PC Port (Linux, Windows)

[PM250B]

A native PC build for Linux and Windows might actually be worth considering. The interface looks good and scales well to bigger screens — something most other PC SID trackers can't really claim. Could be a nice option for desktop users.

[2bt]

The app builds and runs fine on desktop. It's great for development and testing. But there's no keyboard support, and since the app is made for portrait mode, monitor screen utilization is not idea. A proper PC version would look completely different.

Someone actually asked for keyboard support in a playstore comment. I will have to think about that though, the wasn't build with keyboard support in mind.

There are a bunch of goattracker forks that try to improve on the UI for the desktop PC. To me they all seem like halfhearted attempts though. Do you know what's the C64 cross-platform tracker landscape like today? SIDWizard is gradually becoming more and more cross-platform, it seems. Is CheeseCutter still in active development? Does SID Factory II grow with the screen size?

[PM250B]

As far as I can tell, none of the cross-platform SID trackers allow their interface to be freely resized to fit the screen. Even the graphical version of SID-Wizard doesn't.

I think Cheesecutter was eventually discontinued so the developers could focus on SID Factory II. However, I've hardly used it because I find the workflow and overall interface of SID-Wizard and GoatTracker much more intuitive.

Hermit seems to be incredibly passionate about his tracker. He's been actively supporting and improving it for at least 15 years, whereas GoatTracker's development largely came to a halt around 2007 or 2008.

Are you familiar with this comparison table?

C64 Music Editors Comparison Table

[2bt]

I tried out SID Factory II the other day. It might be an amazing editor, but the UI could be done better IMO. It is in active development, so maybe the resizing is on their todo list already.

Yeas I am vaguely familiar with the comparison table. It's amazing to me that after all these years, it looks like GoatTracker is still the number one, what a prophetic name!

A new desktop GoatTracker III would be a nice idea. It should combine the valuable additions of all the major forks. But it should be a rewrite from scratch, with the goal that all current GoatTracker user would be happy to switch to it. Otherwise, would be not much of a point for the project. This means everything needs to basically work the same as in the original. GTMobile makes simplifications around the order list and instrument tables. GoatTracker III must not do that. But it could have a simple mode (which maybe should be the default mode), which offers sliders instead of raw hex numbers, similar to GTMobile.

Honestly, I am not sure the community wants an editor like that at all. As for GTMobile, it has not caught on as much as I initially anticipated.

[PM250B]

Bringing GoatTracker to a true v3 would probably be a massive undertaking. Extending the player with new features while maintaining its rock-solid stability, modernizing the interface to make it fast and user-friendly, and at the same time keeping the generated SID files as small as they are today would be a real challenge.

Cadaver once said that the player is a maintenance nightmare because of the countless "#ifdef"s used for feature optimization. It's very difficult to work your way through the code, and the embedded assembler from Exomizer, with its rather esoteric syntax, doesn't make things any easier.

Unfortunately, interest in music and music trackers seems to be quite limited these days. Even when talented developers put a huge amount of effort into creating a new tracker, it attracts relatively little attention. It's a shame, because the SID is such a wonderful synthesizer. Today's users are simply used to software-DAWs that has evolved and matured over more than 30 years.

Personally, I'd already be happy if GoatTracker could optionally make use of the full 11-bit filter resolution for certain filter slides. 😂

[2bt]

I just checked out GTUltra. Is there any good reason to prefer the original GoatTracker over GTUltra? It has lots of improvements. The original repo has a few open PRs but not much has happened in the last couple of years.

So maybe GTUltra could be improved. E.g., although the window resizes, it just gets stretched out. Maybe I can pick up that project and just dust up the code. Switching to CMake and C++ seems like a nice first step. Eventually, the archaic code of the embedded assembler needs to be replaced, too.

[drfiemost]

I have made a fork with some minor improvements, like switching to SDL3 and CMake, but it is not actively developed.
If someone wants to take over just let me know: https://github.com/libsidplayfp/loadtracker
It would be cool to merge improvements from other forks and avoid fragmentation, but I haven't used it in more than 20 years so don't feel much motivated yet.

[2bt]

That's very nice @drfiemost. The point about fragmentation is a real concern. I have to pick one starting point. GTUltra has multi-SID support. For that reason I think it might be best to build on top of that.

[PM250B]

Today there seems to be significant interest in 2SID, 3SID, and larger multi-SID setups. A key requirement is that each SID has its own full set of available patterns, rather than having to share pattern slots with other SIDs.

[2bt]

Does GTUltra support this?

[PM250B]

Not that I know of, but 208 pattern should still be fine for 2SID.
Anything beyond that becomes rather questionable in my opinion if the SIDs have to share the same pattern pool. Having to reuse patterns across multiple SIDs can quickly become a significant limitation.

[drfiemost]

I agree dual sid support is useful, for C64 Ultimate and Mega65 for example, but anything more makes no sense to me.
Unfortunately GTUltra is still based on an ancient and customized resid version, not easily replaceable.
That said I'll try to merge the single/dual sid support from gt2fork

Also porting to modern c++ seems like an interesting idea, maybe a chance to cleanup the code.

[PM250B]

By the way, have you seen the Goattracker plugin in Retro Debugger? It looks interesting...

[2bt]

I have started porting to C++ and am fiddling with a new ImGui based UI. Let's see how far I can push this.

[PM250B]

Nice. One question is whether the sequence editor should optionally have a more graphical layout, with visual separators and some space for descriptions or labels.

With 6 voices, displaying only pattern numbers starts to become quite difficult to read. The overview gets cluttered very quickly.

GoatTracker already supports patterns of different lengths internally, but managing them in the current sequence editor is quite cumbersome. The editor was clearly designed around fixed-size patterns.

As an example, the old Jeskola Buzz tracker had a sequence editor that remained very easy to navigate and edit, while still being fully keyboard-driven. A similar approach could make complex multi-SID songs much easier to manage.

[2bt]

Actually, GTUltra supports this already. When you click on "ORDERLIST", it switches to a vertical layout which is very similar to GTMobile's, arguably even better. I think this feature was a big selling point. I have not implemented this yet in the new UI.

GTUltra supposedly supports up to 4 SID chips but I am not sure how the other 6 channels are accessed, I guess it works via the next subtune, so two tunes play at the same time. I couldn't find an example that uses this. Can't say how important this feature is.