Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Fasttracker II clone in C using SDL 2

16-bits.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 62 posts

Re: Fasttracker II clone in C using SDL 2

#51

Post by egypturnash »

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…

Oh darling. Stop playing AAA games, start playing real games from teams small enough to make unsafe choices.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD6ujQ0tHAv2qLS5FKH6B... - chopped beats, glitched words, everything you would expect in a love letter to Jet Set Radio

https://halberball.bandcamp.com/album/fragrance-point-soundt... - absolutely perfect noises for a game that looks like a 90s rave flier

https://supergiantgames.bandcamp.com/album/hades-original-so..., https://supergiantgames.bandcamp.com/album/hades-ii-original... - hades and its sequel shifts seamlessly between lutey-flutey strumming, hard rock, ballads, and sets the heck out of its mood

https://momojams.bandcamp.com/album/flipwitch-original-game-... - this horny metroidvania can fit so many electro-swing bangers in it

https://blackpantsgamestudio.bandcamp.com/album/tiny-big-sou... - sideways grooves and gloriously self-indulgent prog

https://polybius-ost.bandcamp.com/album/polybius-the-origina... - so much blissful techno to stare fixedly at blinking lights to, while the Welsh wizard who wrote it repeatedly insists that you are not being programmed by this experience in any way

Re: Fasttracker II clone in C using SDL 2

#52

Post by vintermann »

egypturnash wrote: post #51
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…

Oh darling. Stop playing AAA games, start playing real games from teams small enough to make unsafe choices. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD6ujQ0tHAv2qLS5FKH6B... - chopped beats, glitched words, everything you would expect in a love letter to Jet Set Radio https://halberball.bandcamp.com/album/fragrance-point-soundt... - absolutely perfect noises for a game that looks like a 90s rave flier https://supergia…

Another great indie soundtrack is Death Road to Canada's.

I see you put Hades, haven't played it but I can attest that Supergiant's first game Bastion also has a pretty good soundtrack.

I love the minimalistic soundtrack of Baba is You, made by the developer. Almost all filtered saw waves so it sounds "chippy", but I dare anyone to port it to the C64.

FTL is an indie game which does cinematic soundtracks right, in my opinion. The chip elements are there, it's definitively not chip or tracker-style but it's still very good.

But there are bad indie game soundtracks too. Honestly, Slay the Spire, while a great game, has exactly the terrible cheap wannabe cinematic orchestral soundtrack OP complains about. It's at least slightly better for StS 2.

Re: Fasttracker II clone in C using SDL 2

#53

Post by saidnooneever »

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…

Modplug was fun but i am missing Renoise in the list perhaps because it is not free or open source. but its really cheap for a DAW and amazing tracker. afaik its also inspired on fast/pro tracker but i am not sure as i only used modplug before renoise. maybe its much newer, i started in 2004 or so so i missed a lot ofnthe history :)

Re: Fasttracker II clone in C using SDL 2

#55

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

montag wrote: post #37
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

PCs and consoles back in the day used to have actual hardware synthesizers to play music. (Wild!)

Synthesizers are real musical instruments, so game designers actually had to compose and arrange musical pieces for them!

Today it's just pre-recorded sounds, nobody needs to actually craft special game music.

P.S. Having a dedicated synthesizer instrument isn't a limitation. It was a cost-saving measure back at the time, but it's a special separate custom chip that we don't get to have anymore.

Re: Fasttracker II clone in C using SDL 2

#56

Post by gbraad »

Teknomadix wrote: post #29
cmicali wrote: post #2

Very 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.

A VST is not similar to what the Live extension can do. I use redux, but it is always a slightly less integrated experience, as the extension, but extensions at the moment are also not fully featured yet. In short, both have a purpose. I also converted some of my tools to both, by either writing actual MIDI data into Ableton, and otherwise, be controlled by the DAW as a VST; I work on Regroove, which is a Protracker and (Octa)MED replayed library, which can convert from and to several other formats and can be used even in a Drumlogue to playback a .mod as a groovebox like use, with looping, etc.

Re: Fasttracker II clone in C using SDL 2

#57

Post by gbraad »

cmicali wrote: post #2

Very 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…

Nice, will have a look.

And yes, trackers are great tools and with a bit of integration, like program change message, they can even provide this experience to MIDI. I use a bunch of tools I created for music making, live performance etc. trackers are almost always at the center of this for me.

Re: Fasttracker II clone in C using SDL 2

#58

Post by gbraad »

saidnooneever wrote: post #53
Benanov wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Modplug was fun but i am missing Renoise in the list perhaps because it is not free or open source. but its really cheap for a DAW and amazing tracker. afaik its also inspired on fast/pro tracker but i am not sure as i only used modplug before renoise. maybe its much newer, i started in 2004 or so so i missed a lot ofnthe history :)

Renoise is a great tol, but in some cases a bit too feature packed for some people. I do see it used a lot, and I also occasionally do. But playback of a .mod/.med is much easier and 'guaranteed' among devices, this is why I prefer it; more self-contained.

Re: Fasttracker II clone in C using SDL 2

#59

Post by cmicali »

Teknomadix wrote: post #29
cmicali wrote: post #2

Very 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.

Renoise is great, but there's usually some compromise like using the tracker/vst's built-in sampler instead an integrated instrument (like Ableton's Drum Rack) or another VST (soft synth, etc)

Basically, what gbraad said.

Re: Fasttracker II clone in C using SDL 2

#60

Post by gbraad »

piperflatline wrote: post #50

Love FT2! I did some PlayStation/N64 soundtrack stuff (known if you know) and released a few "albums" with it back in the 90s (essentially unknown). These days I use FL Studio but I'm always wanting in many ways to go back to tracking. Renoise is pretty cool but I do miss FT2, and yeah as someone mentioned there's also MilkyTracker. Annnnnnd... now I want to go track something.

> known if you know

?

Post reply on HN