Slowly, Come, Together
Posted by Trixter on March 4, 2008
In the last two weeks, I have achieved the following in my quest to finish MONOTONE before arriving at Block Party:
- Gotten the flu (took up three days right there)
- Wrote a completely customizable abstract input routine (complete with keyboard configuration utility — with tipsheet writer!) because some composers will throw a hissy fit if the basic interface isn’t exactly like ${FAVORITE_TRACKER}
- Wrote a keyboard interrupt handler (complete with human-readable labels so that “410Ah” reads like “Ctrl+LShift+Alt+F7”) because you never know when some hissy-fit composer will demand the use of Ctrl+LShift+Alt+F7
- Wrote instantaneous-fast (not an exaggeration) text routines, including multiple virtual screens that use hardware video pages where available
…and I haven’t sounded a single note yet. But you can actually watch the pieces slowly come together now, and it’s pretty damn fun writing from scratch what is essentially turning out to be a miniature operating system.
Next up: The main framework request handler/dispatcher and a finalized abstract Song object (and MONOTONE-specific descendant). Hopefully both tomorrow night, or I’ll have to stop development to work on my presentation :-/
Oldskooler Ramblings 
guest said
What is actually the Monotone program? Does it turn the PC into an “R2D2” :P , or does it play serious advanced music and sounds in *.WAV quality?
Trixter said
When finished, it will be a music composition program for extremely simple output devices. The PC speaker is the first supported device, with others to follow (PCjr, Tandy 1000, CMS/Game Blaster, etc.).
It’s a tracker. For more info on what a tracker is, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protracker
guest said
Cool. I’ve not gotten too mutch into how the different sound systems for the computer works, so I really have no clear idea how a tracker works, but it sounds advanced.