Arkos Tracker 2 - Released!

[Arnaud]

Hello,
i have a problem when switching of song, randomly the function PLY_LW_Play doesn't return (infinity loop).

Here my situation (the music is played on interrupt) :

• Init the intro song and play it :

Code: [Select]

PLY_LW_Init(&IntroSong, 0);

• Now starting the game, stop the current song and replace it with the game song :

Code: [Select]

    PLY_LW_Stop();
    PLY_LW_Init(&Empty_SongStart, 0);   
    PLY_LW_Init(&GameSong, 0);

Is the right way to switch of song ? Is the PLY_LW_Play function shall be stopped while switching of song or something else shall be done to synchronize the song start ?
Thanks, Arnaud

[Targhan]

First of all, if you can, you should use one song and multiple Subsongs, so that you can share their instruments/arpeggio/pitchs and thus save memories (and no, there is no merge yet...).


But if you use multiple songs:
- the stop method only cuts the PSG channels, but if you switch directly from one song to another, you don't need to call it.
- simply call the init method with the address of the next song, and play it normally.


So there is no need to stop/init with empty song/init second song like you're doing. Simply call the init second song.
If there is an infinite loop, please send me your song and I'll check what is happening.

[vtk]

hi Targhan,
I seem to be having trouble finding how to change the master clock in arkos tracker 2, i was hoping to change it to 1.5Mhz (for vectrex music)

[Targhan]

What is the problem exactly? Go to Edit > Song Properties > Click the "edit" button near the PSG at the bottom and set the clock to 1500000 at the top left (use "custom") (just noticed a misnamed label here...).


Does an error occur during one of these steps?

[vtk]

hey Targhan sorry about that, i see it now i missed it before   

one thing i have noticed is, if i use my mouse scroll wheel mouse (laptop touchpad) scroll to try to scroll up and down in the pattern window, it doesnt work,  do you use mouse scrolling there yourself and it works ok for you?   (my mouse scrolling works ok in the original arkos tracker pattern window)

also i was wondering if it might be useful to allow for pressing keys to hear an instrument when you are over on the lower left in the list of instruments

ps. i am using a laptop so dont have much screen height so had to kind of crush down some of the windows like the 'test area' and the 'expressions', and the 'wafeforms view' at the top (i attached a pic)

[Targhan]

Yes, mouse should scrolls perfectly, especially in the pattern window. On what OS are you? If you use the scrollbar on the right, does it work?


As for the screen being too crowded, there will be significant improvements in the next release, and I have more plans for the release about that!

[vtk]

ace that's great news about the lower resolution users screen overcrowding issue being addressed.  if it's useful info to you, it looks like 1366x768 is still the most popular desktop resolution:
http://gs.statcounter.com/screen-resolution-stats/desktop/worldwide


i am using windows 7 64bit and the scrollbar on the right works ok yes


when i try to use the mouse (laptop touchpad) scroll, the little windows mouse scroll icon is displayed (like in the pic below), but the scrolling itself does not occur


i have noticed, if i click (left mouse click) in upper or lower positions in the pattern window, i can move up and down that way (same behaviour as in the original arkos tracker)

[Targhan]

@vtk Strange, I can't reproduce this. I tested on my ASUS laptop, on both Linux and Windows bits, the scrolling using the trackpad works perfectly.

[Targhan]

@vtk Strange, I can't reproduce this. I tested on my ASUS laptop, on both Linux and Windows bits, the scrolling using the trackpad works perfectly.



@Arnaud Any development on your bug? You didn't send me your songs for me to test.

[vtk]

@vtk Strange, I can't reproduce this. I tested on my ASUS laptop, on both Linux and Windows bits, the scrolling using the trackpad works perfectly.

hey thanks for looking into it, i think i will try some different touchpad drivers for my laptop, maybe that will fix the issue for me

[Targhan]

I guess the touchpad works perfectly with any other application? Do not go crash your laptop just for AT2 .

[vtk]

well it turned out to be touchpad drivers,  it's a real pain in the a$$ laptop
if i use an older version of the drivers, the touchpad works well with everything except the scroll in arkos tracker II,
however if i use latest drivers, then the scroll works in arkos tracker II but the touchpad itself behaves poorly (it feels like it is 'faulty')
so i expect i will install the old drivers again..........


edit:  phew, fixed it now.  i found some drivers in-between the newest version and the older version i was using, and for those in-between drivers, all of my problems are fixed now and everything works   

[Targhan]

Everything was perfect on Linux, but on Windows, I also had to update my drivers (the scrolling didn't work at all, for any application). Morality: use Linux . Glad you could work this out, though.

[Targhan]

I am very proud to announce a new release of Arkos Tracker 2 (alpha 4)!


It includes a lot of features and it was a hard work to code all of them, but they will help you produce the best sounding productions ever!


You can download the binaries here.


What's new? Here are the main features:
- Copy/paste in the Pattern Viewer (plus a contextual menu, allowing to transpose notes quickly).
- UI overhaul: more space for the Pattern Viewer.
- Generate arpeggios from the selected notes.
- YM Analyser tool: read any YM and extract sounds to use in your own tunes (very useful for drums)!
- Player optimizations via a unique feature called "player configuration": the players now adapt to the songs. Only the parts that are required are compiled. As a result, you can save a lot of memory and CPU!
- Chip'n'Sfx and Vortex Tracker 2 import.
- ... among other smaller features and bug fixes!


I will try to make smaller and more frequent release next time .


Enjoy!

[reidrac]

Excellent news @Targhan !

I hope the lightweight player didn't change much so it's not too hard to port the changes to my SDCC port!

EDIT: oh, the diff is pretty big  I'll see when I have the time to port the changes. If the song format has changed, I may not be able to use this version of the tracker until I finish with the Player

[Targhan]

Don't worry about the format, only the first few bytes have changed at the very beginning (I added the initial speed, which I forgot!).


What has really change is the conditional assembling, in order to optimize the code according to your song(s). If you're afraid of compatibility, check out this page about a trick to use the player with any assembler (but it must been on a fixed address).


My advice is: don't convert the player anymore, simply use a fixed address for it and be done with it. Much simple and using one fixed address is (probably) not the end of the world.

[reidrac]

My advice is: don't convert the player anymore, simply use a fixed address for it and be done with it. Much simple and using one fixed address is (probably) not the end of the world.

It certainly makes things harder and less flexible, but yes... not the end of the world.

I'll think about it, although to be honest, the previous version works aces (used in Kernel), so I'm not in a hurry anyway.

[Targhan]

It certainly makes things harder and less flexible, but yes... not the end of the world.

I don't exactly know why, because imagine you put your player/music at the bottom of the memory (in #50 for example), then you can add all the remaining code just after without any problem.

I'll think about it, although to be honest, the previous version works aces (used in Kernel), so I'm not in a hurry anyway.

Yes, but with the new player, you will gain quite a lot of memory and CPU.

[reidrac]

I don't exactly know why, because imagine you put your player/music at the bottom of the memory (in #50 for example), then you can add all the remaining code just after without any problem.
Yes, but with the new player, you will gain quite a lot of memory and CPU.

Nope, I don't do that. It is the linker that decides where things go. That's what I mean by flexibility and even when I mix my ASM code with C code, the assembled code is relocatable until the linker generates the final binary.

It's OK, on MSX I have to do it like that because the player can't run from ROM (self modifying code).

[Targhan]

Maybe your linker can be told where binaries can be added and thus, will correct our little problem for you?

[reidrac]

Maybe your linker can be told where binaries can be added and thus, will correct our little problem for you?

Nope because when rasm builds the player it is fixed to one address, isn't it? Is not relocatable.

No worries. Keep up the good work on Arkos 2!

[Targhan]

Yes indeed, but since you have a linker, I'm sure it can be told "put a binary in #100", "put that anywhere you want", "put this in #3000". Thus you could simply declare that the player/music can be in #50, and leave the detail of compilation of the other resources wherever the linker wants.

[reidrac]

Yes indeed, but since you have a linker, I'm sure it can be told "put a binary in #100", "put that anywhere you want", "put this in #3000". Thus you could simply declare that the player/music can be in #50, and leave the detail of compilation of the other resources wherever the linker wants.

I'll investigate that, now that you mention it, is possible it may work.

The good thing with the linker is that it won't leave gaps and the result is very compact (e.g. in Kernel the player starts in 9BE5h, and I don't care!). If I can place the player perhaps on its own section on a fixed address, that could work!

[kawickboy]

Is there any list of chiptunes made with arkos tracker 2 ? Well known musicians using it ?

[Targhan]

Well no, but you can listen to some music made with AT2 on the website (ok, there are only 2 on them. Maybe I could include more ).