Recent posts

#11

Development Corner / dotnet/C# wrapper library for ...

Last post by Xpl0itR - November 08, 2024, 19:54:29

Hi all,

I wrote this library a few months ago, but somehow forgot to post about it here lol.

Basically, I set up a GitHub action to poll daily for new versions of libopenmpt, If a new version is found, a source generator will parse the C header files and generate corresponding wrappers in C# + some extension methods to consume the C API in more of an OOP fashion.

Source: https://github.com/Xpl0itR/LibOpenMPT.NET

#12

General Chatter / Re: Utilizing libopenmpt in Ga...

Last post by lucckasmarciel - November 08, 2024, 18:14:33

You can use extreme sample converter to convert your vst sounds into wav files.

#13

Help and Questions / Re: Cannot download from Firef...

Last post by Saga Musix - November 05, 2024, 17:29:42

My guess would be that Xfinity is blocking that subdomain because some antivirus software falsely claims that some OpenMPT versions contain viruses. There is probably a way to turn off this "safe browsing" feature with your ISP, or tell your browser to use a different DNS server to avoid their nanny DNS server. In Firefox in particular, there's this setting you could try.

Apart from that, once again the only thing we can do is reporting those false positives - to antivirus vendors, to ISPs doing the blocking (though I doubt they will be able to do anything because they probably just get their data from a third party like Google Safebrowsing).
While I occasionally do this, I cannot dedicate my entire spare time to reporting false positives. As I already mentioned in the linked thread, everyone in the OpenMPT community can help us by uploading the various packages available from https://download.openmpt.org/archive/ to https://www.virustotal.com/ and check if they are reported as malicious - and if they are, figure out how to contact the antivirus vendor in question and ask the software to be whitelisted. If we get this done for enough OpenMPT versions, we might able to get off those pesky "safe browsing" blocklists.

#14

General Chatter / Re: why are mid sized open sou...

Last post by Alice (Midori) - November 05, 2024, 16:27:15

We all forget it, since we are so used to the way ompt works, but it is terribly designed. For a new user it is dauntingly confusing, and always finds a new way to trip up their creative flow. It is a godaweful mess, and we need to own that, accept it, before we can begin to change it.
There are some real positives, the tab system is a strong intuitive one. But the contents of the tabs get in the way of things, presenting options that a person cant even interract with (greyed out options) to overwhelm the mind giving our present system an information overload.
I know when I first started in mpt (before I knew there was an o version, which i think was only a few years old at the time) I was forced to read the help section almost every time I used it, and these days the help isnt even an offline thing, new users have to go to the wiki.
The reason I eventually came to these forums in the first place was to learn things I was sure I could do in ompt but had no help in the help learning about such as  Zxx macros and how to take full control of vsts. I had to search the forums here just to properly learn what I was doing because I learn very slowly and always have.
The point is, what a programmer thinks is self explanatory almost never actually is. The things us wizened old users of a bit of software think are logical pretty much never are. And to see that difference and fight to bridge that gap is the power of carefully thought out design... which is what is lacking in the majority of open source projects out there, including this one.

While i agree with you on several points (mainly all what you said about Blender), i also don't think that a dedicated team of designers is a must for the GUI to be usable and/or intuitive. It really depends, because there do exist people who are good at both programming and design at the same time. I feel like it's more likely to become problematic when there's a lot of contributors, each with different ideas and no strong leadership in regards to this area of design.

I completely disagree with what you said about OpenMPT, it has always been the simplest to use among all trackers i know, with the most intuitive GUI layout. Especially compared to old DOS trackers without mouse support, with big, obtuse menu buttons thrown around with no logic applied to their placement and context.

#15

Help and Questions / Re: Cannot download from Firef...

Last post by manx - November 05, 2024, 10:52:12

Code Select Expand

Websites prove their identity via certificates. Firefox does not trust this site because it uses a certificate that is not valid for download.openmpt.org. The certificate is only valid for low-xdns.xfinity.com.
 
Error code: SSL_ERROR_BAD_CERT_DOMAIN


If xfinity is your ISP, it looks like your ISP is man-in-the-middle-attacking your internet connection. As far as I know that might probably not be legal in the US (but I am not a US citizen and not really familiar in detail with the net neutrality, data protection, and security regulations in the US; and I am not a lawyer).

I tried clicking the link with a VPN on, and it downloads.

If you trust your VPN provider more than your ISP (and the quoted attack is a good hint that that would be reasonable), this is a valid solution/work-around. Another would be using a different ISP (but that might be difficult or impossible depending on the market situation at your location).

I have no idea why xfinity would do what they are doing. I suggest you contact their support and ask for clarification and explanation, and possibly demand that they stop doing that. Firefox (rightfully so) prevented the interception of your connection.

#16

Development Corner / Re: Any plans adding buffers f...

Last post by manx - November 05, 2024, 09:12:53

I already asked about 5 years ago, if there any plans to add buffers for each channel so we tracker player programmers could finally add cool visualisation stuff (like oscilloscopes) when using libopenmpt.
This ticket here is from 2017 and it´s still marked as new:
https://bugs.openmpt.org/view.php?id=1042

It's still planned, but (at least for me) somewhat low priority at the moment.

Any relevant updates will be discussed in the issue you linked.

I don´t know the internals of the library, but could it be possible to add this feature without changing the current mixing routines? Just some kind of extra data, which could be added additionally. It would be enough to add the first 100-200 bytes of each channel into a new bufferlist or something like that.

In addition to forcing a somewhat slower rendering path (because we currently render and mix a channel at the same time, if no plugins are involved, using separate buffers will significantly increase cache pressure and hurt older systems), the most difficult thing is designing the API, for the reasons outlined in the issue: channels can be grouped and routed through plugins, so the waveform per channel will not be what is finally be heard from that channel, and the waveform per-plugin might contain multiple channels. It's also difficult to design the API somewhat future prove regarding even more complex audio routing graphs which might get added sometime.

I would prefer to move further discussion to the issue tracker.

#17

General Chatter / Re: why are mid sized open sou...

Last post by manx - November 05, 2024, 08:51:30

I was here offering my design services and being shot down... yes I was just one designer and frankly being shat on for the general UI improvements pretty much entirely focused on ease of use has made me fuck right off.

Can you provide an example link?

And frankly your qualifications towards design are irrelevant.

Why? Why is yours or anyone elses not? This makes no sense.

Your focus is programming, and has been for long enough to take your focus away from art.

Wrong. Do not make assumptions about me.
Also, I would really not consider user interface design an art at all. It's more engineering and craftsmanship. I agree that graphics design is art, but that is really not what is lacking in OpenMPT, IMHO.

I have music and art, I take my inspirations for those from all around me, games, movies, television, etc - the inspirations for these things are conveniently clustered... both are pure creation and aesthetics. You have at least programming on top of that which depending on the languages you have delved into could be infinitely massive with rabbit holes of information.

Similarly you supposedly have design on top of that. There is a really big difference between experiencing design and being able to create design. The latter is also "on top" of the former.

So dont even pretend that spending an afternoon, a month, a year, even a decade playing around in graphic software can make you compare to a graphic designer who has devoted his / her entire life and career to it.

Again, you are making assumptions about me which are outright wrong. Just stop doing that, it really does not support your argument at all.

Also, to make things absolutely clear here: I was never talking about graphic design at all here. This is not something that OpenMPT needs, frankly at all. There are 3.5 distinct assets that even require it at all in OpenMPT: Application Icon, File Icon, Project Logo, and maybe the styling of the pattern view (however, see https://bugs.openmpt.org/view.php?id=1114 - that code is an utter mess of spaghetti code at the moment).
What OpenMPT likely needs is user interface design. However, given the UI toolkit that OpenMPT currently uses (MFC), and the way user interface code is still deeply interlocked with logic code in our code base, a user interface designer alone will never be able to do any user interface design work on OpenMPT in its current form. It would require at least an additional dedicated user interface programmer to even be able to implement any user interface changes at all. Decoupling the application logic from user interface code is something that I have been working on constantly since starting working on OpenMPT - because it is a necessary precondition to even be able to attack some user interface problems in the first place - because I always knew it was necessary - and it's a very slow process.

It stands to reason that any designer volunteering time to help with this project will have at least a divided attention between music making and designing. The focus and obsession in OMPT is obviously functionality, and that is great, but it needs some people to join the team who are listened to and not brushed off who are obsessed with and focus almost exclusively on the design and user experience

As just explained, purely focusing on design will not be able to work with the current OpenMPT code base. It will inevitably require the existing programmers to devote time to implement such changes, in a code base where this takes more time than it would take in a cleaner code base. The code base needs to get cleaned up further nonetheless anyway though. So, implementing big user interface design changes NOW, results in double the work. Given how small the OpenMPT project is, investing double the time is not something that makes all too much sense, IMHO. The current user interface design and code is somewhat of a dead end, and we have been knowing that for years (see https://bugs.openmpt.org/view.php?id=783 and related issues for discussion of some aspects of that). Investing significant amounts of time into the current interface to improve it would stall other development in OpenMPT and libopenmpt, and probably also burn out people who have to implement the changes. That is maybe something a pure design-only person will have difficulties to understand, but that is frankly just the situation of the current user interface code.

which would take some severe restructuring of how things on this collection of websites, specifically the issue tracker.

We have been bitten by big hosters failing more than once in the past, which significantly slowed down development for a couple of weeks, which is why we probably will continue to host our own services. Changing that, even if only migrating to the big ones, would require a lot of administrative work for migrating existing information.

Your opinion on the usefulness of my criticisms here are also irrelevant. These are things that need to be said, over and over again, because the message is never received and crucially acted upon.

My opinion is kind of important because I am 1 of the 2 maintainers of OpenMPT and libopenmpt. If you cannot convince me and keep repeating wrong statements, you are wasting our time, and thereby actively hurting the project.
Please at least try to be constructive.

#18

General Chatter / Re: why are mid sized open sou...

Last post by n0cturn - November 05, 2024, 08:32:57

I think your communication skills need a little work. Being confrontational NEVER gets the results you want.

#19

General Chatter / Re: why are mid sized open sou...

Last post by Exhale - November 05, 2024, 07:01:46

I guess you should reconsider your assessment of our qualification. You frankly do not know our education and background, so please stop assuming things and accusing us of random things. You are not constructive AT ALL here.

You are saying OpenMPT needs a "design team" (quite a claim for a currently 2 person project), yet you provide no suggestion at all on how to get one. And you also offer no alternative. What's your point, really? We already know that the OpenMPT user interface can be improved in various aspect. Rambling around and reiterating that fact is not exactly helpful.

I was here offering my design services and being shot down... yes I was just one designer and frankly being shat on for the general UI improvements pretty much entirely focused on ease of use has made me fuck right off. 2 volunteer designers who love the software for what it does but have clear ideas of where it could go is all that would be needed to steer the design language of this project.
And frankly your qualifications towards design are irrelevant.
Your focus is programming, and has been for long enough to take your focus away from art. That is the reality of the homage jack of all traits and master of none... the more you divide your time among other focuses the less qualified you are for the ones you have.
I have music and art, I take my inspirations for those from all around me, games, movies, television, etc - the inspirations for these things are conveniently clustered... both are pure creation and aesthetics. You have at least programming on top of that which depending on the languages you have delved into could be infinitely massive with rabbit holes of information. And that is not counting the real life stuff we both do - all of which steer our minds away from our capacity with our primary qualifications.
Scientifically none of us can multitask - this is fact. It is always divided attention.
So dont even pretend that spending an afternoon, a month, a year, even a decade playing around in graphic software can make you compare to a graphic designer who has devoted his / her entire life and career to it.

EDIT :
So yes, all our attention is divided, thus it is entirely about obsession. It stands to reason that any designer volunteering time to help with this project will have at least a divided attention between music making and designing. The focus and obsession in OMPT is obviously functionality, and that is great, but it needs some people to join the team who are listened to and not brushed off who are obsessed with and focus almost exclusively on the design and user experience - which would take some severe restructuring of how things on this collection of websites, specifically the issue tracker.

Your opinion on the usefulness of my criticisms here are also irrelevant. These are things that need to be said, over and over again, because the message is never received and crucially acted upon.

#20

Help and Questions / Re: Cannot download from Firef...

Last post by acrouzet - November 05, 2024, 00:34:26

Looks like it could be a problem with my ISP? "Advanced" shows the following text:

Code Select Expand

Websites prove their identity via certificates. Firefox does not trust this site because it uses a certificate that is not valid for download.openmpt.org. The certificate is only valid for low-xdns.xfinity.com.
 
Error code: SSL_ERROR_BAD_CERT_DOMAIN

I tried clicking the link with a VPN on, and it downloads.