Hello JGO, I am here to tell you about, in my opinion, of the must-have software for game creation of any sort. I will provide links to the software beside the titles.

Editors:

Notepad++ (http://notepad-plus-plus.org/):
The bare basics for code editing. Not recommended for serious programmers.

Eclipse (http://www.eclipse.org/):
What I and a lot of developers like me use.

Netbeans (https://netbeans.org/):
Like Eclipse, but developed by Oracle.

IntelliJ (http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/):
If you don't like either Eclipse or Netbeans, you could try this, in some ways superior, IDE

Graphics:

Paint.NET (http://www.getpaint.net/):
Sort of like Photoshop, but doesn't cost $700.

GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/):
Like Paint.NET

Pro Motion (http://www.cosmigo.com/promotion/index.php):
I am sorry, but I have never used this software, though I've heard it's worth trying out!

Well, I hope you have enjoyed this list of software, and if you have any questions or feedback, personal message me.
Have a nice day.

Ah, right, will add soon. Thanks for the feedback.

Yeah, but it's technically not a IDE. It's for a rainbow of programming languages, not just Java.

"Must have" ? How about useful stuff ? =P

- Sublime Text 2

Writing:
- just plain old MS Word or imitates. Mostly just Notepad actually

Sound & Music:
- Adobe Audition (formerly Cool Edit Pro)
- Audacity
- Sony ACID
- Ableton Live

Graphics, 2D, 3d, Texture art:
- Autodesk 3ds Max
- Autodesk Maya
- Adobe Photoshop > All
- Many particle editors, Adobe After effects is also nice for effects
- maybe: Blender

Tech:
- Spine
- Map Editors (plus script editors)
- Texture packer

Video editing, cut scenes, trailer:
- Adobe Premiere
- Final Cut Pro
- Sony Vegas

Just like Eclipse.

Is it just me, or is this coming more and more often?

Nah.  You're ear is just getting more attuned to it. 

Why is Photoshop not on your list? *throws temper tantrum*

I like your list, I use a ton of stuff on it.

My "Development library" currently consists of:
- Photoshop
- FL Studio
- Dreamweaver (For eventually making websites for said games)
- TilEd
- Eclipse
- Notepad++
- AngleCodeFont
- Keyboard

and if it counts: (Because I usually stream almost all my development)
- Open Broadcaster
- Twitch Dashboard light

Doesn't help that "Must have" is a very opinionated list.

I couldn't imagine *not* having Photoshop, for example. But most people use GIMP, Paint.net, etc because they're free.

Not sure if this is a good place, but speaking of which, what do you guys use?
Also: Git vs. Mercurial, which do you say is better?

Notepad++ is good, but there are tons of great options. Many swear by a particular editor, but I suspect they are all valid choices, and it's largely personal taste and usage patterns.

Every programmer I know uses a text editor. Even those that use a more full featured IDE use a text editor for working with code snippets, loose scripts, writing notes, and working with text data. Some advanced programmers swear by going IDE-free. I don't. IDEs are particularly important for navigating large code bases.


There are a few tasks where I prefer Eclipse, a lot where I prefer IntelliJ, but I can't think of any reason to use NetBeans any more.

Others:

- Linux or Mac OS. Windows has terrible shell options.
- oh-my-zsh (https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh). A better shell than bash.
- git for version control. Mercurial is fine too. I prefer git simply because it won the "war" for critical mass of this type of hash based open source version control system.
- Gradle for builds. Gradle is a far more cleaner, concise, flexible version of Maven. IDE-specific scripts are terrible.
- pandoc. You should write your docs and notes in some markup format or "markdown" or something similar. Pandoc is excellent at converting to pdf or web.
- Scala. The only good reason to not use Scala is Android, where getting Scala to work is a headache. For desktop work, Scala is a must.
- R + ggplot2. If you need to track any kind of data, or make any type of data plots, this is the best.

Used SVN for a long time (was used in school). Using Git when possible. Chose Git because of Linus basically.