Are we stuck with Protracker's format forever?

[Wavemaker]

There's virtually nothing the Paula can do by itself that is not covered by MOD format. As for things that can be done by software, there are dozens of alternative trackers such as Oktalyzer, AHX, Musicline, Future Composer to name a few. Many of those are great projects that no developer would want to tackle today. Heck ML is an amazing piece of software that came at the wrong time. So when it comes to low end amigas, it's unlikely you will improve on what's been done by a user base a hundred times larger than today's.

When it comes to high end you got Digibooster, Symphony, Octamed SS and so on which are like those Doom ports trying to squeezing the Amiga to do the same things a Pc could manage easily in the 90s. Great as a demonstration of skill or what the hardware could potentially be capable of but we are in a world now where people would rather watch a tacky 1987 scroller than some primitive 3d object in extremely low res with a texture that looks like vomit flying around late 90s style.

Now if we go beyond the format and look at the tracker itself, Protracker could use a much better interface or features. Myself I used OctaMED (in PT compatible mode) back in the day because I couldn't bother putting up with some 80s idea of an UI. But then again a sizeable part of musicians are making their works on the PC, where there is already a huge choice of trackers that can save to MOD format, and even a tracker that lets you work in both tracker and DAW mode.

As for making a FL Studio on the Amiga - FL Studio was the result of computing power in the 2000s allowing for much more elaborate interfaces. In fact it was designed as a logical evolution from the tracker paradigm. So all you could manage to do in an Amiga is, again, playing some catch up game with high end systems which in the end is a huge effort for a limited audience.

There's an amazing world of alternative trackers for the Amiga, worth spending a week checking out all the crazy trackers people came up with it, just for the entertainment value, if not for realizing that feature wise everything has been done already. And what hasn't been done yet probably requires resources few Amigas have.

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by Wavemaker

As for making a FL Studio on the Amiga - FL Studio was the result of computing power in the 2000s allowing for much more elaborate interfaces. In fact it was designed as a logical evolution from the tracker paradigm. So all you could manage to do in an Amiga is, again, playing some catch up game with high end systems which in the end is a huge effort for a limited audience.
.

I am not asking for a Fruity Loops like program on the Amiga.
I use Bubsy's Protracker for Mac OS to create mods for my games.

If there was some mod export feature for Cubase or Reaper, I'd use that.

I even fiddled with the idea to do an converter for Electron Octatrack to Protracker format.

I have been using music hardware and software for 25 years, and started right after trackers were common.
It just feels so weird to use one and lose stuff I did all the time because I clicked the wrong obtuse button somewhere.

[no9]

Originally Posted by Wavemaker

There's virtually nothing the Paula can do by itself that is not covered by MOD format.

I will probably write more elaborate answer later, but if so then please tell me how to achieve things that was mentioned in this thread:

- loop points manipulation
- sample data manipulation like EFx command, but in any meaningful way.
- different LFO shapes for commands like 4xx and 7xx?
- how to get square shaped volume modulation when command column is filled already (with 5xx for example) and you can't just interleave Cxx command there? Without resorting to some tricks?
- how to turn on Paula FM interchannel modulation mentioned by @xanderbeanz


That list can go on and on to show that Protracker lacks of very basic features as for even a very simple synthesizer. And no matter if it is available elsewhere (on Amiga or outside). It is a question if mod has to stay as an ultimate standard of Amiga music. If so, please at least don't claim that it is 'complete', because it is far from it. It is a fossil from the first half of '90ties that was abondoned because of dawn of multichannel trackers.

Yeah, it is good enough to get something but it is far from squeezing the last bit of Amiga. And I mean Amiga, not only CPU inside Amiga.

[DanScott]

Originally Posted by Samurai_Crow

Abyss' Tiny series games maintained a small disk footprint and load-time by using Pretracker in place of Protracker. Pretracker renders its synthetics at load-time using subtractive synthesis and premixed chord waveforms. Protracker uses samples for every instrument and suffers because of it. I just wish the Pretracker editor didn't require a Windows cross development environment.

But memory overhead is still the same. It creates samples that fill up chip ram. You could take the samples it creates and load them into protracker and create the same song, and it would have roughly the same memory overhead once in chip ram.

Edit - It does have some other features I believe, but at the expense of a slower play routine. When we are creating Amiga demos, often we are pushing the CPU right down to the last raster line of time. We require a fast replay routine

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by no9

We can as why TBL guys making EON demo bothered and resorted to smart tricks pushing soundtrack in their demo to the next level, while still on plain old Amiga 500? Because apparently Protracker was not enough.

Dude, what are you talking about?
EON's music is 100% Protracker, seems to me like you didn't read how it was made.
[ Show youtube player ]
Did it require some extra tooling? Yes. but it is still, 100%, Protracker MOD format!

As Galahad and h0ffman (who, btw, made that EON soundtrack, so definitely knows better than you or I about this thing) said, there's little to no point in making something like this, when

- Protracker has basically most if not all commonly needed features covered, as defined/needed by those who actually use it.
- The userbase for something new would be absolutely, incredibly tiny. Which you even said yourself, making this whole argument just pointless.

[no9]

Originally Posted by Akira

Dude, what are you talking about?

There are some ambigous posts and replies I've made, but this one you quoted is not. It says exactly what it meant to say, so it's nothing more to add here.

[no9]

Originally Posted by h0ffman

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

Yeah, I'm aware of that even if my coding skills on Amiga are barely above none.
When I use term 'Protracker', or 'expanded Protracker' I rather think about some (but not all) qualities of the editor that are worth to keep, the general tracker feeling. For many of us it became de facto standard in music making on Amiga.

File format itself is secondary. I think value of new tool and it's format lies in tool itself and replayer routines that everyone can just plug into demo or game.

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.

Yes, but sample precalcing doesn't cover all sound generation techniques than can let achieve composers interesting results. I mentioned a couple posts ago that different LFO shapes to modulate amplitude or pitch are limited or non existend without resorting to some command tricks. And yeah, you can have SAW shapes with xx A0F (like for example "Stardust Memories" did). With years we got use to such tricks and it's the one of those that define the sound of Amiga modules, and I like them, but at the same time it depleted people's imagination with that 'good enough' as Galahad rightufully pointed out.

There are plenty of limitations of Protracker that with years was succesfully masked with increase of RAM in Amigas, because all you can imagine as sound can be ultimately sampled and placed on Protracker's track so why bother? And I can admit at that time i didn't feel much of need for a change here. But you know... time passes, you taste different approaches and techniques here and there, and then you realize how much backward Protracker became.

I'm aware that I can't expect realtime generated sounds of high quality on A500 or with taking half of it's memory. But I never thought this way. Quite contrary. I think there are ways to play with the sound on Amiga that less resource draining and yet it could enrich sound of modules. I think Pink was/is on right track, but he doesn't let you combine this with samples. For me it is a bit sad, because the staple of Amiga sound, chiptunes was infact that blend of synthetic melodies and 'real' kicks and snares, not just shaped white noise.

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.

I don't mind if it was Goattracker/PTclone/Pretracker way. For me it would be actually better. Even with Amiga original Protracker people usually use external tools, VSTi, synths to create sounds. Ironically, sometimes not using 90% of Protracker's features of commands...

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

Definitely.

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

In that case it depends of definition of what 'worth' means. In the demoscene you know, demos are worth... something. And nothing at the same time.


Anyway, I started this thread on the pretext of the phrase "let's not change anything, because it is a standard". Yes, standard it is. It probably won't change ever. There is reasoning behind that attitude. But also bit of lack of imagination in my opinion. We got used to 31 samples limit. If it wasn't enough we also developed 'tricks' to deal with it. Like with some other of Protracker limitations. But it is more like it Protracker shaped people than people shaped Protracker.

[chip]

But people are free to use the music format they want

We know that on Amiga not only Protracker is available

But most of modules created are Protracker, this means something i guess

Indeed there is incredible amount of modules of this format around

People chosen to compose with this tracker even if it has limitations

[no9]

Dear chip, don't worry. Your collection of modules will never stop playing, no matter what.

[Frog]

i'm agree with Wavemaker
There's several others nice trackers that Protracker.

[Samurai_Crow]

Re:XM Format with additive synthesis

NeoMan/Titan is adding his synthesis routines to MilkyTracker and I'm looking right at the source right now. See https://github.com/ApolloTeam-Dev/MilkyTrackerVamped for source. (The editor will work on Paula as well as Vampire Arne core.)

[no9]

Good thinking.


Food for thought: what if you were beeing able to use additional, software mixed channels in music at demand, only in some parts of the song. Even if they were crappy, low quality, as A500 CPU allows. If this would be a song for a demo then you can turn them on in some parts of that demo. In opening intro and in endscroll part. Or in middle of demo when some picture is displayed and coder have some CPU cycles to spare accidentally not precalcing next effect animation. This let music composer to put a bit deeper sounds into composition, utilize additional channels for delay effects or sounds that decay slowly without rush, and without resorting to memory acquiring loop sequences.

Is it to much for Amiga hardware?

[daxb]

Yes, Amiga hardware is the limit. However, 060 demos (can) use audio stream. In that case there is no limit in creating the music.

[no9]

My question was about this particular feature I described. Is it to complex for Amiga hardware?

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by daxb

Yes, Amiga hardware is the limit. However, 060 demos (can) use audio stream. In that case there is no limit in creating the music.

The quality of those can sound awesome, and usually do.

However, it may be because I'm using emulation, but I've noticed that some of those audio streams have a series of rapid clicks in quieter moments, or usually at the end. Is that an emulation glitch or not?

[chip]

Audio stream is obviously not a music format

[h0ffman]

Originally Posted by no9

Good thinking.


Food for thought: what if you were beeing able to use additional, software mixed channels in music at demand, only in some parts of the song. Even if they were crappy, low quality, as A500 CPU allows. If this would be a song for a demo then you can turn them on in some parts of that demo. In opening intro and in endscroll part. Or in middle of demo when some picture is displayed and coder have some CPU cycles to spare accidentally not precalcing next effect animation. This let music composer to put a bit deeper sounds into composition, utilize additional channels for delay effects or sounds that decay slowly without rush, and without resorting to memory acquiring loop sequences.

Is it to much for Amiga hardware?

We already do this in the demos eon and way too rude. The drum loops are rendered on the fly in the background while the demo is running. Saves a lot of memory and can have a near infinite number of loops. The mix routine is very quick but is limited to all samples being at the same pitch hence why its great for drums.

[Jope]

Originally Posted by Tomislav

There are already other Amiga module formats: S3M, XM and IT.

All of these were invented by PC DOS people, naturally with inspiration from the Amiga trackers. So they're more like GUS module formats than Amiga formats.

Also there is MED format which is different than MOD format.

This is definitely an Amiga format.

[no9]

@Hoffman Something like Dutch Retro Guy presents here? [ Show youtube player ]

Good you are doing this. To bad "it's only a demo". It also shows that there are interesting ideas floating in the air, but never making their way to Amiga trackers because of reasons.

Anyway, going after a path that SF2 thread follows with examples guy are throwing there, I also made a small test to see how low can you go with DELAY effect. Decreasing quality to frequencies like 2 or 3 kHz with full aliasing turned on is some approximation of what A500 could handle(?). In comparison 8 kHz sounds like luxury, and 1kHz... I don't know how it sounds, but may find use as some strange FX?

[ Show youtube player ]

Anyway, I though that some XM mixing routine on Amiga could be interesting if it let you to select channels you want to be streamed directly to Paula like standard trackers do, but also let you pick quality of 'software mixed' channels that go to the last Paula channel is left free. There are already 8-channel trackers for A500 like Face The Music or Oktalyzer but they tried to drain as much quality of A500 as they can. What if this would go in the other direction?

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by Steril707

I don't have a problem with the format, but god, I hate tracker apps.

Wish somebody would code something that looks like early Fruity Loops that exports PT format, for instance.

Well you're in luck. We've got a tracker interface (that loads PT, we'll see about exporting maybe) on the to-do list for a future version of FL Studio.