I was hoping to start up a videogame developer’s club this year at school, but one of the biggest problems I’m having is finding good inexpensive (or, better yet, free) software. Basically I was just curious as to what various people here use for audio recording/editing, image editing, music composing, etc. At least I know that I could use Blender for the 3D stuff. I’m already mostly done with an exporter to my own file format that I could easily use with OpenGL in C++ (There’s still a lot of problems to work out, but when I get it done I’d like to post it … even if it’s a big mess). Even though Linux is great, I was hoping that most of the software suggested is for Windows. I don’t think too many people around my school would want to install an opperating system, because most of the people I had my eye on aren’t really all too great with computers (artists, musicians, and writers).
Audio recording and editing: For ripping tracks from CD’s or analog sources, I use CDEX ( http://sourceforge.net/projects/cdexos/ ). For recording MIDI music, I use Anvil Studio (which is free as long as you don’t need to print music) ( www.anvilstudio.com ). If you want more features in MIDI editing (including WAV audio compositing), try to find a lite version of Cakewalk ( www.cakewalk.com ). This will probably cost around $20-30
Image Editing: Sometimes I use ImageForge from CursorArts, but the GIMP for Windows is absolutely much better. I use Irfanview for basic and batch file conversions. ( www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32/ ) ( www.irfanview.com )