Tools Advice, if I may ask... What do you use? (or hate)

ucmRich

Kinda feel a lil silly posting this, but it has been over a decade since I worked on a game. Now that I'm getting back into it and especially using GoDot 4.1.1 as my first go; i was hoping you would share your thoughts on what software to use alongside GoDot -- to import assets or edit existing assets.

When I was using DXStudio, some of the sw i would use included:

graphics:
Paint.NET for saving 32-bit pngs to bring into DXS
3DCoat
ShaderFX

terrain: i used L3DT from bundysoft: http://bundysoft.com/docs/doku.php?id=l3dt:about

audio:
audacity
soundforge
wave studio
acid music maker

3d models to buy online:
hmmm.... i wonder if turbosquid still exists... or maybe something new took their place...

any suggestions or advice is greatly appreciated!

Zini

Blender
Inkscape
Audacity
MaterialMaker (usage still in an early experimental stage, not fully part of my asset pipleline yet)

That's pretty much it. I like to keep things simple.

retroshark

Graphics:

Aseprite
REXpaint
Affinity Designer 2

Blender

Audio

Audacity
GarageBand (Mac)

Text editor/IDE

Godot
VS Code
Text Edit (Mac)

Utilities

iTerm (Mac)
Amphetamine (Mac)
Pastebot (Mac)
Magnet (Mac)
ColorSlurp (Mac)

Tomcat

Terrain Generation for Godot 4

Audacity — I categorically do not recommend it. It was bought by bad people from Russia ("bad" — even by our standards) and turned into the spyware. But it is possible to safely use the ancient version.

ocenaudio

You have not specified the desired OS.

duane

Tomcat

I think that's a bit paranoid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audacity_(audio_editor)#Reception

I'm fairly paranoid and I haven't found any serious privacy issues with audacity. The company keeps walking back anything the users object to. Of course I compile it from source. You're not genuinely paranoid unless you compile all your software from source. 🙂

And to stay on topic:

vim
gimp

fire7side

Blender is no.1 for me. The trouble is, it takes a long time to learn it and they keep changing it.
I also use Krita once in a while.

packrat

FOSS cultist reporting in:

Blender
Krita
Inkscape
Xsane
Ardour
rxvt-unicode(urxvt)
Bash
Godot
peek
scrot

I hate GIMP. Yes, it's a skill issue.

Megalomaniak

packrat I hate GIMP. Yes, it's a skill issue.

And a feature-set issue, if you have used more advanced image editing software before.

Tomcat

duane Of course I compile it from source.

Surely you are doing a code-review of the source code? Otherwise a standalone build makes no sense.

Wiki is not the truth in the last instance, as it is a bit different in different languages:

After the purchase[1][6] in May 2021 by the Russian company MuseGroup of the intellectual property of the Audacity Team project, already on July 2, the Audacity website updated [7] its privacy policy to allow Muse Group to collect user IP address data, OS versions, CPU models, and certain "data necessary for law enforcement, legal proceedings, and requests from authorities" in new versions of Audacity and to transmit [8] it upon request to the relevant countries. [9] This change in privacy policy led to a wave of criticism of MuseGroup and Audacity from the community, who perceived Audacity's tracking features as a form of spyware and called for it to be removed [10], which led to the creation of forks of Audacium [11] and Tenacity [12] without tracking features and calls [13] from individual Internet media outlets to switch to alternative sound editors.

You have to realize that the current developers and owners are obliged to comply with Russian law. Or they will be shut down by local laws. Against the background of such prospects, the outrage of users is negligible.

duane

Tomcat

Using the source always makes sense, because you aren't the only one reviewing it. If you use a binary, only one person reviewed it.

I hear what you're saying, but I'm looking at the source code right now. The only thing I can find that's at all suspicious is the pull that everyone's already complained about, which I can confirm doesn't even get built into your binary unless you specifically ask for it. Gentoo doesn't even allow the binary to use networking libraries by default, so the bad switches would do nothing unless you enabled that as well.

Of course, they can do anything they want in the future, but it would be hard to slip it into github without someone spotting it. They don't run github, so they can't do anything tricky like showing you one source at one time and a completely different file at another.

So, I think I'll keep using it for now. 🙂

I guess if you're worried you could use tenacity, but I think they're pulling updates from the main project, so someone could possibly slip something in there that they miss.

Tomcat

duane you could use tenacity

And what are its advantages and differences from Audacium?

So far I am using the old version of Audacity and ocenaudio.

Tomcat

I use XnView MP for quick and uncomplicated picture corrections.
For simple audio editing — mp3DirectCut.

duane So, I think I'll keep using it for now.

I'm not expanding his user base. It's too ugly a story. In general, anything to do with Russia should be kept away from. It's not about politicking, just basic humanity.

duane

Tomcat

"Audacium has officially merged with Tenacity! Please use the latter instead of Audacium from now on."

Binsk Nano (stop throwing tomatoes, all you vim users)

I was throwing eggs, not tomatoes. 😛

I find myself using basic stuff like grep and sed a lot when I program. Every editor has a find in files, but grep seems easier to me.

Binsk

Hm, let's see...

Graphics

Aseprite, for any and all pixel art; it is fantastic
Gimp / Krita, for edits and non-pixel art stuff but not fully happy w/ either

Audio

Audacity / FFMPEG, for quick edits or file conversions
Ardour, for most else; composition and SFX (a bit janky but gets the job done and is open source)
Hydrogen (for rhythm stuff w/ Ardour)

3D Stuff

Blender, handles all my model / rigging needs but I almost never do 3D stuff

Source Control

Git, obviously
Lazygit, cannot recommend this CLI git tool enough

Fixing Godot when it goes crazy and keeps crashing at start due to some stupid thing I did in a resource or shader somewhere and have pulled my hair out repeatedly over.

Nano (stop throwing tomatoes, all you vim users)

Megalomaniak

I feel RenderDoc deserves a shoutout here at godotforums.

packrat

Megalomaniak I noticed they subtly slip in the fact DOTA 2 uses it for debugging in their screenshots. Nice.
I'm not very creative in using tools that expansive. I'm thinking real hard figuring out how some amateur(me) in Godot would use this. I'm coming up empty. If there's some secret technique and you're holding onto it, I humbly ask you for revelation. I have no money for college.

-I don't know how to convey the last sentence is meant to be funny

Megalomaniak

packrat

https://renderdoc.org/docs/getting_started/features.html
https://renderdoc.org/docs/getting_started/faq.html
https://renderdoc.org/docs/getting_started/gotchas_known_issues.html
https://renderdoc.org/docs/getting_started/quick_start.html

This is good to use when you think you find a renderer bug for an example and want to open an issue for it on tracker. You would use this more for your exported games rather than on the editor(though I recon you can do that too).

Or if you are having performance issues and can zero in on it being rendering related but can't quite tell what exactly with the editor built in tools.

MagickPanda

I use🙁in no particular order)
blender for 3D editing
krita for fixing some image or cut sprites
gimp as photoshop alternative
open draw as ms viso alternative