Triplex
Once upon a time i thought it would be a good idea to dig up the classic
big alec tracker 'triplex' and maybe update it a little. This I did for
a few months until the once pristine code had morphed into a tangled
mess of bugs. Satisfied with my butchery, I let the project sleep for
some time, before having another wave of motivation. This time round I
started from scratch and coded a completely new and quite frankly tasty
GUI. A near perfect emulation of my all time favourite, Protracker 2 by
Wizzcat.
Then something happened. A stark realisation dawned on me. What with the
amazing results of gwems' new tracker, and the upgrading of the already
potent musicmon package, I realised that i'd been a complete and utter fool.
I'd spent all this time creating a sexy interface and had given ZERO effort
towards the most important part of the whole fucking project, the
sound engine!! So I vowed to do the GUI justice, and spend some time
working on the sound engine itself. Otherwise theres no point is there?
And thats where we leave it for this time. A half-finished tracker sits
on my hardrive, wondering if its day will ever come. Maybe, maybe.
For now, you can find my tinkerings with the original triplex. Its basic
as fuck, no fancy trickery here no sir! But potentially its reasonably
optimised, so it might have a use in the world of demos.
The best instructions i can offer are the words of the man himself, Big
Alec!! he breaks it down one time for Cube. I made a few basic additions
that i'll paste in there.
dont bother using the sndh wrapper, its easier to use gwems' converter i'd
say ;)
ok i'm off. greets to everybody. have fun at outline 2k5, sorry i wont be
there to keep you all awake arguing drunkardly with the rest of rg ;-p
i've got some shit going on at the moment in the real world that needs
dealing with.
lotsa love
damoz-rg
Some hints for using the composer, mostly from the man himself, big alec :D
- QUIT only works with right mousebutton.
- Arpeggio and Noise activate the tiny byte-editor at the lower left
side. Use cursorkeys, and enter in hex. Use right button to close it
again. The first entry is the speed of the arpeggio, all others are
halftone steps from the basenote (unsigned). $FF marks the end, $FE
marks a looping end (It's only possible to loop to pos. 1).
- Arpeggio only edits the current Arp., ie. the one described by the
value in the current instrument's ARP-field. (same for NOZ)
- The mouse may hang outside the program (after a while of switching
between editor and fileselector), but works inside.
- Cut'n'paste. shit, i (damo) changed this and i cant remember how it
works :D I think its f1 to start block, f2 to end block, f3 to cut,
f4 to paste. single track only. very lame.
- shift+undo = delete track
- Some useful trackercommands have been adapted, some work a bit
different.
1xx - Slide up by xx
2xx - Slide down by xx
3xx - Slide to note with speed xx
4xx - Vibrato with fixed speed and amount xx (sorry, but I think the
speed is sufficient for most songs)
5xx - Now, this is special: xx is the difference the SID frequency has
compared to the soundchip frequency. SID is basically nothing
else than two layered rectangular waves. One is generated by the
chip, the other by the Timer interrupt (by switching volumes)
Just experiment on this.
6xx - sid morph parameter change
Cxx - Sets the volume deminishing (?) - C00 is full volume, C03
reduces the volume by 3. You see, just the other way around...
Fxx - Sets the speed to xx (Speed 00 doesn't stop, it's the fastest)
So, that are all commands (I couldn't be motivated for more... ;-) )
In the Instrument definition is a field called TYPE. It defines an
instrument to be either a normal, a Buzz-bass, or a SID-Voice.
00 - Normal
01 - Clean Buzz (triangular wave)
02 - Clean Buzz (saw wave)
03 - Layered Buzz (triangle + rect.)
04 - Layered Buzz (saw + rect.)
05 - Normal SID voice (only works on Channels 2+3!)
06 - Layered Buzz2 (rect. frequency 7 halftones higher than triangle)
07 - Layered Buzz2 (rect. frequency 7 halftones higher than saw)
08 - Deep SID (chip freq. 1 octave lower than Timer - Channels 2+3 only)
09 - SID morph - use tracker code 6xx to morph between 2 octaves
10 - SIDlite - piss weak semi-hardon sid
If you install XXX.PRG as an application via your GEM menu you can just
doubleclick onto *.SND files to start Triplex and make it load them afterwards.
With a TOS >= 2.05 you can also drag SND files onto a Desktop Icon of XXX or
onto the program-file itself. Enjoy ...
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