Release FastTracker 2 Clone

[Farox]

Hi!
just released the lastest recompile of the Fast Tracker 2 clone by Olav Sorensen.

FastTracker 2 is a music tracker originally created by Fredrik "Mr. H" Huss and Magnus "Vogue" Hogdahl, this clone is partly based on the original FT2 source code for DOS (coded in Pascal and Assembler), but is re-implemented using C and SDL2 for more portability on modern platform.

This program was requested some time ago, but initially was not mature and slow (on Pandora), now with the release of beta 108, the replay/mixing code has improved so much (by the author) that is really usable.

Anyway my test was very short, if you have time feel free to test.

Included in PND is the sources and the songs released by the original PC package, my advice is to listen the song "Alertia.xm" one of the best XM modules composed (for me) i really love this song.

The program run in fullscreen...windowed mode is not usable, you can play with config options but if you do something wrong you can always press ESC (Fn+q) and press Enter to exit. To recover the working config just delete the /appdata/fastracker2clone/.config directory and rerun the PND.

Here https://16-bits.org/ft2.php is the page of the author if you need the program for PC (Win32/64, Linux, OSX).

vers 1.01: The program is now at release 1 (no more beta).

Beta 130: Audio channel mixer optimizations, Big code cleanup, Fixed some bugs. Some NEW songs added.

Beta 119: Some mixer speedup, Support loading .MODs with odd channel numbers (1,3,5..31), Fixed crash when loading .STMs with empty patterns.

Beta 116:Show beta version in "About" screen, Reverted "About" screen back to FT2 style
Rewrote the .MOD saver, Fixed bugs with the song start/stop position buttons in the WAV recorder screen.
Reset global volume to 64 when pressing "Stop", and when WAV recording is done
Fixed some possible thread race condition issues on close, Various MIDI fixes.

Beta 112 release have this changes:
Scopes are now done with fixed-point arithmetics instead of floating-point.
Some small security fixes. Code cleanup.
Linear interpolation is now done with 16-bit fractional precision instead of 15-bit.
Note Eb (in flat notes mode) was wrongly displayed as Db.

Beta 108 release the author fixed the playback counter. Also i used -Ofast on compilation.
Beta 106 release: first release of PND.

Pandora port run with the help of GL4ES library of ptitSeb.

 

[ptitSeb]

Nice!

It works very well, and the screen fits the Pandora screen very nicely

 

[shaddim]

Nice!

It works very well, and the screen fits the Pandora screen very nicely

I think this is the beauty of software from the 90s. They were optimized for screen resolutions and CPU/memory similar or even lower than the Pandora, so they are potentially a good fit for the Pandora. So, open sourcing old software makes big sense!

 

[ptitSeb]

I think this is the beauty of software from the 90s. They were optimized for screen resolutions and CPU/memory similar or even lower than the Pandora, so they are a potential a good fit for the Pandora. So, open sourcing old software makes big sense!

Yep.

Look at this:

Isn't that lovely

 

[Farox]

I have contacted the author aboout the lenght of the songs, and is saying that the songs are playing fine but it was an error with the playback counter that is displayed on screen...and it look to release a fix soon.

 

[FBnil]

I know SpaceDebris.mod by heart. No artifacts heared. I had no love for FT2, I'm still from the IT (Impulse Tracker) camp . Still, nice port/rewrite. The bar stopped moving for a while, the music kept playing. So I guess it's still a heavy app for the Pandy. Yes, too heavy still:
Playing some instruments (one note at the time... had to wait a few seconds and it plays all notes together (careful: adds the soundwaves together, increasing the volume).

Thanks for the memories Farox. Nice selection of mod's included Now listening....


Sounds so much better than on my old soundcard... no hiss... Pandora's soundmixing and low noise is amazing. I learned to decompose the sound layering with trackers.

 

[8bitbubsy]

I know SpaceDebris.mod by heart. No artifacts heared.

Except for the muddy sound as a result from linear interpolation, in opposite to clear high-bandwidth (3.54MHz) audio on the Amiga.

Playing some instruments (one note at the time... had to wait a few seconds and it plays all notes together (careful: adds the soundwaves together, increasing the volume).

This could very well be related to the instrument having an envelope where the amplitude is low for a long time, then it suddenly releases. Especially on buggy envelopes. I know alertia.xm has some quirky instrument envelopes.
Does it do the same on the instruments in "space debris.mod"?

 

[FBnil]

Amiga.

Well, went from C64->C128D->XT->386->etc so I skipped Amiga and started with S3M on 386... so you are telling me there is a world of the difference?

For the second, hold-on, the software does not like to be sleept... ok. No, no problems with mods. Yes, could be bad instruments. alertio.xm plays clean (tried to reproduce after rebooting Pandy... unable to reproduce now. But still trying...)

Eternity has a bug at the end (where it loops fast between 2 patterns).
I retraced my steps, played nibbles, listened to the songs until they start over again... nothing yet.
However, now the Pandora is rebooted, while the first time, it had not been rebooted for at least 2 days, and VLC was playing audiobooks for hours. I also enabled/disabled the usb to download this software, so thats quite a lot extra if I want to retrace exact steps. For now, very stable, no artifacts, perfect sound... I love it.

One hour in. Unable to reproduce. Giving up.

 

[shaddim]

. so you are telling me there is a world of the difference?

Beside the point that you missed the "Best homecomputer ever made"TM , this is a long running joke about an Amiga 500 hardware bug where an active/non-active Power LED switched unintentional an audiofilter on/off

http://www.polynominal.com/commodore-amiga/amiga-filter-paula.htm

PS: thanks to 8bitbubsy for the clone! Did you managed to contact both original authors for the permission and code?

 

[8bitbubsy]

a long running joke about an Amiga 500 hardware bug where an active/non-active Power LED switched unintentional an audiofilter on/off

Huh? Never heard about stability issues with the "LED"-filter. The "LED"-filter is horrible and should always be turned off, in my opinion. Also Amiga 1200 is the best when it comes to audio because the static 4.21kHz low-pass filter (on all Amigas) has been tuned to around ~28kHz instead, so that no human-audible content has been filtered away.

PS: thanks to 8bitbubsy for the clone! Did you managed to contact both original authors for the permission and code?

Yes I did, and I also received the FT2 source code from them (which I am not allowed to share).

 

[Farox]

Update to beta 108 done, look on first post to download.

Also Welcome to 8bitbubsy (its the author of the FT2 clone).
Thanks for the fixed playback counter.

 

[FBnil]

"Best homecomputer ever made"TM

Wow... I did not know that was possible! Amazing, this is as a amazing as the singing drive applications that made your harddrive squeak...
As for best homecomputer, I nominate C64. Lovely petscii and SID for the creative. It's not like the Amiga console could keep CBM afloat (the hackers that could do magic with it came much later, but by then, the PC had won). It's also a bit shady around the Commodore ST and Atari Amiga swaparound due to Tramiel. Can't find the what-if video, but this one explains it well enough.

 

[TrashyMG]

@FBnil - Don't think much could have kept CBM afloat, bad management drove the company to the ground. If the Commodore UK was running things that may have been a different story.

 

[levi]

Nice, I wish my Pandora was still operational so that I could test this out. Also 6 channel mods? I was only aware of the old 4 track mods and later 8 track ones which fitted the Archimedes sound chip.

 

[ptitSeb]

It's an 8 channels, look at the scroll bar in the bottom of the screen to get 7 and 8.

 

[8bitbubsy]

FT2 supports even channel numbers ranging from 2..32 for XM/MOD.

 

[ClockworkCoder]

I would love to use this on the Pyra when I get mine

 

[Farox]

I would love to use this on the Pyra when I get mine

Sure...when I get mine, is a pretty simple recompile using the correct options. Hope the audio hardware would be amazing like on the Pandora.

 

[Farox]

New updated release see first post.

 

[Farox]

New updated release (Beta 116 now), see first post.