Hi !
I'm a long time module listener, and a new modplug tracker user (in fact I used MPT a long time ago, but never really used it seriously).
Now I'd like to track again and for once *finish* something.
Today I downloaded modplug player and used it to listen to various modules. MPP was my favourite mod player. But now I must admit that I prefer XMplay or dekibulle. I like XMplay because it is really mod-oriented (unlike dekibulle) but I like dekibulle because it runs in tray and can be controlled from global shortcuts (ie no need to leave current app).
I think modplug player misses a lot to be a modern module player: configurable keyboard shortcuts, some user-friendlyness stuff, may be skinable interface (I dont need it, personnally).
For instance: you click on playlist button, you have the playlist. cool. You click it again, it does not disappear. Not cool.
Another example: an internal volume controller. I know it has one, but on a laptop it's not as convenient as the dekibulle one, or XMplay. The MPP volume controller has too narrow range i think.
So I thought: where is the modplug player source code ? I could try to dig it by myself... I'm a software designer, so I could do something...
Unfortunatelly, Olivier Lapique, the original author, never released the sourcecode for the player.
And although I suggested to create a player from OpenMPT, it is not gonna happen soon, if at all.
Why dont you ask Mr. Lapique? Dont ask, dont get..
I guess you can always ask, but I still remember last time when Modplug Tracker went open source. It took quite a while before it actually was realised. But indeed, those who don't ask won't receive.
ok, I'll ask him.
That sounds sweet fabricius. Just on a egoistical note 8) I would like to add that Open Modplug Tracker that could use a 24/7 kind of guy. :) Just joking, the best of luck in your contact with Olivier.
Am I the only one who thinks it would be nice to have the (mod)player and the tracker in a single app - like one tab for tracker and one for player. For example if there was a nice part in some tune one could just switch to tracker view and see the pattern structure. But then again, maybe there's a good reason why they were separate in the first place, yet I can't think of a good reason why they should be separate - if someone knows better please enlighten me :)
Quote from: "Relabsoluness"Am I the only one who thinks it would be nice to have the (mod)player and the tracker in a single app - like one tab for tracker and one for player. For example if there was a nice part in some tune one could just switch to tracker view and see the pattern structure. But then again, maybe there's a good reason why they were separate in the first place, yet I can't think of a good reason why they should be separate - if someone knows better please enlighten me :)
I agree, but differently.
The player part should have a completelly different GUI than the tracker, but ofcource switching between would be great! I actually suggested this long ago.
Its kind of like: add a playlist thingy as first start, and later on top of that, you can make a gui that you can switch to which only shows like the playlist (optional window) and some controls for play/pause/stop/next song/previous song shows progress info.
I still have MPP462 associated with the tracker-extensions, for a quick look of a file.
The GUI indeed could fancy some improvements. Things are quite hidden. But a playlist is there, export to WAV, the same
player options as with the editor, song-info, etc.
It already has a link with the editor because in the Details/Song properties dialog there is a button 'Edit in MPT'.
Of course that button doesn't work anymore.
Quote from: "Relabsoluness"Am I the only one who thinks it would be nice to have the (mod)player and the tracker in a single app - like one tab for tracker and one for player. For example if there was a nice part in some tune one could just switch to tracker view and see the pattern structure. But then again, maybe there's a good reason why they were separate in the first place, yet I can't think of a good reason why they should be separate - if someone knows better please enlighten me :)
but, for writing music you dont want any of the effects added (ie, surround, reverb, bass expansion), but in a player those should be enabled... also, who uses a player in full screen? usually with a player the smaller the better.
i agree that it would be cool to be able to just switch and see the patterns of a playing song tho... but, the player had an 'open in modplug tracker' button which would be good for that.
I think that the reason they were separate is because the player can use playlists etc., and also should have a smaller footprint. However, with vst(i)s and what not, lumping them together could be mildly useful... But I must admit that if I do use mpt as a player, I like to see what's happening. I stopped using the player long before it stopped getting worked on. =)
.
I've taken this discussion to a next level. See here:
http://forum.openmpt.org/index.php?msg=13873.0#msg13873
I would like to stay on this level as well.
This is about developing a new stage of module-player.
Apart from standard playlist things, another aspect comes around the corner : Realtime manipulating of the playback.
This has been developed in the meantime in OMPT, with options like 'change mode at transition'.
So such things should be integrated in the Player as well, perhaps also the Channel Manager dialog.
So the player not only can integrate the ole source code of the player, but also the source code of the real-time options
made in the meantime.
This facility would make a difference with other media-players, because it not only can reproduce some song, but
the Player actually can be used by a musician, who is playing it like an instrument.
Quote from: "Sam_Zen"I would like to stay on this level as well.
This is about developing a new stage of module-player.
Apart from standard playlist things, another aspect comes around the corner : Realtime manipulating of the playback.
This has been developed in the meantime in OMPT, with options like 'change mode at transition'.
So such things should be integrated in the Player as well, perhaps also the Channel Manager dialog.
So the player not only can integrate the ole source code of the player, but also the source code of the real-time options
made in the meantime.
This facility would make a difference with other media-players, because it not only can reproduce some song, but
the Player actually can be used by a musician, who is playing it like an instrument.
I disagree with you here.
If you want to play around with a song, it should be done in the tracker interface instead of the player, simply because such control would lead to an enormous GUI. A player should be small. In fact, the smaller the better in most cases. A player should be a tool that you activate and can work on the background. It should allow you to listen to your music like it was broadcasted on a radio station (playlist?), with the ability to stop and play, in case you need to interrupt the sound for other sound events, like a telephone that needs answering.
Having the ability to do those life transitions are nice, but IMHO not required for the player interface. True, if the player would be a seperate program, it could have the option to switch to a bigger GUI, but even though, I still think that these options are best for the tracker interface only.
You convinced me with the GUI aspect.
I personally prefer ModPlug acting as plugin for Winamp (actually I'm using XMPlay (http://www.un4seen.com), but it can handle Winamp input plugins, so I guess it became standard). When pressing "Song Info" in Winamp the plugin shows some custom window with song info/tags - that's where MPT should reveal itself :) .
The reason for this is that player would play all of my other sound files like MP3/OGG/FLAC/whatever and registers global hotkeys to control it witout switching away from your word processor.
Hi,
three things:
- I cannot contact Olivier, I dont know his mail. His home page has not been updated since 2002 and his mail is not given... Anyone has it ?
- About the "merge" of MPT and MPP, I personaly prefer that the two programs remain separated. The memory footprint of a player will always be smaller, updates will be easier, ... But having a playlist feature in Open MPT could be nice for those who would like to play modules in a tracker.
- Maleek, sounds like a designer would be welcome in Open MPT team. Yeah, why not, but I don't have visual Studio (I use DevCpp at home). And I don't know much about programming music stuff - that's why I just wanted to add GUI features to MPP. And I wanted to do that on DevCpp (supposing I could compile MPP with DevCpp)...
Considering the updates made to the tracker, I think it would be a better idea to base the player on the tracker source than to get the old player source. As far as I can recall, when the tracker was released as open source and Olivier was asked about the player source, he said something about it being the same thing. It's a shame the old forums were lost.
I think älskling is right.
If the playback routine sources of both the player and the tracker are identical, then it is not necessary to hunt down dear Olivier for the player code.
The source code for the tracker is Open, so it's there.
So maybe this is more a matter of skipping existing functions, not related to playback, of an engine, to build a player.
Instead of starting with some sourcecode from scratch and build a GUI around it.
Quote from: "Sam_Zen"I think älskling is right.
If the playback routine sources of both the player and the tracker are identical, then it is not necessary to hunt down dear Olivier for the player code.
The source code for the tracker is Open, so it's there.
So maybe this is more a matter of skipping existing functions, not related to playback, of an engine, to build a player.
Instead of starting with some sourcecode from scratch and build a GUI around it.
or better yet, a winamp plugin!
would be very nice, then i wouldnt have to use a seperate player for mods... tho i have a bass modplayer plugin that does a decent job... not very configurable tho.
well, if i can... er, obtain visual studio, ill see if i have the skills to do something along those lines... will take me a long time tho no doubt.
> or better yet, a winamp plugin!
Yeah, that would be cool. May be it already exists:
As Pelya said in this thread:
> I personally prefer ModPlug acting as plugin for Winamp
Pelya, is there such a plugin ? You said it's a winamp plugin...
mppsdk.dll from the ModPlug Sound System SDK (http://pweb.jps.net/~olivierl/utils/mppsdk.zip) works in winamp. i think you might have to replace the existing in_mod.dll with it for it to work properly. I'm not sure if it's any better than the default in_mod.dll (which is based on mikmod and seems to be pretty decent these days), and it's pretty old so it won't support those quirks that makes mpt so loved and so hated.
mmm, I like the idea of looking at MPT code and trying to get out the "tracking" part to obtain a player. And I guess it'll be a good exercise to understand how MPT works.
I'll do that !
Quote from: "fabricius"- Maleek, sounds like a designer would be welcome in Open MPT team. Yeah, why not, but I don't have visual Studio (I use DevCpp at home). And I don't know much about programming music stuff - that's why I just wanted to add GUI features to MPP. And I wanted to do that on DevCpp (supposing I could compile MPP with DevCpp)...
You will need The Unholy Micro$oft Foundation Classes from Visual Studio to compile MPT somewhere else (I'm trying to do something like that) (http://forum.openmpt.org/index.php?topic=1531.0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=15) . And yes, MPT GUI written using MFC entirely, so maybe programming music stuff will be easier for you :wink: .
I dowloaded the source code of MPT and saw that there are some files created by DevCpp. For instance the Makefile.win file in mptrack directory. Did Olivier tried to compile MPT with DevCpp at a time ?
What I want to do now is to compile the sound part of MPT (all the code in the soundlib directory). If I manage to do that, I might add later a GUI and try to build a basic player. Of course, I'll try to stick with DevCpp. At least, as long as my goal is to do a player based on MPT ! If I start working on open MPT, I guess I'll have no choice but to ... er, obtain Visual Studio !!!
I just use Winamp for a player..it does a pretty good job :)
well well well... you're completely wrong here :D winamp may be able to play some mods and s3ms, but it really lacks IT support. most advanced module tunes won't work on winamp, especially tunes created with OpenMPT. If you want a good player, get XmPlay or the BASS plugin for WinAmp (http://www.winamp.com/plugins/details.php?id=132367) (note: BASS is the sound engine of XmPlay).
I shall acquire that then ;)
Quote from: "Jojo"well well well... you're completely wrong here :D winamp may be able to play some mods and s3ms, but it really lacks IT support.
Actually it's not that bad. It used to be awful but is quite alright now.
it still can't play mmx filters, right?
Well I was gong to mention that as well..the newer versions of Winamp do pretty good..as a mater of fact I have played back some files and they actually improved from MPT's own playback..
Does real good with xm stuff. The main reason I use it for playback is I can create a play list of my favorite tracker songs.. :)
Quote from: "Jojo"it still can't play mmx filters, right?
I think it does.
I use winamp 5.31, and it doesn't :? And no, I don't want to upgrade. It does not matter how much MikMod improved. BASS is still the best mod player on this planet!
Quote from: "Jojo"I use winamp 5.31, and it doesn't :? And no, I don't want to upgrade. It does not matter how much MikMod improved. BASS is still the best mod player on this planet!
That's the case - it doesn't. Latest MikMod release is tagged Mar 2005, which is just release from Feb 2004 copied to SourceForge from original site. However the BASS library is constantly updating. It doesn't play .MED files though.
Quote from: "Jojo"It does not matter how much MikMod improved. BASS is still the best mod player on this planet!
That's a pretty fanatic thing to say ;)
EDIT:
I actually tried it instead of thinking the option to enable resonant filters meant it would acyually play them... ;)
Also, the latest version of MikAmp is dated May 14th 2007, so hopefully it's better than 2003 MikAmp.
Quote from: "älskling"Quote from: "Jojo"It does not matter how much MikMod improved. BASS is still the best mod player on this planet!
That's a pretty fanatic thing to say ;) Anyway, is there a difference between IT's lowpass resonance filters and MMX filters?
it may sound fantatic, but it's the truth! BASS is the only library outside FT2 that plays XM files 100% correctly!
MMX filters is just another word for lowpass resonance filters, coz the filters only worked if you had a cpu that supported MMX (only in IT of course, modpug does not require a mmx cpu).
Quote from: "Jojo"it may sound fantatic, but it's the truth! BASS is the only library outside FT2 that plays XM files 100% correctly!
Oh, I thought the best mod player on the planet was the one that played ModPlug ITs 100% correctly ;) Tho I guess that player doesn't exist.
Still, BASS is pretty good at playing Modplug Tracker IT files (also BASS Improved over the years ;) ), but it can't handle that VST stuff, i think. but it support commands that didn't exist in original Impulse Tracker, like S9F (play backwards)
Quote from: "Jojo"Still, BASS is pretty good at playing Modplug Tracker IT files (also BASS Improved over the years ;) ), but it can't handle that VST stuff, i think. but it support commands that didn't exist in original Impulse Tracker, like S9F (play backwards)
99% right is still 100% wrong :P
but "wrong" is not the same as "not correctly" :P
(which is what you just said)
Quote from: "Jojo"but "wrong" is not the same as "not correctly" :P
(which is what you just said)
I'm flexible. :)