Atari-X-MOD Music(ish) Tracker for Atari 2600

[ctrix]

Is anyone interested in this?

 

http://www.vimeo.com/23589320

 

As the description days "Atari 2600 asm translator. An optimizer is coming in the future. I still find it's easier to put the basic tune together and turn to the assembly code to tweak everything. It uses Paul Slocum's play routine although a slightly modified version to allow triplet times / shuffles is hopefully coming in the future."

 

It's still a bit buggy, but i figure it might make tunes easier to write for the 2600. Still about a month from stable I'd say.

 

Let me know if anyone could see themselves using this tool (will be open source). I'm running out of steam to work on it further and wandering if I'm the only person who'd use it!!

 

(a further demo is at: https://8bc.org/music/cTrix/Triple+Pump+%28Atari+2600+hand+assembled+cartridge%29/)

[cd-w]

Very nice work - I'm impressed how far you have managed to push the 2600 TIA sound. I'll be very interested to hear any more musical creations that you produce.

 

Chris

[the.golden.ax]

Many people would use it. You've come to the right place.

 

AX

[draw]

Mad props for that banging tune on 8bc and thanks for the download.

[GroovyBee]

Good stuff!

[philipj]

Can't wait to get my hands on it... Keep up the good work.

[jp48]

Hi, is this tool still available somewhere, would be really needed !!!

 

Thanks !!!

[ctrix]

Hi @jp48 -  the tool that you really want to use is http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=67648   TIA Tracker.  It's quite lightweight when it compiles and does great optimization. 

As far as what happened to this:  AtariXMod was super hack and relied on a tracker which could deal with out-of-spec IT files.  So a few testers I gave the software to were taking that IT file into other trackers which would drop / rearrange half the samples and cause all kinds of crazy!  It was developed on an XP machine with Windows 98 software in an environment which I eventually lost soon after - so I only had a half broken version compiled.  The stumbling block I hit was optimization / compression - detecting where all the repetition was and having patterns fit neatly in ROM.  An awesome friend was coding a better play-routine and a stand-alone source optimizer but his laptop and the SD card (with backup source / binaries) was stolen from a demoparty right as we were working on it (back in 2012).  So that killed the project.  I didn't want to release the original tool that output sloppy and wasteful source.  Once TIA Tracker came out (there was talk of it for a while) it was such a better solution and it is what I have used ever since.  Thanks for all the support / optimism! 

[jp48]

Hi @ctrix, thanks of the tip !! I actually used your tool quite a lot, it was extremely fun and useful from algorithmic generation of stuff as the IT's text format was so simple (and I still have it). I will check TIA Tracker, just now writing mostly BatariBasic stuff, rather idiotic small systems played with joystick with the external beat (from Nintendo DS etc), stupid, but very fun to do, excellent anger management tools !!

 

Thank you of all your help !!

 

[nooly]

Looks really neat. If there wasn't TIA tracker your tool would be my #1 ;]

[atari2601]

i know this program is really out of date but i would really love to try this out