The Generic Free Software Thread

[Eldezar]

Are there any flash movie makers or graphic design programs on the gpu license?

[russianreversal]

Anyone know a good (free) dungeon creator? For RPGs and the like. (Grids, please, no hex boards)

[Doppler12]

DVD Flick- Video DVD author, kinda limited on what it can do. No watermark. Also makes ISOs.

Any Video Converter- Converts most video files to most others, also, No watermark

[Mad Jack the Pirate]

anyone know a good tutorial to set up ubuntu or linux? I'm using my laptop a hell of a lot more these days and I think I might get on the "hey fuck vista" train so long as I can still play games.

[Lost in Time]

I run Arch Linux on my laptop, and it has it's own beginners guide on the website if you're interested in a nice lightweight OS that isn't Ubuntu.

[bluestarultor]

Originally Posted by russianreversal

Anyone know a good (free) dungeon creator? For RPGs and the like. (Grids, please, no hex boards)

There is Dungeon Hack (formerly UA Forever), based on the DOS-era Forgotten Realms: Unlimited Adventures (now abandonware).

I took a look at it and honestly can say it was in-depth enough that I threw my hands up after 5 minutes, but I was incredibly busy at the time and really was only in the market for something that would handle a 5-person party. FRUA itself has a bazillion hacks for it that can turn it into damn near anything if you don't mind the dated graphics, but it's hard to work with in its own ways. Either one is a time-eater, at least by my viewpoint.


You also have the RPG Maker series of software. I've looked at a lot of them, actually, and can list off some points.

RM 2000: Fairly easy to work with, but battle is 1st-person for the most part and generally isn't pretty by design. Battle graphics are pretty nice, but the view doesn't do it for me. Field graphics are tiny and basic.

RM 2003: Field graphics still suck, but battle is much improved with a FF-like side view of battle. Up to 4 people are supported natively in a party, despite the ability to manually rearrange them. In terms of graphics, battle sprites are handled by what appear to be 8-bit paletted PNGs that get bitchy if you save them as anything else and can't be just made in Paint or something and work. It's sadly best to take a pre-made sheet and edit it in MS Paint, which seems to keep the file info together better than more advanced software.

RM XP: Some things were greatly improved, while others make me want to shoot them. Field sprites are now hi-res, making the 2-D world beautiful, but the entire thing is generic Western fantasy-themed, severely limiting world creativity out of the box. Field sprites are now able to be any size, where there were previously hard limits. Battle animations are also beautiful and now feature transformations capabilities not seen in previous versions. However, sprite editing is painful because rather than choosing a neutral green or teal, it's all done on a very specific near-white color that often ends you up looking at seemingly blank slots. Also, battle is back to a head-on view, and to make matters worse, the characters and enemies now all have horribly-done, flat-shaded, bow-lined styled generic animu graphics.

The good news is that XP is fully fixable if you can learn RUBY to script in it. Examples of things you can do is have any number of party members you like and build back a side-view battle system complete with animation (one my friend uses is effing hard to work with, but the graphics are insanely good and even have animated enemies).

RM VX: This one my friend has, but I never got it. It takes it to 3-D, but that's really all I know about it. I believe it also supports 2-D.





While I'm here, I did find a nice piece of music-making software similar to FL Studio, but arranged a bit differently and with slightly different capabilities. It's called Renoise and frankly suits my current DOS project pretty well, all things considered, so far as I've seen. It's not FREE free, but the demo is pretty well-endowed for most purposes, unless you really need ASIO and to make things directly into a WAV file. It's only ~50 Euros, which means, what, $60US(?) for the full package, which is a lot cheaper than the best of the best from FL. It also seems to double as a MIDI sequencer, which was really what I was looking for. Also, the interface is incredibly flexible and pretty simple and doesn't make my head explode, so that's good.

[Kozar]

I'm looking for a screenshot app that will work on Vista.

[Eltargrim]

Synergy.

I have a laptop and a desktop. I hate switching between them when I'm using them, however. This fixes that. When my mouse hits the adjacent edge of the screen, my keyboard, mouse, and clipboard switch over to the other computer. I can type, browse, copy files, and play games all using the same keyboard and mouse. I can toggle it on and off, too, so I can quickly switch between playing a game and chatting on IRC. Super easy to set up, too.

[Cati]

Wanted to add to the list of useful programs:

Duplicate File Finder -- Does exactly what it says. It does a byte by byte comparison of all files, identifies which files on your computer are exact duplicates, and gives you the option to either just delete all newer versions of the duplicate file (keeping just the original), or selecting which versions of it you want to delete. Very easy to use, and free!

[Viridis]

^That sounds awesome. I am bad about leaving duplicates around.

Originally Posted by Kozar

I'm looking for a screenshot app that will work on Vista.

I use Gadwin Printscreen

Originally Posted by Mad Jack the Pirate

anyone know a good tutorial to set up ubuntu or linux? I'm using my laptop a hell of a lot more these days and I think I might get on the "hey fuck vista" train so long as I can still play games.

Generally you can't play Windows games on Ubuntu. But for other things, Ubuntu is really easy to install inside Windows so it'll run as a dual boot. Just download it here, burn it to a CD, then run it while Windows is on. Then select Install inside Windows.