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Self promotion of my song Goodbye. I did it on a bad time of my life so it is really sad for me.

I'm working in a checkbox to open new files in -> new-instance/one-instance for v0.12.1

In the meantime, please use the internal file->open dialog while using more than one instance of the program.

Guitars and FM?
In DefleMask I achieved the Time Trax guitar sound by ripping it with GensKMOD, playing with up-only/camel-sine vibratos and portamentos.

This is a video of an old version of deflemask.com but this demo module file comes with the current version too:

The Chipmusic have two types of big limitations, one is the technical limitations of the soundchips (channels count, waveforms, effects, rom size, volume control, etc) and the other is the "game environment" limitation or "mental limitation". There's a very deep interrelation between those two factors.

The first is very well known so I will try to explain what the second one means and how it is affected by the first one:

The majority of chiptunes comes from actual games and the big majority were intended to be played as a background thing, as a secondary factor in the whole gameplay. This adds new barriers to the composers, and, back in the day, they were asked to make songs that:
1) Loop beautifully (lack of tempo changes fits here by 30%).
2) Doesn't distract too much the attention from the actual game (the lack of changes in the percussion tempo fits here by 60%)
3) One channel of your track (almost always the percussion) will be removed randomly from your song because of sound effects (this was very popular on chips with less than 6 channels)
4) The player routine code should be very small (for that reason you can hear very simple tracks in good games or very complex tracks in bad games, because of the rom space distribution balance, too much graphics but little music, too much levels but no music, too much music quality but no space for textures, and so on)
5) Your song should be very small too! (memory space!!!), for that reason the loop should be perfect, sweet and gentle (point 1)
6) The speed. Your music runs side by side with the AI, collision detection, rendering, etc. Maybe ALL of your songs were forced to run at 150bpm because of the scan cycle (update frame), or to be a factor of 100bmp who knows.

There are many more things to add to this list but I don't want to fill this post with technical stuff, the thing is that the Chipmusic is limited by many things and not only by the channel count and waveforms. Maybe you're thinking that you have found a new niche to exploit (tempo changes, crazy drum patterns, that's cool!), but the reasons behind why it is not so present is that the Chiptune have a soul molded since the cradle, that psychologically affects what you can do, and makes the excessive complexity in the final rom size or a tricky loop a good reason to get you fired...

Contemporary chiptune artits have all of this in mind, so think as a composer in the 80s writing assembly code and, suddenly, you will understand lot of things of the Chipmusic. It is a form of art not only limited to waveforms, it has part of the history inside it.

This kind of posts are slowly destroying Chiptune software engineering.

DefleMask v0.12.0 released guys! The biggest update ever for this tracker.

The best news are: New GUI, special CH3 for Genesis (full support, one channel per operator!), on-screen-piano, emulators updated, etc, etc, etc.

Full changelog:
UI re-designed.
Pattern matrix and instrument list are both visible at the same time.
Added native file load/save dialogs for all operating systems.
Added a new system that enables the Special Mode of the CH3 in the YM2612 (the operators have independent frequencies)
Contextual menus (File, Edit, About) instead of FastTracker based navigation (Disk .Op, Options, etc)
Added a piano for note inputs and visualization.
Added a BPM display.
Added keyboard shortcuts for Open: Ctrl+O, New: Ctrl+N, Play: F5, Play from current position: Shift+Return/F7 and Play pattern: Alt+Return/F6.
Max patterns row count increased to 256.
Updated the C64 rom exporter, it is fast and roms are smaller.
Updated the reSID core for better Commodore 64 sound emulation.
Now .vgm files will be automatically optimized by passing through vgm_cmp, the official .vgm compression engine.
Now sliders/scroll wheel will react if you are over his sub-window space.
Now you can preview the previous and next pattern.
Now the loaded .wav filename is displayed on the samples editor window.
Now ctrl+left click on a pattern index in the matrix will copy that pattern into a unused one.
Now PSG instruments in Genesis play if you jam the keyboard while playing a song.
Now .vgm/roms and the tracker will behave the same when looping tracks (the tracker was actually resetting too much stuff when a loop start)
Now you have access to all systems folder when loading a module, this will let you load->switch systems a lot faster.
Now both 8bits and 16bits wavs are supported as samples.
Now you can create straight lines in macros graphs by holding down right mouse button.
Now the arpeggio effect on FM chips will not reset the envelope on every note.
Now if you scroll until the end/start of the current pattern you will be automatically moved to the next/previous one.
Changed the behavior of the E5xx - Fine Tune effect: Now its range is a whole note rather than 1/4. E500 means note - 1 semitone, E5FF means note + 1 semitone.
Game Boy emulator core updated to NezPlug++
Nintendo NES emulator core updated to NSFPlay 2.3
SN76489 emulator core updated, volumes and noise output are more accurate now.
YM2612+PSG volume re-balanced to a more accurate relation.
Now the YM2612 updates at HW rate (53267hz) this makes the SSG-EG more accurate among other things.
Now you can stop volume sliding effects by entering 0A 00 or setting a new volume value in the volume column.
Load/File menu now lists 20 files instead of 10 (more files visible in the list).
Ctrl+F1/F2/F3/F4 now work without recording mode enabled.
Ctrl+F1/F2 now works on instrument and volume column to rapidly change many of values at the same time.
Added mute buttons to the FM operators.
Added Zap option under the edit menu (to clear song, pattern or instruments)
Added Poly input under options menu (Ctrl+P shortcut) to switch between chords and mono MIDI input (also works while jamming when the song is playing)
Added bold font type selector under options menu.
Added END/HOME function keys while editing texts.
Added hybrid .hes roms headers so Ootake and other emulators don't complain.
Added more demo songs to all systems.
Now the Arpeggio Tick is controlled by a new effect 0Exx. It is no more a global per module value.
Added a gradient color between max volume values and zero (Volume and Volume_min in colors.ini file)
Added 3 more values to Skins colors.ini file: Windows_Background, Volume_min and Record_Background.
Added a new effect: EExx (Sync Signal) to be used in .vgm exports (it writes a data block of type FF size 1 with data xx and flashes the tracker background when found)
Fixed the EDxx effect, now it delays correctly any other effect on the same row.
Fixed an AMP slider bug in the samples editor window that was causing distortion on negative sample values.
Fixed playback rate of Commodore 64 reSID engine.
Fixed a clipboard bug that was affecting the pattern matrix.
Fixed some header issues with .gb exports, they now load correctly on the HW and all emulators.
Fixed a little detune in YM2612 frecuency table calculation. (thanks Raijin for the report)
Fixed Sample Delta set while using a delay command in the same row in SEGA PCM.
Fixed some Note Slide effect bugs.
Fixed a bug with the key-repeat feature while changing between fullscreen and windowed mode.
Fixed a bug while copying/pasting using channel switching with Ctrl+Right/Left.
Manual Updated.

Get it now!: deflemask.com

Thanks. Check youtube, there are some more tutorials.
Regarding to the system requests, as I said in the Defle forums, the next system to be added will be decided by a poll, democratically. Like the Arcade configuration was selected last time.

Btw, I'm working really really hard to launch the v0.12 soon, a pre-release is available in the forums maybe you want to try it:
http://www.deflemask.com/forum/general/ … release-*/