I've had a few more of my Gamespace banners selected by the GameSpot staff. I went on a bit of a Mega Man bender... :P Here are the most recent additions:
Gabriel Knight 3 (PC)
Mega Man Powered Up (PSP)
Mega Man Network Transmission (GCN)
Mega Man Battle Network (GBA)
Mega Man Battle Network 2 (GBA) -- I cleaned up the banner created by YellowPik
Mega Man Battle Network 3 Blue (GBA)
Mega Man Battle Network 3 White (GBA)
Mega Man Battle Network 4 Blue Moon (GBA)
Mega Man Battle Network 4 Red Sun (GBA)
Mega Man Battle Network 5: Team Colonel (GBA)
Mega Man Battle Network 5: Team Protoman (GBA)
It really makes things very easy and enjoyable when you have such amazing source art to work with, like Capcom has produced for these games.
And I'll have my 2nd tutorial on how I created the banner for Giants: Citizen Kabuto posted sometime in the next few days.
jrclem Blog
Blu-Ray in May...
by jrclem on Comments
...for a cool $1K? Yeah, that sounds fair.
GameSpot recently ran a story in The Last Word about how Sony has announced that they will be releasing their new Blu-Ray home video format in North America on May 23. Yes, hot on the heels of the announcement by Variety that Paramount, Warner, and ... Sony Home Entertainment were reducing their UMD releases (citing poor sales).
As if the announcement weren't Earth-shattering enough, they note that coinciding with the launch of the player 8 blockbusters will be available in Blu-Ray format, including: 50 First Dates, The Fifth Element, Hitch, House of Flying Daggers, A Knight's Tale, The Last Waltz, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, & XXX.
Speculation on prices for these new Blu-Ray movies ranges from $30 to $40. While the player itself will be, as I previously mentioned, $1,000.
So, all this does is play movies. Meanwhile the PS3, as I think I have understood Ken Kutaragi to say, can save my eternal soul from everlasting torment in the pits of Hades, and yet will somehow retail for a competitive price to the Xbox 360? Hmmm...
Whatchutalkinbout Sony?
GameSpot recently ran a story in The Last Word about how Sony has announced that they will be releasing their new Blu-Ray home video format in North America on May 23. Yes, hot on the heels of the announcement by Variety that Paramount, Warner, and ... Sony Home Entertainment were reducing their UMD releases (citing poor sales).
As if the announcement weren't Earth-shattering enough, they note that coinciding with the launch of the player 8 blockbusters will be available in Blu-Ray format, including: 50 First Dates, The Fifth Element, Hitch, House of Flying Daggers, A Knight's Tale, The Last Waltz, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, & XXX.
Speculation on prices for these new Blu-Ray movies ranges from $30 to $40. While the player itself will be, as I previously mentioned, $1,000.
So, all this does is play movies. Meanwhile the PS3, as I think I have understood Ken Kutaragi to say, can save my eternal soul from everlasting torment in the pits of Hades, and yet will somehow retail for a competitive price to the Xbox 360? Hmmm...
Whatchutalkinbout Sony?
Gamespace Banner Tutorial (Part 1)
by jrclem on Comments
For the last couple of weeks, I've been working on a tutorial on how to create Gamespace banners. But today I decided to pretty much scrap the whole thing. Instead, I'm going to publish a series of walk-throughs describing how I created my Gamespace banners that were accepted by the GameSpot Staff.
In this first edition, I will show how I created the banner for the PC RTS game Ground Control II. It is a simple banner consisting of a single screenshot from the game with a black gradient. I should note here that in this and all future tutorials, I will be using the GIMP, which I highly recommend you use yourself. It's free and open-source software, so while I suppose it can be argued that the GIMP is not the equal of Photoshop, it will be in time...
First off, there are some points that you need to know about Gamespace banners.
(1) Your banner must be 760 pixel wide by 140 pixel high, no more, no less.
(2) And it must be saved as a JPEG (.jpg).
(3) Your final image can be no larger than 30 kilobytes.
(4) The left-hand side of your banner must be dark enough to accommodate the game's title.
(5) The title will be added by GameSpot, so there is no reason for you to include the title in your banner.
(6) Finally, remember that there will be tabs across the bottom of your banner, so don't put anything in that space that you don't mind being covered up.
That pretty much covers the administrivia, so now I'll jump right in to the walk-through.
Step 1: Select source art
When searching for source art there are a couple points that I think you should take into consideration:
(1) Since you are making a 760 x 140 pixel image, you should find source art that will fit into this frame without much resizing. Of course, you can always shrink an image without much distortion; it will just (possibly) appear slightly blurred. But you should never try to enlarge an image to fit your banner.
(2) Personally, I think that 9 times out of 10, if a game's graphics are good enough to be used in a banner, you should use them. If not, look for concept art.
Now, this first step of selecting source art is a critical step for creating any Gamespace banner. You should decide what you want your banner to look like and then find images that fulfill your design. In this case, the part of GCII that really defined the experience to me was the artillery units. In GCII, the artillery, unlike artillery from every other RTS game, actually fire waaay up into the air, and after a few moments, the shells come crashing down to the battlefield. Fire for effect! :P
So I went to the GCII Gamespace and searched for any images that showed off the cool artillery fire I wanted to have in my banner. And I found this (click to see the full-sized version).
Step 2: Add the screenshot to the banner
Now that I had found an image to use in my banner, I created a new 760 x 140 image and filled the background with black. Then, I copied the GCII screenshot, pasted it into the banner, and made it a new layer.
Step 3: Size the image to fit & position it
Because the image was too large to properly fit in the banner, I used the Scale Image tool to resize it to 60% of it's original size. This scale allowed me to frame the portion of the image that I wanted (of course, I came across 60% by guessing and a little bit of trial and error). After I had scaled the image I positioned it in the frame.
Step 4: Create a gradient
Finally, I created a new layer and filled it with black. This layer is used to create a gradient to get rid of the hard, vertical line that separates the screenshot from the black background (as shown in the previous image).
To create the gradient effect, I used what is called an alpha mask, which is a gray-scale image that hooks into the alpha channel (opacity) of a layer and defines what is and is not visible. In the alpha channel, white represents complete opacity and black represents complete transparency.
So, initially I set the alpha mask to be completely white (or completely opaque). But then I used the gradient tool to create a white (visible) to black (invisible) gradient for the visibility of the solid black layer.
It is important to remember that the white portion of the alpha mask should extend to the right of the vertical line between the screenshot and the background. Otherwise, the vertical line will still be visible behind the gradient.
Complete
And that's it. The banner shown below is the banner on the Ground Control II Gamespace.
That's all that it takes to create a simple banner for a Gamespace. Find an image, fit it in the banner, and add a gradient. Of course, you can make your banners as complex as you would like, with multiple layers and alpha masks. In the next tutorial, I will show you how I created a little more complicated banner for the game Giants: Citizen Kabuto.
In the meantime, try making some banners using the techniques from this tutorial. And of course I would appreciate any feedback on this one. Let me know if anything is unclear.
In this first edition, I will show how I created the banner for the PC RTS game Ground Control II. It is a simple banner consisting of a single screenshot from the game with a black gradient. I should note here that in this and all future tutorials, I will be using the GIMP, which I highly recommend you use yourself. It's free and open-source software, so while I suppose it can be argued that the GIMP is not the equal of Photoshop, it will be in time...
First off, there are some points that you need to know about Gamespace banners.
(1) Your banner must be 760 pixel wide by 140 pixel high, no more, no less.
(2) And it must be saved as a JPEG (.jpg).
(3) Your final image can be no larger than 30 kilobytes.
(4) The left-hand side of your banner must be dark enough to accommodate the game's title.
(5) The title will be added by GameSpot, so there is no reason for you to include the title in your banner.
(6) Finally, remember that there will be tabs across the bottom of your banner, so don't put anything in that space that you don't mind being covered up.
That pretty much covers the administrivia, so now I'll jump right in to the walk-through.
Step 1: Select source art
When searching for source art there are a couple points that I think you should take into consideration:
(1) Since you are making a 760 x 140 pixel image, you should find source art that will fit into this frame without much resizing. Of course, you can always shrink an image without much distortion; it will just (possibly) appear slightly blurred. But you should never try to enlarge an image to fit your banner.
(2) Personally, I think that 9 times out of 10, if a game's graphics are good enough to be used in a banner, you should use them. If not, look for concept art.
Now, this first step of selecting source art is a critical step for creating any Gamespace banner. You should decide what you want your banner to look like and then find images that fulfill your design. In this case, the part of GCII that really defined the experience to me was the artillery units. In GCII, the artillery, unlike artillery from every other RTS game, actually fire waaay up into the air, and after a few moments, the shells come crashing down to the battlefield. Fire for effect! :P
So I went to the GCII Gamespace and searched for any images that showed off the cool artillery fire I wanted to have in my banner. And I found this (click to see the full-sized version).
Step 2: Add the screenshot to the banner
Now that I had found an image to use in my banner, I created a new 760 x 140 image and filled the background with black. Then, I copied the GCII screenshot, pasted it into the banner, and made it a new layer.
Step 3: Size the image to fit & position it
Because the image was too large to properly fit in the banner, I used the Scale Image tool to resize it to 60% of it's original size. This scale allowed me to frame the portion of the image that I wanted (of course, I came across 60% by guessing and a little bit of trial and error). After I had scaled the image I positioned it in the frame.
Step 4: Create a gradient
Finally, I created a new layer and filled it with black. This layer is used to create a gradient to get rid of the hard, vertical line that separates the screenshot from the black background (as shown in the previous image).
To create the gradient effect, I used what is called an alpha mask, which is a gray-scale image that hooks into the alpha channel (opacity) of a layer and defines what is and is not visible. In the alpha channel, white represents complete opacity and black represents complete transparency.
So, initially I set the alpha mask to be completely white (or completely opaque). But then I used the gradient tool to create a white (visible) to black (invisible) gradient for the visibility of the solid black layer.
It is important to remember that the white portion of the alpha mask should extend to the right of the vertical line between the screenshot and the background. Otherwise, the vertical line will still be visible behind the gradient.
Complete
And that's it. The banner shown below is the banner on the Ground Control II Gamespace.
That's all that it takes to create a simple banner for a Gamespace. Find an image, fit it in the banner, and add a gradient. Of course, you can make your banners as complex as you would like, with multiple layers and alpha masks. In the next tutorial, I will show you how I created a little more complicated banner for the game Giants: Citizen Kabuto.
In the meantime, try making some banners using the techniques from this tutorial. And of course I would appreciate any feedback on this one. Let me know if anything is unclear.
More Gamespace Banners
by jrclem on Comments
I've had some more of my Gamespace banners selected. :D
The new games with my banners are:
Brave Fencer Musashi (PS)
Spy vs. Spy (XBOX, PS2)
Suikoden IV (PS2)
Homeworld 2 (PC)
I have a tutorial in mind that I keep saying I'm going to post. There are a lot of people submitting some great banners now, but there are also quite a few that could benefit from a few pointers. It may even turn into a series, I don't know. But I definitely want to cover: selection of source art, design, selections, paths, layers, and alpha masks. So, I'll be putting that up here in the next few days.
The new games with my banners are:
Brave Fencer Musashi (PS)
Spy vs. Spy (XBOX, PS2)
Suikoden IV (PS2)
Homeworld 2 (PC)
I have a tutorial in mind that I keep saying I'm going to post. There are a lot of people submitting some great banners now, but there are also quite a few that could benefit from a few pointers. It may even turn into a series, I don't know. But I definitely want to cover: selection of source art, design, selections, paths, layers, and alpha masks. So, I'll be putting that up here in the next few days.
GameSpot + AJAX = My dreams come true...
by jrclem on Comments
There's a thread on the Site Enhancements & Feedback forum about Unions and how they could possibly be improved upon. It's a great discussion, and I've thrown in my 2 cents as well... I just thought I'd take a moment to summarize them here.
I started out simply enough:
(1) Add a Link to Unions on the GameSpot homepage to increase the exposure.
(2) Eliminate the article 'Comments' and point the users to the Forum to have their discussions. That's what it's for.
(3) Increase the connection between Unions and their affiliated games (where applicable). I haven't thought much on this topic, I may come back to it later.
(4) Add another layer of meta-data to the Union article Archives so that stories can be sorted more specifically with greater criteria.
(5) Add a means of contacting inactive users, and then terminate their memberships if they remain inactive. If they aren't willing to visit at least once in a period of 2-3 months, then they're not really a part of the Union, and they're just erroneously affecting membership numbers.
But then I started to think about Unions from an interface design perspective, and I just went nuts...
I came up with the idea for an administrative tool for Unions (or really GameSpot as a whole) that takes advantage of that so-called 'Web 2.0' nonsense that's all the rage right now. :P
Basically, the idea is to allow Union Leaders (and Officers) to have complete control over the content that they post to their Union as well as limited control over it's layout. Despite this increased control, the system would maintain visual consistency with the GameSpot look & feel. The tool would take advantage of client-side programming to allow for drag & drop functionality, as well as completely eliminating the necessity of Union leadership to write a single line of HTML.
I created a mock-up of what the HeadCrab Union might look like using such a system. And it has been posted by Sentinelrv in the Union Discussion (UD) thread, around post #184 or so. But I'll include some thumbnails here.
I also later posted a short use case scenario to better explain how the widget system might work. You can read it in it's entirety in the UD thread, around post #207. But here is one thumbnail from the use case that shows what the widget toolbar might look like.
The idea as a whole is a fairly radical suggestion for the addition of a feature that would take many months to successfully develop. But contained within my post were a few smaller suggestions that could easily be adopted by GameSpot.
(1) Allow Unions to decide which objects are shown on the front-page. Maybe a Union Leader doesn't want his members to be listed on the front-page since they can already be found on the 'Members' page.
(2) Similarly, allow Unions to control the length of some of the objects on the front-page. For example, the number of threads or members that are displayed.
(3) Unify the look of Unions with the rest of GameSpot. Make the layout more similar to every other page on the site.These first 3 would be inherent to the widget design, but could also certainly be implemented as stand-alone features using the current Union model.
(4) This one was actually first brought up by Sentinel, but I agree with him. That to be endorsed by GameSpot should mean something. Even some, maybe only limited, ability to host files that GameSpot doesn't otherwise offer, e.g. Half-Life 2 modification installers or videos of those mods.
(5) Re-design the Union Profile object to be more consistent with the Profile object that is found in User Profiles. Remove the extraneous information like associations and game categories, and consolidate the Emblems into a single structure. Something like this:
So those are some of my ideas for the future of GameSpot. I'll add any future ideas to this post as well, unless I think they warrant their own.
I started out simply enough:
(1) Add a Link to Unions on the GameSpot homepage to increase the exposure.
(2) Eliminate the article 'Comments' and point the users to the Forum to have their discussions. That's what it's for.
(3) Increase the connection between Unions and their affiliated games (where applicable). I haven't thought much on this topic, I may come back to it later.
(4) Add another layer of meta-data to the Union article Archives so that stories can be sorted more specifically with greater criteria.
(5) Add a means of contacting inactive users, and then terminate their memberships if they remain inactive. If they aren't willing to visit at least once in a period of 2-3 months, then they're not really a part of the Union, and they're just erroneously affecting membership numbers.
But then I started to think about Unions from an interface design perspective, and I just went nuts...
I came up with the idea for an administrative tool for Unions (or really GameSpot as a whole) that takes advantage of that so-called 'Web 2.0' nonsense that's all the rage right now. :P
Basically, the idea is to allow Union Leaders (and Officers) to have complete control over the content that they post to their Union as well as limited control over it's layout. Despite this increased control, the system would maintain visual consistency with the GameSpot look & feel. The tool would take advantage of client-side programming to allow for drag & drop functionality, as well as completely eliminating the necessity of Union leadership to write a single line of HTML.
I created a mock-up of what the HeadCrab Union might look like using such a system. And it has been posted by Sentinelrv in the Union Discussion (UD) thread, around post #184 or so. But I'll include some thumbnails here.
I also later posted a short use case scenario to better explain how the widget system might work. You can read it in it's entirety in the UD thread, around post #207. But here is one thumbnail from the use case that shows what the widget toolbar might look like.
The idea as a whole is a fairly radical suggestion for the addition of a feature that would take many months to successfully develop. But contained within my post were a few smaller suggestions that could easily be adopted by GameSpot.
(1) Allow Unions to decide which objects are shown on the front-page. Maybe a Union Leader doesn't want his members to be listed on the front-page since they can already be found on the 'Members' page.
(2) Similarly, allow Unions to control the length of some of the objects on the front-page. For example, the number of threads or members that are displayed.
(3) Unify the look of Unions with the rest of GameSpot. Make the layout more similar to every other page on the site.These first 3 would be inherent to the widget design, but could also certainly be implemented as stand-alone features using the current Union model.
(4) This one was actually first brought up by Sentinel, but I agree with him. That to be endorsed by GameSpot should mean something. Even some, maybe only limited, ability to host files that GameSpot doesn't otherwise offer, e.g. Half-Life 2 modification installers or videos of those mods.
(5) Re-design the Union Profile object to be more consistent with the Profile object that is found in User Profiles. Remove the extraneous information like associations and game categories, and consolidate the Emblems into a single structure. Something like this:
So those are some of my ideas for the future of GameSpot. I'll add any future ideas to this post as well, unless I think they warrant their own.
Happy Little Trees
by jrclem on Comments
Well, I've had 5 of my Gamespace banners accepted by the GameSpot editors. And I couldn't be freakin' happier!
The games that are now sporting my banners are:
The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery (PC)
No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.'s Way (PC)
Giants: Citizen Kabuto (PC, PS2)
Ground Control II (PC)
Metal Arms: Glitch in the System (XBOX, PS2, GC)
Granted, some of them are just screenshots with an alpha mask, but at least two of them were actually a bit of work to complete; particularly the Giants banner. So now that I've had some banners selected, I'll be posting that tutorial that I've been talking about. Not that there aren't tons of very talented people churning out banners, but maybe it'll be helpful to someone...
And I'll be getting myself a shiny new emblem... :P
The games that are now sporting my banners are:
The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery (PC)
No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.'s Way (PC)
Giants: Citizen Kabuto (PC, PS2)
Ground Control II (PC)
Metal Arms: Glitch in the System (XBOX, PS2, GC)
Granted, some of them are just screenshots with an alpha mask, but at least two of them were actually a bit of work to complete; particularly the Giants banner. So now that I've had some banners selected, I'll be posting that tutorial that I've been talking about. Not that there aren't tons of very talented people churning out banners, but maybe it'll be helpful to someone...
And I'll be getting myself a shiny new emblem... :P
Guild Wars: Factions
by jrclem on Comments
From a January 11 GameSpy Preview by Allen Rausch:
"Guild Wars: Factions will take place on the same world as Tyria, the location of the first game, but on the continent of Cantha, a mysterious land far to the south. Cantha is a land forever divided between three nations -- two of which, (the titular factions) -- have sworn eternal enmity toward one another. The first nation, also called Cantha, is a cosmopolitan land of merchants and traders led by a hereditary emperor. 200 years ago, the Emperor of Cantha was slain by his bodyguard, Shiro Tagatchi. When Shiro was brought to justice, his death wail was so powerful that it petrified the forest and turned the sea to jade."
Well, I'm a huge Guild Wars fan. Back in August of 2005, I want to say, I was looking into trying out one of these MMOs that I'd heard so much about. Better late than never, I guess. So, I was standing in a game store with Guild Wars in one hand and World of Warcraft in the other. The deciding factor was Guild Wars' lack of a subscription fee. Now, you can talk all you want about whether or not GW is a true MMO (instances!), and I wouldn't argue with you, because it's the only one I've ever played and so maybe I don't know any better. But ultimately I really don't care, because it's a lot of fun.
That being said I still haven't even touched the guild battles portion of the game. I've been wandering around killing monsters for the past 6 months. And I want more... Eventually, I'll get into the player-vs-player aspect of Guild Wars and I'll probably like the game even more. So Factions is one that I'm definitely going to pick up. I don't know if I'll ever buy another MMO, WoW or otherwise, but I do know that I'll be playing Guild Wars until NCSoft and ArenaNet stop hosting it.
Oh, and that highlighted line up there is brilliant. I don't know if it's from the author of the article or from one of the game's developers, but that's just good writing. I guess that makes me a pretty big nerd. Ah, well. I think I'll get a little more time in on the Factions weekend preview.
"Guild Wars: Factions will take place on the same world as Tyria, the location of the first game, but on the continent of Cantha, a mysterious land far to the south. Cantha is a land forever divided between three nations -- two of which, (the titular factions) -- have sworn eternal enmity toward one another. The first nation, also called Cantha, is a cosmopolitan land of merchants and traders led by a hereditary emperor. 200 years ago, the Emperor of Cantha was slain by his bodyguard, Shiro Tagatchi. When Shiro was brought to justice, his death wail was so powerful that it petrified the forest and turned the sea to jade."
Well, I'm a huge Guild Wars fan. Back in August of 2005, I want to say, I was looking into trying out one of these MMOs that I'd heard so much about. Better late than never, I guess. So, I was standing in a game store with Guild Wars in one hand and World of Warcraft in the other. The deciding factor was Guild Wars' lack of a subscription fee. Now, you can talk all you want about whether or not GW is a true MMO (instances!), and I wouldn't argue with you, because it's the only one I've ever played and so maybe I don't know any better. But ultimately I really don't care, because it's a lot of fun.
That being said I still haven't even touched the guild battles portion of the game. I've been wandering around killing monsters for the past 6 months. And I want more... Eventually, I'll get into the player-vs-player aspect of Guild Wars and I'll probably like the game even more. So Factions is one that I'm definitely going to pick up. I don't know if I'll ever buy another MMO, WoW or otherwise, but I do know that I'll be playing Guild Wars until NCSoft and ArenaNet stop hosting it.
Oh, and that highlighted line up there is brilliant. I don't know if it's from the author of the article or from one of the game's developers, but that's just good writing. I guess that makes me a pretty big nerd. Ah, well. I think I'll get a little more time in on the Factions weekend preview.
Free Software Alternatives
by jrclem on Comments
There are a few free Windows applications that I use (some more frequently than others) and thought I would share with anyone interested. More often than not these applications are open-source, for those who are into that sort of thing.
The GIMP - or the GNU Image Manipulation Program is an excellent digital painting, photo-editing, etc program. I doubt that I'll ever go back to Photoshop, even if I had hundreds of dollars to blow.
Inkscape - vector graphics software similar to Adobe's Illustrator. While not sporting the full feature-set of a commercial package, I have had no complaints with it so far.
VideoLAN - my favorite media player. I've never run across a file that VLC won't play. Plus, it can also be used as a streaming server, which is just about the coolest thing I've ever seen a media-player do...
NVU - a web-authoring application that offers WYSIWYG editing, tabbed views, and built-in FTP for file management, just to name a few. Nvu is based on the Mozilla layout engine code and so is fast and has a small memory footprint. The link actually points to a project by John Haller called Portable NVU for use on USB drives, because I've had a lot of difficulty getting the official NVU Windows installer to work. Actually, this project may be dead, but the program is still a great free web editor.
AbiWord - so you just want to write something? Well, how about a free word-processor that installs under 40MB of data, uses less than 6MB of memory, and supports just about every document file-type you can find. The only problem I have with it is the lack of a reliable grammar-check function.
Gnumeric - a spreadsheet app with, as far as I can tell, all of the functionality of Excel plus a few extras like XML file formats and over a 150 worksheet functions "unique to Gnumeric". But yeah, it's basically spreadsheets for free.
Planner - a project management tool for planning, scheduling, and tracking projects, and a free alternative to Microsoft Project. Chances are not many people have a use for this sort of thing, but this type of software is a brilliant resource for mod teams.
WinMerge - a text-file differencing and merging tool. WinMerge is incredibly useful in discovering changes in project files that have been edited by multiple team-members.
WinSCP - an SFTP client that uses SSH. It also integrates with Windows context-menus and can perform batch file scripts through the command-line.
Blender - a 3D graphics application with very modest system requirements. Blender allows for modelling, animation, rendering, and post-production, as well as many other features. Also, there is a very large and active Blender community offering numerous resources and tutorials.
Avid Free DV - I admit that I've used this program the least, but hey, it's a free non-linear digital video editor. Be warned, as far as I can tell it's not supported by Avid and is seriously complex. Another interesting NLE that I haven't used yet is Jahshaka, which is an open source project.
ConTEXT - a small but very powerful text editor. It's packed with features, but some of the more useful are tabbed editing, syntax highlighting for over 200 different programming & scripting languages (and you can create your own), record & execute macros, and user-definable execution keys. Actually, ConTEXT and the Borland command line compiler were my C/C++ development environment of choice through college.
Well, that's it for me... But if there are any interesting free (open-source or otherwise) applications that you use, let me know about them. I'd love to try them out.
The GIMP - or the GNU Image Manipulation Program is an excellent digital painting, photo-editing, etc program. I doubt that I'll ever go back to Photoshop, even if I had hundreds of dollars to blow.
Inkscape - vector graphics software similar to Adobe's Illustrator. While not sporting the full feature-set of a commercial package, I have had no complaints with it so far.
VideoLAN - my favorite media player. I've never run across a file that VLC won't play. Plus, it can also be used as a streaming server, which is just about the coolest thing I've ever seen a media-player do...
NVU - a web-authoring application that offers WYSIWYG editing, tabbed views, and built-in FTP for file management, just to name a few. Nvu is based on the Mozilla layout engine code and so is fast and has a small memory footprint. The link actually points to a project by John Haller called Portable NVU for use on USB drives, because I've had a lot of difficulty getting the official NVU Windows installer to work. Actually, this project may be dead, but the program is still a great free web editor.
AbiWord - so you just want to write something? Well, how about a free word-processor that installs under 40MB of data, uses less than 6MB of memory, and supports just about every document file-type you can find. The only problem I have with it is the lack of a reliable grammar-check function.
Gnumeric - a spreadsheet app with, as far as I can tell, all of the functionality of Excel plus a few extras like XML file formats and over a 150 worksheet functions "unique to Gnumeric". But yeah, it's basically spreadsheets for free.
Planner - a project management tool for planning, scheduling, and tracking projects, and a free alternative to Microsoft Project. Chances are not many people have a use for this sort of thing, but this type of software is a brilliant resource for mod teams.
WinMerge - a text-file differencing and merging tool. WinMerge is incredibly useful in discovering changes in project files that have been edited by multiple team-members.
WinSCP - an SFTP client that uses SSH. It also integrates with Windows context-menus and can perform batch file scripts through the command-line.
Blender - a 3D graphics application with very modest system requirements. Blender allows for modelling, animation, rendering, and post-production, as well as many other features. Also, there is a very large and active Blender community offering numerous resources and tutorials.
Avid Free DV - I admit that I've used this program the least, but hey, it's a free non-linear digital video editor. Be warned, as far as I can tell it's not supported by Avid and is seriously complex. Another interesting NLE that I haven't used yet is Jahshaka, which is an open source project.
ConTEXT - a small but very powerful text editor. It's packed with features, but some of the more useful are tabbed editing, syntax highlighting for over 200 different programming & scripting languages (and you can create your own), record & execute macros, and user-definable execution keys. Actually, ConTEXT and the Borland command line compiler were my C/C++ development environment of choice through college.
Well, that's it for me... But if there are any interesting free (open-source or otherwise) applications that you use, let me know about them. I'd love to try them out.
I think I hate the embedded text editor...
by jrclem on Comments
I know that it's not officially supported, but come on... It's just screwy in Firefox. At least, that's my experience. And I've recently been promoted to be a news editor for the HeadCrab Union, so I've been messing around with it a little more than I used to...
Of course, it's entirely possible that I'm just a raving moron...
And I'm still working on my 'Tips for Gamespace banners' article. I hope more people will start creating their own banners, because every gamespace should have one.
Of course, it's entirely possible that I'm just a raving moron...
And I'm still working on my 'Tips for Gamespace banners' article. I hope more people will start creating their own banners, because every gamespace should have one.
New Profile Banner
by jrclem on Comments
I put it together with Gimp and Google. I hope that Capcom will put out another Bionic Commando before I die... That game was sweet. Although, from the looks of it, Price of Persia 3 is going to fill a lot of my desire to swing through a level and smack dudes around with a chain.
I like that GS is letting users submit potential game space banners. It was kind of fun putting this one together, so I might try my hand at making some for a few of my favorite games.
I like that GS is letting users submit potential game space banners. It was kind of fun putting this one together, so I might try my hand at making some for a few of my favorite games.
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