OK, managed 1.6 scanlines, there doesn't seem to be a single thing left to optimize. I think I'll hang onto this version until after Breakpoint, cos I'd like to try a more advanced distribution option for the channel decrunch. But that's more ambitious and I need to spend time on finishing the demo.
Asle, well that quote is for the converter docs, I think. It's been unchanged through many versions of the playroutine, and I just want to do speed optimizations, so I won't change it either.
To be honest (and the reason I optimize this and not some protracker player) is that this seems the standard for demo-making, and so there's no reason to optimize something nobody would use. I think you can take any protracker playroutine and as long as you do "start sounds" and "set replen" as interrupts, you're already faster than The Player 6.1, since the playroutine doesn't have to decrunch the notes!
I actually started my own module compression utility a year back, but when I found out everyone uses The Player and it had decent compression already and a reasonably mature and tested playroutine, I figured I'd put the time into that instead. I'll still use the PT format interpreter in the utility for another project.
Since it has decent compression already, removing notes below Bxx and Dxx commands won't make a big diff. Unless you fill them with random notes that have no similarity to anything else in the song, so they don't get "crunched away"
if they are blank or has the same beat/melodies similar to another pattern they will be crunched to just a few bytes. Replay has no problem with Bxx/Dxx even without this size-optimization.
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Daxb, I've not removed support for anything that p6106.lha (widely used latest version) supports. In short, every advanced option that wasn't used in my test-modules have been left completely untouched. I have added one option that doesn't work with F01 commands (nothing to do with sample size), but each option is explained so you can decide to turn them on or not.