Wednesday, August 27, 2008

New motivation: Ubuntu.

I'm slowly moving all my development into the Ubuntu community. From now on, all the games I create will work in Ubuntu and Windows, possibly Mac. Currently, the only games I made which work in Ubuntu or on a Mac are my old Flash games.

Anyway, I'm still looking for good animation software. Here's the alternatives I found for Ubuntu and what I'm still missing:

Avast: available for Ubuntu as well but not necessary and doesn't monitor the system. I could also use Clam, which is a native Linux app, but, if you're serious about safety, Clam doesn't monitor your system. Nothing monitors the system in Linux. It just isn't necessary, because you have complete control of what runs and what doesn't. Basically, Linux monitors itself.
Blender: It actually works better in Ubuntu. The game engine is still a little confusing, and shadowing is not supported in stand-alone runtimes, so you need to use textures for everything in your game projects.
DirectX: I can use OpenGL instead. There are plenty of open source OpenGL-powered 3D engines to pick from, and I have my eyes on Ogre, using Blender as my modeler. Any recommendations are welcome.
Flash: no good alternative yet. You have PyGame for programming games, but that's not helpful for animations. I tried Flash4Linux and all the apps based on it, but those require some sort of compiler, and I don't really know how to get them working.
Photoshop: GIMP works well, but I'm open to change. If I can get Photoshop CS3 to work in Wine, I'll go that route. Otherwise, I think GIMP could grow on me. I'm also considering Inkscape for vector art.
Runescape: works in Ubuntu. I don't play it, though. If I ever get bored, though, I know I can start a character on there and hack away at trees.
Sony Vegas: no good alternative yet. I need a good video sequencer for music videos and simple editing. I'm hoping for some transition effects and color filters.
ToonBoom: Synfig Studio is pretty good, but it's still in early stages of development.

Flash isn't available in Ubuntu (just the browser plug-in), but I can use Wine to run a very old version. I need to find an alternative to Flash CS3 for animation, but I can code 2D games in Python/PyGame.

I hope you consider moving to Ubuntu. It's free, and it's more secure than Windows. Plus, almost every good piece of software is either on the installation DVD or add/remove menu!