Home Forums General Discussion Open Source Apps / Tools etc

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    • #3947
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      Hi there,

      I know a number of people are using open source software, such as Firefox.

      I try to use as much open source stuff as possible, like…

      Mozilla, FireFox’s bro…
      http://www.mozilla.org

      Open Office ( about to become v2, it’s completely MS Office compliant now, v1 had a few issues )
      http://www.openoffice.org

      Also, I’ll post more about this when the next point release is up in a few months, but the 3D Modeller, Blender ( http://www.blender.org ) is starting to really rock.

      Does anyone use any other open-source stuff, in the actual game development chain ( eg project management etc )
      Mal

    • #19346
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      Does anyone use any other open-source stuff, in the actual game development chain ( eg project management etc )
      Mal [/quote:50f710011b] Subversion for source control, Fileszilla for FTP and a whole slew of Open Source stuff for web/networking and back-end utils

    • #19350
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      i use CVS and Eclipse

    • #19352
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      I only have Open Office on my personal machine – if I had a company I’d try and use as much free stuff as possible.

      I did a quick search on teh interweb and found this prohect management tool:

      Projectory:
      http://projectory.sourceforge.net/

      I cant say I’ve used it…so maybe someone (=Tony) can see if it compares to MSProject

    • #19356
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      i love sourceforge

    • #19359
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      I’ve pricked around with GMAX and it seems that the oft-lamented lack of a renderer for GMAX has been solved by the guys over at http://www.yafray.org/

      and IrfanView is an excellent freeware image browser/viewer, even does dds over at http://www.irfanview.com/

      I came across Jahshaka, an open source movie editing app, haven’t tried it yet though at http://www.jahshaka.com/

      Then theres the Open RenderBump project (ORB), a normal map generation tool at http://engineering.soclab.bth.se/tools/177.aspx

    • #19361
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      I came across Jahshaka, an open source movie editing app, haven’t tried it yet though at http://www.jahshaka.com/
      [/quote:4e5ffc7305]

      there is virtua dub as well, but is more of an encoder, but i can do effects in it

    • #19362
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      Apart from the obvious ones like Firefox and OpenOffice, I also use an excellent tool called The GIMP. For alot of my image editing. It takes awhile to master but in the absense of expensive apps such as Photoshop etc… its a nice alternative!

      Outside that I also use:
      Thunderbird – mail client
      FileZilla – FTP’ing
      Video LAN Client – Media Player
      Media Player Classic – ^^ The Alternative
      Blender (I’ve dabbled with it anyway! :D )

      …and since I love Emulation *cough*
      MAME – Arcade Emulation
      ZNES / SNES9x – SNES Emulation
      GENS – Sega Emulation
      FInal Burn Alpha – Arcade / Neo Geo
      NeoRAGE – Neo Geo

    • #19368
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      I only have Open Office on my personal machine…

      Projectory:
      http://projectory.sourceforge.net/

      I cant say I’ve used it…so maybe someone (=Tony) can see if it compares to MSProject [/quote:344a2742d5]

      Open Office is a blight upon mankind

      am happy to try out Projectory and see how it compares. will look into it at some point

    • #19373
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      mplayer is also pretty decent.
      dont like open office (it appears a bit unstable in my opinion). althought msword isnt much better in that respect.

    • #19378
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      “Productivity”: Open Office, Thunderbird
      Utils: Filezilla, WinMerge
      Compilation: gcc, eclipse, python
      SDK: playing with excellent Popcap’s Sexy framework… This one rocks !!!

    • #19379
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      Open Office is a blight upon mankind[/quote:73c5feea69]
      Anything specific that makes it so horrible?

      Think I’ll still give it a go as I’m quite sick of using Microsoft Office in college then having to use Works at home. It’s like playing for Chelsea one minute then Exeter the next.

      Not to mention Open Office is apparently quite compatible with Word documents and its formatting… unlike Works which butchers my beautiful reports. ;)

    • #19380
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      Not to mention Open Office is apparently quite compatible with Word documents and its formatting… unlike Works which butchers my beautiful reports. ;) [/quote:95998d1a98]

      works isnt good simply because its a skimmed down version of ms word packaged with your pc with aload of features missing.

      Its a nice app to package with windows for basic word processing, but obviously not good enough for real work (bare your c.v or letter to your gran).

      Each time a new iteration of ms word comes out, the open office crew go about figuring out what the new specs are for ms file formats i.e .doc file (similarly .xls etc).

      ms are consistently changing the spec (internally), so that open office wont show a .doc correctly, so you buy ms.

      typically, though the guys at openoffice, reverse engineer in the legal way, trial error, good guess and eventually get something close to it. thus leading to the instability in open office.

      ms are actually arguing with the eu at present over this source code\interface issue, in that 3rd parties cannot get access to specs such as .doc .xls .ppt etc, so they can not interpret the formats exactly. end result open office is a best guess (which in fairness is pretty good).

    • #19381
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      Anything specific that makes it so horrible?

      Not to mention Open Office is apparently quite compatible with Word documents and its formatting… unlike Works which butchers my beautiful reports. ;) [/quote:29ae381d00] this is, unfortunately, not true – Open Office is largely compatible with Word documents/formatting (and even Excel) but falls down in quite a few places – particularly in an office where some are using OO and some are using MS Office.

      MS Office wins every time in my book, I’m afraid

    • #19382
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      Claris works rocks!

      is it called apple works now?

    • #19383
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      > Open Office is a blight upon mankind

      Open Office 1.x had a number of problems with MS Office compatibility, which put a number of people ( including myself ) off it.

      However, I’ve been using the beta of 2.0 for about a month now, and it seems to work 110%.

      Mal

    • #19421
      Anonymous
      Inactive
    • #19441
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      Open Office is largely compatible with Word documents/formatting (and even Excel) but falls down in quite a few places – particularly in an office where some are using OO and some are using MS Office[/quote:32f49b8970]

      I’m in this situation and have to agree with Tony. It’s a pain in the arse to be honest. But seeing as the company isn’t willing to fork out for the required number of Office licences we have to just get on with using OO…..

    • #19454
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      Anyone use Lotus ? How does it rate. Probably not free either is it. When I got my PC a few years back I got Lotus Suite free with it, but never really used it as I just installed a copy of MS Office instead.

    • #19455
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      This is kinda interesting, the Project of the Month list on SourceForge.

      OGRE, the 3D rendering engine, made it onto the list last month.

      http://sourceforge.net/potm/

      Mal

    • #19458
      Anonymous
      Inactive
    • #19462
      Anonymous
      Inactive
    • #19671
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      audacity.sourceforge.net. I used audacity for basic sound editing, did the job for me. Might be useful to anyone here :)

      I like openoffice, cos I cant afford MS word :)

    • #19673
      Anonymous
      Inactive
    • #19680
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      Isn’t it strange how you change when you get older. Couple of years ago, that logic would have made sense to me. Now…I’d buy office. Well, only if I couldn’t find someone to scrounge it off first. [/quote:893625ce6b] there’s an obvious irony there…

    • #19850
      Anonymous
      Inactive
    • #19854
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      Ah, but if I couldn’t scrounge it, i would buy it :)

    • #19855
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      or find someone who works at ms and get them to get you a copy from the inhouse store. prob get office for a bout 20-30 maybe less. i used to know a person who worked in ms in santry and they could apparently get xbox titles for 15 quid.

    • #19862
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      Ah its all about who you know not what you know these days isnt it! *wink*

      :D

    • #19863
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      Ah its all about who you know not what you know these days isnt it! *wink*

      :D [/quote:428bf829e2]

      profound!

    • #19934
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      Being a techie lawyer rather than a techie obviously I aint got a clue about comparing one piece of software against another. But just to say that, while using opensource software as a tool is fine, investors and lawyers get rather nervous when opensource is used as a base program to build a game. It can limit considerably the range of licensing models that can be used and increases the risk profile of the vulnerability of the intellectual property.

    • #19959
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      Ah, but if I couldn’t scrounge it, i would buy it :) [/quote:f52f6851f3] oh, well that’s alright then!

    • #20005
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      > But just to say that, while using opensource software as a tool is fine, investors and lawyers get rather nervous when opensource is used as a base program to build a game. It can limit considerably the range of licensing models that can be used and increases the risk profile of the vulnerability of the intellectual property.

      True, the distinction should have been made between OpenSource apps ( FireFox, OpenOffice, Blender ) and OpenSource technology ( ODE, OGRE etc ).

      Using OpenSource technology could indeed lead to a few hairy issues with publishers etc, depending on the license it uses.

      Mal

    • #20033
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      > True, the distinction should have been made between OpenSource apps ( FireFox, OpenOffice, Blender ) and OpenSource technology ( ODE, OGRE etc ).

      Using OpenSource technology could indeed lead to a few hairy issues with publishers etc, depending on the license it uses.

      Mal [/quote:cfffd89bd4]

      I saw the price per share paid by a VC drop considerably where a software company delivering services to telecos in a fairly secure environment had used opensource as part of their product. Probably not so much of an issue for gaming software, but the problem is best avoided anyways.

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