Open ModPlug Player

[sunshine]

Hello,
I have been developing Open ModPlug Player, and I want to contribute my code to ModPlug Central, and I want my project to be a part of Open MPT. I also want to be a contributor of Open ModPlug Tracker & Player.

Can you please accept my contribution?

Open ModPlug Player is based on LibOpenMPT, Qt, PortAudio, and supports Windows, macOS and Linux natively. It is currently in alpha stage, but 40% of its development was done.

By the way, I am planning to add spectrum analyzer this week.

[Saga Musix]

Hi there,
Quite frankly, your wish is the exact opposite of our current development intentions. libopenmpt currently comes with several player plugins in its source tree, but the additional development burden is just too much for us, so we intend to give them back to the community where possible (as already happened with the Foobar2000 plugin, which is now officially maintained by kode54). Having even more software built on top of libopenmpt in our code repository would thus just contradict of our long-term goal.

Of course you are welcome to submit patches to OpenMPT / libopenmpt and contribute to its development, but I'm afraid that we cannot have yet another player in our code repository. You are of course welcome to develop your player outside of the OpenMPT repository  like all the other players using libopenmpt (and of course we can add your player to this list once it's public), but I would prefer if you chose a different name to not give the impression that it is an officially endorsed or OpenMPT-derived software.

[sunshine]

Thanks for the information Saga Musix. Can I use "ModPlug Player" name and the graphical design of original ModPlug Player for my player? I already have a code repository on GitHub, and I am planning to make all the codes public when my application becomes to beta phase.

[Saga Musix]

You would have to ask Olivier (the original author) about that, I guess, however I don't think that choosing the same name as an existing software is going to make the situation any better for anyone. MPP in particular doesn't have a good reputation for this playback quality these days (which makes sense given that it as last updated almost 20 years ago), and you would just taint your own software with this reputation if you were giving it the same name. Why not use a completely different name?

On an unrelated note, I see you are trying to make an exact copy of the original MPP but I think many of the options present there are outdated or simply not useful. A modern player probably doesn't need any bit depth configuration and no option to configure the amount of buffers. The "headphones" option also doesn't make a lot of sense since the particular code path that was used for this in MPP isn't even exposed by libopenmpt (it changed the way panning works).

[sunshine]

Thank you very very much for your precious comments and recommendations Saga Musix. You are right so much. I also consider to implement a skinning feature.  It would be better to design a completely new Module Player application. It will also have some new features like scope display.
An exact copy of a very old application is not a good idea

If I can have some more spare time, I will want to take a part on the development of OpenMPT software in the future.

[sunshine]

I implemented spectrum analyzer and vu-meter for my new module player. If I could get a permission to use original design of ModPlug Player, it would be very nice. At least there might be a choice to show old GUI, and it can be selectable on the preferences window.

Screenshot of my latest work is here.

[Saga Musix]

Well, as said, you will have to ask Olivier for permission, we cannot grant it. We don't even have the source code for the original player. However, since you basically just recreate the approximate location of every button, and are not even making a pixle-perfect copy, I don't see a technical need for asking for permission.

[sunshine]

Thank you very much for the information Saga Musix.
Yes, it will not be pixel-perfect copy of the ModPlug Player, and I will improve the design in the future. For example, I may remove option buttons on the right side because we will not need most of them, and some functionality of that buttons can be moved to the right-click menu, and on the mac to the application menu appearing on the top of the screen. In place of that buttons, I may add a horizontal vu-meter or I may think something different.

As you said, this module player will have so many differences from the original ModPlug Player, probably it will not be any problem to continue to mimic the design of the original ModPlug Player.

I want to ask Olivier Lapicque to use the name of "ModPlug Player" and to mimic the design of the original ModPlug Player. If I will not be allowed, I will use a different name and a little bit different design for my new module player.

Can I write an e-mail to olivier@modplug.com to ask Olivier Lapicque? Is this mail address still accessible?

[Saga Musix]

I'm rather sure that email address does not exist anymore (Olivier does not run modplug.com), but I also cannot give you any other up-to-date contact information. I was never in contact with him. Supposedly this is his LinkedIn profile, maybe you can contact him that way.

[sunshine]

Thank you very much Saga Musix. I will release first final version of this application next year because there are a lot of things to do like spectrum analyzer bars falling with acceleration, preferences window and perhaps uade123 integration. Until the first release or maybe beta version, I will try to contact Olivier Lapicque. I tried to add him to my Linked-In network in the past, but he didn't add me (probably because he doesn't know me or he adds only the persons he is familiar with).
Cheers

[Exhale]

How about calling it boombox Modplug?

[sunshine]

Perhaps we can find a much better name together with everybody here. I may create a new topic for the name of the new module player. I consider to do these things after then releasing first beta version of the new player.

[sunshine]

Olivier Lapicque allowed me to use the name and the design of the ModPlug Player. Probably I will release first alpha version of ModPlug Player 2.0 in a few months for Windows, macOS and Linux. We will have first final version in 2021, and mobile version of ModPlug Player next year.

[ASIKWUSpulse]

Oh you're making it an mobile app too? Yes please!
Of what I know, there's only 2 module-players for phone (android) - xmp and another one that can only play the MOD-format (can't remember it's name)
xmp has really slow development rate and is super light, nearly in an inconvenient way - i.e. loop can only be turned on (loop infinitely) or off
But its module-playback core is excellent (has support for a lot of module-formats) and it has nice visuals that happens to be the ones like channel-oscilloscopes and channel-status, that ftm of what I've heard of the OpenMPT dev is hard to accomplish with the OpenMPT API, due to the tricky module-playback core. Hopefully that will be easier in the future since the developers here are doing a great job on the progress of OpenMPT .

Though it really would be nice to have something like xmplay for mobile too, when you want to bring module-music with you. mo3 and compressed stuff would be a hot support-need for the mobile version, since mobiles are still like the 90's home computers in storage (at least mine is - only like 16 GB of free internal space + an SD-card adding an extra 14 GB)

[sunshine]

Yes, I am planning a mobile version, too. Its user interface will be very similar to desktop version of ModPlug Player. It will work in landscape mode on the cell phones and tablets. I am not sure to support portrait mode.