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User Interfaces of the Demo Scene

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Re: User Interfaces of the Demo Scene

#71

Post by whizzter »

noduerme wrote: post #14

ahhh, fasttracker. my best friend made albums and albums of "dope industrial" with that in the 90s... I had the cassette tapes in my car. I watched him on it a lot. He was the only one of us who didn't play guitar or bass or keyboards (he was a drummer). I'd say that was a very sophisticated piece of software, small on size though it was, not comparable to a demoscene demo in any way. But iirc the keyboard shortcuts…

Like mentioned FastTracker was created by people in the demoscene, also the module format fasttracker created was fairly dominant in the demoscene from maybe 1994 to 1998-1999 (when PC's were fast enough that people started moving onto streamed music via mp3 soundtracks as shown by State of Mind/Bomb).

The FT2 XM format was more powerful than the ST3 format (limited in track numbers and iirc no 16bit samples?) and less powerful than the impulse tracker IT format (virtual tracks without tying tracks to output channels), but for many demos the XM format was a sweet spot since third party IT replayers were few due to the more advanced features while XM replayers were plentiful and often powerful enough to create the music people wanted to do.

Re: User Interfaces of the Demo Scene

#72

Post by tosti »

superted wrote: post #25

I vividly remember FastTracker II, and how intuitive and tactile it felt to get things done in it, despite the minimal user interface real estate. As an example, there were no sound effects. So, I routinely manually created echo effects by copying the sounds from one channel to another one of the available channels, offsetting the notes by a few ticks and lowering the volume. It was simpler times.

Intuitive? I never thought anyone would ever describe something as arcane as a tracker intuitive. I can't think of something worse. Pure Data comes close.

Re: User Interfaces of the Demo Scene

#74

Post by Lerc »

I think a lot has been lost by an overfocus on chasing a unified look and feel for User interfaces.

Standardising the user interface allows applications that have no design to share a common appearance. Making a custom user interface requires designing something. It can result in monstrosities if the designer lacks skill, or experiments with new ideas that don't work out. The antidote to that is dogfooding. Using the interface you made is the next incentive to make it good.

The demo scene philosophy of building precisely what you want to serve a function was clearly one of the influences on winamp, which was beloved by many.

I guess a lot of this went away with the lack of software choice. If you didn't like winamp you didn't have to use it. When a program is marketed as the only solution to a problem and they want everyone to use the same program (often by locking people in). If the software aims to be to everyone's taste it is to no-one's taste. It just becomes bland.

Re: User Interfaces of the Demo Scene

#75

Post by spankibalt »

Schlagbohrer wrote: post #50
p2detar wrote: post #17

I swear music trackers had the most impressive UI back then. FastTracker and ImpulseTracker were to me the highest piece of art and engineering at the time. They kind of hold up even to this day. Especially ImpulseTracker's instruments and sample editor.

I can verify that modern AI's, even the frontier ones, are absolute crap at producing ASCII art or ANSI art. It's really unfortunate. We need models to be better trained on digital fine art (digital graffiti). First thing I did at one aerospace company I worked at was get root on the nearby office printer, which served its own webpage, and digitally deface it a bit with some fun ASCII graffiti.

> I can verify that modern AI's, even the frontier ones, are absolute crap at producing ASCII art or ANSI art.

That's good.

> We need models to be better trained on digital fine art (digital graffiti).

Only lamers need something like that. And lamers and artists (sceners) don't go together.

Re: User Interfaces of the Demo Scene

#76

Post by joeyjojo »

tosti wrote: post #72
superted wrote: post #25

I vividly remember FastTracker II, and how intuitive and tactile it felt to get things done in it, despite the minimal user interface real estate. As an example, there were no sound effects. So, I routinely manually created echo effects by copying the sounds from one channel to another one of the available channels, offsetting the notes by a few ticks and lowering the volume. It was simpler times.

Intuitive? I never thought anyone would ever describe something as arcane as a tracker intuitive. I can't think of something worse. Pure Data comes close.

I would also consider trackers as being very intuitive in a lot of ways compared to DAWs, coming from the perspective of someone who isn't great at playing midi controllers live.

I do find tracker software to not be as immediate compared to a DAW for quickly producing a loop or initial idea, but beyond that initial hump the workflows for fully fleshing out and completing a track seem simpler and intuitive compared to a DAW, IMO. Once you have established the beginning of an idea the UX feels like editing a spreadsheet. The difference between using a DAW or tracker, for me feels like the difference between coding in a text editor versus using a node based UI. They are both intuitive in very different ways.

Re: User Interfaces of the Demo Scene

#77

Post by stackghost »

larodi wrote: post #53
gilrain wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s your point?

exactly what is stated. it is demoscene, and people been calling it such. https://www.pouet.net/ calls it demoscene, https://scene.org/ calls it demoscene, and so does https://assembly.org , which existed for at least as long as the demoscene been a thing. so something that is called "demo scene" perhaps may designate other matter. the same way copyright is one word, and not "copy right", which is semantically diffre…

I would imagine lots of occurrences of "demo scene" are due to autocorrect on phones.

Imagine being so pedantic that you're gatekeeping because of a whitespace character. Couldn't be me.

Re: User Interfaces of the Demo Scene

#78

Post by DonHopkins »

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Re: User Interfaces of the Demo Scene

#79

Post by 5-0 »

tosti wrote: post #72
superted wrote: post #25

I vividly remember FastTracker II, and how intuitive and tactile it felt to get things done in it, despite the minimal user interface real estate. As an example, there were no sound effects. So, I routinely manually created echo effects by copying the sounds from one channel to another one of the available channels, offsetting the notes by a few ticks and lowering the volume. It was simpler times.

Intuitive? I never thought anyone would ever describe something as arcane as a tracker intuitive. I can't think of something worse. Pure Data comes close.

Loading a module and playing it in a tracker is how I learned to make music. You see what notes and samples are triggered when and whatever effect commands are used to make it sound the way it does.

Besides, once you've memorized screens and hotkeys (which happens pretty fast, because there aren't that many) you don't need it to be intuitive.

A couple of years ago I downloaded SchismTracker. The muscle memory from Scream/Impulse Tracker from 20-25 years prior, coming back in an instant was one of the most wonderful computer interactions of my life. <3

Re: User Interfaces of the Demo Scene

#80

Post by tosti »

5-0 wrote: post #79
tosti wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intuitive? I never thought anyone would ever describe something as arcane as a tracker intuitive. I can't think of something worse. Pure Data comes close.

Loading a module and playing it in a tracker is how I learned to make music. You see what notes and samples are triggered when and whatever effect commands are used to make it sound the way it does. Besides, once you've memorized screens and hotkeys (which happens pretty fast, because there aren't that many) you don't need it to be intuitive. A couple of years ago I downloaded SchismTracker. The muscle memory from Sc…

So you basically brute-force your way through?

Like, you load or generate a sine wave as a sample and just keep changing the numbers until you've got a rough idea of what does what?

I guess nowadays it's easier to read the source code of mikmod or milkytracker. But back in the day, heck no. MIDI sorta worked, but not great. My recordings were an awful mess because the timings were always slightly off such that it was impossible to have a bar with normal 1/4 notes.

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