Feedback and several different issues

[Lee Bee]

First of all, a huge thank-you to Mr Nevo for this excellent software! 🙂 I first looked at it last year and since then it seems there have been many great improvements. The software is very attractive, nice and fast, and there’s lots I like about it! 🙂

Until now, I’ve been using Vortex Tracker, and I must say I really do like the new version of Vortex released last year by Ivan Pirog. Nevertheless, Vortex is too slow for games, and I want to make game music (in fact I would like to become a prolific Spectrum game musician!), so I am starting to move over to Arkos so I can achieve this 🙂

Perhaps the best thing about Arkos is that it’s being actively updated—while Vortex has had almost no support for many years.

Anyway, here are a few humble feature requests/issues…

1. Play in mono
I can’t find any way to play in mono. This is important for making music for Spectrum games, since the Spectrum is mono.

2. Holding Enter
When I hold down Enter in the pattern viewer, the song plays high-speed. I personally don’t like this, and prefer the song to play in real-time. Perhaps Enter could be high-speed and Return could be real-time? Oh and I also prefer if the song continues to the next block instead of stopping at the end of the block.

3. Start and end of patterns
If you’re on the last line of a pattern and press down, it doesn’t loop back up to the start of the pattern. Likewise, if you’re on the first line and hit up, it doesn’t loop round to the bottom of the pattern.

4. Editing an instrument
When I’m editing an instrument, the only way to “play” the instrument with the keys is to click on the piano at the bottom. But when I go into an instrument, the first thing I want to do is hear it. So I think you should always be able to “play” the instrument by default – and only if you click into a box like Volume, then the keys stop playing and you can enter hex numbers, until the cursor is no longer in the Volume box, then the keys will play again.

5. Windows border
When the application is maximized, there is a light gray border all the way round the window. To me it looks like it isn’t maximised and I would prefer not to have that border.

6. Name of the project
It would be nice to see the name of the project/song at the top of the screen somewhere. Perhaps the title bar could say “Arkos Tracker 2: [song name]”.

7. VU meters
The VU meters are fun, but they seem detached from the pattern editor. I would move them to be at the top of the pattern editor, that way each channel directly relates to the channel in the pattern editor. I’ve made an image here of how it could look: https://i.ibb.co/sRrWMxH/new-VU-meters.png

8. Pattern height in decimal?
I don’t mind pattern line numbers being hex, but when I want to specify how long a pattern is, I always think in decimal.

9. Hide the piano?
It would be good to have the option to hide the piano. I don’t actually need it and it takes up valuable space.

10. More than 3 channels
I can’t see a way to add more than 3 channels? (Vortex tracker allows 6.) I have no intention of making music in more than 3 channels, but having more than 3 channels would help composing. I often compose a pattern with 4 or more parts (bass, drums, melody, chords), and then when I’m happy with how it sounds, I compress it down to 3 channels.

11. Typos
Finally, in your tutorial page for the Linker panel, there are a couple of typos/bad sentences:

One sentence says:
“An important note is that a pattern be shorter than the tracks it contains: only a subset of it will be heard”

It should be:
“An important note is that if a pattern is shorter than the tracks it contains, only a subset of the tracks will be heard”

Another sentence says:
“Events tracks have to use:”

It should be:
“Events tracks have two uses:”

I also have some feedback on how the linker panel icons look but I’ll put that in a separate topic as it’s a very minor issue 🙂

[Targhan]

Thanks a lot for this feedback.

1) Mono: go to the song property, and edit the PSG: a new pop-up shows. At the bottom-right, a “mix” combo box allows you to choose “center”.

2) This is good suggestion, I’ll add that the TODO list. Also, you can use ALT+Space to play from the cursor. By removing the Follow, you can play the same block again and again. About the looping, I think looping to the beginning of the pattern is the right solution, not continuing to the NEXT one, right?

3) Yes, good idea. I thought using start/end key would be enough. Aren’t they?

4) Wrong! Simply press Enter in the Instrument Editor. Also, don’t hesitate to use the Repeat combobox in the Test Area.

5) Windows border: true. I’ll see what I can do.

6) Name of the project: already done, the “song name” is displayed, provided you typed one in the Song Properties.

7) Vu-meters: I already thought about it, but one thing I like about the current system is the ability to mute/solo a channel by left/right clicking on its vu-meter. Also, with a 9-channel song (are they often used though??), this is nice to better understand what is going on. Maybe I’m the only one using this feature? Also, when the new linker system is done, more data will be displayed at the top of the track (transposition, maybe track name) so the Vu Meter will shrink a lot… I also thought about having the vu-meter ABOVE the top of the track notes, but I’m having doubts about the usability of this idea.

8) This will be addressed with the new linker system.

9) You can. Simply use the “handle” between the pattern viewer and the Test area, and click+move mouse down, this will resize the Test Area.

10) You’re in it for a treat :). Song Properties > Add PSG. Add as many as you want!

11) All corrected, thanks!!

Thanks for this feedback, this is tremendously motivating.

[Lee Bee]

Hey, thanks so much for the replies! 🙂 Great answers!

Thanks for this feedback, this is tremendously motivating.

You’re welcome and I think what you’ve made here is fantastic. I love the AY-3-8910 chip. It has been around over 40 years, and for all that time (to my knowledge) there has never been a truly user-friendly GUI for programming it.

The AY scene may be a relatively small scene, but it’s historically significant – we live in a quantum leap of technology. Until the 1970s people had not heard square waves! 😀 I think that in hundreds of years time, people will still listen to this kind of music. It may be a small scene, but historically it could have a huge audience. And your software is a part of that history 🙂

I keep finding new things I like about Arkos that is so much better than Vortex and other trackers. The approach to instruments is much better for one thing. Being able to name instruments AND ornaments is a HUGE deal for me!

Also, not being limited to 15 ornaments is a massive deal. A couple of years ago I used Vortex to make an accurate rendition of “Passing Breeze” from OutRun – that song has so many beautiful, complex chords, so I had to stack multiple arpeggios within each ornament, then use commands to jump to the right point of the ornament. Very irritating, and totally counteractive to the creative process!

You can [hide the piano] Simply use the “handle” between the pattern viewer and the Test area, and click+move mouse down, this will resize the Test Area.

Ah, that’s great. Thanks! 🙂

Mono: go to the song property, and edit the PSG

That is helpful. Though I like to have a button that lets me quickly switch between listening in mono and stereo. Why? All the music I make, I optimise it so it sounds good in both mono and stereo. I intend it to be played on the Speccy (mono) but I also intend to play it for fun in stereo, and I always optimise it for “ABC” stereo. So I like hearing it in both mono and stereo and would like a “mono/stereo” button. But maybe others think that’s not necessary? 🙂

Wrong! Simply press Enter in the Instrument Editor.

Ah, thanks for that. That is very helpful. Pressing Enter lets me hear how the instrument sounds. However, it chooses the note for me, and sometimes I want to hear what it sounds like at different pitches (for example, a bass sound needs to be heard at different pitch to a glockenspiel sound).

Perhaps you could make the instrument editor so that if you click anywhere outside the boxes then they stop being selected (in pink), and the piano can be used?

Vu-meters: I already thought about it, but one thing I like about the current system is the ability to mute/solo a channel by left/right clicking on its vu-meter.

Well my idea was that you can still mute them by clicking on them, only they would be in a more logical place – you would be clicking at the top of the actual channel you wanted to mute/unmute.

You can currently do this by clicking the numbers 1–3 above each channel, but those buttons are quite small, which makes it harder to quickly mute/unmute channels. If VU meters occupied a strip across the top of each channel, you would have loads of opportunity to click on them.

(Also, if the VU meters were not in the top right of the screen, there would be more room for the instruments list.)

I thought using start/end key would be enough. Aren’t they?

Oops, I never thought to use the Home and End keys! 😀 That’s something I will use in future.

In fact, in other trackers, it can sometimes be annoying when you’re entering notes on the last line of a pattern and it jumps back up to the top! So I actually like that it doesn’t jump when entering notes on the bottom line.

However, I still think it would be useful to be able to press “up” and “down” to loop round the to bottom/top. I can’t see any disadvantages to that being added at some point.

Speaking of the Home and End keys, I’ve used trackers that have another really useful feature: Keys F9–F12 jump to the following locations:

F9 Start of the pattern
F10 Quarter way through the pattern
F11 Half way through
F12 Three quarters way through

I have found this so helpful in the past and would like to request a feature like this. Not only does it let you quickly travel up and down within a pattern, but it helps you quickly find the quarter points, which (musically) are always key points.

About the looping, I think looping to the beginning of the pattern is the right solution, not continuing to the NEXT one, right?

Hmmm. Well sometimes I want the current pattern to loop, other times I want the song to continue. I think it should depend whether “loop” is turned on.

This leads me to another suggestion…

I will be using the “toggle loop” function a LOT. I think it needs to be easier to toggle and should be a single key, not a combination. (For example, something like the ` key above tab.)

I also think there should be more visual indication when loop is on or off, not just the small icon.

I would like to suggest something like this image I’ve made – when ‘loop’ is on, all the other patterns are greyed out:

https://i.ibb.co/Z2JkTNx/loop.png

I also have another suggestion that is quite radical and you may hate it! LOL 😀

You currently have four “play” buttons:

F7 = Play from beginning (loop off)
F8 = Play from current pattern (loop off)
F9 = Play from current pattern (loop on)
F10 = Play from cursor (loop on)

I think there should be just 3 “play” buttons which are independent to the loop button:

1. Play from beginning
2. Play from current pattern
3. Play from cursor

I would like “loop” to be completely independent to these controls. So if we want to loop the current pattern, we hit “play from current pattern” and turn looping on. I think this is a better system that is less confusing.

Putting all these suggestions together, I would assign the F keys as follows:

F1–F4 = Switch to Linker, Pattern, Instrument, Expression

F5–F7 = Play from beginning, play from current pattern, play from cursor
F8 = Switch to Piano

F9-F12 = Jump to start of pattern, quarter, half, three quarters

This way, all the “play” commands” are grouped together, which makes it easier to remember.

LOL sorry for making so many suggestions! I’m just trying to help 🙂

[Targhan]

Wow, thanks for the elaborated suggestions.

I don’t know about the play shortcuts. I’ll think about it! The jump shortcuts are a good idea, but I don’t know if assigning them to Fx keys is a good idea. However, you can bind the shortcuts as much as you want, so I could find other binding and you could reprogram them. I’ll add these to the bindings.

About the Vu-meters, my point is that having a view of ALL the channels is a good way to mute specific tracks, or make a goto (by clicking on the number). So I’m not sure I want to put them in the Tracks, though I like the idea. It is something we can add later on, so I’ll keep that in mind.

The looping “grey out” is interesting, I’ll add that to the infinite list of TODOs :).

About the instrument editor, by using F6 to switch to the test area, you can play the notes directly. Then press F3 to switch back to the Instrument area… But there is a problem is that your cursor disappears :). Maybe I should correct this (all this focus management is quite cumbersome to manage…). Do you think it can be enough?

[Lee Bee]

However, you can bind the shortcuts as much as you want, so I could find other binding and you could reprogram them. I’ll add these to the bindings.

That would be great! 🙂

Just a random idea (not sure if it would work), but how about a button to make the keyboard ALWAYS operate as piano keys. Could look like this:

Numerical values can still be entered on the numpad (hex A–F = Ctrl+numpad 1–6).

Or if you only have the bottom keys set as a piano, it leaves the number keys free, while Q–Y could enter hex values A-F.

Just some ideas? (I do actually have a MIDI keyboard, but I don’t always plug it in and I’ve spent my life using the keyboard keys for these kind of trackers!)

Here are a few other quick feature suggestions for entering values into boxes:

• Values can be quickly changed up and down with the mouse wheel

• Values can be quickly changed up and down by clicking and dragging up/down

• Value can be entered to multiple boxes simultaneously by selecting boxes and typing/pasting a single value for them all

[Lee Bee]

One more feature request…

• Some way to re-order the instruments/arpeggios in the list. Normally when I make a song, I randomly add instruments as I go along, and they get in a messy, confusing order. e.g. Two almost identical kick drums will be far apart. It’s so much easier when you can organise things better.

(This was 100 times worse in Vortex when instruments had no names! LOL)

[Targhan]

Noted all these FR… Not so easy to do :).

As for the reordering, this is definitely on the TODO list.

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