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FamiTracker
I had this idea yesterday when I was starting a song. I wanted to import some of the instruments I had made in a previous FTM because I thought they would work best with the type of song I was making. Only problem is that there's no option to do that, meaning that I'd have to go back, delete all the extras I don't want, then delete the individual settings (but I'm probably the only person who goes out of their way to do that.)
What I'm proposing is a way to select certain instruments from an FTM to import. I was thinking it would be sort of a checkbox (kinda like how importing a file gives you the option to select certain tracks from the FTM,) either as it's separate thing in the toolbar or in the Module Properties, as a option somewhere under the "Import File" button or something (though I don't think an "Import Instruments" button will fit in that space, so Iunno.)
Hopefully, this won't be something too tedious to code in, I think it'd be really useful for those 20-30-some-odd-instrument songs where you only want to carry over a few into another module.
I like this idea, because it would take a lot less time if we're talking about something like 20 instruments or more. It's a bit tedious to deal with that many .FTI files.
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I agree with this. The question would be how easy it is to implement Bari10's idea; it shouldn't be too hard. Either adding check boxes by each instrument icon, or making it possible to select/deselect multiple instruments through CTRL+Left click before clicking on the save instrument button (provided that it's not too difficult to implement the save instrument code to save all the files with a prefix & instrument numbers).
For example, in a 16-instrument module (00 to 0F,) lets say that I want to save instruments 03, 05 & 0B. Instead of saving each file manually & giving each one a name, I could select those 3 instruments (either via check boxes or with CTRL+click,) press the save button, provide the filename prefix "NewFile" & those 3 instruments will each be saved as "NewFile-03.fti," "NewFile-05.fti" & "NewFile-0B.fti" respectively
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Currently the only way to 'import' instruments is to import the whole FTM, untick all the songs but tick the 'include instruments' -- but this results in the instruments being imported en masse, which may not be what you want sometimes.
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Just save your FTIs and load them back into a new module using the "Load instrument" button later?
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Lets say you have an FTM file from someone else (for example, my attachment of tssf's Megaman 10 cover,) or that you've managed to make something similar & want to use that file as a basis for preserving all your instruments. Now, at first glance, you'll see how this attachment's instrument list is a bit of overkill with a total of 63 instruments, but bare with me; this is a pretty good way of preserving all your instruments, without having a huge collection of FTI files sitting around on your drive (i.e.: if you were to ever compose something of this scale with so many instruments, you could preserve this file as a backup of all the instruments you'll possibly ever need in the future).
Now, you know for a fact that you won't be using all the possible instruments contained in such a file for just one single song or even for a general indie game's OST (especially if you're not the original composer); it's possible, but pretty tedious. But then, when it comes to needing a particular set of instruments, what then? It's already tedious enough to search through a file tssf's cover, just to find the individual instrument numbers you want; then comes the time to save each instrument individually into a separate FTI file for use in a new, blank module. Of course you can still import his entire module into your own, but again, you'll have the problem of a huge instrument list that you most likely won't use to its fullest (& possibly need to have the desired instrument numbers documented from the previous search, provided that you haven't memorised them by heart).
Sure, for something as trivial as saving 5 instruments from a list of 16, one can just save the 5 instruments individually (& if you're an original composer making something from scratch with any FTI file set, again, it's up to you to know how each instrument sounds). But, if you want to save 20 random instruments out of a list of 63 just to make something for your own indie game or for a single-song copmpetition (whether or not you're the original composer of such a complex source file,) then I think Bari10's idea would really ease a composer's workflow (at least in the aspect of being able to select the desired instruments & save them all in one shot, by their instrument numbers).
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I still don't see why saving twenty instruments and reloading them is a problem. Beats having to recreate them from scratch, anyway. Besides, the "load instrument" dialog allows batch loading.
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[quote=jrlepage]I still don't see why saving twenty instruments and reloading them is a problem. Beats having to recreate them from scratch, anyway. Besides, the "load instrument" dialog allows batch loading.[/quote]
It's not exactly a "problem", it's just that this skips a few (or more) unnecessary steps.
If you don't want to save instruments as files, you could still reuse them just by loading them from another module.
And in some cases, it could be more preferable if you don't want to take your old module and save it with another name, then removing songs, instruments, sequences (macros or whatever you wanna call these) and other things just to reuse some instruments.
If you don't find the current methods tedious, then OK, that's cool...
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How would it be to save a copy of the file you want to import instruments from, delete the instruments you don't need (and pattern data) and then import it?
I still completely fail to see the difficulty in saving the instruments you want to reuse and batch-loading them back into your new module.
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I guess the point of this suggestion is to cut the step in the middle. You [i]could[/i] save twenty FTI files out from a project and batch load them in, but with this you'd cut out saving each instrument individually and just importing them in directly. It means for faster workflow and I'd see it as a good idea, to be honest.
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