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In the past we used Soundtracker for Amiga compos in real time demos.
The lines of code to play the Zik were easily included in the main code
of the Demo. The most popular language was Assembler and it is the one I used (I guess this has not changed Amiga users ...?!).

But how does it work on PC?
What are the most popular trackers or soft today to according to you on PC?
Does the code that plays the music can be inserted in the code
that runs the animation.

Ulrick - ex member of IRIS

" ModPlug tracker " ---> you keep the amiga Soundtracker spirit. Simple & effective.

i sense tons of random images coming to this dimension

I like Milky Tracker and Renoise. Milky tracker might be more for you or ModPlug since they are free and easy to use, but I would definately give Renoise a try and see how it feels to you.

Not sure about the code part, but anyway good question! I hope this doesnt turn into another random gay porn thread, but you never know with pouet. Anyway, I work on tracker stuff on and off and ive done some softsynth in the past so send me a message sometime if you want to talk zik!

cheers

standart way of playing tracked or stream music in a pc demo is using an external player library like fmod, minifmod or bass.

remainder to self: use standard for english.

Tracked music is very rarely used in demos on PC anymore. It's almost always .mp3 or .ogg.

yeah I think fmod code can be streamlined into whatever you code with.

tracked music can still sound pretty damn cool if you use some good samples and use some fancy pants tricks. Then just export to wav and convert to mp3. :)

ulrick, mp3 music.

the synchronization is done differently than in the past. You must use actual times for sync. I use smpte since it's designed for video syncing and audio software often let you see what the smpte time of a marker is.

Is happening what I feared: too many things to mearn at a time.

kelsey: I saw one of the 64k PC demo that went first at a competition.
What soft did your group use to make the tune? ModPlug?
Tell me more?
Thanks to all of you.
It does not sound like I was a demomaker myself in the past.
Perhaps things on Amiga were not very complicated.

They told you nothing about softsynth yet :D

_-_-__:

Do you program that in C?
if I understand, you are talking about how to take control of the machine like we did on Amiga by following the frequency of vertical blakings. The word was 'iinteruption', something like that.

You can't take control of a pc, he's talking about analysing the samples sent to the sound cards beforehand or just returning and using their amount to synchronize the sound with the visuals.

esion:

I have ModPlug which plays my old .mod Amiga songs very well.
Do you use it? Do you run your Zik made with ModPlug? Thanks!

if you want to use tracked music use milkytracker or anything able to output decent xm files (not renoise) together with the ufmod replayroutine (not minifmod).

Ulrick it's very different from the amiga days yet at the same time nothing forbids you to use the old methods.

64k intros are all mostly made with softsynths. One can use a commercial or free midi sequencer with the intro softsynth's as a VST instrument (virtual instrument) .. then use the midi file as source for the soundtrack.

Others implement their softsynth as a buzz machine (buzztracker is a somewhat modern reimplementation of the tracker idea)

I believe modplug can run VST instruments (renoise, another traditional tracker can as well)

One can make a ".xm" or ".mod" that instead of simply using samples, controls a software synthesizer.

etc ..

However I would suggest against making a 64k as a first attempt at a PC demo.

Demos leave a lot more opportunities to concentrate on the art, without getting bogged down on the technicalities of what work and what does not.

ModPlug Tracker is very shaky on compatibility with xm (often saves some fucked up xm modules) and is a real mistake for people who want to make 4ch mods for Amiga replay. It doesn't warn on out-of-octave-range notes, which it should for ProTracker mod compatibility, so people who replay your mod on an Amiga will probably hear loads of errors if you haven't been sticking to the three-octave limit. So will people who quite sensibly have Xmplay (Windows multi-format mod player) set to Amiga compatibility mode. However, a lot of people use ModPlug for Impulse Tracker mods, to save them from having to set up IT in DosBox etc. I use it for IT mods when I have to, but I dunno how compatible it is...

Modplug *can* run VST instruments...but the overall support for VSTs is a bit shit and crashes are frequent. Renoise is a fantastic, highly customisable tracker with extremely good support for VST instruments and effects. Definitely try that out. And Milkytracker. Both pieces of software have active development cycles, and user-requested feature suggestions are often included into version updates. (Oh, and aesthetically, Modplug looks as ugly as fucking sin, so it's nice to run software that actually *feels* like a tracker and not like a festival of grey, beige and fixedsys. Try running Milky low-res and fullscreen for the true oldschool flavour!)

Sorry, I know Rubicante mentioned those already, but I thought I'd provide links. I also thought I'd warn about the dangers of Modplug;) I expect to receive some abuse for my more subjective comments, because I'm drunk and shouldn't even be posting, but the incompatibilities and the crippled .mods it saves stand for all to see:)

protracker 3.10

what of it

TCB tracker

Fasttracker 2. It runs perfect under dosbox these days.

When using VST's the clear choice is Renoise.

Eeeww, i've always found ModPlug to be an aweful replayer of amiga mods, at least in the past it used to murder Cream of the Earth for example. XMPlay is what i use these days or even HippoPlayer on my miggy or through winuae.

ulrick, xmplay == bass.dll, a library which can be used by your coder to replay such tracks.