or real instruments) ánd the top-notch software are really really expensive and mostly will be nothing a indie developer would ever consider buying. I think sound quality in indie games is very important too, but I don't think it's worth spending hundreds or thousands of dollars just for accurate sound.

Besides, software even has the advantage that programming sounds tends to be a lot easier than actually playing (all) the real instrument(s). Needless to say making good songs still takes talent and knowledge, but I think the music programs proposed here will prove to be useful for most people.
« Last Edit: December 12, 2007, 01:12:48 AM by PHeMoX » Logged

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Chris Whitman
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« Reply #43 on: December 12, 2007, 01:08:27 AM »

Well, obviously soft synths are capable of producing pretty much any effect their hardware counterparts are capable of producing, save for discretization errors, which are usually inaudible.

I was more talking about non-sampler versions of acoustic instruments such as strings or horns, which I have never found particularly convincing.
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PHeMoX
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« Reply #44 on: December 12, 2007, 01:24:05 AM »

I see, yeah those kinds of acoustic instruments are definitely the most difficult, but are still very possible to model properly with (albeit often very expensive) software, but the problem isn't the actual sound accuracy, but more so the unique way in which actual instruments can be played and the amount of factors that influence the sound (or should be possible to modify in their software equivalent).

Pressing a key on a keyboard and turning a knob a bit to get a wobble in the sound won't nearly be as accurate as pulling on a string down on a guitar while playing a chord, or at least it's extremely difficult to get it sound the exact the same way. It's possible with complicated software when it provides editing capabilities for just the right tweak in the sound.

But yeah, even then acoustic instruments are definitely the most difficult to model convincingly and you're right about that most (mainly cheap) software solutions do a pretty horrible job at modeling the sound of a violin, guitar or horn.
Still, electric drums and their complex software or even electric violins and their software have already been implemented in more and more sound editing software packages. The steps from actual instrument to electric instrument to software based sound aren't that huge anymore. These kind of modeled sounds are usually based on actual sound samples by the way for extra accuracy, so in a way it's not very different from how a hardware synthesizer compares with a soft synth.
« Last Edit: December 12, 2007, 01:32:58 AM by PHeMoX » Logged

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PoV
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« Reply #45 on: December 12, 2007, 02:23:19 AM »

If you're looking for cheap powerful music tools, I've got one for ya.  The free modular music tracker, Buzz.  There are tons of free plugins for it (machines and effects).  A great intro to modular synthesis, and a very capable tool.

However, the original program was buggy, crashing often.  However, that's no longer a problem.  Check out ...

Buzé Tracker!  Buzz, but stable!  Written from the ground up to be compatible with every plugin.  Almost everything I've tried has worked flawlessly (stuff in old tunes, as I switched to paid apps a while back).  For those classic Buzz users though, the mixer (Jeskola Mixer) was embedded in the app, so that's one of the few plugins you can't get.  Some known super buggy plugins were blacklisted (Some Arguru effects).  You can comment them out of the blacklist text file to enable them temporarily (but there's a good chance you'll crash soon after loading another song).

Buzz Machine Collection - http://zzub.org/static/buzzmachines/

Buzz Drumkit Collection - http://www.hamsteralliance.com/buzz/
« Last Edit: December 12, 2007, 02:25:31 AM by PoV » Logged

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« Reply #46 on: February 25, 2008, 05:35:17 AM »

Hey, how about adding these?

3d:
Silo 2
Runs natively on windows, OSX and Linux. (the linux version has only recently been announced and is of yet unreleased)
Costs $159
http://nevercenter.com/about/

Audio:
Wavosaur
Windows only
Free
http://www.wavosaur.com/

Buzz/Buzé
Windows only, although Aldrin (which comes from the same codebase as Buzé) runs on Linux, and Buzé is reported to run on OSX on (I think) Parrallels
Free/Opensource
http://batman.no/buze/
www.buzzmachines.com

Energy XT 1 & 2
Windows, Linux and OSX
49 euro
This is a lovely modular host. xt2 is still a bit rough around the edges for some parts, but it's cheap, good and crossplatform. Development is promising.
http://energy-xt.com/
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« Reply #47 on: March 25, 2008, 03:00:18 AM »

2D pixel software suggestion:

IDraw Charamaker
I first bumped into it when I had my odd RPGMaker 2k period. I do ALL my pixel work in this program.

It is like working with Paint, except:

- You have a quickly-adaptable 256 color palette, including creating gradient colors between selected colors on the palette

- You have more (useful) tools, such as equal-color-area selection and foreground-selection (selects and area surrounded by the background color), animation dialog etc.

- Similar tools usually have their own dialog box (e.g. Text and Brush type) in contrast to Paint.

- Controls are more intuitive and user friendly (for instance: right-click on color = eye drop)

Apart from that, it runs fine on old OSs like mine  Wink That's also why I compare it to paint and not (for instance) Photoshop, which requires a humongous amount of settings-editing to become pixel-perfect.

There are only two issues:
- Some people get error messages (I haven't so far on my comp)
- You can only save pictures as 256-color .bmp or .png


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« Reply #48 on: March 25, 2008, 11:12:40 AM »

2D pixel software suggestion:

IDraw Charamaker
I first bumped into it when I had my odd RPGMaker 2k period. I do ALL my pixel work in this program.

Another bonus: the installer features a picture of a shocked brown-haired boy hitting a cute little blond girl with his car!




what the heck was that all about?
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« Reply #49 on: April 15, 2008, 11:17:10 AM »

TxEdit
Link: http://www.gregorybraun.com/TxEdit.html

this little diamond is very useful in editing large number of files like scripts, inis, etc. the program is very reliable and stable. i'm generally editing up to 14 different files, so i don't want to miss it!

edit: unfortunally it is shareware: $14,95
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« Reply #50 on: April 15, 2008, 04:49:02 PM »

TxEdit
Link: http://www.gregorybraun.com/TxEdit.html

this little diamond is very useful in editing large number of files like scripts, inis, etc. the program is very reliable and stable. i'm generally editing up to 14 different files, so i don't want to miss it!

edit: unfortunally it is shareware: $14,95

Are you the author of this or something?  Sorry, but it looks like it's worth about $0.00.  Most of the links on that page don't even do anything...   Huh?  If you're seriously using that app do yourself a favor and check out some of the more capable ones below:

Without further ado ...

Notepad++.  Windows.  Free (GPL).  A full-featured programmer's editor editor with syntax highlighting/folding, regex search & replace, macros, auto-completion, bracket matching, plugins. (Download)

TextMate.  OS X.  Commercial (39 Euros).  The definitive GUI text editor for OS X.  Has fantastic IDE-like project management and customization potential.  Smultron is an open source editor that approaches TextMate's capabilities, and is probably better for just editing a handful of assorted files.

Kiss Kiss MilkyTracker Kiss Kiss and Schism Tracker.  Windows, Linux, OS X, others.  Freeware.  Good old-school trackers for putting together chiptunes (and more traditional music).  They have a learning curve that is steep, but it's also short.  Once you learn to use them you can work really fast and put together great game music.  Games that use this type of format include stuff by Lexaloffle and Knytt.

Pixen.  OS X.  Free (MIT).  A pixel graphics editor with animation and palette support.  Works very well for pixel art, but save your work because there is one problem: it crashes somewhat frequently.
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Klaim
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« Reply #51 on: April 15, 2008, 04:55:45 PM »

You can add PSPad to the list.

I tryed PSPad and NotePad++ and now i use only NotePad++.

The reason is that PSPad is really full featured and all good, but NotePad++ is really faster, lighter and have nice simple and to the point UI (like the keep-right-mouse-button-down-and-roll-the-middle that let you go throug files easily).
It had strange memory management bugs a year ago but now it is stable enough and verry powerful.
PSPad is more to replace something like Visual Studio as it manage "workspaces". NotePad++ have something similar but i never tested that.
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paulreitz
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« Reply #52 on: April 16, 2008, 07:03:57 AM »

Just thought I'd add a couple that I use a lot for Flash projects:

FlashDevelop:
A free, full featured actionscript editor.

Flex:
A free SWF compiler from Adobe.
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paulreitz
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« Reply #53 on: April 16, 2008, 07:15:40 AM »

D'oh...sorry for double posting, but I forgot one:

AIR:
Another fun tool from Adobe that lets you convert SWFs to desktop software. This is good for publishing Flash games. Smiley
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« Reply #54 on: April 16, 2008, 07:25:49 AM »

Actually, unless you need one of the AIR features that you can't get in Flash such as SQLite, local file-system access, resident OS Chrome, HTML+JS support, offline play, et al. I wouldn't deploy your Flash games via AIR.  Why would I want to download a game when I can play it on a web page?  Offline play seems to be only compelling reason to publish a game in AIR, and who's ever at a computer but not online these days?

Also, AIR does not convert swfs.  It's simply a different way to compile your ActionScript code. 
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« Reply #55 on: April 16, 2008, 07:39:13 AM »

Sorry...force of habit. I'm used to describing things like AIR to people with more money than technical skills Smiley They don't care how the compiler works, they just care about how it's going to make them a butt load of money. :D

And, not to argue, but I do think AIR has a place on the list. Like you said, it adds a lot of features to use in games, and it certainly is a lot better than creating a projector for those who don't want their game confined to a browser. Just my two cents, but I think it's good to know that the tool is out there.
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« Reply #56 on: April 16, 2008, 09:43:09 AM »

Oh yeah, I don't disagree, there are situations where one would want to use AIR over the Flash Player for deployment, I just wanted to point out some cons of AIR as I see it.   Smiley
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« Reply #57 on: April 20, 2008, 10:40:28 PM »

Maybe not a tool for the indie developer but IncrediBuild is a really good program if you want to keep compile time down when working on a big projekt, installed it at work last week and it's really awesome, works like "maya renderfarm" so the compiler uses all the computers in the network do build your app.
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« Reply #58 on: July 11, 2008, 01:22:45 PM »

There's a huge collection of free audio-software on KVR-Audio:

http://www.kvraudio.com/wiki/?id=The+Free+Software+Studio
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Decipher
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« Reply #59 on: July 11, 2008, 11:53:59 PM »

Some IDEs,
Eclipse
Dev-C++
Visual Studio 2008 Express Editions
Code::Blocks
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