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Fasttracker II clone in C using SDL 2

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Re: Fasttracker II clone in C using SDL 2

#31

Post by wartywhoa23 »

dintech wrote: post #22

Someone also released an extension of this project but as a VST plugin, so you can integrate it with your modern DAW. https://github.com/juho/ft2-plugin

Woot!? The project website link in the repository leads to Blamstrain's bandcamp - that's Juho Hietala, a Finnish musician whose album "Disfold" is among top ambient / dub techno albums of all times for me, in line with Fluxion - Vibrant Forms I/II, G.R.I.T. - Expanse and Yagya - Will I Dream During The Process?

Now, he also turns out to be a programmer, which I didn't know, and that he ported a clone of my fondly beloved FT2 to a VST plugin is just such a double hit!

Juho, if you happen to read this - thank you so much, man!!

Re: Fasttracker II clone in C using SDL 2

#32

Post by SwellJoe »

Teknomadix wrote: post #30
Benanov wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Worth noting that the SID chip in the C64 was also created by the guy who founded Ensoniq, before he went on to found Ensoniq. Good computer audio was invented by Bob Yannes. Ensoniq also made sampling affordable with the Mirage, and built some of the coolest sampling synths of the 80s and 90s (EPS, EPS-16+, ASR-10 were the synths everyone in electronic and industrial music had to have). When a friend in my audio engineering class in college got an ASR-10, it was a moment.

Re: Fasttracker II clone in C using SDL 2

#35

Post by Razengan »

Tracker music and 1990s video game music needs to make a comeback in general.

Why is game music so boring and same-sounding nowadays? That damn wannabe-Hollywood-bug with the faux-orchestras and shit.

Just listen to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FA95o7RNjqA

That's for a freakin SHOP scene, a single screen of static UI.

And THIS!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGe3gP9VY9A&list=PL8FB351987...

What's the last memorable game OST you can recall? I can only think of Elden Ring.

Re: Fasttracker II clone in C using SDL 2

#36

Post by drummojg »

wartywhoa23 wrote: post #34

To slightly rephrase Gary Fisher: Anyone who has fond memories of FT2 is a friend of mine! Kudos to everyone sharing a wealth of information about FT2 and other trackers and audio hardware of that time in this discussion :) This is the HN I adore.

I might have 1 or 2 compositions in backup that I could load up...amazing! I love it too.

Re: Fasttracker II clone in C using SDL 2

#37

Post by montag »

Razengan wrote: post #35

Tracker music and 1990s video game music needs to make a comeback in general. Why is game music so boring and same-sounding nowadays? That damn wannabe-Hollywood-bug with the faux-orchestras and shit. Just listen to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FA95o7RNjqA That's for a freakin SHOP scene, a single screen of static UI. And THIS!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGe3gP9VY9A&list=PL8FB351987... What's the last…

I agree. The limitations forced composers to be economical and creative.

As for modern OSTs, I like VA-11Hall-A. Never played it though

Re: Fasttracker II clone in C using SDL 2

#38

Post by whizzter »

Benanov wrote: post #15
eps wrote: post #10

How 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…

Gonna add the comment about FT2 vs IT, in the demoscene FT2 was probably favoured a bit more since third party replayers (required for embedding the music into demos) were at least somewhat faithful when it came to .XM modules whilst .IT module support wasn't as good for a long time since IT files had more advanced features (though you could probably export .XM modules from Impulse Tracker if you kept to a subset of the features, but I remember it being a bit of a hit and miss).

Re: Fasttracker II clone in C using SDL 2

#39

Post by mhd »

rzzzt wrote: post #14
eps wrote: post #10

How 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...

In Germany this was certainly true, as the local distributor CPS put out their own "Sound Blaster" cards for a while until stopped by a lawsuit. IIRC they were rebranded Aztech sound cards. I had a "Sound Blaster Junior" which I was quite fond of (until I saved some money for a GUS ACE).
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