SDL3 has been around for 1.5 years. I can't help but wonder about the choice of SDL2 over it. I started using SDL from its 3rd version. Don't I know about some advantages of SDL2?
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Fasttracker II clone in C using SDL 2
21–30 of 62 posts
Re: Fasttracker II clone in C using SDL 2
#22Someone also released an extension of this project but as a VST plugin, so you can integrate it with your modern DAW.
Re: Fasttracker II clone in C using SDL 2
#23How does FT2 relate to the ScreamTracker? The latter had a printer port output option that, combined with 10 resistors and 5 minutes of soldering, yielded proper sound on any standalone speaker. In the era of chip tunes and inaccessible SoundBlaster cards, it was nothing short of magic. * The adapter was a DIY version of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covox_Speech_Thing
As someone who was in the demoscene: FastTracker II was more of a successor to ProTracker on the Amiga than it was a successor to ScreamTracker 3. I say this because I used it for years; if you go by user interface and keyboard shortcuts the heritage is very visible. That isn't to say that FT2 didn't build upon what ST3 (ScreamTracker 3) did; FT2 loaded ST3 files and played them just fine, as long as they were sample…
FT2 and ST3 were released within months of each other in 1994, so they must have been in development in parallel. It makes sense that FT was primarily inspired by a different Amiga tracker.
Re: Fasttracker II clone in C using SDL 2
#24How does FT2 relate to the ScreamTracker? The latter had a printer port output option that, combined with 10 resistors and 5 minutes of soldering, yielded proper sound on any standalone speaker. In the era of chip tunes and inaccessible SoundBlaster cards, it was nothing short of magic. * The adapter was a DIY version of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covox_Speech_Thing
Tell us about the great Sound Blaster shortage! I thought they threw one after you each time you left a PC parts shop. (Could be a different time period.) The GUS on the other hand...
Lol, it was a shortage of money, not the cards!
This was in '93 or thereabouts and they were really expensive and through that very sparse where I was.
Re: Fasttracker II clone in C using SDL 2
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tell us about the great Sound Blaster shortage! I thought they threw one after you each time you left a PC parts shop. (Could be a different time period.) The GUS on the other hand...
Lol, it was a shortage of money, not the cards! This was in '93 or thereabouts and they were really expensive and through that very sparse where I was.
OK, that I can relate to! :)
Re: Fasttracker II clone in C using SDL 2
#26How does FT2 relate to the ScreamTracker? The latter had a printer port output option that, combined with 10 resistors and 5 minutes of soldering, yielded proper sound on any standalone speaker. In the era of chip tunes and inaccessible SoundBlaster cards, it was nothing short of magic. * The adapter was a DIY version of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covox_Speech_Thing
As someone who was in the demoscene: FastTracker II was more of a successor to ProTracker on the Amiga than it was a successor to ScreamTracker 3. I say this because I used it for years; if you go by user interface and keyboard shortcuts the heritage is very visible. That isn't to say that FT2 didn't build upon what ST3 (ScreamTracker 3) did; FT2 loaded ST3 files and played them just fine, as long as they were sample…
There is a FALL1.MTM on the MOD archive, but not sure if it is the one you're looking for.
Re: Fasttracker II clone in C using SDL 2
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
The changelog for this project dates back to 2019, well before SDL3 was available. SDL2 supports some older platforms that SDL3 has deprecated. If you value running on those deprecated platforms and/or you don't need any of the features introduced since SDL3, it's quite reasonable to stick with SDL2.
Not sure when the switchover happened, but IIRC I started out with SDL2 on Homebrew and recently got this compatbility shim instead when it updated: https://github.com/libsdl-org/sdl2-compat
I don't have an extremely high opinion of sdl2-compat specifically because my SDL2-based projects have had several bizarre bug reports which originated in downstream packages presuming they could use this "compatibility layer" instead of the actual dependency I develop and test against.
Re: Fasttracker II clone in C using SDL 2
#28It's unfortunate that the Turbo Pascal (with inline X86 asm) source code of FT2 written by Vogue and Mr H hasn't been released after all these years. It's so seminal to so many people from that era.
If I were to guess, they found the quality of the code too embarrassing, years later - they were kind of kids when they wrote it. I did see that they (supposedly) shared the source with someone on Vogons for the purpose of minor updates/bugfixes.
Re: Fasttracker II clone in C using SDL 2
#29Very cool - can’t wait to try it. I made an impulse tracker clone for MIDI years ago that also uses SDL, though a mix of C and C++. It has been picked back up for dev again recently and we’re making good progress. https://github.com/m6502/ztrackerprime The world could use more trackers. I’m really hoping the upcoming ableton live extension api will allow for direct access to the piano roll. I suspect many people incl…
Renoise Redux is already shipping a feature complete tracker you can easily run in Ableton or Bitwig.
Re: Fasttracker II clone in C using SDL 2
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tell us about the great Sound Blaster shortage! I thought they threw one after you each time you left a PC parts shop. (Could be a different time period.) The GUS on the other hand...
Honestly by 1995/1996 or so yeah you could find SoundBlaster cards everywhere and anywhere...but if you wanted a GUS you were basically having to plunk down a lot of cash. Maybe SoundBlaster being short was a little earlier? I didn't have a PC before 1995, so... By early 2000 you were seeing a lot of Ensoniq and other sort of "Windows Sound Source" crap in most consumer-grade PCs and if you wanted an AWE32 or AWE64 y…
Um, no. Let's set the record straight. Creative bought Ensoniq in '98 for just shy of $78 million, so by early 2000 the "Ensoniq crap" shipping in OEM boxes was Creative's own product. The AudioPCI ES1370/ES1371 got rebadged as the Sound Blaster PCI64 and PCI128. Creative had already absorbed E-mu Systems in '93, and the EMU8000 on the AWE32/AWE64 was E-mu silicon. Both of these American sampler houses ended up under the Creative Labs roof, so framing Ensoniq as the cheap alternative to Creative in 2000 is totally backwards. Ensoniq was just the volume tier of Creative's own lineup.
You're off on the timeline. AWE32 is '94, AWE64 is '96, both were ISA. By early 2000 those were legacy cards on a dying bus architecture, and the enthusiast ask was a SB Live! with the EMU10K1, or an Aureal Vortex 2 if you cared about A3D and had deep pockets. Specifying an AWE64 in 2000 would have gotten you an obsolete card. Also the term is Windows Sound System, the Microsoft AD1848/CS4231 codec standard, and AudioPCI is not a WSS part. It has its own PCI driver stack with legacy SB emulation bolted on, and it genuinely sucked, ran its wavetable in host CPU and system RAM off the ECW patch sets rather than dedicated hardware, and its DOS Sound Blaster emulation was mediocre compared to a cheap ISA card.
Ensoniq was an amazing engineering powerhouse before the demise. In late 1994 I got an Ensoniq Soundscape, at the time it was the most high-end wavetable card built around their OTTO chip (EPS-16+/ASR10), which I believe was a descendant of the Apple IIGS DOC, and it competed at the time with the Roland SCC-1 and the GUS.