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Pretty cool, dynamic tune. Guess it is time to put some work into a Phaser4.

This is kind of an answer of the Soviet electronics to the graph calculators such as Ti-8x. To my knowledge, it is a totally unique design, not a copy or derivative of something (like most of other Soviet electronics), yet it is based on the cloned CPU architecture, yeah - the 16-bit LSI-11, which is at heart of the BK line of home computers. It even had a dock station MK-92 with a 4-color plotter and tape interface. First prototyped in 1986, released in 1988, produced till 1992. At the time of release it used to cost nearly as much as a small Soviet car. Not a vapor hardware either, I personally seen it in a shop being a kid.

It was the last mass produced device of such kind in the USSR. There was a similar but 8086-powered MK-98 follow up in the works, a few production quality fully functional prototypes were found, but it was never available to the mass market.

Oh, you probably creating the source block at the very first row. It is a common issue in the code, will fix it ASAP.

Edit: fixed, uploaded.

I was thinking more on the idea with references, and come to the same conclusion, it is better to have it as a manual 'sync' command rather than an automatic update. Besides of the possible unwanted changes, it brings too much trouble handing the insert/delete position (as all data shifts inside all blocks). I'm going to think some more before trying to implement it. At least a simple block copy function is possible and should not hurt anything, like, press something, input an existing block name, and it'll get copied into current position.

I implemented RowOpt to cram down all songs into my 1-bit collection, it worked just fine at the moment, but yes, it may have issues. One thing is that it won't optimize above the slowest speed, which is vary for different engines. I confirm the issue with the example, will look into it.

A minor update to v0.43:

- Main/side display in the header with M/S
- Rows with contents on the other track marked on the left with > < (depending on current track)
- Inactive track gets displayed in the dual mode (F6)
- Marker name copying for the whole-width copy/paste operations
- Module filename and path displayed in the window header

I also got an idea for another big improvement to the pattern-less system, a link for the already defined named blocks, but I'm still not exactly sure how to implement it interface-wise. It certainly would be a front-end side feature, so no changes needed for the engine scripts. Basically, we already have blocks of variable length and with an optional name. That name can be used as a reference for a 'link' that would synchronize contents of the same-sized same-named blocks. So you would be able to edit one block, and it automatically updates all linked blocks.

Edit: actually when I was explaining my idea here, I got a better understanding how to do it. Hopefully it won't turn the tracker into another hard-to-fix glitch fest.

This was a matter of discussion for several years on ZX scene, and the conclusion was that the difference between these volume levels is very subtle (a fraction of a volt) to be noticed by the ear; and this behavior is not replicated on most Amstrad models and clones. To my knowledge, no one ever actually tried it, though.

Yes, this exact idea. Although I never seen this one, the one I saw was using Video RCA connector plugged into Audio input. Anyways, very cool stuff.

Oh, actually you're reminded me one interesting topic. I recall someone already attempted it, but generally it is totally underexplored, I believe. The idea is to generate audio using the video output. Like, we often put colored strips to the screen when a beeper engine is working (because Spectrum shares border color selection with the sound output bit). These strips actually produce voltage changes in the video signal at audible frequencies. It is possible to display patterns on the screen that will produce certain tones, and by changing the patterns it is possible to play music.

Hehe, guys, this does not work like this. I'm not sitting on a pile of finished GTIA songs ready to be sent anytime, it had to be made from scratch just before the deadline. So not this time... Nevermind, I'm actually just made one, sent it already. Don't know if it'll make to the compo, but let's hope. It sounds a bit glitchy compared to the ZX version, but as usual, there is no time to figure out what is wrong (kind of a sound port contention?). Party version it is!

Somehow forgot to make this small update. v0.41:

- Minor fix in the color schemes, c64 got brighter
- dirent updated, utf8 file paths supported
- Minor tweaks to the file selection dialog layout, navigation arrows added
- The global speed now resets to a default of the selected engine on an engine change
- MML-style envelope parser in engines now also support L as | and X as * to make it usable with QWERTZ keyboards
- Other minor fixes

Unfortunately the problem with QWERTZ keyboards in SDL isn't one that is easy to fix, so for now there is that workaround with L and X. Hope it'll help to make the engines usable, at least.