The N163 is a complicated piece of hardware which, by its nature, demands prior knowledge of its inner workings to be used. The 2A03 is very simplistic in comparison, and even the VRC7 relatively is easy to use once you grasp the very basics of FM synthesis (your mileage may vary). The N163 is more complicated in terms of memory usage, and basically my point is if you don't understand how it works, maybe you should study it a bit more before using it in your tunes.
Understanding digital audio and computer processing in general is kind of prerequisite to understand a lot of chip explanations provided on the wiki. It might be worth looking into to write up a little primer, a kind of "READ THIS FIRST" section that addresses things like samples and wavetable lengths and all that.
I might get one started when I get bored at work or something.
I'm a hands on kinda guy, jr. I'm gonna get that knowledge of the namco chip by experimenting it. Hopefully the people of this here forum will be charitable enough to help me along from time to time too.
Shywolf - yes of course you're right. That beat somehow turned out bizarre... I'm used to working intuitively on FL and I never usually have a problem. I hear a beat in my head and within a couple of minutes I can plot it out, changing the time signature if necessary. With FT that didn't happen this time - I kept changing where the lines were to fit with my beat but they didn't work. I can't work it out, sometimes it sounds all right, but all together the tune sounds a little sludgy. I figured that the beats weren't hitting the bars due to a shuffle. Anyway, your fix is pretty good, it takes the swing out of the beat but at least there's flow now. I'm gonna have to find another way to swing my beats I reckon.
Poseidon, thanks. I've read a couple of other posts where people are insulting you as well. It's not on really. there's no need for names and insults to be flung around. Keep at it regardless!
Gyms, that's a great suggestion. A lot of people are going to approach FT from a non technical background, and having a decidedly technical wiki is going to produce a lot of puzzled people, who it seems are then going to get bludgeoned by famidicks. A fami-wiki "for dummies" (or let's say beginners, cos we ain't stupid) would save a lot of bloodshed.
"Poseidon, thanks. I've read a couple of other posts where people are insulting you as well. It's not on really. there's no need for names and insults to be flung around. Keep at it regardless!"
I only remember that one post where danooct1 calls me a willfull ignorant... not that I really care xD And I'm by no means insulting the community, I in fact says that it encourages you to make more music (in its own way, of course).
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The non-talented musician =P
I believe he called you a dick as well, which is out of order. I'm glad it doesn't bother you!
I make music regardless of arrogant, name-calling people on the internet. The thing is I'm almost encouraged to do it without the "help" of a "community" that likes to lord it over me and call me names for not knowing what they do.
I managed all right without any guidance when learning acid and FL, I'm sure I can get a tune or two out of FT without the hassle of being made to feel shit for having a question which I pose to a forum that is supposedly designed to answer my questions... we'll see.
C'mon Natty, you can't label an entire community based off of the somewhat negative interactions you've had with a few people. I understand you're being a bit prosey here, but there's not a group of people lording over you and acting against you.
To jrlepage's defense, he's spent a LOT of time on that wiki. My understanding is that most articles were cultivated and are maintained by him and him alone. It's one thing to just type out all the words and wikify everything, but he wasn't exactly copying that stuff out of an NES encyclopedia. I'm sure each article took hours of consideration and thought as to how the material would best be represented. I think it's just frustrating for him to see all of his hard work being either passed over, or completely misunderstood time and time again.
Writing a for-dummies version does sound like a great idea, but there's the risk of even that being overlooked and misunderstood by some people at some point. I can imagine spending hours and hours composing a great layman's guide and still have new people asking questions that were already clearly addressed. Obviously the wiki is not a complete layman's guide, but the information to solve and understand 99% of the problems you'll have with famitracker are in there somewhere.
Also, just would like to mention that FT forums is not the only place that's a bit rough on n00by questions. I've noticed that just about any tech heavy forum has people that get touchy with n00by questions, especially when they've been asked dozens of times before. I remember a long time ago, back when I was trying to build a midiboxSID as my first electronics project ever, I had a ton of n00by questions I shot at the midibox forums. It was not-so-kindly brought to my attention that my questions had already been addressed before and "use the search function, it's there for a reason" and "use google, stop wasting space and our time with this simple shit."
I was pissed of course, like "Fine, fuckers! How hard is it to just answer my questions? Sorry I can't be a fucking electronics major, I just want my synth to work."
And honestly, I still ask nooby questions around these forums every now and then, but only after I've done as much research as my brain will allow me to understand. I'll make sure to throw some tekky jargon into my post to demonstrate I at least did some research, people respond a lot better to that than just saying something doesn't work right.
My main point here is to say I sympathize with your frustration, but try to not take things personally. "The fucking wiki wrote:" wasn't a personal attack, just a release of steam by jrlepage. I'm sure he's thinking, "Fuck, yet again, more proof that my hard work was just a waste of time." Sure, not the most kindly response from a moderator, but, well fuckidunno. And the name calling that happens here and there is more personal and childish, yea, but I dunno...just hang in there I guess. This place isn't perfect, but it's here : /
Hope any of that helps.
edit: the n163 is particularly a moderfocker to understand; it's not exactly simple and intuitive. most of us around here have been waiting for n163 support in FT for years, so have been learning about how it works during the long wait. perhaps maybe another reason why nooby n163 questions are shot down, i dunno, maybe a lot of things are like 'cultural' common knowledge round these parts.
either way, feel free to pm me with questions, i'll do my best to help.
I think the perceived and potentially-intimidating hostile nature of this forum is a necessary evil, but it's not without room for improvement.
I may not have been here long, but it's very clear that this place will never be overrun by a bunch of mouth-breathing posers; you guys can be absolutely *ferocious* when you want to be. Make no mistake, this IS a community and there's a very apparent camaraderie here, however unspoken.
When it's clear someone is making absolutely no effort to improve themselves and just mucking up the SOYW section with garbage .FTMs and being a general jackass, everyone does their best to make sure they leave and never come back (at least not without improving). This place would be much worse off without that defense mechanism, and while it's often a bit on the cruel side... I have to admit I can't count the number of times I've laughed myself to tears listening to a horrible module while reading the spiteful commentary.
What bothers me is that a lot of newcomers who could end up being a welcome addition get tomatoes thrown at them for asking basic questions. It's not that I can't understand the frustration, I just don't get why it needs to be met with so much hostility sometimes.
If the question annoys you because it's something basic, why answer it at all? If it never gets answered, they'll be encouraged to further their research on their own. If someone answers it, they gain some understanding that will help them to begin to comprehend everything else, and we don't wind up with a 3 page drama-fest that ends up getting locked and buried away.
I'm just saying - this is a very interesting place once you get used to it, but honestly being new always felt like walking on eggshells - hell, I'm still relatively new, and the feeling lingers. Is it really ALL necessary?
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The only things certain in life are death and uncertainty.
Necrophageon, you talk a lot of sense, and thanks for your support on this subject. You're right, I mean look at us, I ask a simple question, and here we are at the bottom of page 2 (page 3 yet?) and a total of 3 posts relate to my questions.
Gyms, you're also right. I didn't mean to attack the entire community with my comments - it just seems that some of the most senior members of this community are the ones who are most surly and offensive, and they tend to comment quite early on in a post and sour it.
Especially as a moderator you are a representative and model for the community. In a forum you can expect time and again new people to come and ask the same questions - it's part and parcel of the job. If you can't handle that then maybe being a moderator isn't the position for you.
I'm an English language teacher. Can you imagine how my classes would go if I said to my students "Fuck, the Present Simple again?! I've already explained it to a thousand students - why don't you just check the coursebook?"
I recognise that the thing is that until you've learnt a few basic things the coursebook doesn't make much sense. I also recognise that I'm a pillar of the community and my behaviour has an important effect on a lot of people around me, it can create or destroy the whole community. That's why I always try to be patient, friendly, welcoming and of course swearing is struck out of my language in that situation.
I recognise jr has put a lot of work into the wiki, but if it's not solving the problem of people repeatedly asking the same questions then it would be better to look at the whole thing more intelligently, rather than just blame those people time and again as they come. There's really two things you can do about that: 1) accept it as a part of the situation, and do like I and Necrophagen have suggested and leave it to others to post answers; 2) recognise that the wiki is prolix and inaccessible to the non-technical student and still needs work, either with a supplementary work outlining Famitracker in non-technical language, or An addition to the wiki itself.
Because, you know, if people repeatedly posting simple questions angers and frustrates you that's no good for you either, and the problem should be addressed for everyone's benefit. It's clear that belligerence hasn't done any good.
I am firmly on Naff_Natty's side on this. Not everybody using FamiTracker is going to immediately understand that "wave position" and "memory position" are the same thing, and the full explanation, while it does clarify this, is not necessarily easy for a nontechnical person to follow. Hell, I've written most of an NSF player from scratch (albeit not one that supports N106) and I'd probably have to read it a couple of times just to be sure I get it.
Don't antagonize every n00b that comes along, especially when the documentation itself isn't crystal clear. Jeez.
