Mod Archive Forums
Community => Project / Coder's Corner => Topic started by: Tricky on March 14, 2021, 12:30:59
-
The reason for picking this forum is because I am merely showing off my coding skills at the end of my teens, the start of my twenties... (looking at the copyright year, I was 20 back then).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cExPPEw4_68
BRO-Tracker (the name is a pun to "ProTracker" and my surname being "Broks", and so the tracker having the first three letters of my last name) was a simple Adlib based tracker I coded in Turbo Pascal. I created games back then in Pascal, and RAM was one of my most important issues to revert to Adlib, since Adlib doesn't use samples, it was back then also easier to code, even though I don't even remember how I exactly made the adlib routines back then (I was blessed with very detailed and simple documentation back then or BRO-Tracker would never have been possible). However since Windows 95 came while I was still working on this project BRO-Tracker never really had the chance to shine, although a few games of mine do feature a few modules made with BRO-Tracker.
Since this website being devoted to tracker music, and BRO-Tracker being a tracker and all, I still thought I should show BRO-Tracker here, and one of the first songs I created with it, in order to test and demonstrate the tracker, a simplistic adaption of "Popcorn" and that is what you'll hear in the YouTube video I just linked you to.
By the way, BRO-Tracker is able to read HSC (only read, not write, for that BRO-Tracker uses its own format) modules based on a format by Hannes Seifert later disassembled and worked out by Chicken and Zwerg Zwack, and used for some "cracktro" tunes. However the support for HSC is not optimal, especially not in DOSBox.
-
Nice tracker! I notice that it's not in the ModLand tracker collection (https://modland.com/pub/software/trackers/DOS/). Did you ever release it? Would you like to add it to the ModLand collection to preserve it?
-
My source folder is a mess, but I do really want to put the source code on Github and release the tracker under the terms of the GPL. I never did back then, also due to the the tracker not functioning in Windows and all and we didn't have DOSBox back then (it's because of DOSBox I dug it up). I always had to find the motivation to do this and your post was definitely some of the motivation I need. It could indeed be a good idea to preserve this tracker...
I hope I can get it sorted out... It has been quite awhile ;)
-
Well the tracker's source has been sorted out.
https://github.com/Tricky1975/BRO-Tracker2
I do also have a small player that I will add to the same repository later.
-
Awesome! ;D
-
BRO-Tracker does also support HSC-Tracker modules (.HSC) and this video demonstrates that on NEOREMIX.HSC
https://youtu.be/JVPhJQhTebY
I now also used DOSBox' build-in recorder... Gave me bad results when I used that on games, but I guess since BRO-Tracker works entirely in text-mode things turned out a bit better ;D
Please note I did NOT compose the music myself (I actually am not sure who did), I am only demonstrating how music originally written in .HSC can be read (only read, not written) by BRO-Tracker.
-
The orignial tune is Neointro by Hannes Seifert (who designed the HSC format). Here's a more accurate rendition. ;) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L916AcM4lhE
-
I already thought Hannes Seifert was the original composer. The HSC format was added without any form of documentation, at my disposal I basically used a HEX editor to analyze the byte format back then, trying to see if I could make BRO-Tracker able to read it, which was quite a challenge, I tell ya.