English Amiga Board - View Single Post - Are we stuck with Protracker's format forever?

h0ffman · 03 February 2021, 20:34

The bottom line is thats either its protracker or its not. The format has zero expandability at all. In fact its a legacy mess.

If you want new features it will require a new tracker with all of that in mind before you start development. In terms of features, you can only really do stuff which is directly associated to the hardware. You can do stuff for synth / sample generation but we're doing that with protracker already.

That then begs the question, what platform do you write the tracker for? Developing it for the amiga increases the complexity, reduces stability but most of all cuts out a large number of people who will use it. This became apparent when bubsys pt clone was released and a swath of musicians started making mods again so it really needs to be pc based.

Let's also not forget that your amiga based replay routine really needs to not suck!

Add all the up and you start to wonder if its really worth the effort when protracker already covers most of the bases.

03 February 2021, 20:34	#20
h0ffman Registered User Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: Salisbury Posts: 746	The bottom line is thats either its protracker or its not. The format has zero expandability at all. In fact its a legacy mess. If you want new features it will require a new tracker with all of that in mind before you start development. In terms of features, you can only really do stuff which is directly associated to the hardware. You can do stuff for synth / sample generation but we're doing that with protracker already. That then begs the question, what platform do you write the tracker for? Developing it for the amiga increases the complexity, reduces stability but most of all cuts out a large number of people who will use it. This became apparent when bubsys pt clone was released and a swath of musicians started making mods again so it really needs to be pc based. Let's also not forget that your amiga based replay routine really needs to not suck! Add all the up and you start to wonder if its really worth the effort when protracker already covers most of the bases.