Thank you!

[intylab]

I had to take a break from my development for a few minutes to shout out a thank you to Mister X for his tutorial in the MODPlug Tracker Quick Start Kit, and to the rest of you who created this software.

All my other game development projects so far I have done on my own, and I had created my own proprietary primitive music engine, and I have been creating music for my games by hand-coding binary strings.  Now I am developing for a newer platform that uses the XM music format, and whose online SDK docs recommended this software.

The README.TXT file in the Quick Start Kit gave me the kind of hand-holding I needed to get started writing music quickly.  Music-generation programs tend to be intimidating, expensive, and require extra MIDI hardware.  I'm already migrating some of the music I wrote into this format with ease.

What's more, I was a DOS gamer in the mid-'90s, and some of my favorite games appear to have used the S3M format, which I was able to convert to XM.  Epic MegaGames made a lot of awesome games before they started on the Unreal engine, and I'm rocking out right now to the soundtracks from Epic Pinball and Jazz Jackrabbit.

I just wish I'd found this 15 years ago, back when I was writing MIDI files for a collaborative PC game development project in college.  I had just gotten a Wave Blaster II card to add to my SoundBlaster 16 back then, and I thought that was the best thing around.  Better late than never I guess.

[Saga Musix]

Please note that the quickstart kit is extremely old and contains a more than ten years old version of this software. OpenMPT is still actively being developed, so you should get the latest version from the main page. This version also comes with a more up-to-date manual and tutorial.

Epic MegaGames made a lot of awesome games before they started on the Unreal engine

The first few Unreal engine games (most notable Unreal, Unreal Tournament and Deus Ex) still contained awesome tracked music, mostly in S3M and IT format (packed in UMX files, which OpenMPT can of course read). The latest version of OpenMPT will also import music from Epic Pinball and Jazz Jackrabbit much more faithfully than the original ModPlug Tracker that comes with the Quickstart kit (you should have noticed some broken patterns in e.g. the Epic Pinball intro in the original MPT, which sound correct in OpenMPT).

Out of couriosity, which SDK recommends using ModPlug Tracker? If you found your way to the quickstarter kit, they must be referencing the old and outdated modplug.com - that site is pretty much dead, and people should rather link to openmpt.org for the latest versions of the software.

[real-comp-master]

sound engine consists primarily of next parts:

1. sequencer/track player visualizer and editor.
2. sound engine that plays whatever it told to by part 1.
for professional musician delay in part 2 should not exceed 1/44100 second.
and part 1 should give same abilities as human mind gives (for ex playin pattern from any pos with variable features including note snap).
engine must give clear and unmocked sound with autocompensative calculation of volumes and so on.
playing sampled sound with varing speed to change note will not go anymore, nobody wants plastic food for his throat or ears.
VST will not go either bcoz of it's delays.

Along with time spent to dig the code we have to admit that today there is no such tracker still exist.
Most of samples are sampled from proff synthezisers like korg etc.

Wish you think seriousely about the task.
Unfortunately I never had required resources to make such system possible.
May be you guys will have strength for that.
but please dont make commercial product that can not be used by folk without paying half their money.
bcoz most advanced musician come from any direction, often from far cities where no money ever for PC.

[Saga Musix]

And what exactly does this random blurb have to do with this topic?

[LPChip]

And what exactly does this random blurb have to do with this topic?

I think we have a spambot on our hands here, judging his 3 posts, they all classify to be an automated response based on what is on the page at that time, linked to a dictionairy.

[real-comp-master]

Saga Musix, LPChip, with all respect, let me ask you:
Do you disagree with my words in post above?
I offer simple cure: let's ask those who write music in tracker at least 1 hour a day - do they agree with my words?
We will see the right way.
And if I am wrong - I will apologize.

[Saga Musix]

Do you disagree with my words in post above?

I can't disagree with gibberish that doesn't make sense. And the parts that I could decipher are factually incorrect too - you are making up stuff that has no relevance in the real world. For example:

for professional musician delay in part 2 should not exceed 1/44100 second.

Have fun finding an audio device which gives you actually less than 32 samples buffer (which would be a 32/44100th second at 44KHz in your calculation). And even a 32 sample buffer will cause stuttering on many badly configured systems which can't cope with such a low buffer size. You'll find that many ASIO drivers use something like 256 samples by default, meaning that any audio played by your soundcard is delayed by at least this amount (which is a practically inaudible delay).

VST will not go either bcoz of it's delays.

Again, you have no idea what you are talking about. VST does not have any inherent delays - sure, if you use some plugin that makes use of e.g. FFT effects, they are delayed by the FFT window size, but that is not the fault of the VST plugin architecture but due to how FFT works.

None of this is the business of OpenMPT, but the underlying architecture (soundcard) or used algorithms (VST).

Most of samples are sampled from proff synthezisers like korg etc.

So? Someone made great sounds that are ready to be used, so why not use them?

And again, this has nothing to do with the original thread topic - please refrain from hijacking existing threads just to add something totally unrelated.

[real-comp-master]

for professional musician delay in part 2 should not exceed 1/44100 second.

Have fun finding an audio device which gives you actually less than 32 samples buffer (which would be a 32/44100th second at 44KHz in your calculation). And even a 32 sample buffer will cause stuttering on many badly configured systems which can't cope with such a low buffer size. You'll find that many ASIO drivers use something like 256 samples by default, meaning that any audio played by your soundcard is delayed by at least this amount (which is a practically inaudible delay).

thanks. that information is useful.
there was a time of covox, when cpu was putting numbers out to ports, without buffers.
but at least you have clarified some technical inpurity of PC.

VST will not go either bcoz of it's delays.

Again, you have no idea what you are talking about. VST does not have any inherent delays - sure, if you use some plugin that makes use of e.g. FFT effects, they are delayed by the FFT window size, but that is not the fault of the VST plugin architecture but due to how FFT works.

None of this is the business of OpenMPT, but the underlying architecture (soundcard) or used algorithms (VST).

Thank you for answer again. In my experience there's still significant delay when you play as fast as 32 notes per second.
It may be due to PC/Windows architecture, but still it breaks the sound.

Most of samples are sampled from proff synthezisers like korg etc.

So? Someone made great sounds that are ready to be used, so why not use them?

Sure use them, but if you can keep em unmangled, which is imposible for sampled to wav sound, played by resamling to change frequency.

And again, this has nothing to do with the original thread topic - please refrain from hijacking existing threads just to add something totally unrelated.

Thank you for your work.
I stress that system must meet requirements above. Even if for that, musicians will need to build completely new PC architecture (which must be true realtime).

Good luck.

[LPChip]

Saga, still convinced this is not an automated response system?

[Saga Musix]

Yes. Spam bots can't register on the issue tracker. It shows great social competence that you tell people in their face that they are a spam bot.

[LPChip]

Yes. Spam bots can't register on the issue tracker. It shows great social competence that you tell people in their face that they are a spam bot.

You have a point, but so far it hasn't been denied...

[Saga Musix]

there was a time of covox, when cpu was putting numbers out to ports, without buffers.
but at least you have clarified some technical inpurity of PC.

If 32 samples (the time of that buffer is shorter than the time audio travels between your speakers and your ears) is too big a buffer for you, you must go back to single-tasking, single-threading operating systems (and use your covox there), where you have real-time guarantees. Such a thing is not possible on modern consumer systems, and it's in fact not required. Plus, many audio algorithms simply introduce lag because of their nature - such as interpolation / resampling and digital filters, because many of them require access to past sampling points in some way or another to compute the current sampling point. If that's a problem for you, go re-invent physics.
Seriously, your make yourself sound like you are one of these audiophiles with no understanding of the technical background, yet making ridiculous claims what the technology must be able to do. If you want no buffer delays, forget about filters (at least in the digital domain), compression / limiting,  vocoding, EQing, resampling and many other algorithms.