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rb+ tutorial #6: tools of the trade


ggn

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A language like this is not much worth if there aren't any supporting tools that can help create supporting files like graphics or audio files. Since this question keeps popping up in various threads I thought I'd gather everything in a thread of its own. Please share any other packages I missed/forgot (also I'm not up to speed with Linux/Mac tools, so suggestions welcome there too - especially free ones):

 

Graphics editors

 

grafx2 (1,2,4,8bpp images) (Windows, Linux, Mac)

sshot_svn693.gif

 

ProMotion NG (only for 4bpp/8bpp images) (Windows) - there's a free version with reduced functionality but it's still pretty good

8qlWh0.jpg

 

The gimp (1/2/4/8/16/24bpp images) (Windows, Linux, Mac)

800px-Gimp-gnome-2.2.8.png

 

Paint shop pro 8 and earlier (1/2/4/8/16/24bpp images) (Windows) (commercial, but v4.12 is free AFAIK)

MN-JascPS9-Screen-XL.jpg

 

Graphics gale (1/2/4/8/16/24bpp images) (Windows) - used by a few friends to create sprites. Also supports animation so it might be handy to create spritesheets.

galecap1.jpg

 

Krita (Windows, Linux, Mac) - Only for 24bpp images.

krita-screenshot-01.jpg

 

paint.net (Windows) (only for 8bpp images)

pdn40_kirkland_thumb.jpg

 

Audio editors

 

Audio is much easier to handle as rb+ uses sox to import sounds which handles most major formats including wav, mp3, etc. With that in mind here are a few audio editors for Windows:

 

Audacity (Windows, Linux, Mac - Free)

Audacity-212-Windows.png

 

Wavosaur (Windows - Free)

wavosaur-main-view.jpg

 

Goldwave (Windows - Free trial available)

gwmainhorizontal.png

 

Cool edit pro (Windows) - Actually I'm not sure this is free or not, any volunteers to try the old versions out?

cool_edit_pro.png

 

Wavepad (Windows) - Free for non commercial use. So watch out if you're going to burn carts or CDs!

main.jpg

 

General tools

 

bfxr - move the sliders around, hit "mutate" and fiddle till you have your own personal sound effect (or until you annoy people enough to tell you to shut the hell up)!

BFXR.jpg

 

Chiptone - What do you mean you want MOAR KNOBS? Oh well, here you go then!

chiptone.png

 

Misc

 

opengameart.org - Don't have a graphics artist in your team? Is your graphics art skills equivalent of womble with a crayon? Have a look here then, lots and lots of free and quality art await to be adopted!

open-game-art.jpg

 

freesound.org - a very large library of sound effects and many recorded sounds

logo.png

 

incompetech - Kevin McLeod's site offers a vast array of royalty free music. I find it a valuable resource for good quality recordings.

2013janlogo.png

 

 

Edited by ggn
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Switch sound converter lets you convert to .raw sampleshttp://switch-sound-file-converter-software.soft32.com/

That's fine but this is just a sound converter. It's not a problem to use one if you really want to but assets importing supports audio files of most formats and also does resampling. Have another look at assets.txt description, I think you can simplify your build chain significantly!

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Cool edit pro (Windows) - Actually I'm not sure this is free or not, any volunteers to try the old versions out?

As far as I know, it's never been free. Old versions were shareware, and the unregistered versions either disabled some functions, or disabled saving your files. It was bought by Adobe and renamed Adobe Audition, with added DRM and a much higher price. A pity, because it was an excellent audio editor -- I should have registered a copy back in the day... Edited by Zerosquare
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This is great list of useful tools, and for more than just Jag stuff ( I'll suggest some of these for my students when teaching intro game programming ) , thanks. :)

 

That said, I tried GIMP recently and I just can't get along with it after almost exclusively using Photoshop (or very occasionally Paint Shop Pro) for almost 20 years....which does make me wonder why Photoshop is missing from the list?

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This is great list of useful tools, and for more than just Jag stuff ( I'll suggest some of these for my students when teaching intro game programming ) , thanks. :)

 

That said, I tried GIMP recently and I just can't get along with it after almost exclusively using Photoshop (or very occasionally Paint Shop Pro) for almost 20 years....which does make me wonder why Photoshop is missing from the list?

Because I wouldn't want people forking over hundreds of dollars/euros/whatever to achieve something that could be done using free tools :). Besides, it's called "Photoshop" for a good reason - i.e. to edit photos. While it's actually possible to edit pixel graphics with it I wouldn't recommend it! And one final point is that I've no idea if it supports all the bit depths people will want to use - so if it supports at best 8bpp it'll be a huge waste of money for everyone.

 

(And yes, there are "other" ways of acquiring a copy of Photoshop but... is it really worth it?)

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Paint Shop Pro (NOT Coral, but JASC) is great - for the single reason that it can save 16 bit uncompressed .TGA - which is directly supported by RAPTOR API.

 

...which is not used by rb+ ;)

 

(but yeah it's a nice program indeed)

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Paint Shop Pro (NOT Coral, but JASC)

Yeah, stay away from the Corel versions. I used PSP XI a while back, it had fewer features than PSP 8, an annoying DRM service that ran even when you weren't using the program, and simply having PSP open with no document loaded used 100% of one CPU core (!).

Another example of a great shareware program that got ruined a big company.

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  • 3 years later...

Just in case someone is looking to poke around in creating some amazing MOD music for the Jag, Bassoon Tracker is probably the easiest and coolest web-based, free MOD tracker available to start making some super cool tunes for your next project: https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/

bassoon.thumb.JPG.0761abc293919ea1096360f2537f0a9c.JPG

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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 years later...
On 5/27/2017 at 9:09 AM, Zerosquare said:

Yeah, stay away from the Corel versions. I used PSP XI a while back, it had fewer features than PSP 8, an annoying DRM service that ran even when you weren't using the program, and simply having PSP open with no document loaded used 100% of one CPU core (!).

Another example of a great shareware program that got ruined a big company.

I asked if there was a reason nobody was using GIMP...

I scrolled up and there was a recommendation for GIMP. Sorry for the noise.

Edited by alucardX
Foot in mouth.
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