Oct. 11, 2025
...Well, "good" is a relative term when it comes to some things actually, but if it wasn't worth using, I simply would not.
█ Here's something I made with some free software. The thing I'm about to yap about, in fact.
One of the skills I've got really good at over the past several years is sniffing out free stuff. Food, entertainment, software, as long as I can avoid draining my wallet (usually for greedy corporations too, ick), I've become fairly good at finding ways to get what I want with minimal hassle. Sometimes, this involves a little thing called piracy (which I won't feel bad about until Crunchyroll stops using AI for subtitling), and sometimes it involves reasonable single-time payments to less exploitative companies... but usually it just involves digging a page or two deep into google once I know what I want specifically.
With all that said, right now I'm going to focus on one program in particular, which I've been using (and possibly abusing) for quite a while now: The Wick Editor.
To quote the program website itself, "The Wick Editor is a free, open-source tool for creating games, animations, and everything in-between!" If you've ever worked with Flash and actionscript 2 or 3 when it was still a functional program, the layout is astoundingly similar; Canvas with an adjustable FPS, a timeline with keyframes, tweening vector art, and most importantly (to me), the 'Wick Object'-- basically the equivalent of a movieclip. I was never particularly good at actionscript when I tried to make my own versions of those interactive anime character games on DeviantArt back in the mid 2010s, but that's the nice thing about Wick: its engine is made to run with Javascript!
█ Oh yeah... It's all coming together.
Unnnnnfortunately, the editor hasn't been maintained or updated for probably at least four years now, and it doesn't look like the developers will be returning to it anytime soon. While the console is usually pretty good at picking up on any problematic code, the layout is a bit janky and it's a good idea to save often, especially if whatever you're trying to make is reliant on updating variables. Even if you're not using it for a game, the audio syncing options leave a hell of a lot to be desired, and the vector tools aren't as robust as Flash's were. All that being said though, it's still (almost) perfectly serviceable for the projects that I want to do with it, since I'm not trying to reinvent the tetris block. If you're looking for a fun tool to tinker with for small game projects (like a Homestuck STRIFE animation, perhaps) I still highly recommend it, especially since Flash isn't really an option anymore (imagine me saying "thanks, Adobe" through gritted teeth).
█ Neeeeear, faaaaar, whereeeeever you aaaaare...