Suggest programs for new computer!

[Fenrir-Lunaris]

So I've come into possession of a brand new Win 7 laptop, to replace my old/crashing/dying Win XP one. Suffice to say, I'm rather pleased that I don't have to have a box-fan running 24/7 to keep the power supply from overheating and fizzling out (Vikings had a few close calls and almost ended up in Electronic Valhalla a few times). That being said, I'm in the process of transferring all my old stuff to the new laptop, and am getting the essentials. In ORDER:

Firefox - Because good lord, I hate Explorer's fundamentally weak security
OHRRPGCE - Best game creation software ever. Has a pretty good selection of titles. Quality notwithstanding on some of them.
Winrar - Like winzip, but free, and works with a wider range of compressed formats.
Winamp - It really whips the Llama's...
Aim - Sorry, Windows Messenger just really comes off wrong with me.

I'm looking for a variety of software to download for game creation purposes, so any suggestions are welcome. Come across a good art program you have to crow about? - speak of its praises here.

[JSH357]

For making OHR games:

Notepad++ - Once you get used to it you will be using this constantly. So much better than regular notepad for coding; works great with HSpeak.

Foobar2000 - Great open-source music player, loads much faster than any other option, and can be DLL'd to help with midis and OGGs.

Audacity - Great free audio editing. I use this all the time for sound effects and editing music to fit better (not to mention reduce file sizes)

Noteworthy Composer - I don't use it a lot, but it's great if you need to compose simple tunes.

Sfxr - A sound effect creator. Makes mostly 8-bit sounding stuff, but very helpful in that regard.

Lamedrop - Actually I forget what this is called, but I use it to convert files to different music formats. Handy at times.

Additionally:

OpenOffice - It's improved a ton in recent years, and I think it's much better than MS Office at this point.

Foxit Reader - Free, much faster PDF reader than Adobe.

Paintshop Pro version whatever you prefer.

[Bob the Hamster]

* The Gimp
* Inkscape
* MyPaint

And I second JSH's recommendation of Audacity and sfxr

[Mogri]

I second Notepad++.

[Fenrir-Lunaris]

Audacity is an otherwise EXCELLENT all-purpose sound and music editor that I've had a lot of success with in the past. Why I didn't remember it sooner is beyond me.

Open Office is also good. I've recommended it on a number of occasions to customers at work. Any word on how well it handles MS Office formats? If it's just fine with them that's spiffy.

Gimp is a must. I still haven't figured out all its features, but its palette management is otherwise wonderful and fairly straightforwards.

Sfxr sounds interesting, what with most OHR sfx being "8-bit" by default.

[Bob the Hamster]

I hear other people complaining about OpenOffice's support for MS Office formats sometimes, but in my own personal experience, I have never had a real problem. I use OpenOffice Calc for spreadsheets at work all the time, save them as .xls files, and send them of to MS Excel users who never have a clue that I wasn't using the same program as them. I also use OO Impress to view MS Powerpoint files, and I haven't run into any troubles there either.

[Mogri]

If all you care about is viewing Office documents, Gmail does a passable job of that.

[Baconlabs]

Sounds like you've already decided on Gimp. I was gonna suggest GraphicsGale, but it's all apples and oranges I suppose.

Also, get yourself some Winamp plugins and emulated music from Zophar's, it's a pretty sweet deal. Listen to quality music at no cost and very little memory. I've been digging the FFVII and Xenogears soundtracks recently, with a combined total of less than 15 MB.

[Momoka]

More legally, OCRemix.org has a few thousand legal video game remixes of passable to awesome quality.

[Skullduggery Studios]

I second GraphicsGale. Although I find Photoshop easier, I realize not everybody can get it. It took me a year to save up extra to get it.

Magix Music Maker 7 was freeware last I checked, and I use it for all my music creation needs.


Although, I was wondering if anybody knew a good program to mix sound and music in 4bit. Any help would be appreciated.

[Shadowiii]

I really like Google Chrome over Firefox. The downside is the Mac version doesn't have an ad-block add-on yet. I think the windows one does, though.

[Bob the Hamster]

Hmm... If I had a fast box like that (and some free time) I would install <a href="http://www.blender.org/">Blender</a> and spend some time trying to learn it.