BINTRACKER
30 May 2020
Hello Friends of Bintracker,
Time has come! I’m releasing the Bintracker source code today. Now, before you get too exited: Bintracker is definitely not ready for production use yet. That said, most of the essential features are there, and if you’re adventurous enough and know how to compile from source, you can definitely start to some fun with Bintracker now.
All the things that I talked about in the previous video update are done. I rewrote the build system, so Bintracker now neatly builds out of source. Copy/paste (mostly) works. There is a second engine (nothing too exiting, just good old Quattropic), and documentation is coming along nicely (though still far from being complete). Also, I have added the plugin API. I’ve started to work on some plugins too (MML support coming up), but haven’t managed to complete any of them yet.
There are a number of bugs in the edit system, I will start tackling those in the coming days. For the time being, remember to save often when you make music with Bintracker.
The next big step will be reworking the assembler, and adding new instruction sets to it, which in turn means more supported platforms, which in turn means more engines. Also, I will continue to work on plugins, as well as extending the MDAL compiler. Furthermore, I want to get started with Windows builds.
That said, I will now continue to work on Bintracker for a few more days, but then I will take a break for about 2 months because I’ll have some “real life” things to take care of. I’m hoping to start up development again by the end of summer.
I guess this is a good moment to say some thanks. Thanks to all of you who have been following the project until now. Massive thanks to my girlfriend, who has been supporting me throughout this project. Special thanks go out to the CHICKEN Team, especially Felix Winkelmann, who has been giving me a lot of advice and help. Thanks to adkd, nyanpasu64, and Alone Coder, the discussions we had really helped move things forward. Thanks to Shiru, whose is to blame for the original idea of MDAL. And a big thank you to Catskull Electronics for the big donation.
Speaking of donations, the crowdfunding campaign will of course be delayed until the first beta release is out, which will be in late autumn, as things stand now. If you do feel like sending some financial support in the meantime, I’ve set up a Paypal donation button on the website for now.
That’s all for now. As always, let me know if you have any suggestions/questions/etc, and of course check out Bintracker!