General music and sound solution

[GradualGames]

So I've heard. I think it'd be neat if someone wrote a plugin for Famitracker that could export to Drag's engine, should it be released eventually.

[Shiru]

Text exporter plugin for FT is updated to use new interface.

I should say that the way 'someone just should release his thing' is stagnation. It is not effective approach. There were custom solutions for years, but they weren't designed for public release, which requires a lot of additional work (comments in code, docs, tools, features not needed by the author). So even if someone generally OK with the idea to release his solution, after he realizes amount of needed work and see posts 'I working on similar thing too, going to release when finish', he just decides to wait. Everyone waits for everyone, no progress for years, the problem remains.

[GradualGames]

Regardless of who it comes from---this plugin system will enable somebody out there to provide a truly robust sound engine to be used in games. The example one that I included with the system is a working sound engine, and I'm using it in my game, but I'm under no illusion that it will satisfy everyone's needs. That's why I built the plugin system---to make it easier for somebody who has made a really fine sound engine for games to adapt Famitracker to export for their engine. Now it is just a matter of time until that happens. Maybe someday there will be several such engines available rather than "one overarching solution" and you can just pick from these based on size, speed, features, etc. but the common feature will be-- "I can just click a button in Famitracker to use this sound engine with my song in my project."

[Dwedit]

I wrote a parser for FTM files long before famitracker did anything involving Exporting. I'd probably be more likely to make a direct .FTM to whatever converter than an exporter plugin.

[Shiru]

FamiTracker's module format evolves with the editor, the files aren't compatible between versions. Plugin system allows to reduce requirements for having an exact version of FT.

I thought about the parser approach before learned that there is plugin system in FT now, and choose plugin way as much simpler (text exporter code is about 80 lines).