Fasttracker II clone in C using SDL 2

(16-bits.org)

44 points | by andsoitis 4 days ago

8 comments

  • tomduncalf 22 minutes ago
    This rocks. Such nostalgia.

    FT2 was how I discovered anything about music making - I loved the euro dance music I heard on the radio as a 12 year old but had no idea about the scene or how electronic music was was made.

    PC Format had FT2 plus hundreds of modules on its cover CD one month, I used to love exploring all the random stuff on there and opened it up and my mind was blown when I realised that there was music like I heard on the radio, but you could see all the individual bits that made it up.

    It took a loooot of messing around to figure out how to do anything of value with it, pretty sure this was before we had internet at home, but it was the start of a life long fascination with electronic music making.

    So thank you to the author for resurrecting this amazing and somewhat esoteric bit of software!

  • eps 8 minutes ago
    How does FT2 relate to the ScreamTracker?

    The latter had a printer port output option that, combined with 10 resistors and 5 minutes of soldering, yielded proper sound on any standalone speaker. In the era of chip tunes and inaccessible SoundBlaster cards, it was nothing short of magic.

    * The adapter was a DIY version of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covox_Speech_Thing

  • cmicali 1 hour ago
    Very cool - can’t wait to try it. I made an impulse tracker clone for MIDI years ago that also uses SDL, though a mix of C and C++. It has been picked back up for dev again recently and we’re making good progress. https://github.com/m6502/ztrackerprime

    The world could use more trackers. I’m really hoping the upcoming ableton live extension api will allow for direct access to the piano roll. I suspect many people include myself will use it to make tracker interfaces for ableton.

    • rustfreeforme 42 minutes ago
      inb4 "but why an obsolete language like C, why not Rust bruh"
  • laladrik 19 minutes ago
    SDL3 has been around for 1.5 years. I can't help but wonder about the choice of SDL2 over it. I started using SDL from its 3rd version. Don't I know about some advantages of SDL2?
  • jeffalyanak 1 hour ago
    He also has a fantastic ProTracker clone as well as a bug fixed version of the Amiga ProTracker. Together, they make for a great way to write Amiga tunes that you can still edit and playback on real hardware.
  • vkaku 1 hour ago
    Really cool stuff. Would you be working on a port of rtmidi in pure C? :)
  • tosti 1 hour ago
    MilkyTracker exists and that uses SDL too
  • hncsiocp9x 53 minutes ago
    More people need to see this