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MilkyTracker

milkytracker.org

31–40 of 51 posts

Re: MilkyTracker

#31
post #7

I love MilkyTracker for its minimalist Amiga tracker-esque experience, but have been frustrated by its instability on macOS. You really do have to save your work very frequently in order to avoid losing it so I've found myself gravitating towards Renoise, even though it's paid and - very recently - Deflemask (I also like that it supports SID tracking, which is what I've been playing with).

Yeah, Milky doesn't work great with a Mac keyboard layout either.

Re: MilkyTracker

#32

Digging down, it seems to be implemented in antediluvian C++: Equalizer::~Equalizer(void) { } It probably could be cut to half the LOC just by modernizing, and get more reliable and faster.

You can rewrite it in Rust, because we all know Rust has almost no original software.

Re: MilkyTracker

#33

Digging down, it seems to be implemented in antediluvian C++: Equalizer::~Equalizer(void) { } It probably could be cut to half the LOC just by modernizing, and get more reliable and faster.

You can rewrite it in Rust, because we all know Rust has almost no original software.

Then nobody would be using the result.

Modernizing, however many users it has would benefit immediately.

Re: MilkyTracker

#34
post #7

I love MilkyTracker for its minimalist Amiga tracker-esque experience, but have been frustrated by its instability on macOS. You really do have to save your work very frequently in order to avoid losing it so I've found myself gravitating towards Renoise, even though it's paid and - very recently - Deflemask (I also like that it supports SID tracking, which is what I've been playing with).

I’ve had to use MilkyTracker on my Mac for creating .mod files for Game Boy development over the past couple of years. I’ve learned workarounds for nearly everything and gotten really good at using it, but I keep telling myself I’m going to fork it and try and make some improvements. Maybe one day if I ever get time.

Re: MilkyTracker

#35
post #3

See also: Renoise, a modern cross-platform DAW/tracker hybrid https://www.renoise.com/

I can personally vouch for Renoise, having put more than 800 hours into the program. Stable, FAST and very, very versatile. Together with the tracker view you get a mixing panel per channel and you can attach multiple effects, sends and whatnot, just like you would in any other modern DAW's mixing console.

Re: MilkyTracker

#36
I love trackers and still use to create some small songs or music ideas. After original FastTracker II, I used Skale Tracker, MilkyTracker and SunVox (this last one is one of the best music softwares I know). Nowadays I use the new remake of FastTracker II https://16-bits.org/ft2.php. It's quite impresive how they copy almost identical the original one.

Re: MilkyTracker

#37
I used Milkytracker for many years, graduating from LSDJ and Famitracker. I eventually got my hands on a proper A500 and tracked on that for a while, before going back to the comfort of a modern PC running Renoise. These days it’s all Ableton for me, but I miss the days of using trackers like nothing else. I’m spoiled on Ableton, so can’t easily make the switch back to a tracker equivalent like Renoise, but there are still loads of things I miss about tracking. It is, for me, the most intuitive way to create the kind of music that I want to create with a computer.

Shameless self promo, but I released a tiny album of .xms using Milkytracker back in the day [0] on Disasterpeace’s (composer for Fez, among others) label, which I am still quite fond of. 4mat, of course, was, and is still, a huge influence.

[0]: https://jophish.bandcamp.com/album/distance

Re: MilkyTracker

#38

Also of interest might be this 1:1 remake of FastTracker 2: https://16-bits.org/ft2.php . I’ve only played around briefly but it was exactly as I remember it! FT2 was pretty much my intro to making music, it came on a PC Format magazine cover CD with a a bunch of XM/MOD files and it blew my mind that I could open up these songs and see how they were made! I never got particularly good with it but had some fun making…

Yup, 8bitbubsy's FT2 clone completely replaced Milky for me. I was never a huge user of it but I used it as a scratchpad for DOS music when I wasn't near my DOS laptop.

It compiles perfectly well on my Pinebook Pro, so now I have with me all the time, along with the equally fantastic PT2 clone: https://16-bits.org/pt2.php

Re: MilkyTracker

#39
I've been using this for years to read my .MOD etc. That I've accumulated in the early 90s, really feels like the original experience!

Re: MilkyTracker

#40

Digging down, it seems to be implemented in antediluvian C++: Equalizer::~Equalizer(void) { } It probably could be cut to half the LOC just by modernizing, and get more reliable and faster.

I agree that you could reduce the lines of code by modernizing, and get more reliable code (the current codebase has cases of UB that they neglected pull requests to fix for a year and counting, see https://github.com/milkytracker/MilkyTracker/pull/255 and https://github.com/milkytracker/MilkyTracker/pull/256). But MilkyTracker is uniquely fast in compiling, I think because of avoiding STL and heavyweight headers. My hope is that in the future we can have container niceties and lightning-fast compilation (perhaps modules over headers, concepts over SFINAE, or using STL alternative containers designed to be lightweight like EASTL or Corrade, or jumping ship from C++ entirely to Zig or Nim or so).
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