Why is everyone hating on deflemask? It's a good c64 tracker . It does what every other c64 tracker can...
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South Korea
I LOVE Deflemask! I've only used it for Genesis stuff though, will DEFINITELY check out what the c64 engine can do. I really don't understand the general negativity towards the program, it's pretty stable and sounds fantastic.
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Riverside, CA
My personal beef with it is that it's nonfree software. That being said, I still use it on occasion.
But I would be behind it 100% if it were GPL'd or something.
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matt's mind
how is it not free?
the first sentence on the webpage is "DefleMask is a free Cross-Platform tracker for producing music for many soundchips and old school systems."
and on the right side are download links...
???
http://www.delek.com.ar/deflemask
i personally really love deflemask, i didn't know people had a beef with it. must have missed those talking points...
** by 'nonfree', do you mean works you make via the software are not free to distribute commercially? if so, what leads you to this conclusion? i'm not seeing any licensing info on the website, manual, or wiki which would indicate this. perhaps I'm overlooking this
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Riverside, CA
"Nonfree" as in it's not Free Software (free as in freedom, not free as in free beer)
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Toronto, Ontario, Canada
While it's a shame that it's not FOSS, there is plenty of software that isn't which is still very popular. Even extremely popular software such as LSDJ isn't really open source as only a trusted few are given access to the source.
Deflemask is powerful and has an interface that many find conducive to writing good music. It's free but closed, sure, but I don't consider that as a major strike against it as the software is relatively mature.
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Sweeeeeeden
The Silph Scope wrote:
My personal beef with it is that it's nonfree software. That being said, I still use it on occasion.
But I would be behind it 100% if it were GPL'd or something.
If it was 100% GPL (as opposed to, say, parts being LGPL) you may need to share the source song file for your music, if the exported module contains playback code. Arguably, the whole module would then become a derivative work of the GPL'd playback code.
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Riverside, CA
nitro2k01 wrote:
The Silph Scope wrote:My personal beef with it is that it's nonfree software. That being said, I still use it on occasion.
But I would be behind it 100% if it were GPL'd or something.If it was 100% GPL (as opposed to, say, parts being LGPL) you may need to share the source song file for your music, if the exported module contains playback code. Arguably, the whole module would then become a derivative work of the GPL'd playback code.
As someone who already shares almost all of their source files, I wouldn't mind it. But that could simply be changed by not having playback code in the module or like you said, some parts being LGPL (or MIT/BSD/etc)
Even OSI approved licenses would be better than all proprietary.
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last time i used it it was just total trash
- crashed every 30 seconds
- required a scroll wheel to operate
- only let you save in the deflemask directory
- exported song files didnt work and were bigger than could actually fit on a c64
- ugly interface with a weird picture of the phantom of the opera
- loads of weird bugs in the pattern editor
it may well have improved since then and become a decent tracker im just saying that its reputation as a piece of unusable junk 1) didnt just come from nowhere 2) have nothing to do with the gnu gpl
also i would be careful about saying things like "It does what every other c64 tracker can..." til you have used every other c64 tracker *flexes muscles*
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UK, Leicester
I never really got into deflemask for 1 reason, I really don't like the pattern editor. It looks... strange, I don't know how to put it, but it looks off. And, the thing that I really, really couldn't deal with when it came to writing was the timings when you paused a song, the way it would go past the point that you paused it at, and the way that deflemask followed the line(thing) made it a bit tedious to write tracks with,
The whole open source/ closed source thing doesn't bother me because i wouldn't be able to do anything with it anyway, but I'm all for sharing source files, and I guess people have done some pretty neat things with famitracker, due to it being open source.
Last edited by Alpine (Jul 15, 2014 1:36 pm)
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philly
it whispers scary stuff in your ear - isnt that reason enough to hate it? 
but really... the UI is bad... the graphics are bad... even if you try your hardest to tweak the palette it still looks like crap... theres even a popular cracking program to remove the mask icon... that's how ugly it is
then there's the crashing
but the thing that bothers me the most about it is it supposedly is responsible for the discontinuation of "VGM Maker"... aka the best Genesis tracker there is ;_;
Last edited by alex_mauer (Jul 15, 2014 1:50 pm)
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nitro pulse wrote:
It does what every other c64 tracker can...
Let's see...
No hard restart
Very simple wavetable logic, filter controls etc
Resulting binary files are 4-8x as large as from other editors
Rastertime usage is 1) very inconsistent 2) much higher than for example GoatTracker 2, despite GT2 having a much greater featureset
That's just what I could learn from a quick glance.
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deflemask has amazing sampling capabilities specially for nes
it will be amazing if it ever gets expansion chip support..........
sorry this isn't about c64.............................
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Malapascua, phillipines
alex_mauer wrote:
it whispers scary stuff in your ear - isnt that reason enough to hate it?
but really... the UI is bad... the graphics are bad... even if you try your hardest to tweak the palette it still looks like crap... theres even a popular cracking program to remove the mask icon... that's how ugly it is
then there's the crashing
but the thing that bothers me the most about it is it supposedly is responsible for the discontinuation of "VGM Maker"... aka the best Genesis tracker there is ;_;
There's always the option to make your own custom skin . And It depends what your running it on . I personally use it with windows xp . It never crashed on me before . And what do graphics have to with anything the listener isn't going to see a mask while listening to the song he/or she would be like "hell yeah! This song is sick"
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Los Angeles, CA
There's something to be said for the aesthetics of a tracker being unpleasant. Opening up deflemask is just off-putting every time. I personally dislike it when a music program dedicates a not insignificant portion of it's interface to a non-functional wanky representation of the creator (I'm just assuming, there, tbh) And yes, while the listener of the end product doesn't have to see the mask, the person making stuff with it sure as hell does 
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what i really want to know is what's wrong with little piggy tracker???????????