To be clear, the difference nicetas_c is talking about in Fester's quest is that "croak" sound at the end. Another example is Metroid track 10 (the Mother Brain room). These are little tonal clicks you can't really make without the linear counter.
H00's effect as previously discussed seemed to be an unintended consequence of the pitch reset jsr built into the hardware sweep effect. Wherever the NSF importer picks up H00, if that game happens to want a phase reset at the same time it's only a co-incidence.
That's another good thing about the linear counter, you can make all kinds of cool sounds with it (Like that sound from Fester's Quest).
Also, you say it's not noticeable, but what if there's a part of the song where only the triangle is playing, or the square, noise and DPCM channel volume is so low you can notice it? Also, there is one feature I would like to request but I'm 99.9% sure it won't make it into Famitracker, but like PPMCK, separate tempos for each channel.
I dunno, if I wanted to complete FamiTracker's APU feature set, I would propose:
triangle Lxx - linear counter on current note only.
square/noise L0x - envelope on next note (use of volume channel or volume macro will immediately halt the envelope), or alternatively L01/L00 turns on/off envelope mode which just turns all volume values into envelope, if that's simpler to implement.
square H8x/HFx - set high bit to prevent pitch reset (allows keeping of H00 for phase reset effect, but also permits smooth alternating up-down slides).
Length counters are pointless since all possible values are multiples of 2 anyway (so it's really only a 60hz effect, same as Sxx or macro).
I've said before though, I don't want to request any of these, personally, because I don't need them (especially envelope, which is REALLY subtly different than a volume macro). Probably some people would like to see envelope and linear counter as part of the instrument definition too, which would probably be more annoying to implement, but at least some effects would make it possible to do.
jsr also told me he would not support Hardware Decay. Only defense I had for it is that a lot of Nintendo games used it.
Linear counter isn't a whole lot like the Sxx to me. To me it's more like a H00 effect on the triangle channel.
5B is already on the way, though I guess it will probably take another year before it happens.
Also, Doommaster, there are two different counters, linear counter and length counter. Length counter is the one that is completely redundant. Linear counter does something we can't do.
im going to continue making this crazy stuff then after a while my style will be so sick that you will be like damn suuun that shit is so sick i dont even get it. i will be like bro its ok.. you dont have to.
It's just that people thought I was talking about the game (which I have no idea what it is, by the way).
