FrankenGraphics
New member
Baking sustain levels and pitch changes into instruments is the typical modus for game oriented drivers. It's not much of a problem either, except that it bamboozles anyone used to the conveniences of the Famitracker driver. The silver lining is that envelopes are infinitely reusable between instruments, so it's not nearly as wasteful as it first might look - it might actually make for smaller song file sizes in the long run for a complete soundtrack = you can potentially fit in more songs in your dedicated song bank(s). On the other hand, not planning ahead can lead to the opposite.
The only ft effects i personally find worth bothering about when deciding on what driver to use are the ones that can't be achieved with envelopes. Looping/jumping, tempo, pattern cut, song stop, typically.
GGSound has loop. In fact, songs must end with the loop command. I'm not sure what actually happens if it isn't there - does it stop (that would actually be very elegant) or does it run into whatever data comes next? I need to try that out.
FamiTone2 has loop*, tempo, and pattern cut.
Pently has loop and tempo. Pently is a special case, because since it can't change pitch via its instruments, vibrato and portamento effects goes here too. Vibrato can't change speed, so it's actually a little less agile than GGs and FT2.
*loop for FamiTone2 is explicitly only backwards. I don't know about the others actually, i've never tried doing a forward reference. You can in famitracker, but i suppose this usage is not very common.
The only ft effects i personally find worth bothering about when deciding on what driver to use are the ones that can't be achieved with envelopes. Looping/jumping, tempo, pattern cut, song stop, typically.
GGSound has loop. In fact, songs must end with the loop command. I'm not sure what actually happens if it isn't there - does it stop (that would actually be very elegant) or does it run into whatever data comes next? I need to try that out.
FamiTone2 has loop*, tempo, and pattern cut.
Pently has loop and tempo. Pently is a special case, because since it can't change pitch via its instruments, vibrato and portamento effects goes here too. Vibrato can't change speed, so it's actually a little less agile than GGs and FT2.
*loop for FamiTone2 is explicitly only backwards. I don't know about the others actually, i've never tried doing a forward reference. You can in famitracker, but i suppose this usage is not very common.