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Hello everyone, it's been a while. I have some bad news and some good news. First, let's get the bad news out of the way. The bad news is, the drive I used to store the project's source code came up missing recently. If it turns up, that's one thing but we shouldn't hold our breath and here's why:

1) I made a lot of mistakes early on when making design decisions, mistakes that were very deeply entrenched in the code foundation, fixing these issues would have broken the whole program and proven difficult to rewrite. Enharmonic spelling, gui , memory management etc.

2) The direction I was going with the development would have made Deflemask compatibility limited and less likely. I really want Deflemask compatibility and think of it as necessary.

3) I went into the coding and design having little notion what I was actually getting into. I was learning many programming concepts and an entire system + language on a pretty intense concept. This tracker was my first real program and although the project WAS getting somewhere, it ultimately had a poor foundation and truthfully, it was frustrating to deal with.

So wow that's some pretty bad news right? What about the good news?

This is a great chance to start from a clean slate. I still have all of my handwritten notes for everything I implemented. I know exactly what I'm getting into this time around as well. This time around, I would like to dev this project in C language with hand coded 68k assembly for speed critical parts and to start I want this project open source.

Why C and why open source?

Because it's a bit easier to write with imo and because there are better odds of getting other programmers onboard with the project. We might see more progress in a less amount of time with open source this time around. Besides that, there are always better developers than myself out there... that goes without saying, losing source code now will be less likely.

So in short. This project will be rebooted, made open source and will be done in C & 68k assembly instead of pure 68k assembly.
Also, I'm taking the donation links down. Things like this are much more fun when money isn't an object.

@kitch if you still want to set up that source hosting that would be awesome and it would be greatly appreciated. Sourceforge doesn't allow Android phones to register apparently and I don't have the luxury of time atm to fish around for a site that will. It's amazing how we take the internet on desktops/laptops for granted.

That sounds fine. I just moved a few weeks ago and the only internet I have is limited to a cell phone. I may need help getting this set up.

You'll find eventually that writing bass, rhythm and lead melodies are very roughly the same in concept. They may have different functions but the way they're written are too similar for me anyways. Each have their own rhythm, their own musical scales/pitches and so forth. It's how they interact with the base tempo of the song and each other that makes them interesting. Research this. You'll do just fine. Learn about swing and learn from your favorite artists. Bam! Eventually you'll know when you "got it".

My New Year's Resolution? To eject from the rails of expectation and facilitate the combustion of the neural networks of the ones that might attempt to predict the evolutionary cycle of a hierarchical structure of inhuman language which is used to satisfy the desires of a population who's tendency it is to take ideas and translate them to aural abstractions. Anyone that understands this is inherently evil.

That's really unusual that the sequencer isn't progressing past the first line. Perhaps it has to do with the location of the cursor when on the song screen, as Prodigy is modeled after LSDj in this regard. Playback starts on the nearest pattern equal to or greater than the cursor's vertical position. It's also possible that I changed some code right before release that messed it up, I'll have to look into it when I get time.

Gui indications of playback and which notes are playing on which channels in the Tracker Info panel are planned for a future release.

The flat note thing is really something else. The way I coded all the note handling routines is very bad and inefficient. But for me to change it to where the notes are all sharps instead of flats and sharps, means I have to change all of it. It's alot of code and will take time. I'm not really concerned with customization of note names at this point, maybe later. But yes I suppose changing all the flats to sharps will need to be done. Future release

@yoyz2k, I'm glad you enjoyed it. More to come in the future, and yes save states are your best bet for now. Saving and loading won't be coded for quite some time even still.

I still need to finish rounding up some bugs, and get commands working on all the channels, and PSG envelope drawing going. Then I'll add options (row count/highlighting), tempo control, and all that Tracker Info stuff... possibly some extras and bonuses before the next release.

Jansaw had at one point made a suggestion for customizing note naming, I'll either do that or just go with all #'s in the future.

@defiantsystems, it doesn't look to me like you read the documentation that came with it. Some of the issues you pointed out are all made clear in the readme file. As for the notes ringing out, you need to max out all of the Release Rate parameters with your FM instruments.

@herr_prof, I just did a quick test on a Windows version of PicoDrive as I don't have a Caanoo. Sound works and no crashes yet. I don't know what version you're using and I'm not seeing debugging capabilities so there's little I can do. Setting stereo panning to 3 on FM instruments and setting up the envelopes is the prerequisite to getting FM instruments to play audibly. Setting up the envelopes for PSG instruments is more straightforward and is still required to get sound. Default instruments is in the plans though.

I'm looking into ways that'll make this tracker more intuitive to use. The YM2612 isn't exactly a simple sound chip.

You're welcome everyone.

Yes Stereo Panning on FM synth editing is as follows. 0 = off, 1 = Right, 2 = Left, 3 = Both.
That's one thing I forgot to put in the documentation. But everything else is in there as far as I can recall. Also for PSG, you must set up your envelopes first.

Keep in mind that this is very early for a release. I wanted to wait longer on a release with more features but I figured "ahh what the heck". One request for those that haven't downloaded yet. If you like, refer to the documentation before reporting bugs or asking about features, that way we keep these threads clean, thank you.

Also, you may test on emulators. I use Regen personally.

Merry Christmas everyone! There's a present in the main post for all of you.

Be sure to read the included readme.