breakphase
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koub1s wrote:

yes except if you really know what you're doing and/or don't like experimenting, the ctrl+s / revert-shortcut, ctrl+z/ctrl+y  are like the most common combo you'll use yikes and on phones if you have to long touch, or swipe on the side to reach an option, you're slowing your workflow so much, it's really frustrating,

Right, I use those a lot too. Even on a PC, it's nice to flip back and forth. Basically, on a phone, you have to take the *most* important stuff, and just make it really  accessible. Which, on a tracker, ends up meaning you need a big context-sensitive area to tap on. You need to turn those hot keys into buttons, and make them easy to hit.

What I have learned is that making portable software is not about getting it running but trying to somehow satisfy all platforms and their weird UI conventions...

I guess I'll start with an undo feature, it's useful in any case!

Sorry I didn't mean to add anything to your todo list! tongue Oh yeah, mobile needs a lot of focus on UI. Theoretically you can avoid the weird conventions by just writing your UI in OpenGL, but that's asking a lot. I just build my audio code in cross-platform C++, and have the GUI layer make calls into it. Which is still a pain for porting between OSes. Oh well.

breakphase
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Oh wait... are you using SDL to write the UI, komet?

koub1s
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you need SDL & SDL_image to compile the sources, i think so,

>>OK, I'll try to make a somewhat useful video with the very basics!
yis, thanks!

kometbomb
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The whole thing is 100 % written from scratch with SDL. The UI troubles are not technical but more about finding out which key is available to everyone (e.g. is there a F12 key on the keyboard, should CTRL-C be actually CMD-C on Macs etc.). Oldschool trackers are maybe the most tactile software ever written and basically utilize the keyboard as well as it's possible - it's a bit of a challenge to make that work on touch screens unless you somehow find a very different way to track.

breakphase
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kometbomb wrote:

The whole thing is 100 % written from scratch with SDL. The UI troubles are not technical but more about finding out which key is available to everyone (e.g. is there a F12 key on the keyboard, should CTRL-C be actually CMD-C on Macs etc.). Oldschool trackers are maybe the most tactile software ever written and basically utilize the keyboard as well as it's possible - it's a bit of a challenge to make that work on touch screens unless you somehow find a very different way to track.

Yes that is a very daunting problem, but potentially a big accomplishment if you did even an ok job at it. Having Such portability as you do is a huge bonus in many ways. But yeah, the draw back is you have to imagine a bunch of compatible UI paradigms.

the thing that I loved about keyboard tracking was that it was so fast, and gave me a really fast listen->modify->repeat cycle. As long as you can do those somehow, I think it would be successful.

kometbomb
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potentially a big accomplishment if you did even an ok job at it.

Challenge accepted! smile

I think a part of solving the problem is indeed to accept that you can't mimic the original keyboard-only method and add something to tacle user errors etc. (well, this was already discussed above) I am hoping you can sort of find some "UI bottlenecks" that you will instantly notice when using a touch screen and add a bypass for that. I am thinking something like the cursor not advancing when using the touch screen and entering notes (with a keyboard it's super fast to just hit up with your pinky, with touch screen you would swipe and go back five steps etc.)

Last night, I added some very rudimentary gamepad support (copied from LSDJ). I think a touch screen could sort of copy it 1:1, having cursor keys as touch areas as in the mockup above (and of course also the usual swipe to scroll stuff) and similarly edit e.g. just the note when the cursor is over the note column. Basically, the LSDJ UI but with visually changing buttons on the side.

koub1s
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hourray for the hybrid version of pro(to)tracker!

kometbomb
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Here's a REALLY poor video: https://youtu.be/X3mrvNaED-g (not sure how helpful it is with no narration, just recorded 10 minutes of editing etc.)

Last edited by kometbomb (Apr 25, 2017 5:47 pm)

koub1s
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thanks, the mystery that prototracker is, is unraveling smile

I think i encountered a bug, when setting an effect (or editing the channels numbers on the top right),
i can't change the numbers (even in edit mode), maybe is it linked to my azerty keyboard? (tried to shift-&, which is 1, just 1/& or the keys from the number pad, but it's not working) ; i can set an effect but it won't move from the 00 original state.

Last edited by koub1s (Apr 25, 2017 7:54 pm)

kometbomb
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koub1s: You seem to have understood the magical note that appeared on all tracks. smile (For those who didn't, it's because all tracks had pattern 00 on them)

I am using scan codes so it probably maps to a different key when entering hex values. Can you put in e.g. FF in the sequence? I should fix this so that entering hex values uses the key codes, that is if you press "Z" it enters "Z" in the effect parameter column and not "W" (unless I fixed that already and it's a different bug).

koub1s
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>>You seem to have understood the magical note that appeared on all tracks.

yes, it took me a while to understand that all channels starts with the same 00 pattern! :0

is it a protracker legacy? it doesnt' bother me now, but i found it wierd at first to see a song using the 4 exact same patterns,

your video was helpful, just following your steps  with the doc on the side, made me get the reason why, thanks again,

>> Can you put in e.g. FF in the sequence?

do you mean in the effect zone's value? yes i can write F as value where the zero won't be written,
(any hexadecimal is ok, as long as it is a letter, numbers don't work)

If i write z in the effect zone, it writes z, same with w, it writes w,

Just a question, i can write both z and w as effect, but z is not listed as effect, what happens when i do that?

Last edited by koub1s (Apr 26, 2017 6:45 am)

kometbomb
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Protracker does that thing where each pattern has all four tracks. I think of the 16+ -bit trackers only AHX does the pattern per track thing as Prototracker (and klystrack). It's maybe a bit annoying because quite often you end up having the same patterns next to each other anyways.

The key issue has something to do with the AZERTY number keys. I need to look into that.

EDIT: Seems like SDL has (and always has had) trouble with AZERTY keyboards. Luckily it seems all layouts have the number keys arranged at the same location (except for an ancient USSR computer) so I could probably fix this quite easily because it only affects typing in hex numbers.

If you enter an effect that does not exist, it will simply do nothing when playing. Prototracker is quite extensible so it might do something if you load the song in another fork (e.g. the OPLL fork has quite a few additional effects).

Last edited by kometbomb (Apr 26, 2017 9:55 am)

koub1s
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the number bug doesn't seem to affect the web version smile i'll tinker with this one meanwhile ^____________^

kometbomb
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I fixed it last night in the main code as well (though didn't test on an AZERTY for obvious reasons but it SHOULD work... maybe). I guess the web build (or maybe it's the browser) handles the layout better.

koub1s
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haha let's test it,
edit: the compilation failed: https://pastebin.com/nQZiVbxv

Last edited by koub1s (Apr 27, 2017 12:05 pm)

kometbomb
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You need the latest libsdl2-dev (2.0.5). Might have to compile it yourself, though.