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FamiTracker
Okay, now that I've had some quality time with 0.2.6, here's my mother of all request / bug / suggestion posts. Incredible work. And by the way, I just now noticed the multiple effect column, but it's AMAZING. Hope you'll take the time to read these, as most are fairly simple, but important from a composing standpoint. They just require a lot of explanation.
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[b]Pitch[/b]
Are Pitch sequences broken, or do I just not understand them? [-30 10 10 10 | 0] won't produce a gradual pitch to the root note like it will in MML, it will in fact end up way off the root note and mess up the scale, even though the values all add up to 0. How can we get a "scoop" or other pitch actions at the beginning of the note and end with the note at the original pitch? Seems to be an issue of non-linearity.
Also, is it just me or does the pitch go .. backwards? like 10 seems to decrease the pitch, while -10 increases it.. Generally it seems the pitch envelope doesn't correspond to MML.
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[b]Volume cutoff, part 1[/b]
The way the volume column scales instrument volumes is programmatically correct, but non-musical. Let's say I have an instrument volume script of 12 8 6 5. If I play that with volume 8 (half relative volume), it becomes a very quick staccato note, quickly dropping the volume to the point that it rounds down to 0. Only by playing at volume B can I cause the note to sustain indefinitely. I understand why this happens, but it forces guesswork to create sustained melodic notes - you have to guess what value the absolute volume is currently at.
To "idiotproof" this, I recommend never rounding the volume to zero if a loop point is set in the volume, until the note is explicitly stopped or manually set to zero.
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[b]Volume cutoff, part 2[/b]
To continue on volume: Of course some instruments aren't meant to continue forever. Say I have a script of 15 13 8 6 4 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 0. If I play that in a pattern at volume 8, it will of course hit the zero point much more quickly than if played at full volume. This can be troublesome for dynamic passages where you want to have a series of short notes that vary in volume, but not in length. By altering the pattern volume, you would also be altering the audible length of the notes (although they are technically still playing at volume 0), and that often has unintended (bad) effects.
So I recommend including a "Don't Silence at Low Pattern Volume" checkbox that, when checked, will force the instrument to round up to 1 until the script has reached its last value. In other words, in my above example, the note would play for 11 ticks, even at pattern volume 1 - the hardware volume would be 1 for most of the note, but to the ear it would still have a uniform length, and create the illusion of uniformity.
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[b]Keys[/b]
Is there a key shortcut to set the "step"? Also, the step seems to work when entering notes, but not when navigating with the cursor. Many people are used to having the step affect both note spacing and cursor movement, so we can "play out" rhythms using the down arrow as a "skip". An option for this would be lovely.
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Selectable cursor jump when pressing page up / down - right now it's 4, 16 would be ideal for me but I can't set it.
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It's great that you have "modplug" and "ft2" style column editing, but you should consider making an "IT" style wherein the cursor jumps after COMPLETELY editing any field - i.e. both digits of instrument, or both digits of effect. In other words, to create
G01
G02
G01
G02
G01
G02
I would hit the following key sequence: GGGGGG [up x 6] 010201020102 - Since this example is only a one-digit value, I know FT2 mode would work fine on it.. But there are many other instances in which it's faster to be able to enter a two-digit value and then auto-skip, but not the letter as well.
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Finally, this is a pain in the ass request, but probably the most important to me, after note delay, and I'd be unbelievably grateful for it:
Key shortcut editor or layout file, and more shortcuts for common operations.. I'd speed up by about 300% if I could set my own key shortcuts to those I use in IT. Even just an INI text file or something for which we could create layouts by hand, and a couple of option checkboxes for tracker-specific behaviors like switching octaves with two keys for "up" and "down" instead of F2-F9. :)
In general, the less I have to use a mouse while composing, the better..
Additional keyboard shortcuts I'd like to see:
- Mix pasted notes
- Solo current channel
- Mute current channel
- Select entire pattern (perhaps 2x Ctrl+A)
- Value Gradient (write interpolated values between the beginning and end of a selection, like:
0
-
-
-
-
A
would become
0
2
4
6
8
A
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Anyway, I'm truly loving 0.2.6, I can't wait to really start using it. I keep falling back on trusty IT because it's so comfortable and fast, but with more useful keys and these few more "comfort tweaks" I'd be able to customize this to my own habits and write real NSFs just as quickly. Thanks again for your damn fine work!
Thanks for the extensive list!
Most of it appears fast to fix so it should not take long time. With a possible exception for the shortcut editor, but I'll definitely give it a try.
The pitch effect seems to be broken by the way, as it should behave as you said. Strange I've not noticed it earlier.
The rest seems to be clear though.
I'll download IT and see if I can get any ideas from it.
Woot!
Still, I'd be just as happy with a textfile until you make an editor I read through the code last night and saw how the keys and shortcuts are handled, so I know it won't be a 30 second job to go back and make them consistent/generic.
If you try IT, don't download IT itself unless you have Windows 98 or earlier, and a Soundblaster or GUS - The much more modern, portable near-1:1 interface clone Schism Tracker (http://nimh.org/schism) actually runs on SDL so you can experience IT without using Dosbox or messing with emulated audio drivers.
I got IT to work under Dosbox, but Schism Tracker seems to be a better option indeed.
The shortcuts are right now handled through the built in accelerator table, but I'll find a way around it.
I would easily drop the MFC lib for SDL if I would do the thing again, but I didn't know better back then. (Heh)
I love to hear that you're working on the tracker, implenting new stuff etc. Perhaps you could write some kind of WIP report/blogg and publish on the site. Something like:
"2006-10-28 00:29 Today I have been working with blabla. Great news, it seems to work great, blabla..."
Things has been progressing slowly the past few days so I decided to upload what I've done this far.
(I'll begin a WIP thread later.)
Volume cutoff is fixed, it will always round off to 1 unless it should stop.
The step setting now works when moving the cursor, page up/page down is settable in the option box and an Impulse Tracker option is available.
Other news are numpad keys 0-9 to select instrument 0-9 and Ctrl + Numpad to set the step.
And there is also a shortcut editor in the option box now. It has a few items (like solo channel, next/prev octave) but I'll keep adding more.
Well, there's still things left (pitch setting for example) so I'll keep the updates coming!
[quote=jsr]The step setting now works when moving the cursor[/quote]
Great work, I see the point, but is there a way to disable this function in the configuration. Cause I'd rather not have it this way...
I've noticed that the keyhandling let's me play really fast now, thanks for fixing that. I haven't tried with MIDI keyboard yet, but I guess it works with that to!
But hey! I found a new bug in this area (sorry!!!). Make an intrument with volume "15 13 12 9 6 " or anything that doesn't end with 0. Play a little with it, seems to work just fine, fast and everything. Keys responds an all. But try this: Press "N" (A-3 or what you have the octave set to). Then keep holding down that "N" button then press "Y" (A-4). Keep pressing the both buttons down. It plays A-4 and everything seems just fine. But when you release the "N" button and still keeps pressing the "Y" button, the "Y" button is retriggerd, and the volume envelope is restarted... I tried 0.2.5 and there it worked, and I could play fast aswell.
I hope you understand my description, otherwise I will take it in Swedish.
The volume cutoff bug seems to have been fixed...when playing the .ftm files everything sounds perfect. But when you export to .nsf, it looks like the volume cuts off.
Example. Megaman3.ftm on the chiptune upload server, under "browse files", then "tadpole".
http://2a03.free.fr/
Sounds nice when you play the .ftm but the .nsf is messed up.
I read through the code last night and saw how the keys and shortcuts are handled, so I know it won't be a 30 second job to go back and make them consistent/generic.
