Axolotl
Chiptune DJ software
Contents
1. Introduction
2. What is Axolotl?
3. Using Axolotl
4. Download
5. Compiling Axolotl
6. Known bugs
7. To-do
8. Changes
1. Introduction
This hereby documentation shall cast sparkling light of wisdom upon thee regarding the noble project of Axolotl.
2. What is Axolotl?
Axolotl is a small sea creature that looks like mudkip but has been a subject to quite more elaborate naming convention.
Axolotl was fisrt started as dotmod2 (dot mod squared), to be a video game with gameplay synchronised to chiptune music. Using code resources from .mod2 i began new project. My aim is to enable people to freely mix chiptunes which may lead to having some chiptune party nights (hell yeah!). It can currently thoroughly annalyze a .mod, play it through allegro/dumb and synchronise itself with music.
PS most recent dotmod2 version is available at sf.net repository, and I consider developing it further if anyone's interested in drawing some sprites for this one.
3. Using Axolotl
Ok, so first of all, its all keyboard-driven. You have to load two mod files and you can mix them.
Function Green mod Yellow key
Open F1 F5
Play F2 F6
Stop/Close F3 F7
Channel 1 on/off 1 5
Channel 2 on/off 2 6
Channel 3 on/off 3 7
Channel 4 on/off 4 8
Speed +/- Q/A
Tempo +/- W/S
So, where's the trick... all the functions but play have instant effect. When you press play, start of the song will be timed with starting of another songs next pattern, also both songs are synchronised. And there is no crossfader, these are mods, let's take advantage of it. You should choose channels and enable them one by one when fading to another song. While loading mod is analyzed and each channel is evaluated whether it is a melody, drums, bass or arpeggio channel, these of course may vary since the algorithm itself is imperfect. Log from analysis is printed to the console.
4. Download
Most recent version can be found on sourceforge repository
5. Compiling Axolotl
It's a single C file Code::Blocks / Dev-C++ would do. Not tested on MSVC yet.
You need allegro and dumb libraries to compile it. they can be get here:
allegro.sourceforge.net
dumb.sourceforge.net
6. Known bugs
Roaches, termites, earthworms, beatles etc.
- channel evaluation seems to freak out sometimes
- pattern jumps are not handled correctly
7. To-do
- too many things
8. Changes
v0.1.2
- added multithreading
- added bg image
v0.1
- alpha stage reached
- basic functionality
- display of some sort
- windows style file opening (as oposed to hard-coded filenames)
v0.0a
- Major memory management fix, which got the project up and running
*EOF*