alt Hacker NewsFasttracker II clone in C using SDL 2
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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 include myself will use it to make tracker interfaces for ableton.
This rocks. Such nostalgia.
FT2 was how I discovered anything about music making - I loved the euro dance music I heard on the radio as a 12 year old but had no idea about the scene or how electronic music was was made.
PC Format had FT2 plus hundreds of modules on its cover CD one month, I used to love exploring all the random stuff on there and opened it up and my mind was blown when I realised that there was music like I heard on the radio, but you could see all the individual bits that made it up.
It took a loooot of messing around to figure out how to do anything of value with it, pretty sure this was before we had internet at home, but it was the start of a life long fascination with electronic music making.
So thank you to the author for resurrecting this amazing and somewhat esoteric bit of software!
I am glad they also cloned the snake game.
https://github.com/8bitbubsy/ft2-clone/blob/master/src/ft2_n...
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
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.
SDL3 has been around for 1.5 years. I can't help but wonder about the choice of SDL2 over it. I started using SDL from its 3rd version. Don't I know about some advantages of SDL2?
He also has a fantastic ProTracker clone as well as a bug fixed version of the Amiga ProTracker. Together, they make for a great way to write Amiga tunes that you can still edit and playback on real hardware.
Someone also released an extension of this project but as a VST plugin, so you can integrate it with your modern DAW.
Really cool stuff. Would you be working on a port of rtmidi in pure C? :)
It's unfortunate that the Turbo Pascal (with inline X86 asm) source code of FT2 written by Vogue and Mr H hasn't been released after all these years. It's so seminal to so many people from that era.
If I were to guess, they found the quality of the code too embarrassing, years later - they were kind of kids when they wrote it. I did see that they (supposedly) shared the source with someone on Vogons for the purpose of minor updates/bugfixes.
More people need to see this
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.