Import from VortexTracker?

[emook]

Is it possible to add an importer from Vortex Tracker?

VT has a good text export that produces the song data in a plain text file.

Example is here :

https://pastebin.com/rZKWaEjh

This would mean we can then import any track to VT (pt3/asc/stc etc) and export to work on in Arkos!

Looking forward to your reply!

[Targhan]

Yup, VT import is on the TODO list, though I didn’t expect anyone to ask for it. I was wrong, several people are already interested, so I should probably increase the priority of the feature :).

This export as text is indeed very neat, I will probably use that, thanks a lot for the pointer, I overlooked that feature! This make the import even simpler to do, because the VT binary format isn’t extremely well documented.

[emook]

Sounds great!

As you may or not know the Spectrum Next is on the verge of being released that supports 3 x AY chips and Arkos would be awesome to use for the machine.

If you need any help testing conversions let me know.

From what I have found the text import is really good and captures all ornaments / samples that are needed and as I mentioned cool because you can use VT to convert some of the more obscure formats into one that we can load into Arkos2.

Bump it up super high please! Eagerly waiting!

Thanks!

[Targhan]

No problem, it shouldn’t be too hard to do, BUT the Vortex philosophy is quite different from the AT one, so the conversion will be a “best effort”. The musician will probably have to tweak the result. For example, a lot of things are managed within the instruments with VT, such as pitch loop, which is not really working well with AT2 (which relies more on track effect for that).

But I guess, as long as the notes are well imported, it is quite easy to modify the instruments to make them sound right.

[Targhan]

Now that I think about it again, it might be better to import the binary files. One less step to convert the song (PT3 -> AK2 song). I don’t think there will be much work involved, probably less actually. Less parsing to do!

[Lee Bee]

Hi, I signed up here specifically to add my voice to this feature request!

I’ve been using Vortex Tracker for years and I really like it, but I wanted to start making music for games and learned that Vortex is too resource-demanding for games and doesn’t have a sound effects module.

So now I am just about to begin learning to use Arkos Tracker! 🙂

It would be so helpful to me if I could import songs and instruments from Vortex. (I’ve created my own library of instruments in Vortex.)

It would also be nice to be able to export songs to Vortex, but that’s less important to me at the moment.

By the way, I really don’t like the scrolling inertia on this website, it makes me feel dizzy, sorry.

Thanks,
Lee

[Targhan]

Thanks for passing by! It’s in the pipeline, but not top-priority. It will be done eventually. However, do not count on a AT2->VT3 converter, because AT2 is supposed to be the ultimate 8-bit tracker, you know :).

There is a question I’m asking to myself: should I make a text import or a .PT3 import? Do you have any option about it?

And once again, the PT3 import will be “best effort”, as both tracks have very different philosophy. But the notes should be well converted, as well as basic instrument. For the rest, it will require tweakings.

[Lee Bee]

Thanks for the reply Targhan 🙂

Yes, I understand that it won’t be an exact conversion, but if the notes are there, that is the main thing. Instruments would be good too, but if that’s not possible then never mind.

AT2->VT3 isn’t really important – it just seems like it would be useful for general compatibility, but the only thing I really need is to bring things into Arkos.

As for file format, I can only speak for myself but I always save everything as text files. Other people may have other ways of working. But then again it doesn’t matter to me whether it’s txt, pt3, Hobeta, TAP, vt2… I’m happy to export in whatever format is needed to give the best conversion. But I like working with text files as it seems nice and simple. And as an AY lover, I like simple things!

[Targhan]

Ok, thanks. Instruments will be exported too, but some will probably suffer the conversion.

>By the way, I really don’t like the scrolling inertia on this website, it makes me feel dizzy, sorry.
Oh, check the bottom of the “troubleshooting” section of this website, Grim has the same problem as you and proposed a patch.

[Lee Bee]

Great! Thank you Targhan.

I got the inertia to stop with Adblock as suggested, though it took me a while to figure out how. Maybe you could add this explanation to your Troubleshooting page:

Adblock Plus settings > Advanced > My filter list > > Edit filters > paste the two urls into the box

I’m looking forward to learning to use Arkos! I’ll come back to these forums and let you know how I’m getting on, thanks 🙂

[Targhan]

I just started to at the format. I thought PT3 would be the best, but it seems that the “.txt” export of VT2 is the same as the “.vt2” of Vortex Tracker 2.5. So maybe I should make a “.vt2/.txt” import instead of PT3.

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