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Author Topic: Furnace Tracker (for PC) (Read 3250 times)

Offline SlashNet

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Furnace Tracker (for PC)
« on: 2024.May.12. 10:53:39 »
New version of Furnace Tracker features sample offset effects for Dave chip.

https://tildearrow.org/furnace/

Video with result music: https://youtu.be/yQyuE0NnEh4

Offline ergoGnomik

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Re: Furnace Tracker (for PC)
« Reply #1 on: 2024.May.12. 11:27:50 »
Somewhat interesting but mostly useless, I think.

Offline geco

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Re: Furnace Tracker (for PC)
« Reply #2 on: 2024.May.13. 08:48:38 »
I think it is useful, it is easier to write a music to Enterprise, i do not know if there is a z80 player included into the tracker.

Offline ergoGnomik

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Re: Furnace Tracker (for PC)
« Reply #3 on: 2024.May.13. 09:53:45 »
I think it is useful, it is easier to write a music to Enterprise, i do not know if there is a z80 player included into the tracker.
I know I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but if there is no player then there is little use to this editor. Yes, it may make easier to compose something but you will have to rewrite the composition almost from scratch to play on Enterprise.

I took a second glance at the product page and I found that it has the following export options: .wav, VGM and ZSM. The first is a bad memory hog. The second, as far as I could understand lacks player for the EP and a different kind of a memory hog. The last one is for the Commander X16, which would also need further investigation if it is suitable at all for EP musics, and obviously lacks a player for EP. Yes, I know you are capable of writing players for them but will you?

Offline szipucsu

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Re: Furnace Tracker (for PC)
« Reply #4 on: 2024.May.13. 10:12:07 »
I think it is useful, it is easier to write a music to Enterprise
I think midi is the easiest one. I cannot imagine any other methods to create music for the Enterprise.
100 SOUND SOURCE 2,STYLE 128,PITCH 25.2,SYNC 1
110 SOUND PITCH 25,SYNC 1
120 ! Videos

Offline geco

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Re: Furnace Tracker (for PC)
« Reply #5 on: 2024.May.13. 10:37:57 »
If only those 3 format exists, then yes, it can not be used for creating music for EP.
I played/wrote with VGM player to Sega Megadrive (it played the music on the z80), and i could modify to work on EP, but VGM format is not the best for EP programs.

Offline SlashNet

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Re: Furnace Tracker (for PC)
« Reply #6 on: 2024.May.13. 10:40:20 »
VGM players exists for retro computers: MSX, Atari 800, Memotech MTX.
The question here is how compact and convenient this format is for use in demos or games.

As I see some people have used the effects of the DAVE chip just for curiosity (and a funny name).
https://youtu.be/Wll5d2tDrWo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nc2fOB8a3I

Offline geco

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Re: Furnace Tracker (for PC)
« Reply #7 on: 2024.May.13. 11:28:41 »
VGM players exists for retro computers: MSX, Atari 800, Memotech MTX.
The question here is how compact and convenient this format is for use in demos or games.

As I see some people have used the effects of the DAVE chip just for curiosity (and a funny name).
https://youtu.be/Wll5d2tDrWo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nc2fOB8a3I
VGM format uses quite big space, and i do not remember how much CPU was used by my player, probably not so much, i remember had problems with sample playback, because the memory paging is way too slow for z80 on Genesis.

Offline geco

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Re: Furnace Tracker (for PC)
« Reply #8 on: 2024.May.13. 13:22:46 »
One solutition could be done, create a VGM player, which saves Dave register values the same way as MIDICONV does, and then we could use DAVECONV to create music binary, and use the player of Daveconv.

Offline ergoGnomik

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Re: Furnace Tracker (for PC)
« Reply #9 on: 2024.May.18. 11:02:55 »
One solutition could be done, create a VGM player, which saves Dave register values the same way as MIDICONV does, and then we could use DAVECONV to create music binary, and use the player of Daveconv.
As far as I could understand, VGM in itself is an organized collection of register writes. Therefore, writing a player that you use to save those register writes again seems to be somewhat like wasted efforts to me. And then again, you have an unwieldy mass of register writes data like in the case with the SID files. Unless DAVECONV have some aces up its sleeves like pattern recognition and referencing to optimize memory use.

Offline geco

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Re: Furnace Tracker (for PC)
« Reply #10 on: 2024.May.18. 12:31:06 »
As far as I could understand, VGM in itself is an organized collection of register writes. Therefore, writing a player that you use to save those register writes again seems to be somewhat like wasted efforts to me. And then again, you have an unwieldy mass of register writes data like in the case with the SID files. Unless DAVECONV have some aces up its sleeves like pattern recognition and referencing to optimize memory use.
Yes, it is an organized collection of register writes, delay time is set, register, and value, as i remember, but for Daveconv we need all register values written in each 50Hz, so we get a mass of 16 bytes from each frame, and Daveconv will generate an envelope table, and a music data table from the huge register output file.
The problem with Music Box is, it does not handle special Dave effects (It is not a problem for me, because i will never write any music :D )

Offline geco

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Re: Furnace Tracker (for PC)
« Reply #11 on: 2024.May.18. 15:11:31 »
And mostly used way by Szipucsu, create/modify midi's and convert it to EPM format :D
And the midi's with ENVELOPE.TXT can be converted by daveconv for a game friendly output also :)