[wardog300k]

As my campaign, Final Destination, enters a rather full swing after being largely inactive for a few weeks, I began all the work, including Modeling, tabling and fredding. I'm one guy doing stuff usually done by entire teams. I use many programs for this stuff, including:

FRED 2 (cause I can't live without it)
VP View (cause I need it for stuff)
VP Mage (cause them VPs need to be made)
POF Construction Suite (cause PCS 2 crashes if I try to do some stuff)
POF Construction Suite 2 (cause PCS doesn't have all that's needed (including crashing))
Model View 32 (cause it has a simple-to-use model editing stuff I need)
Ani View 32 (cause I need to watch cool videos)
Ani Builder 32 (cause I need to make some cool videos)
Pilot View 32 (cause it came with DM package)
TBL View 32 (cause I need an easy way to watch them texts)
Notepad (cause I need to edit them texts)
Fraps (cause I need to record to make cool videos)
Kingsoft Office Writer (cause I need to write enormous fiction stuff, in style)
GIMP (cause I can edit textures with it (and fail ultimately))

Are there any other programs that you would recommend me? Those can be anything that's useful for FreeSpace 2 modding.

[Goober5000]

Notepad (cause I need to edit them texts)

Notepad++ is A-1 SUPAR.

[Droid803]

Hrm, IMO there is no reason to be using Model View 32 or PCS1, because PCS2 does everything those two can, and more. The latest version of PCS2 (or at least the one I have) doesn't crash at all - you must be using an outdated version, try updating. Should fix your crashing issues.

Also there is no use for table viewer 32, notepad(++) lets you view and edit at the same time. Not like tables are particularly difficult to navigate (I've never even heard of the program).

Ani builder is obsolete because you can have *.eff animations for just about everything, allowing for vastly superior quality (at the cost of effects folder cleanliness, but a small price to pay for having loss-less images for frames). There's no longer a need to be using *.ani files anymore, the SCP team has done some great work to move away from that terrible, terrible format.

What I use for my "one-man team" stuffs:

FRED 2 (Missions)
Notepad (Tables, Missions)
QuickVP (VP management)
Adobe Photoshop (Textures, Effects)
3D Studio Max + OpenCollada DAE plugin (Models)
PCS2 (Models)
Audacity (Sound Effects/Music)
Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Express (Coding/Debugging) <- this one is absolutely necessary if you are working with SCP and using any "cutting edge" features, otherwise you will never debug anything
XFire (Recording Video - free, without any watermark/time limit, idk if this has changed though, haven't done any recording in ages)
Adobe Premier (Editing Video)

All one really needs
Notice the absence of Descent Manager Tools. They're obsolete. Made all of Dimensional Eclipse without the tools even installed, shows how useful they are nowadays. Community-developed tools and other advancements have really left them in the dust, relics of a bygone age of FS2 modding.

Photoshop easily replaced by GIMP
3D Studio Max easily replaced by Blender
Premier easily replaced by...actually I don't know, but there should be a free/open source option for video editing

[wardog300k]

I'm using 2.0.3 Stable version of PCS 2, the one found at WCS homepage. Clicking on most stuff will crash it. I do use it, however, for model's objects editing (removing turrets mostly). PCS 1 I use for texture swapping, and MV32 for adding gunpoints and subsystems, and for general model viewing.

TBLV32 and Notepad combination served me well till now, I'm not sure about switching, (I don't really have that much tabling left to do TBH). The main reason I use TBLV32 instead of Notepad to navigate is because it has a list of ships/models/sounds and makes getting to them easy.

.ani is good enough format for my use, price is not so small for me because effects folder is all but clear.

As for the programs:

QuickVP - I might even get this
Adobe Photoshop - GIMP is better
3D Studio Max - I might try making some models (might)
Audacity - No need for it, I already have all the stuff necessary
MS Visual Studio - No SCP for me, which means no debuging either
XFire - Fraps' video recording and screenshoting abilities are good enough
Adobe Premier - Will probably try it out

Thanks for your recommendations.

[The E]

The current version pf PCS2 can be found here.

And yeah, if you're stuck with FS2 retail, then the DM tools are appropriate to use. If you're not, which is true of the overwhelming majority of people working with FS2 and FSO, then they're really really useless and should be abandoned.

[Dragon]

VPView 2.0 is a great tool. I think it might have a VP creation function as well. It came with a tbl viewer that allowed really quick and easy navigation (not really vital, but nice for looking things up). It also can preview some older formats such as .ani and .pcx (I think .jpg and .png as well, but not .dds) without extracting them.

Of the DM tools, the only one I really used was AniView 32. There are some older effects in that format that still look very nice. That said, if you're making stuff from scratch, it's not needed. Also mind that out of Droid's recommendations, Photoshop and 3DSMax are pricey (in case of the latter, very pricey). If you can get them for free (from your uni, for instance, educational institutions are a great way to get freebie software like this), then by all means try them. Oh, and be wary of GIMP's DDS plugin. It's compression algorithm is lousy, though it works fine in normal cases (even if it does seem to sacrifice more quality than it needs to), very dark areas on the texture tend to end up with horrible artifacts.

[jr2]

Photoshop and 3DSMax are pricey (in case of the latter, very pricey)