Deprecated: mysql_connect(): The mysql extension is deprecated and will be removed in the future: use mysqli or PDO instead in /storage/content/49/145849/famitracker.com/public_html/forum/classes/dbHandler.php on line 29
FamiTracker
I'm finally using Famitracker to work on a real project (for about 12 hours per night in the past week!) so I'm finding little tweaks that you've made and am very happy for them, but I'm also finding things that still need attention in the user interface. Here are a few:
[b]Page Jump Length:[/b]
1) Currently the "Page Jump Length" selection box gives a fixed choice between 2, 4, 8, and 16, making it imprecise when working in other timebases. Rather than simply making the field editable, however.. I would suggest changing (or adding an option for) the Page Jump behavior, to make the cursor jump to the nearest "2nd highlight" row, rather than simply moving by an inflexible number of rows. To give a usage example: You are on row 63 of 63, but you want to go back a quarter-note to row 48. Hitting Page Up with a Jump Length of 16 would currently put the cursor on row 47, forcing you to step down before continuing. Combined with issue #2 below, this is quite annoying..
[b]Single Step Selections[/b]
2) When holding shift to make a block selection, using the arrow keys or page up / down works correctly to grow or shrink the selection. However, using the "Move one step up" or "Move one step down" keys, at best, won't alter the selection. At worst, if the "one step" keys are set to the Impulse Tracker standard of Ctrl+Home and Ctrl+End, it will actually cancel the entire selection and jump to the bottom of the pattern, as if you'd hit "Home" or "End" by themselves. Much of my work involves precise selections, and changing the step size each time I want to tweak the selection by one row is inconvenient.
[b]Selections and Navigation[/b]
3) Selections should be independent of cursor navigation. If you make a block selection and then move the cursor, the selection should not be cancelled. Sometimes you want to move around to see what is selected, or add to it.
[b]Pick Up Instrument Under Cursor[/b]
4) "Switch to track instrument" definitely needs to be definable as a key for use during editing, not just upon playback. In Impulse Tracker, hitting Enter in any column of a particular channel will "pick up" the current instrument being used at the cursor's X/Y coordinates, switching to it for subsequent input.
Overall, the program is improving very rapidly; I'm so happy to see how far it has come. You may have noticed that this year's Famicompo is freaking mindblowing.. In my opinion, a big part of this is Famitracker's "coming of age". As less time is spent fighting against buggy tools, more effort can be put into polish and creativity.
That said, I hope you'll always try to focus on any corruption / inconsistency / usability / export bugs before working on any major new features like skins or piano rolls or toaster ovens. It's not as gratifying to list "Very few bugs!!!! Doesn't ever corrupt or erase data!!" as a feature, but your hardcore users will surely appreciate fewer bug-workarounds and more peace of mind.
I can assure that bugs are always prioritized, those are usually the first things I'm working on once I get to know about them. (I know there has been some serious ones for too long, but that's more due to lack of time overall rather than spending time only on new features.) Anyway the next version is supposed to contain almost only fixes for the bugs introduced in the latest version.
I've made some changes and improvements to the pattern editor and the IT-mode already and I'll take these requests into consideration too. Page jump setting was editable before but got broken by the key config boxes apparently, the rest seems clear and should be quick to fix/add.
Finally, I agree about this years famicompo! However I'm sure that's because of all the kinds of great tools that are available now for composing.
