Mod Archive Forums Mod Archive Forums
Advanced search  

News:

Please note: Your main modarchive.org account will not work here, you must create a forum account to post on the forums.

Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

Messages - Steffest

Pages: [1]
1
Tracking / Re: Horizontal tracker interface
« on: October 06, 2020, 10:29:31 »
I think that is why nobody has made any "horizontal" trackers.

I'm working on one.
Switchable between horizontal and vertical.

A bit like Ableton Live, where you can switch between Session view (which is vertical) and Arrangement view (which is horizontal)
Both have their advantages.

Even in most trackers there is already the concept of horizontal time in the sample-editor view.
Say you want a graphical preview of the waveform shape of each channel, then horizontal makes much more sense.

2
If you could post/link the EXE I'm pretty sure we can extract the resources from it and have the individual mod files, that woud be easier to identify.
But being a keygen, posting it might be hard without setting of a gazillion security and virus alarms :-)

3
Macintosh / Re: OMO
« on: April 25, 2019, 05:51:12 »
Hey!

I looked into it and never mind: my mistake :-)
They are all S3M files that are XPK compressed. I forgot those get silently unpacked when playing them on my Amiga (what a cool platform, right?)
Obviously this won't work on other platforms.

When I unpack them to uncompressed ScreamTracker files, they play fine in OMO.

Cheers!
Steffest

4
Macintosh / Re: OMO
« on: April 18, 2019, 09:23:13 »
Nice!
Always good to see the mod-musics getting some love :-)

I especially like the "fadeout" option instead of ending a song abruptly, that's a good idea.

On my machine, the control buttons at the bottom are not showing.
I like minimal interfaces, but this is a little hard to use :-)


As you can also see on the screenshot, some of the Screamtracker files are not recognized and also are skipped at playback.

Nice work!

5
Hey nikku4211,
Thanks for your thorough test drive

Quote from: nikku4211
The font needs improvement. Quotation marks and apostrophes as well as the @ symbol need to be implemented
True, I'll add the missing ASCII chars

Quote from: nikku4211
The pattern loop start feature needs to be added, too. Even the original Protracker has it.
You mean the E6 command for pattern loops? That should be working.

Quote from: nikku4211
When I load in an 8 channel mod, the message that comes up says they are not supported...yet. I hope that means you will support them in the future.

No doubt. Technically there is no reason to stick to 4 channels. You can already activate more by http://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/?tracks=8 and http://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/?tracks=16 etc. but I still have to add loading/saving for more tracks and fix the UI so you can scroll patterns horizontally.


Quote from: nikku4211
Add the option of playing audio with no interpolation. I don't even think the Amiga uses interpolation. Whether it does or not, the Bassoon Tracker plays modules too muffled.

Yeah I know, but I don't think that's going to happen. I don't do any interpolation in code, but the Web-Audio implementation of the browser upsamples the output. This depends on the specific browser used, but probably it's up to 16-bit 48kHz.
As interpolating in javascript is another can of worms and will have a serious performance impact, I think I will leave that can closed.

Quote from: nikku4211
It would help if you at least put a search feature for when looking in the tracker's ModArchive. That, and/or not all of the artists in the actual ModArchive are listed in this tracker. I couldn't even find any of my songs, and trust me, at least some of my Amiga tracker modules are in the actual ModArchive.

Yes, the artist list is - for now - just a manual list of composers with lot's of 4-track mods that are good for testing. I totally love the ModArchive API, but for searching and filtering it's probably best that I replicate a part of the ModArchive meta data in my own database to do these kinds of things locally. That's for the future.


Quote from: nikku4211
Improve the sample editor. Add copying and pasting for the sample editor, as well as upsampling and downsampling. I know this might make it too much like OpenMPT, but it's good for making bass samples and is needed in case you didn't know that you needed a note of a higher octave than 3 or of a lower octave than 1.

Yes, that is certainly on the roadmap. Of course it will never be a fully featured sample editor but the basic stuff like copy/pasting/resampling should be there.


Quote from: nikku4211
Add support for the OpenMPT keyboard layout. Maybe I'm the problem, being too used to OpenMPT, but please make it happen. Especially since the only way to switch octaves that I know of for now is to use the piano, which is actually a nice feature, no kidding.

That's not going to be completely possible as the browser already has some keyboard-shortcuts in use (so I can't use the F-keys) but yes: the basics should be possible. That being said, I still have to figure out nice way to edit notes and effects on a touchscreen without a keyboard too.

Quote from: nikku4211
Add the ability to copy and paste notes, effects, samples, and a combination of any of those 3.

Yes, range selections and some form of transparent copy/paste where you can select what you want to paste is on the road-map.

The next features probably will be in the order
  • Dropbox integration to open/save your files
  • proper undo/redo
  • better sample editor
  • range selection for copy/paste

Once we're there I'll probably make the jump to more tracks and the .xm format.

There a many other features that I would like to implement - if time and interest permits.

Like a separate beat-sequencer type interface for drum patterns, or that you can group and fold some tracks together and that you can use these groups independently to compose a song. Like when you create a drum patterns on 4 tracks, you should be able to use that as a building block in the composition without having copy them over and over. As you change the building block, all patterns that use it will be updated too.
The same for bass-lines, leads, ... That will avoid much of the tediousness of pattern editing.

Polyphony on a single track is another (easy) one.
Now I had to write code specifically to cut a note when another on the same tracks starts playing so - especially with the attack and release curves in .xm instruments - it would make sense to have an option to activate true polyphony.

Also the effect channels for the low-mid-high ,reverb, echo, ... should be controllable by parameters.

But at some point it will be inevitable to divert from the standard .mod or .xm format and create another format to hold all the info.
Of course there will always be an export option to .mod or .xm ...

Maybe the openmpt format supports extensions like that ... I haven't really looked into that, shame on me :-)

I always though it was a missed opportunity that the trackers didn't use the Amiga IFF file structure as this allows the extension of the file with different blocks. If a program doesn't understand a block, it can still ignore it but keep it intact while saving again.

Well... the story of the Amiga is a story of missed opportunities, isn't it ... :-)
Luckily the trackers still live on!





6
Ok, I think we're about ready for a first release:

Bassoon Tracker - a browser based tracker in plain old javascript.
Open, play, edit and save 4 channel mod files in your browser.

http://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/



It supports all Protracker effects.
Not all Protracker 1 and 2 weird playback quirks are implemented but most of them are.
It also performs well on mobile devices, but without a keyboard it's a bit hard to enter any notes ...
Of course the wonderful ModArchive API is implemented so you can access the archive directly from the tracker.

Source code is on Github: https://github.com/steffest/bassoontracker
If you finds any bugs or have any feature requests: let me know!

Steffest

7
Aha!

Thanks Saga Musix,
Without a doubt you have the deepest technical tracker knowledge on the planet, but of course you already knew that :-)

To boil it down to a simple ruleset for my own peace of mind:

For PT1 and 2 playback

  • if a 9 command is present, advance the sample offset and set the start of the sample
  • advance the sample offset again (but don't set start)
  • at the next note, when no sample number is given, don't reset the sample offset (and do reset the offset otherwise) then set start of the sample and apply effects

That's why the offset gets tripled in some cases on notes with no sample number and a repeating 9 command.

The way XMPlay in PT1 mode handles this is a small bug IMHO, as I haven't seen this behaviour on any other player on any other platform.


 

8
Small update, before someone says "There's a bug in PT1 and 2 that adds offsets in the 9-effect when no sample number is given".

Yes, I though so too, but not exactly: here's a more simple example with just 2 notes:

http://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/demomods/test/sampleoffsetb.mod

If the offset is added, then you would hear "2-3" not "2-4" like you do now on PT1 and PT2, so somehow the offset is tripled.

Still ... puzzling ...


 ???




9
Hey,
I'm in the process of writing my own web-based tracker and have reached the muddy waters of tracker-variations.

My Question is about the "9" sample offset effect, especially related to special cases when notes and sample number are omitted.
I created a little demo mod that behaves differently in different players.

It's located at http://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/demomods/test/sampleoffset.mod

The sample is a voice counting from 1 to 4, depending on the sample offset and the handling of special cases, you get another sequence in different players .

I tested it on multiple trackers and there are 3 different ways the sample offset is handled:
  • counting is heard as  2-3-2-3-3-4-4
    • Protracker 1.3 - Amiga
    • Protracker 2.3d - Amiga and the Windows Clone
    • OpenMPT
  • counting is heard as 2-3-2-3-2-3-2-3
    • Protracker 3.15 - Amiga
    • Protracker 4 - Amiga
    • Milkytracker (even in Protracker 2 mode)
  • counting is heard as 2-3-2-3-1-2-2-3
    • FasttrackerII - DOS
    • Milkytracker (in Fasttracker mode)

The problem is: I understand the 2nd and the 3th way, but I can't get my head around the logic of the first way (of Protracker 1, 2 and OpenMPT)
especially the note on row 32: this doesn't have a sample number, nor an effect but somehow the previous 9 effect gets applied twice? (the sample starts playing at "three")
Then after that, at row 48, no sample number and "900": you hear "four"? why?

My own code follows Fasttracker here as this seems the most logical implementation (http://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/?file=demomods%2Ftest%2Fsampleoffset.mod)
but most .mod files seem to expect the PT2 way so I would like to get that right.

And even more a mystery: How would you know what playback variation the .mod files expect?

Anyone who has dug deep into this and wants to shed a light?

Update:
Oh, look at that, I found a 4th way ...
XMPlay with the the "PT1" playback mode does "2-3-2-3-2-3-3-4"
How balls-on weird is that?
puzzling ...

 





10
Hey!

On old-school trackers there are no build-in effects for reverb, delay and low/high pass filters.

You can mimic them a bit by playing the same note on another track, one or 2 steps down with a lower volume (like in this module https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&query=65222 ) but obviously it's not quite the same.

The amiga had a hardware lowpass filter that you could activate/deactivate using the E00 and E01 commands, but most non-amiga trackers ignore that.
If I'm not mistaken the Coma Rebels demo used that to great effect ( https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&query=59623 )

you could say it's one of the charms of old-school tracking: just raw sample manipulation and not much fancy effects like reverb or VST plugins.



Pages: [1]