As Unity 3 is going to support MOD files:
http://blogs.unity3d.com/2010/06/25/unity-3-feature-preview-audio/
What “usable” application support that format. I can remember ModEdit which was made for MS-DOS and you had to type in every single event. Start that note, stop that note, …
All the applications I found were somehow comparable to that. I am sure I missed several good applications. I would be very thankful if someone could point me to them :).
Phew, been a while since i touched a tracker.
Modplug Tracker was my favourite http://www.modplug.com/
Mod is a wide area by the way. *.it, *.s3m, *.mo3 … there are dozen of mod formats
Thanks Tiles, as soon as I saw that video I was wondering the exact same thing.
I’ve wondered about this myself for months, since they announced the support. I was hoping UT would give us some advice on how to use the files, but this thread would suggest that’s not the case (can’t investigate the video myself right now because it’s a fail on the iPhone). I looked this up when Unity 3 was announced, as, despite having a background in electronic music composition, I’d never even heard of a tracker in or out of college. This looks like a really sad state of affairs, to me:
Everything there looks like it was made for a Game Boy Color. 
Is this just something that came with FMOD and will end up being useless to everyone?
Tracker music was common in the late '80s and '90s. For something that doesn’t look completely hideous you can try Player Pro (Universal version here, use the other link for the full package…and yes, these are MacOS Classic screenshots; the OS X version looks similar though):
–Eric
Well, there’s actual notation there, so that’s a plus. Thanks, Eric, I will investigate that. Have you used it? Do you have any idea why it wouldn’t be included on Wikipedia’s list?
Yes, although only lightly. The first music program I used was OctaMED on the Amiga, so scary-looking tracker programs don’t put me off as much as they might otherwise.
Because nobody has bothered to put it in there, I guess. I’m sure there are a number of tracker programs that aren’t there; it seems like a pretty short list.
–Eric
I had a glance at several of those applications (before I started this thread) and I wonder that my first impression about them is they are outdated from a usability point of view.
Many screenshots show a grid in which all the commands are written. Who want’s to work like this today?!
As I have no keyboard, I like it to work with a matrix view, where you can exatly define the length of each note and often one may change the volume of that note in the same view with the mouse.
Tiles, I think Modplug Tracker appears like a retro application. I haven’t tried it yet, but I doubt it is possible to work efficiently with it.
Eric, Player Pro is Mac only and I don’t have one :(. I very much prefer that one could read the music directly. As I said before, I like it to work with a matrix view, as it is mostly easier to define the exact length and a volume at once.
I don’t understand why those applications only have one view. Most of the basic midi editors have several different views, all with its pros and cons.
(It is not my intention to complain. It is just frustrating. I hoped that could become a pretty cool feature. There are amazing songs made in the mod format (or .it, .s3m). As I like it to work on details and try different things out. That would take months with those applications.)
Renoise seems like one of the better ones.
You could fix that. 
Although it is open-source, so theoretically someone could try porting it.
I agree, and Player Pro has several views (click for larger pic, although there are still some some other windows I left out…and that’s just random typing to get something to show up in the views, not actual music ):
–Eric
I thought so, but the Wiki page only says “Load” for the .mod file support. That might be outdated, but the link at the bottom of their features page is also useless. Any idea if Renoise and Unity are actually compatible? I’m not too keen on using what Eric offered after seeing this.
I don’t know that I even care at this point, though. I figured that we’d have some way to manipulate the tracker data, which would provide what was requested here. Instead, we get this, but I’m not interested just for file size savings; it will probably take so much longer to make music with tracker software instead of a regular DAW that by the time I’m done making something, a better family of iOS devices will be released and AT&T will have upped the App Store download limit again. 
Definitely appropriate for old-school game music, though, so maybe we’ll see that guy taumel make something cool with this feature.
It was open-sourced. See here.
–Eric
Well, I did think it weird to see “Author” on that page, considering you already mentioned that it was OSS, but I don’t see why that link is built into a menu in the app itself. Nobody cared enough to weed out the menu, I guess.
Defintely, Depends, Sometimes, err …
You can normally record in a tracker the same way than in a regular sequencer. By simply playing it live and record it. Modplug tracker also allows you to import midi. Means, you create your track in a sequencer, and then simply load it into MPT to finish the track.
One of the big limits of mod music is the lack of effects when you use the mod directly. And that it works with samples only. Even when some trackers like MPT can work with VST. DirectX effects are no real substitute here.
A mod will nearly never sound as good as a mastered wave that is made with a sequencer.
One of the big advantages of mod music is the very small filesize. Especially with MO3. Not this much bigger than pure midi files. A few kilobytes for a full album in best case. Depends of course of the used samples 
Porting something that was not made with portability in mind could be fun :).
As I said, I haven’t installed any of those applications, I only checked some screenshots, tutorials on youtube, documentations and stuff like that.
And I won’t have a closer look at Player Pro as I can’t use it…
aNTeNNa trEE, have a look at that tutorial http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXuyVKUesbw. Working like this is simply horrible. It is impossible to work fluently as there are a lot of barriers in many areas.
Tiles, you are right. It is possible to make music like that and it would be very small. It is just too complicated to do it from my point of view.
When I read the first time about tracker support in Unity 3, I had a look at what fmod supported. After I excluded mod 
, I expected they would support a midi with soundbank combination (I was surprised that fmod doesn’t support SF2 but only DLS).
Renoise produces module files that are compatible with Unity (thru xrns2mod). I’ve been using Renoise and it’s actually quiet capable. You can basically do everything a std DAW allow you to. Hook up your MIDI devices and record. Automate volume, pitch, pan and effects. Or import MIDI files. And the size saving is huge over wavs and oggs.
Of course managing banks etc. is a bit of a job and the module format is a bit more convoluted. But again, nothing is free these days :-).
You get sample-precise timing of audiosources in 3.0 as well. All sources .Play(ed) in the same frame will start at the exact same sample-boundary. And a new overloaded version .Play(Int64 delaySamples) is also introduced to time sources precisely over time.
Its of course a bit more complicated. And it is as told a bit more limited. It is harder to create good music with a tracker than with a sequencer and then render it out to wave. But it really depends what you want to do if it is worth the effort. The [mod archive](http://modarchive.org) shows that it is possible. A whole musician generation made music that way. Thats how techno started. And the results are sometimes really amazing.
For a downloadable application/game it may make no big difference if your game has 10 Mb with Mod music or 60 Mb because of WMA or MP3 music. But even here it can still make a difference. Still not everybody has a highspeed connection.
For a web application/game it can definitely make a big difference. Because even with highspeed it takes a while. A while that can last long enough that the user presses esc to abort the loading. Or think about Android or Iphone where the resources are limited
soren, I see your point. But the applications that support the modular formats are trackers, which seam to be user unfriendly by definition. Just as an example: If you decided once to use sixteenth notes, it is very hard or impossible to use triplets in the same track. If you decide to use a huge matrix with values, you are getting something that is not any more readable.
On the other hand there would have been tons of midi editing applications that do a much better job. And there would also have been very small soundbanks out there. (It would probably have been easier to find DLS soundbanks than using a modular sound format)
Tiles, if you use a midi/soundbank combination, you get about the same as with mod. The size would probably be a little bit bigger, but still very small. It is not about the quality, there is amazing music that was made with trackers. It is the time spent to make the music. You need much more time to do it with a tracker than with a sequencer. (I am only talking about things that you can do with both!)
Metron, I just tried both of them. Unfortunately both of them are plain trackers.
Sorry, I am only complaining. But I honestly would use that kind of functionality if it came with an efficient workflow. I was surprised, as for me that is one of the strengths of Unity. Doing music with a tracker feels like drawing a texture in a text editor and typing the rgb value of every pixel .
Well, Midi and Mod is very similar in lots of areas. They even share the same roots, file format wise. And guess what? A Midi-Soundbank combination is nothing else than mod music. That`s how mod music started
I made mods in the past too. And it didn`t take this much longer than creating the tracks in a sequencer. All a question of getting used to it
But honestly, i prefer to create my music in FL Studio nowadays. Not this limited. And sounds better. Even when the music i create is still cruel, hehe :lol:
In the end its all about if you need it or not. I want to make offline Windows games. So i dont need mod music anymore. MP3 or WMA is fine for that. And i guess it`s the same with you
