Any Free Programs One Can Use When Making Simfiles?

Ever since I've created my account on Zenius -I- Vanisher and began the nDDRo Archive project, the spark within me to create my own simfiles has slowly but surely begun igniting again. The first simfile I ever made was back in late 2016 when I created a simfile for Kyary Pamyu Pamyu's song おねだり44℃ (Onedari 44℃). Obviously, it was not the most outstanding simfile, but for a first attempt, it was at least playable and it was fun to make. I would love to create more simfiles that will hopefully be better than my older personal ones I made.

The only issue that's keeping me from going forth is my lack of more serious programs. Major music editing software/programs like ACID Pro, FL Studio, GoldWave, and whatever else is out of my realm due to my lack of money. The only programs I have are the ones that I used to create my old simfiles (Audacity for cutting songs, Abyssmedia BPM Counter for figuring out a song's BPM, and StepMania for creating stepcharts) I'm not at all sure if these programs that I have are the best for making simfiles, so I thought I would get other's opinions on the matter.

Does anybody know any programs that work well when creating simfiles and are free?

I use ArrowVortex editor in making simfiles. It has a decent built-in BPM* and offset* analyzer, and has a more user-friendly interface than StepMania's own editor.

*You may still have to double-check if the analyzed BPM and offset are correct, especially in songs with inconsistent tempo changes.

You can get it here.

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Actually the demo of FL Studio is fully functional and free, with no sign-up required. The only issue is that you can't save your projects as FLPs, but as long as you do everything in one go, you can save your song cuts as any audio file you like.

Here is the download link: http://www.image-line.com/downloads/flstudiodownload.html

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Audio editors:
https://alternativeto.net/software/adobe-audition/
recommended: Audacity

Video editors:
https://alternativeto.net/software/sony-vegas/
recommended: OpenShot

Graphic editors:
https://alternativeto.net/software/adobe-photoshop/
recommended: Gimp (font work)
Krita (artwork)

BPM:
MixMeister BPM Analyzer (old version) - https://download.cnet.com/MixMeister-BPM-Analyzer/3000-2169_4-10290906.html

Stepchart editing (all free):
StepMania
ArrowVortex
DDReamstudio

Every single software above (recommended ones) is free.

arrowvortex - stepcharting, bpm finding
audacity - audio
gimp - graphics

these are all you need (and they're free!)

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Wow, I had no idea the program ArrowVortex even existed, but boy am I glad to know that it does! I downloaded it a few days ago and followed its basic guide that was available on its website and I am loving this program. It offers one a ton of tools to use but it also isn't convoluted! I just finished making a light-difficulty stepchart for a song that I've been listening to a lot recently and, although it is nothing special (just a two-footer) it is I believe playable!

Thank you very much everybody for showing me these programs~! ^(^o^)^

ArrowVortex - For making simfiles
Sony Vegas - For creating graphics
FL Studio - For editing audio

Here is what I use, all of which are free:

Audio editing: Audacity
Graphics editing: GIMP
Video converting/editing: Blender
BPM analyzing: Mixxx

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