ProTracker II revealed

[ruben]

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/

[ruben]

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:

[ruben]

@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.

[ruben]

@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.

[ruben]

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.

[ruben]

That's why it's called "ProTracker II", not "ProTracker 2"  ;-)

[ruben]

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.