Modding Tools-of-the-trade

[KingMob4313]

I was just talking with a friend about the tools I use for modding. Spreadsheets, spreadsheets, spreadsheets.

What does everyone use for their mods as far as organization, content generation and so on?

Ever since I started modding back-forever-ago, I would make giant spreadsheets with computed values so I could attempt some sort of balance, or at least sort values and get a larger overview of things.  Final Fantasy, Ultima V, Final Fantasy Tactics, Jagged Alliance, Vampire: Bloodlines, BBS door games, NES editing, Snes save game hacking, Wasteland 1 and 2, XCom (2012), Xenonauts and some others I can't recall now:  All my mods start from a spreadsheet.

Right now I'm using:

Notepad++ for text editing.  I used to use something else, but I can no longer recall what it was.  I have a textfile for soldier editing that goes back to 1998 and most of my text is typed up on base text editors.  Not much to brag about because I'm sure there's someone who uses VI on here to text edit (there's always one), but just more an observation.

Aseprite for sprite editing: I finally listened to everyone on here. It handles gif palettes without crapping all over everything, which is amazing.  I still do a little work in GIMP from time to time as needed, but everything gets final processing in Aseprite.

Visual Studio 2013 for coding with resharper, codemaid and github. I use vs2013 with tfs at work daily so using a IDE that's familiar to me is handy. Better than struggling to get ECLIPSE up and working and coaxing Cmake to do what you want to do, which can be a massive pain in the ass.  I wish I was better at C++ instead of using easy mode C++ called C# all day (AKA: C++++).

WindHex32 I do a lot of hex editing (but none so far for OpenXcom) for most games, especially ones that aren't supposed to be modded. I used to use 'Thingy' and a few other programs, but WindHex32 is the only one I can get to work reliably.

Google Docs (spreadsheets) for mod planning. This used to be/still-sometimes-is Excel, depending on what I am working on, but it all gets imported to google now so I can access it anywhere. Here's where I do all my sorting of values, comparing, contrasting and generating 'computed' values so i can attempt to give some sort of balance to my mods.

Wikipedia and google via firefox for generalize research.

I'd love to hear what everyone else uses.

[yrizoud]

Spreadsheets all the way. Used to employ Excel, but as you said, the ability to access a Google drive spreadsheet from anywhere is very handy.
For any game with a significant amount of data, spreadsheet is mandatory to visualize and balance everything.

Typical uses for formulas :
- damage vs armor calculator (weapons)
- profitability calculator, to determine sensible sell values
- soldier generator - I use it to test growth profiles in my "kill-based experience" system.
- compute "damage per second" in craft weapons
- in general, whenever you need to automatically compute progression, using a linear factor, or parabolic, or power of less than 1 (don't know the name) for diminishing returns.

[ivandogovich]

- Notepad ++.  Just a sweet tool.

Image Work
- PowerPoint: Poor man's graphic editing tool.  Its amazing how much it does, and due to my fluency with it, its easier often to mock things up in PowerPoint before more intensive graphics editing.
- PIXLR - Online Graphics editing tool.  Used it at work for a lot of the Commendation Medals, when I could access PhotoShop.  Better for transparency work, and selection/deselection/erasing sections of images etc.
- PhotoShop. All graphics.  Saved in the right palette at the end.  Fired up Asperite once and couldn't handle going back to the 80's interface.  Also, Xop's handobs template.

[KingMob4313]

I forgot some tools:

Audacity: Basic Sound editing and recording. Used to use GoldWav and some other programs back in the day (including an excellent program that came with a wavetable card back in the late 90s), but right now Audacity is the gold standard.  Whether I am working with samples for weapons, or working on Dialog or radio bits, this is my goto.   It's got all the tools you need: reverb, echo, pitch and time independent manipulation and direct output to a variety of formats.

Massive: A synth from Native Instruments, I just recently started using this to generate original sci-fi sounds for my mods.  Nothing from it has made it in to my X-Com mods, but I'll soon be replacing the sounds I lifted from other sources (~cough cough~ 343 studios ~cough cough~) with synth sounds for the laser and plasma sounds.

Ableton Live 9: For Midi and music composition.  Been a long time user of demo-scene tools such as Modtracker, Fasttracker, and Psycle for music, but I finally decided to join the modern age. Going to do a recomposition soon of the original midi music and for vocoder and synthetic voice effects.

LG Nexus 5: For field recordings.  A non-trivial amount of the sounds for the conventional weaponry in my Equal Terms mod came from being onsite for a number of Full Bore rifle competitions, skeet shooting, and the pistol competitions that I've been to.  I have been very lucky to have the chance to do this when the summer season of shooting comes around.

[KingMob4313]

- Notepad ++.  Just a sweet tool.

Image Work
- PowerPoint: Poor man's graphic editing tool.  Its amazing how much it does, and due to my fluency with it, its easier often to mock things up in PowerPoint before more intensive graphics editing.
- PIXLR - Online Graphics editing tool.  Used it at work for a lot of the Commendation Medals, when I could access PhotoShop.  Better for transparency work, and selection/deselection/erasing sections of images etc.
- PhotoShop. All graphics.  Saved in the right palette at the end.  Fired up Asperite once and couldn't handle going back to the 80's interface.  Also, Xop's handobs template.

Weird, how are you using PowerPoint? Just as a quick and dirty layer maker?

Thanks for the recommendation for PIXLR, that way I can do some works on the road.

[ivandogovich]

(Powerpoint) yeah... I also like it for some of the artistic effects to apply to shapes etc.   The 3D effects can be nice too.  Of course all of this stuff gets imported into Photoshop and indexed properly to the correct palette before all it said and done.  But its an easy place to start.

[KingMob4313]

(Powerpoint) yeah... I also like it for some of the artistic effects to apply to shapes etc.   The 3D effects can be nice too.  Of course all of this stuff gets imported into Photoshop and indexed properly to the correct palette before all it said and done.  But its an easy place to start.

That's straight up mad. Awesome work. I didn't know that PPT could be used like that!

[hellrazor]

I use:
VIM for ruleset files.
Gimp and Graph2x for sprites.
Dia for making Research Tree's and some flowcharts for myself

Recording is done via ffmpeg.