From a business/IT point of view what Adobe is doing is fantastic but certainly bad for small/indie users. For a company, a monthly cost for software is perfect because it is something that can be put into a budget for a department. If a new person is employed the IT department simply adds the software amount to the relevant budgets and installs the software. This system is also good for a producers who can budget projects better (cost wise).

One major benefit will be having all the latest (OS and features) software available and having access to all of the suite at once. One other thing is work flow, having a suite of software from the same vendor can increase work flow because there is less compatibility issues.

The new Adobe direction is designed for medium/large business and will make sure Adobe has a constant amount money coming in for future upgrades and development.

From a personal point of view I am screwed and will probably have to look for alternative software because I cannot afford to rent software for personal projects. Ironically what Adobe is doing will probably generate more pirated software because most small/indie developers will (most likely) use alternative means.

@Fifth, I was thinking of doing a Kickstarter for my ITS project, the money would pay for my time not the final assets and work with custom engines. It might have worked but there is one fatal flaw, there is only about 50 active people who play quake anymore! :) 

Ironically what Adobe is doing will probably generate more pirated software because most small/indie developers will (most likely) use alternative means.

I'm not sure that is what'll happen, but it's what I'm expecting will.

Also, Gimp/Inkscape etc are nice, but they really are no match for the stuff in Creative Suite. GIMP doesn't even have propper CMYK support out of the box, that alone makes it totally useless from a DTP pov. Adobe also has a pretty tight grip on the educational system. Winner takes all. While you can have various objections to that, from a workflow point of view it is enormously helpful to have an entire industry using the same set of tools. That's why if you're serious about getting into a certain industry it's simply more useful to learn the industry standard apps. Unless the open source apps get vastly more development resources at their disposal it's just idealist to think they'll be able to compete in the marketplace. I wish it were different, but I just don't see that happening any time soon. 

-q1 gpl source does include the .exe files ?!?(winquake.exe,glquake.exe,..)

-And do you know if after ID's acquisition by Zenimax Quake licensing model has changed ??

-Carmack himself stated that many people don't realize that if they do "true" total conversions they could create standalone commercial games off the source !
..that's why so few attempts were made (Malice,Shrak,Xmen,Steelstorm,..) 

There are more graphics tools than GIMP and Inkscape. Please do not talk bad about free alternatives until you know what is available. Krita for example is pretty fucking damn amazing and has many of the features some people miss in GIMP. MyPaint is great for painting I hear. I have not tried Karbon yet but if Krita is any indication then it's gotta be good as well (I like Inkscape but it has some quirks). And for photographers of course there are RawTherapee and darktable. I wish people would stop recommending GIMP as "the" tool.

I understand that the Adobe suite has good exchange (both in-between its products and thanks to their quasi monopoly to other people) but honestly, it sucks if you are forced to use software because its file formats are proprietary and closed. 

-for commercial use of q1 source what if I leave references/calls to Quake copyrighted assets(model frames,buffer sounds,ai.qc,..) in my game ?!?

..this gnu/gpl thingy putting me to the test so hard that giving up would be wise :( 

on the mac, Pixelmator is plenty good, they're tearing it up nowadays.
http://www.pixelmator.com/

For a hobbyist, I'd definitely recommend it over Photoshop. It only costs $15 and has a lot of features that casuals will love, and a really slick, fully featured interface.

Of course if you're thinking of doing anything professional, especially if you'll have to work with other designers, Photoshop/Illustrator/Indesign is still the only option.

I think the subscription model is reasonable, but it still irks me not to actually own software I've paid for. Oh well, that's the way things are going it seems. 

I think the subscription model is reasonable, but it still irks me not to actually own software I've paid for. Oh well, that's the way things are going it seems.

I feel the same, it seems subscription models are increasingly becoming the way of the future.

(random idea)
Something that would be cool would be an image editor where the layer system is swapped for a node based system. That way it wouldn't be a one way street. I often get into weird and redundant layer configurations where I wish I could just tell Photoshop "use this layer R channel as input for this layer's mask". Would be slower but could save a lot of memory and hasstle at times. Another thing that irks me is the layer style system not being modular.
Some more modularity between the subsystems would be cool also, the brush system can be made to stroke vector paths, but it would be nice if this was dynamic rather than just stamping on the pixels. Hmmm, maybe I should write my own image editor :P 

How about making the kickstarter price really low? Like $10... just see how much cash you generate in a months time. Even if all you make is $10 you will still be making money for a project that you are going to already be doing...
At least this way you can gauge the interest properly (remember, you don't generate interest *before* the kickstarter, you generate interest *while* kickstarting)...
I'd certainly pay $10 for a whole new expansion pack if it was done properly. :) 

Your map is getting big when it takes you 30 secs to zoom in the 2D views in Worldcraft just so you can use it smoothly after loading it.

Your map is getting big when you can't see what you're doing in the 2D views anymore.

Your map is getting big when you get lost in your own map. 

Use the "Group" function to combine finished rooms brushes and the use the "Hide Selected" function to hide selected groups. You can still compile hidden groups, it just helps to unclutter the 2d and 3d windows and it speeds up rendering times in the editor. 

respect, Qmaster (my reviews are in the works).

I found it a milestone when WC/Hammer told me "too many objects in view" and would no longer display anything unless I selected it. Of course, there's the visgroup solution to it. Heh. Just surprised me. 

all good points and ideas. Along the same lines, I think some more ability to use variables would be nice. I.e. LESS/SASS style color definitions, so I could change one "@accent-color: #ff0000" and it'd change shape layers, shadows, text with that color to whatever I choose.

The text styles thing they've got going on seems a bit weak but is going the right direction though.

I feel like the node idea might have been adopted already if it wasn't such a one horse race. 

This already exists in apps like After Effects, Shake and other post-processing software, and many people have asked for more of it in Photoshop. Adobe have started putting some stuff like that a bit, with non-destructif filters and such, but it requires using smart layers, and is just generally pretty half assed and useless. :( 

with non-destructif filters and such, but it requires using smart layers, and is just generally pretty half assed and useless.

Seriously what planet are you on! the filter layers are awesome, extremely easy to add, test out settings, combine them and re-arrange the order. It also does not require smart layers (cs5+), you just add them. The only downside is you cannot apply them to groups which would be useful for global style effects. 

are less intuitive to grasp than the layer concept though. It might steepen the learning curve for more casual users. 

 

Mmmm... I'm on CS5, and I don't see how to use them without smart layers. When I try to it says my layer needs to be converted to a smart layer, which makes it useless for me.
Maybe it's better in CS6, haven't tried it yet (we're still using CS5 at work).

What I'd want the most in Photoshop is a way to instance layers, that would make my job so much easier. You can kind of do it with smart layers, tried to use them for a while but it's really clunky and wasn't worth the effort in the end for me. 

http://userbase.kde.org/Krita/Tutorial_2#Clone_layers 

Why not release the source? Maybe I'm being naive, but it worked for id. 

@Bal, I use the shortcut icon to create the special filter layer. I rarely use the menu's and I never get any messages about smart layers. Honestly I find them amazing and they have saved me destroying original layers because of effects. I often put the filters into groups so I can test different combinations. 

Do you mean adjustment layers? Those are fine (and I also use them a lot), but what I'm talking about is smart filters, for instance having a filter applied to a layer that gives it a gaussian blur, but that you can still paint in (and the blur would be applied more or less on the fly, depending on how expensive it is, and be able to tweak it like an adjustment layer), honestly don't see how that's possible in CS5 without using smart layers (which makes it alot less useful). 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niEFNEkbNKk 

have you seen this already?

www.dailymotion.com/video/xzc0u2_giant-god-warrior-appears-in-tokyo_shortfilms#.UZqV_Hkgvxc 

fucking cutoff

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xzc0u2_giant-god-warrior-appears-in-tokyo_shortfilms#.UZqV_Hkgvxc 

@mfx, sorry but that was terrible, you should be playing THIS!?!