5 ms·

Fasttracker II clone in C using SDL 2

153 points by andsoitis 3mo ago

cmicali 3mo ago
Very cool - can’t wait to try it. I made an impulse tracker clone for MIDI years ago that also uses SDL, though a mix of C and C++. It has been picked back up for dev again recently and we’re making good progress. https://github.com/m6502/ztrackerprime https://github.com/m6502/ztrackerprime The world could use more trackers. I’m really hoping the upcoming ableton live extension api will allow for direct access to the piano roll. I suspect many people include myself will use it to make tracker interfaces for ableton.
- Teknomadix 3mo ago
  Renoise Redux is already shipping a feature complete tracker you can easily run in Ableton or Bitwig.
  - gbraad 3mo ago
    A VST is not similar to what the Live extension can do. I use redux, but it is always a slightly less integrated experience, as the extension, but extensions at the moment are also not fully featured yet. In short, both have a purpose. I also converted some of my tools to both, by either writing actual MIDI data into Ableton, and otherwise, be controlled by the DAW as a VST; I work on Regroove, which is a Protracker and (Octa)MED replayed library, which can convert from and to several other formats and can be used even in a Drumlogue to playback a .mod as a groovebox like use, with looping, etc.
  - cmicali 3mo ago
    Renoise is great, but there's usually some compromise like using the tracker/vst's built-in sampler instead an integrated instrument (like Ableton's Drum Rack) or another VST (soft synth, etc) Basically, what gbraad said.
- gbraad 3mo ago
  Nice, will have a look. And yes, trackers are great tools and with a bit of integration, like program change message, they can even provide this experience to MIDI. I use a bunch of tools I created for music making, live performance etc. trackers are almost always at the center of this for me.
vkaku 3mo ago
Really cool stuff. Would you be working on a port of rtmidi in pure C? :)
tosti 3mo ago
MilkyTracker exists and that uses SDL too
- rzzzt 3mo ago
  Schism Tracker as well: https://github.com/schismtracker/schismtracker/ https://github.com/schismtracker/schismtracker/
  - Benanov 3mo ago
    Schism Tracker is based off Impulse Tracker, and as such it isn't a ProTracker successor per se as the user interface is different. It's absolutely a tracker, and absolutely part of the demoscene and quite a capable piece of software - but if you have the muscle memory for ProTracker (or FastTracker 2, as I do) keyboard shortcuts, it is not the same. MilkyTracker does have an option for FT2-style shortcuts.
jeffalyanak 3mo ago
He also has a fantastic ProTracker clone as well as a bug fixed version of the Amiga ProTracker. Together, they make for a great way to write Amiga tunes that you can still edit and playback on real hardware.
hncsiocp9x 3mo ago
[dead]
rustfreeforme 3mo ago
[flagged]
- glouwbug 3mo ago
  Because often times you don't need browser grade systems infrastructure to make something like an impulse tracker
tomduncalf 3mo ago
This rocks. Such nostalgia. FT2 was how I discovered anything about music making - I loved the euro dance music I heard on the radio as a 12 year old but had no idea about the scene or how electronic music was was made. PC Format had FT2 plus hundreds of modules on its cover CD one month, I used to love exploring all the random stuff on there and opened it up and my mind was blown when I realised that there was music like I heard on the radio, but you could see all the individual bits that made it up. It took a loooot of messing around to figure out how to do anything of value with it, pretty sure this was before we had internet at home, but it was the start of a life long fascination with electronic music making. So thank you to the author for resurrecting this amazing and somewhat esoteric bit of software!
laladrik 3mo ago
SDL3 has been around for 1.5 years. I can't help but wonder about the choice of SDL2 over it. I started using SDL from its 3rd version. Don't I know about some advantages of SDL2?
- RodgerTheGreat 3mo ago
  The changelog for this project dates back to 2019, well before SDL3 was available. SDL2 supports some older platforms that SDL3 has deprecated. If you value running on those deprecated platforms and/or you don't need any of the features introduced since SDL3, it's quite reasonable to stick with SDL2.
  - rzzzt 3mo ago
    Not sure when the switchover happened, but IIRC I started out with SDL2 on Homebrew and recently got this compatbility shim instead when it updated: https://github.com/libsdl-org/sdl2-compat https://github.com/libsdl-org/sdl2-compat
    - RodgerTheGreat 3mo ago
      I don't have an extremely high opinion of sdl2-compat specifically because my SDL2-based projects have had several bizarre bug reports which originated in downstream packages presuming they could use this "compatibility layer" instead of the actual dependency I develop and test against.
- neonz80 3mo ago
  The first version of the FT2 clone was released 7 years ago.
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
eps 3mo ago
How does FT2 relate to the ScreamTracker? The latter had a printer port output option that, combined with 10 resistors and 5 minutes of soldering, yielded proper sound on any standalone speaker. In the era of chip tunes and inaccessible SoundBlaster cards, it was nothing short of magic. * The adapter was a DIY version of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covox_Speech_Thing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covox_Speech_Thing
- rzzzt 3mo ago
  Tell us about the great Sound Blaster shortage! I thought they threw one after you each time you left a PC parts shop. (Could be a different time period.) The GUS on the other hand...
  - Benanov 3mo ago
    Honestly by 1995/1996 or so yeah you could find SoundBlaster cards everywhere and anywhere...but if you wanted a GUS you were basically having to plunk down a lot of cash. Maybe SoundBlaster being short was a little earlier? I didn't have a PC before 1995, so... By early 2000 you were seeing a lot of Ensoniq and other sort of "Windows Sound Source" crap in most consumer-grade PCs and if you wanted an AWE32 or AWE64 you had to specify you wanted a good sound card.
    - rzzzt 3mo ago
      I had a Crystal Semiconductor-based clone card that supported the SB Pro 2.0 features around that time.
    - Teknomadix 3mo ago
      Um, no. Let's set the record straight. Creative bought Ensoniq in '98 for just shy of $78 million, so by early 2000 the "Ensoniq crap" shipping in OEM boxes was Creative's own product. The AudioPCI ES1370/ES1371 got rebadged as the Sound Blaster PCI64 and PCI128. Creative had already absorbed E-mu Systems in '93, and the EMU8000 on the AWE32/AWE64 was E-mu silicon. Both of these American sampler houses ended up under the Creative Labs roof, so framing Ensoniq as the cheap alternative to Creative in 2000 is totally backwards. Ensoniq was just the volume tier of Creative's own lineup. You're off on the timeline. AWE32 is '94, AWE64 is '96, both were ISA. By early 2000 those were legacy cards on a dying bus architecture, and the enthusiast ask was a SB Live! with the EMU10K1, or an Aureal Vortex 2 if you cared about A3D and had deep pockets. Specifying an AWE64 in 2000 would have gotten you an obsolete card. Also the term is Windows Sound System, the Microsoft AD1848/CS4231 codec standard, and AudioPCI is not a WSS part. It has its own PCI driver stack with legacy SB emulation bolted on, and it genuinely sucked, ran its wavetable in host CPU and system RAM off the ECW patch sets rather than dedicated hardware, and its DOS Sound Blaster emulation was mediocre compared to a cheap ISA card. Ensoniq was an amazing engineering powerhouse before the demise. In late 1994 I got an Ensoniq Soundscape, at the time it was the most high-end wavetable card built around their OTTO chip (EPS-16+/ASR10), which I believe was a descendant of the Apple IIGS DOC, and it competed at the time with the Roland SCC-1 and the GUS.
dintech 3mo ago
Someone also released an extension of this project but as a VST plugin, so you can integrate it with your modern DAW. https://github.com/juho/ft2-plugin https://github.com/juho/ft2-plugin
- wartywhoa23 3mo ago
  Woot!? The project website link in the repository leads to Blamstrain's bandcamp - that's Juho Hietala, a Finnish musician whose album "Disfold" is among top ambient / dub techno albums of all times for me, in line with Fluxion - Vibrant Forms I/II, G.R.I.T. - Expanse and Yagya - Will I Dream During The Process? Now, he also turns out to be a programmer, which I didn't know, and that he ported a clone of my fondly beloved FT2 to a VST plugin is just such a double hit! Juho, if you happen to read this - thank you so much, man!!
lysace 3mo ago
It's unfortunate that the Turbo Pascal (with inline X86 asm) source code of FT2 written by Vogue and Mr H hasn't been released after all these years. It's so seminal to so many people from that era. If I were to guess, they found the quality of the code too embarrassing, years later - they were kind of kids when they wrote it. I did see that they (supposedly) shared the source with someone on Vogons for the purpose of minor updates/bugfixes.
omoikane 3mo ago
I am glad they also cloned the snake game. https://github.com/8bitbubsy/ft2-clone/blob/master/src/ft2_nibbles.c https://github.com/8bitbubsy/ft2-clone/blob/master/src/ft2_n...
wartywhoa23 3mo ago
To slightly rephrase Gary Fisher: Anyone who has fond memories of FT2 is a friend of mine! Kudos to everyone sharing a wealth of information about FT2 and other trackers and audio hardware of that time in this discussion :) This is the HN I adore.
- drummojg 3mo ago
  I might have 1 or 2 compositions in backup that I could load up...amazing! I love it too.
Razengan 3mo ago
Tracker music and 1990s video game music needs to make a comeback in general. Why is game music so boring and same-sounding nowadays? That damn wannabe-Hollywood-bug with the faux-orchestras and shit. Just listen to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FA95o7RNjqA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FA95o7RNjqA That's for a freakin SHOP scene, a single screen of static UI. And THIS!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGe3gP9VY9A&list=PL8FB3519874861B25 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGe3gP9VY9A&list=PL8FB351987... What's the last memorable game OST you can recall? I can only think of Elden Ring.
- montag 3mo ago
  I agree. The limitations forced composers to be economical and creative. As for modern OSTs, I like VA-11Hall-A. Never played it though
  - otabdeveloper4 3mo ago
    PCs and consoles back in the day used to have actual hardware synthesizers to play music. (Wild!) Synthesizers are real musical instruments, so game designers actually had to compose and arrange musical pieces for them! Today it's just pre-recorded sounds, nobody needs to actually craft special game music. P.S. Having a dedicated synthesizer instrument isn't a limitation. It was a cost-saving measure back at the time, but it's a special separate custom chip that we don't get to have anymore.
- metroholografix 3mo ago
  There are some great remixes to Kenny Chow's legendary intro to the amazing "One Must Fall 2097" that manage to retain and enhance the tracker feel: - Original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ixf_NfKjXkA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ixf_NfKjXkA - Chow's own remix: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvlVaQl7kEk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvlVaQl7kEk - SIDNIFY: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3Jf4i4jG4U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3Jf4i4jG4U The original Deus Ex also had some great tracker music.
- egypturnash 3mo ago
  Oh darling. Stop playing AAA games, start playing real games from teams small enough to make unsafe choices. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD6ujQ0tHAv2qLS5FKH6B8MjtfEg1kwsn https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD6ujQ0tHAv2qLS5FKH6B... - chopped beats, glitched words, everything you would expect in a love letter to Jet Set Radio https://halberball.bandcamp.com/album/fragrance-point-soundtrack https://halberball.bandcamp.com/album/fragrance-point-soundt... - absolutely perfect noises for a game that looks like a 90s rave flier https://supergiantgames.bandcamp.com/album/hades-original-soundtrack https://supergiantgames.bandcamp.com/album/hades-original-so..., https://supergiantgames.bandcamp.com/album/hades-ii-original-soundtrack https://supergiantgames.bandcamp.com/album/hades-ii-original... - hades and its sequel shifts seamlessly between lutey-flutey strumming, hard rock, ballads, and sets the heck out of its mood https://momojams.bandcamp.com/album/flipwitch-original-game-soundtrack https://momojams.bandcamp.com/album/flipwitch-original-game-... - this horny metroidvania can fit so many electro-swing bangers in it https://blackpantsgamestudio.bandcamp.com/album/tiny-big-soundtrack https://blackpantsgamestudio.bandcamp.com/album/tiny-big-sou... - sideways grooves and gloriously self-indulgent prog https://polybius-ost.bandcamp.com/album/polybius-the-original-soundtrack https://polybius-ost.bandcamp.com/album/polybius-the-origina... - so much blissful techno to stare fixedly at blinking lights to, while the Welsh wizard who wrote it repeatedly insists that you are not being programmed by this experience in any way
nuc1e0n 3mo ago
Why SDL 2 and not SDL 3? Was the project started before SDL 3 was released?
- bananaboy 3mo ago
  This was started quite a few years ago
teo_zero 3mo ago
Does anybody know why the site is called 16-bits? Aren't trackers an expression of the first 32-bit computers?
- selcuka 3mo ago
  Fasttracker II was a 32-bit DOS executable, but trackers in general (and the MOD/XM formats) were born [1] during 16-bit Commodore Amiga era. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Soundtracker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Soundtracker
  - teo_zero 3mo ago
    > 16-bit Commodore Amiga era The Motorola 68000 was a 32-bit processor. What Commodore Amiga was 16 bits?
    - georgemcbay 3mo ago
      > The Motorola 68000 was a 32-bit processor. ... but not entirely. The registers were 32-bit but the ALU and data bus were 16-bit. The 68020 was the first 68k chip that was 32-bit without having to qualify exceptions for different parts of the architecture.
    - selcuka 3mo ago
      Fair enough. As someone who was alive in the 80s, I remember first generation home computers (ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 etc) were (correctly) called 8-bit, and the second gen (Amiga, Atari ST) were colloquially called 16-bit. The CPU was 32-bit but the earlier Amigas (A1000, A500) and STs had 16-bit data buses. That was probably why.
- myself248 3mo ago
  My favorite mod player. Galaxy 2.12 (GLX212.ZIP on Simtel et al), runs on 8086's just fine.
piperflatline 3mo ago
Love FT2! I did some PlayStation/N64 soundtrack stuff (known if you know) and released a few "albums" with it back in the 90s (essentially unknown). These days I use FL Studio but I'm always wanting in many ways to go back to tracking. Renoise is pretty cool but I do miss FT2, and yeah as someone mentioned there's also MilkyTracker. Annnnnnd... now I want to go track something.
- gbraad 3mo ago
  > known if you know ?
boneskull 3mo ago
here’s a terrible MOD I adapted from sheet music ca. 1994 (best guess). I have no idea why this is on the internet. https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&query=60490 https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&qu...
persephonex 3mo ago
What a nostalgia. I make Finnish dance chart track back in 98 with ft2 and Soundblaster.. those were the days.

153 points by andsoitis 3mo ago

Very cool - can’t wait to try it. I made an impulse tracker clone for MIDI years ago that also uses SDL, though a mix of C and C++. It has been picked back up for dev again recently and we’re making good progress. https://github.com/m6502/ztrackerprime https://github.com/m6502/ztrackerprime The world could use more trackers. I’m really hoping the upcoming ableton live extension api will allow for direct access to the piano roll. I suspect many people include myself will use it to make tracker interfaces for ableton.

Teknomadix 3mo ago
Renoise Redux is already shipping a feature complete tracker you can easily run in Ableton or Bitwig.
- gbraad 3mo ago
  A VST is not similar to what the Live extension can do. I use redux, but it is always a slightly less integrated experience, as the extension, but extensions at the moment are also not fully featured yet. In short, both have a purpose. I also converted some of my tools to both, by either writing actual MIDI data into Ableton, and otherwise, be controlled by the DAW as a VST; I work on Regroove, which is a Protracker and (Octa)MED replayed library, which can convert from and to several other formats and can be used even in a Drumlogue to playback a .mod as a groovebox like use, with looping, etc.
- cmicali 3mo ago
  Renoise is great, but there's usually some compromise like using the tracker/vst's built-in sampler instead an integrated instrument (like Ableton's Drum Rack) or another VST (soft synth, etc) Basically, what gbraad said.
gbraad 3mo ago
Nice, will have a look. And yes, trackers are great tools and with a bit of integration, like program change message, they can even provide this experience to MIDI. I use a bunch of tools I created for music making, live performance etc. trackers are almost always at the center of this for me.

vkaku 3mo ago

Really cool stuff. Would you be working on a port of rtmidi in pure C? :)

tosti 3mo ago

MilkyTracker exists and that uses SDL too

rzzzt 3mo ago
Schism Tracker as well: https://github.com/schismtracker/schismtracker/ https://github.com/schismtracker/schismtracker/
- Benanov 3mo ago
  Schism Tracker is based off Impulse Tracker, and as such it isn't a ProTracker successor per se as the user interface is different. It's absolutely a tracker, and absolutely part of the demoscene and quite a capable piece of software - but if you have the muscle memory for ProTracker (or FastTracker 2, as I do) keyboard shortcuts, it is not the same. MilkyTracker does have an option for FT2-style shortcuts.

jeffalyanak 3mo ago

He also has a fantastic ProTracker clone as well as a bug fixed version of the Amiga ProTracker. Together, they make for a great way to write Amiga tunes that you can still edit and playback on real hardware.

hncsiocp9x 3mo ago

[dead]

rustfreeforme 3mo ago

[flagged]

glouwbug 3mo ago
Because often times you don't need browser grade systems infrastructure to make something like an impulse tracker

tomduncalf 3mo ago

This rocks. Such nostalgia. FT2 was how I discovered anything about music making - I loved the euro dance music I heard on the radio as a 12 year old but had no idea about the scene or how electronic music was was made. PC Format had FT2 plus hundreds of modules on its cover CD one month, I used to love exploring all the random stuff on there and opened it up and my mind was blown when I realised that there was music like I heard on the radio, but you could see all the individual bits that made it up. It took a loooot of messing around to figure out how to do anything of value with it, pretty sure this was before we had internet at home, but it was the start of a life long fascination with electronic music making. So thank you to the author for resurrecting this amazing and somewhat esoteric bit of software!

laladrik 3mo ago

SDL3 has been around for 1.5 years. I can't help but wonder about the choice of SDL2 over it. I started using SDL from its 3rd version. Don't I know about some advantages of SDL2?

RodgerTheGreat 3mo ago
The changelog for this project dates back to 2019, well before SDL3 was available. SDL2 supports some older platforms that SDL3 has deprecated. If you value running on those deprecated platforms and/or you don't need any of the features introduced since SDL3, it's quite reasonable to stick with SDL2.
- rzzzt 3mo ago
  Not sure when the switchover happened, but IIRC I started out with SDL2 on Homebrew and recently got this compatbility shim instead when it updated: https://github.com/libsdl-org/sdl2-compat https://github.com/libsdl-org/sdl2-compat
  - RodgerTheGreat 3mo ago
    I don't have an extremely high opinion of sdl2-compat specifically because my SDL2-based projects have had several bizarre bug reports which originated in downstream packages presuming they could use this "compatibility layer" instead of the actual dependency I develop and test against.
neonz80 3mo ago
The first version of the FT2 clone was released 7 years ago.
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]

eps 3mo ago

How does FT2 relate to the ScreamTracker? The latter had a printer port output option that, combined with 10 resistors and 5 minutes of soldering, yielded proper sound on any standalone speaker. In the era of chip tunes and inaccessible SoundBlaster cards, it was nothing short of magic. * The adapter was a DIY version of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covox_Speech_Thing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covox_Speech_Thing

rzzzt 3mo ago
Tell us about the great Sound Blaster shortage! I thought they threw one after you each time you left a PC parts shop. (Could be a different time period.) The GUS on the other hand...
- Benanov 3mo ago
  Honestly by 1995/1996 or so yeah you could find SoundBlaster cards everywhere and anywhere...but if you wanted a GUS you were basically having to plunk down a lot of cash. Maybe SoundBlaster being short was a little earlier? I didn't have a PC before 1995, so... By early 2000 you were seeing a lot of Ensoniq and other sort of "Windows Sound Source" crap in most consumer-grade PCs and if you wanted an AWE32 or AWE64 you had to specify you wanted a good sound card.
  - rzzzt 3mo ago
    I had a Crystal Semiconductor-based clone card that supported the SB Pro 2.0 features around that time.
  - Teknomadix 3mo ago
    Um, no. Let's set the record straight. Creative bought Ensoniq in '98 for just shy of $78 million, so by early 2000 the "Ensoniq crap" shipping in OEM boxes was Creative's own product. The AudioPCI ES1370/ES1371 got rebadged as the Sound Blaster PCI64 and PCI128. Creative had already absorbed E-mu Systems in '93, and the EMU8000 on the AWE32/AWE64 was E-mu silicon. Both of these American sampler houses ended up under the Creative Labs roof, so framing Ensoniq as the cheap alternative to Creative in 2000 is totally backwards. Ensoniq was just the volume tier of Creative's own lineup. You're off on the timeline. AWE32 is '94, AWE64 is '96, both were ISA. By early 2000 those were legacy cards on a dying bus architecture, and the enthusiast ask was a SB Live! with the EMU10K1, or an Aureal Vortex 2 if you cared about A3D and had deep pockets. Specifying an AWE64 in 2000 would have gotten you an obsolete card. Also the term is Windows Sound System, the Microsoft AD1848/CS4231 codec standard, and AudioPCI is not a WSS part. It has its own PCI driver stack with legacy SB emulation bolted on, and it genuinely sucked, ran its wavetable in host CPU and system RAM off the ECW patch sets rather than dedicated hardware, and its DOS Sound Blaster emulation was mediocre compared to a cheap ISA card. Ensoniq was an amazing engineering powerhouse before the demise. In late 1994 I got an Ensoniq Soundscape, at the time it was the most high-end wavetable card built around their OTTO chip (EPS-16+/ASR10), which I believe was a descendant of the Apple IIGS DOC, and it competed at the time with the Roland SCC-1 and the GUS.

dintech 3mo ago

Someone also released an extension of this project but as a VST plugin, so you can integrate it with your modern DAW. https://github.com/juho/ft2-plugin https://github.com/juho/ft2-plugin

wartywhoa23 3mo ago
Woot!? The project website link in the repository leads to Blamstrain's bandcamp - that's Juho Hietala, a Finnish musician whose album "Disfold" is among top ambient / dub techno albums of all times for me, in line with Fluxion - Vibrant Forms I/II, G.R.I.T. - Expanse and Yagya - Will I Dream During The Process? Now, he also turns out to be a programmer, which I didn't know, and that he ported a clone of my fondly beloved FT2 to a VST plugin is just such a double hit! Juho, if you happen to read this - thank you so much, man!!

lysace 3mo ago

It's unfortunate that the Turbo Pascal (with inline X86 asm) source code of FT2 written by Vogue and Mr H hasn't been released after all these years. It's so seminal to so many people from that era. If I were to guess, they found the quality of the code too embarrassing, years later - they were kind of kids when they wrote it. I did see that they (supposedly) shared the source with someone on Vogons for the purpose of minor updates/bugfixes.

omoikane 3mo ago

I am glad they also cloned the snake game. https://github.com/8bitbubsy/ft2-clone/blob/master/src/ft2_nibbles.c https://github.com/8bitbubsy/ft2-clone/blob/master/src/ft2_n...

wartywhoa23 3mo ago

To slightly rephrase Gary Fisher: Anyone who has fond memories of FT2 is a friend of mine! Kudos to everyone sharing a wealth of information about FT2 and other trackers and audio hardware of that time in this discussion :) This is the HN I adore.

drummojg 3mo ago
I might have 1 or 2 compositions in backup that I could load up...amazing! I love it too.

Razengan 3mo ago

Tracker music and 1990s video game music needs to make a comeback in general. Why is game music so boring and same-sounding nowadays? That damn wannabe-Hollywood-bug with the faux-orchestras and shit. Just listen to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FA95o7RNjqA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FA95o7RNjqA That's for a freakin SHOP scene, a single screen of static UI. And THIS!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGe3gP9VY9A&list=PL8FB3519874861B25 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGe3gP9VY9A&list=PL8FB351987... What's the last memorable game OST you can recall? I can only think of Elden Ring.

montag 3mo ago
I agree. The limitations forced composers to be economical and creative. As for modern OSTs, I like VA-11Hall-A. Never played it though
- otabdeveloper4 3mo ago
  PCs and consoles back in the day used to have actual hardware synthesizers to play music. (Wild!) Synthesizers are real musical instruments, so game designers actually had to compose and arrange musical pieces for them! Today it's just pre-recorded sounds, nobody needs to actually craft special game music. P.S. Having a dedicated synthesizer instrument isn't a limitation. It was a cost-saving measure back at the time, but it's a special separate custom chip that we don't get to have anymore.
metroholografix 3mo ago
There are some great remixes to Kenny Chow's legendary intro to the amazing "One Must Fall 2097" that manage to retain and enhance the tracker feel: - Original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ixf_NfKjXkA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ixf_NfKjXkA - Chow's own remix: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvlVaQl7kEk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvlVaQl7kEk - SIDNIFY: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3Jf4i4jG4U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3Jf4i4jG4U The original Deus Ex also had some great tracker music.
egypturnash 3mo ago
Oh darling. Stop playing AAA games, start playing real games from teams small enough to make unsafe choices. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD6ujQ0tHAv2qLS5FKH6B8MjtfEg1kwsn https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD6ujQ0tHAv2qLS5FKH6B... - chopped beats, glitched words, everything you would expect in a love letter to Jet Set Radio https://halberball.bandcamp.com/album/fragrance-point-soundtrack https://halberball.bandcamp.com/album/fragrance-point-soundt... - absolutely perfect noises for a game that looks like a 90s rave flier https://supergiantgames.bandcamp.com/album/hades-original-soundtrack https://supergiantgames.bandcamp.com/album/hades-original-so..., https://supergiantgames.bandcamp.com/album/hades-ii-original-soundtrack https://supergiantgames.bandcamp.com/album/hades-ii-original... - hades and its sequel shifts seamlessly between lutey-flutey strumming, hard rock, ballads, and sets the heck out of its mood https://momojams.bandcamp.com/album/flipwitch-original-game-soundtrack https://momojams.bandcamp.com/album/flipwitch-original-game-... - this horny metroidvania can fit so many electro-swing bangers in it https://blackpantsgamestudio.bandcamp.com/album/tiny-big-soundtrack https://blackpantsgamestudio.bandcamp.com/album/tiny-big-sou... - sideways grooves and gloriously self-indulgent prog https://polybius-ost.bandcamp.com/album/polybius-the-original-soundtrack https://polybius-ost.bandcamp.com/album/polybius-the-origina... - so much blissful techno to stare fixedly at blinking lights to, while the Welsh wizard who wrote it repeatedly insists that you are not being programmed by this experience in any way

nuc1e0n 3mo ago

Why SDL 2 and not SDL 3? Was the project started before SDL 3 was released?

bananaboy 3mo ago
This was started quite a few years ago

teo_zero 3mo ago

Does anybody know why the site is called 16-bits? Aren't trackers an expression of the first 32-bit computers?

selcuka 3mo ago
Fasttracker II was a 32-bit DOS executable, but trackers in general (and the MOD/XM formats) were born [1] during 16-bit Commodore Amiga era. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Soundtracker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Soundtracker
- teo_zero 3mo ago
  > 16-bit Commodore Amiga era The Motorola 68000 was a 32-bit processor. What Commodore Amiga was 16 bits?
  - georgemcbay 3mo ago
    > The Motorola 68000 was a 32-bit processor. ... but not entirely. The registers were 32-bit but the ALU and data bus were 16-bit. The 68020 was the first 68k chip that was 32-bit without having to qualify exceptions for different parts of the architecture.
  - selcuka 3mo ago
    Fair enough. As someone who was alive in the 80s, I remember first generation home computers (ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 etc) were (correctly) called 8-bit, and the second gen (Amiga, Atari ST) were colloquially called 16-bit. The CPU was 32-bit but the earlier Amigas (A1000, A500) and STs had 16-bit data buses. That was probably why.
myself248 3mo ago
My favorite mod player. Galaxy 2.12 (GLX212.ZIP on Simtel et al), runs on 8086's just fine.

piperflatline 3mo ago

Love FT2! I did some PlayStation/N64 soundtrack stuff (known if you know) and released a few "albums" with it back in the 90s (essentially unknown). These days I use FL Studio but I'm always wanting in many ways to go back to tracking. Renoise is pretty cool but I do miss FT2, and yeah as someone mentioned there's also MilkyTracker. Annnnnnd... now I want to go track something.

gbraad 3mo ago
> known if you know ?

boneskull 3mo ago

here’s a terrible MOD I adapted from sheet music ca. 1994 (best guess). I have no idea why this is on the internet. https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&query=60490 https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&qu...

persephonex 3mo ago

What a nostalgia. I make Finnish dance chart track back in 98 with ft2 and Soundblaster.. those were the days.