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Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga Software News => Topic started by: ruben on December 03, 2003, 07:12:55 AM
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ProTracker II, the official follow-up to the original family of sound trackers (SoundTracker / NoiseTracker / ProTracker) is under development.
March2004 is the expected release date for MorphOS and Windows (OS4 and AROS to be confirmed).
WIP screenshot and features available at
http://www.kiritsu.com/protracker/ (http://www.kiritsu.com/protracker/)
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Wow, that looks pretty promising.
Way to go! :-) :-)
Cheers,
Ron
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YAHHHHHHHHAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
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Damnit, that looks nice. And good to see it's WIP, the GUI still needs fixing. ;P But other than that, soo great!
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Wouldn't "Protracker 5.0" be a more apt name, since Protracker 2 is very old? :-?
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I'd be more impressed if they were using a decent (i.e. standard) GUI toolkit instead of that hideous gradient-infested purple-and-silver monster.
+Neko+
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How on earth can you call it protracker if it doesn't have a badly designed custom GUI?
Next you'll be expecting every option in the sample editor to work without crashing!
Well, it just wouldn't be Protracker!
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I'd be more impressed if they were using a decent (i.e. standard) GUI toolkit instead of that hideous gradient-infested purple-and-silver monster.
You know, Neko, I think sometimes you could express yourself in less harsh way and still get the point across ;-)
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I personally love this oldschool interface... I guess it also makes porting easier ?
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@falemagn:
You know, Neko, I think sometimes you could express yourself in less harsh way and still get the point across
But then he wouldn't be Neko, would he?
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I think the gui is OK too.
I'm just glad I'll soon have an "OctaMED-alike" for my pegasos.
Midi support would cap it.
Cheers guys! :pint:
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:-o :-o :-)
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This news item is so great that i almost wet my pants while reading it! :) :) :)
As a release for MOS i planned, it really cant be that hard to port it to AOS4 right?
Was it him that announced that he where working on a new PT clone like
one or two years ago here on amiga.org?
Suggestions? VST plugin support wouldnt be bad at all!
Effects is quite important these days to add that extra touch to your tunes...
We really need this to be ported to AOS4!
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GUI: The GUI supports skins, so I'm sure other themes will be available. I just needed one skin for development, but I ain't no gfx artist :)
VST: There's no SDK for it on Amiga and plug-ins are platform depedent (mostly on Windows/Mac) so I don't know how one could implement that.
Feel free to email me your sugestions.
Oh yes: Thanks to Genesi and Phoenix for sponsoring this with a Pegasos. Cheers :pint:
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Ruben...
Looks great. I am curious about the OS 4 version. When will that version be available? Will you also bring it out for Mac?
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Let it be known that Skins Suck (tm). They reduce the usability of applications by radically changing their interfaces, making them undocumentable and unintuitive for modest or novice use.
If you want something that only a geek can use, then fine. But ProTracker is more "art" (music!) than "computer programmer with a masters degree with honours and 25 years experience in algorithmic noise generation".
MUI or death. That's why it's part of MorphOS. You can easily abstract Windows MFC and MUI using the same techniques and get a GUI that works practically everywhere.
To those who think I'm harsh: I do *NOT* reward people with compliments just because they did some "minor works", if don't think it's good. It would be shallow to jump around and shout "WAHEYY!! IT'S GREAT!!!" when I don't think it is. There is a place for encouragement of work, and there is a difference between that and encouraging bad work. I prefer
not to tell people they did a good job if I don't think they did. Is that harsh? No, it's REALISTIC.
I like ProTracker, but I always hated the interface. The fonts used on that "default" skin are unreadable, there is too much clutter, and not enough information can be compared between modes (since the GUI will remove one section and display another.. I like editing my samples *AND* seeing the main GUI tracker window).
OctaMED kicked ProTracker's ass for that when they moved to a GadTools GUI. Shame it was GadTools :(
That ProTracker GUI also looks pretty "fullscreen"
to me - is it actually windowed, or does it really open a whole new screen? How do you do that on Windows, I'm curious. Hiding the desktop would be frowned upon, I hope it's windowed.
+Neko+
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Protracker for AROS.. go on say it again and make me smile.
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neko: 3-4 years ago you whined about how LAME and awfull mui is/was and now you hype it up like a pig??? , sorry you have lost your touch..
oh and MUI is slow and retarded (that was one of your comments aswell and i couldnt agree more)
anyway i am glad PT2 (name is old ... should have been pt 5 or something like xeron said) Keeps the oldschool style interface.
ruben: glad to see you are still alive, and this is really good news, now lets see the os4 version..
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Very cool!!!. Between this and Pro station audio, The pegasos is looking like a interesting audio workstation.
I like the old school GUI. ;-)
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@Neko
I appreciate your honest feedback. I'd rather have that than false cheerleading :-)
Skins are a matter of opinion. For instance, I find Octamed really awkward to use, whereas I feel at home with ProTracker.
I agree that initially it may look harder because you're seeing a layout for the first time. On the other hand, they mean that the GUI can be optimized for the specific needs of the program. Would Winamp and Windows MP go well without skin support? I don't think so.
Also, it allows portability, which is important for this ProTracker. And sorry, I really don't think that abstracting MFC and MUI can be done 'easily', not to mention X if you want to support Linux (or you must be a REALLY good coder...)
Window mode: the screenshot is actually running on a window in XP, I just cut out the window borders. You can switch between full-screen and window mode at any time.
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@matt, amigamac
Versions:
- Does AROS fully support SDL, with sound? If so, it should be trivial to port.
- MacOS / OS4: I don't have the hardware to support those myself, but if anyone wants to port it, feel free to ask me for the source.
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If you use SDL it should be dead easy to support OS4 too. As long as it works with 3.x and SDL it should work with OS4 too.
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3-4 years ago you whined about how LAME and awfull mui is/was and now you hype it up like a pig???
I'm sure I most certainly did not. All of my favourite apps were MUI, all of the decent browsers were MUI, and having used it for coding in the last 3-4 years, I wouldn't use any other GUI toolkit.
You must be thinking of some other cat.
=Neko=
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Skins are a matter of opinion. For instance, I find Octamed really awkward to use, whereas I feel at home with ProTracker.
I prefer to live in the 21st Century with all the modern conveniences that 21st Century user interface advances have brought me.
If I wanted to live in 1985 and reminisce and nostalgise about stuff like fixed-size user interfaces, skinning, "demo fonts" that look "cool", 4x4 pixel torus spinning around making me get a migraine, I would live in 1985 and do all those things.
But it's nearly 2004. You can use MUI for Protracker, and override all the layout yourself using subclassing. Skins without the crap.
Lempkee: I think I may have remembered just now - I do remember hating MagicWB with a passion, and the horrible blue and flesh colour scheme. MUI should have dropped it years ago, and it's a shame it took MorphOS to do it. We're still looking at XEN buttons and designed ordered-dither gradients everywhere, and a pink marker, though, even today.
=Neko=
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Ruben:
About the GUI. I think it is really cool.
You said it yourself, you are no GFX artist, but
I am. And when it gets released I will most probably make a skin for it. (Duh, when it gets released for AOS4 that is, i have no Peggy.)
And, as you have realised, it is very very VERY
important to keep the layout PT like, as all tracker musicians are very used to that old
interface. I know, as I am the organiser of an Amiga music crew (Up Rough).
All musicians in Up Rough dislikes, and refuse to work with octamed as they think it's GUI is weird
and uncomfortable.
But maybe the most important thing is to keep
all the keyboard shortcuts exactly the same as
in the old PT versions. I have heard tracker musicians scream many bad words in a row when using for example digibooster or octamed.
That leads me t o another thing. Many Protracker
boys do not like Digibooster because it doesnt work exactly like Protracker..
The only really successful tracker on the Amiga
since Protracker must be THX/AHX.
The dream scenario would be to have one skinable
GUI and one MUI/Reaction GUI. Possible?
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- Does AROS fully support SDL, with sound? If so, it should be trivial to port.
It does, and I look forward to seeing the port :-D
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Yay! What more can i say? :-D
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is it better than digital performer ? :) Good news !!!
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@ Ruben
I agree with you. I find Protracker really easy to use as apposed to Octamed. I also love how I can compress all my modules and still use them transparently using the XPK package and Protracker.The sampleing and editing features are great and make it so easy to create samples. I don't know what this new version will be like, but if it's as good as what I currently use, it will be fantastic. MIDI is really a must for serious users but for us non keyboard sampler tracker types, this program is IDEAL. I saw the specs, more tracks and better sample rates. I have been waiting and waiting for development of this app on the AMIGA. People keep saying, they will now be writing a newer revision, then they relase one or two bug fixes and drop it again.
I hope it get's to AMIGA OS. I love protracker.
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Poster: Neko Date: 2003/12/3 14:29:10
Let it be known that Skins Suck (tm). They reduce the usability of applications by radically changing their interfaces, making them undocumentable and unintuitive for modest or novice use.
Propellerheads Reason springs to mind as one of the most intuitive interfaces i've ever used, and it's hardly a "standard UI".
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IE refreshed the page and lost my extensive reply, so pardon me if it sounds like I'm in a bad mood, here, because I am. ;-)
Xeron: How on earth can you call it protracker if it doesn't have a badly designed custom GUI?
Next you'll be expecting every option in the sample editor to work without crashing!
Haha! I still have to use Degrader to get it to work on my A1200, otherwise the screen modulo gets messed up. Will that feature be emulated in PT2?
Neko: Let it be known that Skins Suck (tm). They reduce the usability of applications by radically changing their interfaces, making them undocumentable and unintuitive for modest or novice use.
Indeed. Skins are used to make things look nice, not to improve functionality. Hence, the term "skin" -- a very thin, cosmetic top layer that offers little to no protection for what lies underneath.
Neko: OctaMED kicked ProTracker's ass for that when they moved to a GadTools GUI. Shame it was GadTools :(
OctaMED 5 was only OK. Better organized than Protracker, but ugly as sin. I liked the original shareware OctaMED best, but it had its own problems.
I've always felt that what the world really needs is not a new OS, but a new GUI system, since that's the part of the computer that's the most inconsitent, badly designed, and most unportable. Java tries to offer a standardized GUI toolkit, but it sucks. It amazes me how few developers ignore the fact that an interface toolkit itself needs a good interface.
That's what I want to do when I better understand effective application architecture. Right now, aside from some C, Perl, and HTML, I only know how to use graphics tools. ;-)
Lempkee: MUI is slow and retarded...
I have little experience with MUI, but it seems to me that it was designed to take a PC interface and boil it down so it ran on Amiga hardware. Full featured, pretty, but not terribly practical. Then again, I don't recall ever seeing a GUI toolkit I actually liked.
Ruben: Skins are a matter of opinion. For instance, I find Octamed really awkward to use, whereas I feel at home with ProTracker.
If you grew up on ProTracker, of course you're comfortable with it. But keep in mind that this is the 21st century, and we have a hell of a lot more hardware and power than we did 10 years ago. The learning curve of ProTracker is very steep, and some careful re-designing could help immensely. Personally, I think trackers these days should use an interface resembling SawCutter 2.0, using horizontal graphical tracks, rather than vertical tracks filled with numbers, surrounded by integrated subpanels.
Ruben: Would Winamp and Windows MP go well without skin support? I don't think so.
WinAmp isn't so bad, though it is slow. MediaPlayer9 is awful. Unresponsive, and lacking in many standard GUI mnemonics that let you know the application knows what you are doing, like, darkening a movable slider when you click on it. It's very hard to make skins work properly unless you understand EVERYTHING that makes an effective GUI toolkit work properly. Very few people have that level of interface knowledge, and fewer people have the time to implement such systems properly when they actually have to write the application code, too!
Ruben: Also, it allows portability, which is important for this ProTracker. And sorry, I really don't think that abstracting MFC and MUI can be done 'easily', not to mention X if you want to support Linux (or you must be a REALLY good coder...)
Understood. I personally feel writing the GUI takes the longest time when making an app, so it's no wonder programmers hate doing it. Take a look at the GUI code for a simple text editor that DOESN'T use a GUI toolkit, but tries to look and function like an ordinary windowed application. What a horrible, bloated mess.
Neko: If I wanted to live in 1985 and reminisce and nostalgise about stuff like fixed-size user interfaces, skinning, "demo fonts" that look "cool", 4x4 pixel torus spinning around making me get a migraine, I would live in 1985 and do all those things.
This is an Amiga forum. You don't expect to find people living in the 21st century here, do you? :-)
Seriously, the reason I like getting nostalgic about the Amiga, is because rather than constantly looking towards the future, and getting into bigger and bigger messes, it helps to occasionally look to the past and realize what mistakes were made. If you try to write a critical 20-page essay about the differences between the ProTracker interface and a modern Windows app, you'll understand a lot more about interface design than just doodling haphazardly in Photoshop.
Then again, audio apps are infamous for horrible interfaces. Take a look at all the synthetic audio generators and post-recording filters used in the high-end PC audio industry. Oh, they look great because their icons, panels, and bevels have been carefully drawn and textured in Photoshop, but the functionality is crap. It really makes me wonder how companies can sell these tools at $200-500 a pop and stay in business.
And, as you have realised, it is very very VERY
important to keep the layout PT like, as all tracker musicians are very used to that old
interface. I know, as I am the organiser of an Amiga music crew (Up Rough).
All musicians in Up Rough dislikes, and refuse to work with octamed as they think it's GUI is weird
and uncomfortable.
Only usability testing will prove whether an interface is well designed or not. I also find OctaMED very awkward, but that's because the interfaces in both OctaMED and ProTracker suck. ;-)
The tracker interface, in general, needs a makeover. We no longer need to think about things like limited numbers of voices, sample cutoff, and stereo seperation. More sophisticated mixing techniques and support for stereo sounds and OGG-encoded samples could make using a tracker a heck of a lot easier and more effecint. Note, though, that OctaMED's attempt to make a tracker look more like standard musical notation was pretty pathetic. Admit it, many tracker users don't know beans about musical notation... myself included. ;-)
Technology evolves. Might as well try some new things to take advantage of it. Otherwise, all you're really doing is making a Windows/OS4 port of an ancient music tool very few people use anymore.
Propellerheads Reason springs to mind as one of the most intuitive interfaces i've ever used, and it's hardly a "standard UI".
I've been meaning to try that for a while. Although, I tried ReBirth a while ago and it really turned me off. I'm more of a sample recorder and composer than a DJ, these days. :-D
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Hi Waccoon,
I think you'll agree with me that it's impossible to please everyone. For instance, Windows MP9 is awful for you; for me it works like a charm.
I know that some people will simply hate ProTrackerII and others will love it. The concept of a Tracker is based on loading a collection of samples/instruments and writing the music as a list of positions each containing a note, effect and parameter. The song is a sequence of patterns, a pattern is divided in tracks.
Of course, there are other paradigms for music composing, and they have their place. But this is ProTracker. If it didn't follow this paradigm, it would be something else (could be fine as well, but it wouldn't be a tracker).
So, to sum up: trying new things: Yes (16bit stereo unlimited size samples and 64 channels are supported, for instance). Turning ProTracker into something that isn't a Tracker anymore? NO.
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I have never been a fan of PT series. I started using OMED since v1.01 and fell in love with it.. still would be using OMED v4 (the best of the series) for 4ch tracking, if it only would work on Pegasos.
For MIDI+sample tracking there is no competition for SoundStudio.. and daaaaaamn I want it on Peg aswell :)
Nevertheless, I will most certainly be testing PT and see how it has developed. Good luck with the app!
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I will definitely try it out on my Pegasos - Can't wait :-)
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Hey,
This is great news... for MOS and AOS anyway.... On Windows its unlikely to be superior to Fasttracker or even Renoise... On MOS/AOS/AROS it'll be excellent no doubt but I agree MIDI (amongst other stuff) is a must but can be lived without for the first release! :-D
Looks great to me ..... old skool style :) keep it up mate...
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All musicians in Up Rough dislikes, and refuse to work with octamed as they think it's GUI is weird
and uncomfortable.
I agree! The problem with Octamed is that on a
standard 640x512 screen there's no space to
keep all the most used windows opened, and
opening them everytime from the menu is
frustating and not practical. The ONLY reason
I use it sometimes is because it's the only
free 16 bit tracker available on Amiga... but not
for long :)
But maybe the most important thing is to keep
all the keyboard shortcuts exactly the same as
in the old PT versions. I have heard tracker musicians scream many bad words in a row when using for example digibooster or octamed.
Yep... protracker has been so much famous that its
a standard on its own.
That leads me t o another thing. Many Protracker
boys do not like Digibooster because it doesnt work exactly like Protracker..
For me, the main attracting point of Protracker is
that is has been always free. It's a great thing that
the new version continues this trend. Thanks Ruben!
The only really successful tracker on the Amiga
since Protracker must be THX/AHX.
Abyss have directly copied many things from PT,
like some of the shortcuts, the inline help text that was a copy from the PT 1.x versions, the vertical
copper bars...
The dream scenario would be to have one skinable
GUI and one MUI/Reaction GUI. Possible?
This would mean that 2/3 of the work would have to be redone, and I don't know if Ruben would have time to do so. But this doesn't mean that someone coudn't do a Protracker 2 clone :)
Varthall
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Wouldn't "Protracker 5.0" be a more apt name, since Protracker 2 is very old?
I agree, calling it "Protracker 2" would lead to big problems... imagine when it will be uploaded on aminet, when searching for "pt 2" people would find it together with pt 2.3, and would confuse the latter as a newer version. I don't think that a new name would fit, too (something-tracker), it would be confused as another pc tracker that has little to do with the original. So, Protracker 5 would be a much better idea IMHO.
Varthall
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That's why it's called "ProTracker II", not "ProTracker 2" ;-)
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That's why it's called "ProTracker II", not "ProTracker 2"
How about:
- ProTracker Pro
- ProTracker X
- ProTracker 2K3
- ProTracker Millennium
- PronTracker
:-D :-P
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@Ruben
That doesn't stop it being confusing, IMHO.
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Hooligan, Protracker Pro is already taken.
And boy is that a bad sounding name!
Professional Tracker Professional! Hahah...
Protracker 5 or Protracker NG maybe?
Personally I like protracker 5 most, if it is
supposed to be an official follow up..
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How about Protracker Pro: Pro? :lol:
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@Hooligan: Always with the "pron" eh ? :)
@all and everything
How about some kind of very modest name like,
YberTracker,
DivineInterventionTracker,
KickYourAssTracker,
WishIcouldCodeThatKindOfTracker,
WorldIsNotEnoughTracker,
HellTracker,
EvilTracker,
Tracker666,
DivineTrax,
Pancakes Tracker, .. hmm..
we may have a winner :)
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I can see that there's some confusion as people tend to replace roman numerals with the arabic
ones.
I do like ProTracker X, I thought about that as well.
I may do a poll or something.
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will their be MIDI suport at all in any of the releases?
by the way the GUI looks awsome its like the program is on acid hehe
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@Blubbe
What about HelluvaTracker.. i like the sound of that!
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How about "Protracker: Evolution".
I think that sounds really cool ;-)
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Poster: xeron Date: 2003/12/7 0:07:35
How about "Protracker: Evolution".
I think that sounds really cool
Hmm..
"Protracker: with its 4 8-bit channels of high
quality sound, Protracker Generation 2 sets a new
standard in todays intensive and evolving MOD-market. If this is not enough, PTG3 is already in
planning featuring 9-bit (!) sound and orthogonal
sliders for your sliding pleasure.
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Hoya!
Bummer!
They are going to launch a peecee version BEFORE the Amiga version; what a nonsense!!!
It always p*ss me off to see Amiga Originals being stolen by wincrap stuff...
Anyway, seems there are less and less real Amigans nowadays. I guess noone gives a damn...
Be funky
M A D