Well folks, here we are again. Since last time, negotiations utterly fell through, I've not been able to find a spot with anything else since, and am generally in quite the rut/dry spell/writer's block/burn out/etc. However, I'm still paying attention as to what's out there and intend to keep at it despite it all trying to get some manner of traction. It is a bit odd becoming more informed and aware on a broad spectrum of things while still having yet to find a niche for skill growth, but what are you gonna do?
Misc:
Indie Proofing Outfit aimed at helping to proof and edit English in games, particularly for ESL folks.
Gobby Free collaborative editor supporting multiple documents in one session and a multi-user chat. It runs on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and other Unix-like platforms.
Dev-HQ Free tutorials on a variety of languages and such.
Strawberry Perl Behold, all the majesty of UNIX Perl environs and such reckoned unto a purely Windows experience!
Bennu A fork of Fenix, a high level open source game development suite which focuses on modularity and portability, making it a perfect choice for cross-platform game development. Our good chum Streets of Rage Remake is a fair metric of a partial sample of what it is capable of, as it has been further developed since those days.
NaaLaa Extra potent, free, BASIC-like language/environ with support of libraries and use of a VM instead of Machine code---explicitly game focused in terms of ease of creation. The 6th generation is brewing for OpenGL support alongside the existing custom software rendering---
strikes me as one to watch.
LinuxGames Solid portal for keeping track of the goings on in the Land of Penguins.
Ludum Dare Frequent assortment of game dev compos and a supportive community.
GLBasic Yet another powerful, "living" take on BASIC wranglings----a full tilt cross platform capable package at v10 that is free for non-commercial development with a v11 seemingly due out in the not distant future as it is recently in public beta.
GAMESTORM Grand collection of doodles, sketches, and scrap-paper designs by game developers around the world, rather cool.
PGD Annual Showcase for all the Pascal Game Dev compos.
wubi Handy Ubuntu installer for Windows folks
Greenshot Spiffy lightweight screenshot tool for Windows that recently hit a big v1.0 release after some years of development---free and open source to boot.
Indie Game Mag Daily Slick and not so little e-zine doing their best to keep the pulse on the Indie scene and foster it period.
Indie Games Channel Video centric news portal on the indie slate of it.
The New Boston Deluge of tutorials across the spectrum of programming and otherwise--engines, languages, scripting, etc.
Ryzom Core Open source "all the code" aspect of the Ryzom project centered on MMORPG dev---seems to have stalled a bit, but was in Google's Summer of Code 2012 so hopefully they'll clear the hump.
Quote Unquote Interviews and quotes via indie game devs.
Primary Pad web-based word processor meant for schools and such with a free and commercial version---looks pretty well featured for group collaborating and whatnot.
AI Wisdom Grand hub of game AI centric research, articles, interviews.
FreeGameDev Wiki Aimed primarily at those develop entirely along the free/open source style on all fronts.
Polycode Been tracking this for awhile, but they shifted gears and went internal awhile back as well, now due to be some manner of powerful/spiffy new IDE that will unveil itself come Dec 1, 2012. We shall see...
Synergy Lets you easily share your mouse and keyboard between multiple computers, FOSS, cross-plat, and clipboards can be shared across a network. Free and "Premium", with the latter just being a donation vector since their last sponsor left them---they are still hard at it though!
Moonlight Ongoing effort by the Mono community to salvage and improve upon Microsoft's now foolishly abandoned Silverlight technology that once jousted with Flash...and was rather good at it...for Linux.
TeraCopy Free Windows utility designed to copy files faster and more securely, providing the user with many features--Pro version needed for Commercial use, but it is cheap.
Equalizer middleware to create and deploy parallel OpenGL-based applications---lively dev and seemingly quite on the bleeding edge side of things, suite of tools inherent to it, etc. Free and multi-platform.
Ohloh Portal aimed at the finding and stalking of open source programs alongside involvement.
.kkapture Nifty demo tool from on the the masters, produces video+audio captures of fullscreen apps, source available as well.
The Big Monk Games Daily Yet another indie news centric e-zine.
Labyrinth Abandoned, but nifty, tool for an integrated development environment for developing and recording storylines and plots. For Windows and maybe Mono users as it is .NET based.
Video Game Name Generator Yep.
Dia Free cross-plat tool to draw structured diagrams.
openFrameworks an open source C++ toolkit for creative coding--pretty sizable effort behind it too.
Red The wouldbe successor to REBOL returns with an initial public Alpha release since opening up for community involvement---they are looking to rapidly gain ground in this bid to be a futuristic, potent language, in the near future.
Pathfinder Random Treasure Generator Surely applicable otherwise as well.
Scheme Bricks A way to livecode scheme visually, by plugging in and tearing off bits of code---has a V2 incoming and is by the dev behind Fluxus who has also been hitting up an enormous amount of recent events to do with livecoding and has quite a number of writeups and pics on his dev blog tied into his main site on here.
Inno Setup Long running and lively developed free installer for Windows programs---looks and aims to be quite robust.
Epoch Language Fresh off a Release 13, a modern, full-featured programming language designed to offer rich first-class support for both symmetric and asymmetric multiprocessing. Has a ways to go yet, but parallel processing and whatnot is only going to ramp up further.
Bloom Editor It was fated to be:
a 3D, highly visual centric, text editor. Yes, that's right. Currently cross-plat Beta available with a full tilt Premium edition being worked on in the shadows.
Learn Code the Hard Way Now featuring the formative edition of Zed Shaw's guide to modern C programming to join the rest.
BergZergArcade Large amount of Unity tutorials.
GamePrefabs Portal to buy and sell said aspects.
Pixel Prospector's Indie Guide Helpful array of info and links for new indies and existing as well.
Itemizer A small application that lets you define attribute sets for (C)RPG items, create item catalogs from these sets and edit the item data in the catalogs. Itemizer can also be used to manage character and other game entity data in (C)RPGs.
Moonscript Dynamic scripting language that compiles into, and generally lets you harvest the benefits of, Lua.
Code Academy Free online learning resource for a variety of subjects, Python and Ruby among them.
Displayhack Site for participating in or enjoying real-time graphics, visual arts, motion graphics and the demoscene.
Sublime Text 2 Powerful, modern commercial text editor that saw a big release this past Summer after a long beta period.
MorphOS Something of a woudbe successor to the spirit of the classic Amiga OS, this long running project gives a new purpose to discarded Apple PPC macs and whatnot.
Icaros Desktop Pre-configured AROS desktop environment for the PC platform, distributed on a bootable live media. The AROS Research Operating System is a open source lightweight, efficient and flexible desktop operating system, aiming at being compatible with AmigaOS 3.1 at the API level, while improving on it in many areas. Has a big v1.5 release likely due out by the year's end.
Amiga OS4 "Official" successor to the classic Amiga OS helmed by Hyperion Entertainment---also fights MorphOS for those old PPC machines though it does have an experimental "high end" X-1000 machine available.
ACP Atari ColdFire---a community attempt at a new and more powerful Atari clone using the above chip and FPGA sorcery. Exists, costs hundreds of dollars, and generally works with the vast array of Atari software that people actually kept writing all these years. Amazing that this exists in the slightest.
OSNews Excellent site for keeping up with the goings on in the OS world, fringe or otherwise.
Linux Mint Rapidly gaining different take on Ubuntu as far as Linux environs go, good pace of substantial release updates.
TimeCult A simple yet powerful task management and time tracking application. Supports a hierarchy of projects and tasks, multiple taks timers, data export to a comma-separated file, detailed time log, dynamically computed summaries of used time per each project.
pouet Ultimate hub of the demoscene and archival thereof.
SFGUI Fast, simple and native C++ GUI library for SFML. It provides a rich set of widgets and is highly customizable via themes.
Genode Experimental, alternative OS with lively dev pace aimed at a better order of operations when it comes to everything an OS contends with and a stable environ---has made a great deal of progress here in 2012 and at this rate may draw much attention come 2013.
Razor-qt FOSS lightweight desktop environment based on Qt technologies. It has been tailored for users who value simplicity, speed, and an intuitive interface. Unlike most desktop environments, Razor-qt also works fine with weak machines---handy in the arsenal of Linux devs I'd think.
Fantasy Name Generator Indeed.
Dreckig-OS Madness in the form of Assembly. OS for the x86 chip architecture. It is written in all assembly language. With a 10 kilobyte kernel, it is one of the smallest operating systems out there. Dreckig uses a megalithic kernel architecture, so everything is in the kernel, this makes it very fast. A megalithic kernel basically takes the UNIX feature 'everything is a file' to an extreme, in Dreckig 'everything is one file'. Dev pace is semi-lively and some wonderful person made a text-based adventure game OS fork of it already.
CompoHub Grand collector of all the game dev compo events globally.
ANX Alpha, yet growing, platform independent game framework which is compatible with Microsoft's XNA Framework---handy since last I saw the future of XNA is looking grim not unlike Silverlight before it.
AspireOS Another in the AROS stable of operating systems, this Amiga-inspired take on it aimed at giving new/better life to a fair range of i386 machines on top of being super-lightweight and fast booting---fairly lively dev.
64 Digits Game dev portal and community site of sorts, has compos, tutorials, and games they host.
Commodore Free Very nice e-zine that keeps tabs on all the goings on past and present in the C64 world---which is quite lively!
Tiggit A desktop app that installs and launches games with one click. It is sort of like an open source Steam clone, but much simpler and currently with only freeware games and demos. Substantial Beta off a big rewrite landed not long ago, so the future looks bright for them if they can keep it up and pursue quality.
Fossil Yet another open-source version control system vying for use while having some robust features to it---cross-plat and in lively dev it seems.
Dxtory A movie capture tool only for DirextX/OpenGL application, potentially more powerful than FRAPS and the like.
Indie Marketing 101: The Right and Wrong Ways..
Programming, Motherfucker The palpable hate and rage of Zed Shaw became a site with links to a variety of resources to help people on along to get on it the lot of it without dancing around.
National Game Development Month Compo and resource site for the June competition, this year's inaugural assortment available.
Beginner's Guide to Roguelike Dev in C/C++ Incomplete, but seemingly progressing.
donjon RPG tools generator Hits a wide variety of areas,
quite cool.
Zorin-OS Scrappy OS aiming to be an ideal bridge to Linux from Windows---dev pace kicking up nicely and they've a deal with a PC solution outright with locked in compatibility.
BASIC Gaming Nice e-zine keeping tabs on the FreeBasic scene and those on a similar level---fair bit of game dev going on out of the spotlight.
Critical Path Project Tons of interviews across the spectrum with game developers of various stripes.
Gamedev tuts+ Range of relevant tutorials and such.
HelenOS Another promising micro-kernel OS on the cusp of more general audience capabilities, this time out of a Uni in Prague---dev pace is good and bodes well for next year.
Parallella Crowdfunded $99 Parallel-Processing centric "Super Computer" due out next year by and large---much of it open and hoping to be a real shot in the arm for learning, progress, and such on this front.
Articyraft The first professional tool for story and game design as well as content creation. It is the all-in-one-place solution for your design documentation, delivering specialised views tailored to deliver a specialised tool for designers of interactive software. Trial and expensive commercial edition available, though it does appear pretty robust on the features list and screens---fairly surprised that only now is something like this vying to be..well..viable.
Indie Game Design Do's and Don'ts Manifesto by Edmund McMillen
Procedural World Blog of one talented guy trying to wrestle down the whole of procedural doings and claim victory--may well do it!
MindCandy 3 discs worth of some of the very best of the Demoscene these past several years--many a technical marvel and artsy doing.
Cliffski's 2012 Guide to Advertising your Indie PC game online
Complete roguelike tutorial using C++ and libtcod
gwen C++ GUI system aimed at game development and such---MIT license and packing some features.
Wiki on Disk magazines A subject well worth reading on to better understand computer history, NSFW content being something likely to encounter though in a more "Visual Arts" sense---Hugi has a vast trove of informative issues going back years in English available free to all!
Well, that's the lot pretty much and now I can cycle back once more...eventually. Thanks for reading, presuming any of it was at all helpful as that's the plan and all, and please feel free to point out gaps or just general feedback as per usual. Maybe I can hit another assortment of the areas by year's end~