Topic: Furnace, the Chiptune Tracker Discussions

[Cyartog959]

So, I don't know if anyone in the VGMaps community heard of it or not yet, but have you even tried that very amazing, and completely cool chiptune tracker called Furnace?

It is a very amazing chiptune tracker that allows anyone to make chiptune music and sound effects, but shattered known technical boundaries by allowing many chips from many game consoles, even home and handheld, we've all known and loved to this day, NES, Genesis, TG16, GB, GBA(yes, that), DS(yes, that, too!!), and many others, including obscure sound chips, too, to be played at once, and it allows duplicates of said same chips to allow greater palettes of chiptuning alike, meaning no one will have to make music of whatever same sound chips' singular sound channels alone!

The creator behind it is none other than Tildearrow. Big congratulations to that fellow for making such a cool tracker!

Sure, we do have well-known trackers people used before, but this may be one of our best yet! And, so anyone knows, I have read, and it says it is NOT meant to replace any and all chiptune trackers, so people can still use them as they want. Famitracker, Deflemask, you name it. You can still download and use them, so nothing is ever replaced. PERIOD.

With this amazing tracker, I am thrilled to see such an amazing program bridge such gaps in making chiptunes for games & beyond!

I've previously thought of such a tracker that does it in such a long time, even after seeing a particular Famitracker fork playing many NES sound expansion chips at once, but no duplicates have been allowed from there.

There's a chiptune tracker guidance video up, for those that don't feel a bit confident in how to use one, made by ButtonMasher. Only thing is there's not yet a tutorial for making sound effects in trackers.

Video link here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q37XuOLz0jw

The download is absolutely free, so feel free to make whatever crazy songs or sounds you want! And don't worry about audio exporting. That tracker can export them from its own .fur format into .WAV formats, and we have converters to cover whatever we need for many projects.

Link to Furnace Tracker website - https://tildearrow.org/furnace/

Furnace's Github link - https://github.com/tildearrow/furnace

Furnace 0.6 Release Trailer video link, for those who want to see it in action - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEO_H3IqIPs

So, how do you like that tracker, and how have you been making whatever music and/or sounds with it? The possibilities are truly endless!

If you have made such music and sounds, place links for us to hear.

[Cyartog959]

The second video is actually the launch trailer for Furnace 0.6, a program that tracks chiptunes. A news message regarding an invasion by Martians is absent from it. We can almost guarantee that the caption is wrong.

Isn't what that tracker is for?

Release, launch, same thing, different terms.

That quote I heard from that video, not sure if its whole yet or not, I don't know where its originated from, a game I've not heard nor remembered in a while or someone that voiced it to test that tracker's features, but I do know how good that tracker is for numerous projects people want to work on.

[davisjame]

So, I don't know if anyone in the VGMaps community heard of it or not yet, but have you even tried that very amazing, and completely cool chiptune tracker called Furnace?

It is a very amazing chiptune tracker that allows anyone to make chiptune music and sound effects, but shattered known technical boundaries by allowing many chips from many game consoles, even home and handheld, we've all known and loved to this day, NES, Genesis, TG16, GB, GBA(yes, that), DS(yes, that, too!!), and many others, including obscure sound chips, too, to be played at once, and it allows duplicates of said same chips to allow greater palettes of chiptuning alike, meaning no one will have to make music of whatever same sound chips' singular sound channels alone!

The creator behind it is none other than Tildearrow. Big congratulations to that fellow for making such a cool tracker!

Sure, we do have well-known trackers people used before, but this may be one of our best yet! And, so anyone knows, I have read, and it says it is NOT meant to replace any and all chiptune trackers, so people can still use them as they want. Famitracker, Deflemask, you name it. You can still download and use them, so nothing is ever replaced. PERIOD.

With this amazing tracker, I am thrilled to see such an amazing program bridge such gaps in making chiptunes for games & beyond!

I've previously thought of such a tracker that does it in such a long time, even after seeing a particular Famitracker fork playing many NES sound expansion chips at once, but no duplicates have been allowed from there.

There's a chiptune tracker guidance video up, for those that don't feel a bit confident in how to use one, made by ButtonMasher. Only thing is there's not yet a tutorial for making sound effects in trackers.

Video link here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q37XuOLz0jw

The download is absolutely free, so feel free to make whatever crazy songs or sounds you want! And don't worry about audio exporting. That tracker can export them from its own .fur format into .WAV formats, and we have converters to cover whatever we need for many projects.
 
Link to Furnace Tracker website - https://tildearrow.org/furnace/ rice purity test

Furnace's Github link - https://github.com/tildearrow/furnace

Furnace 0.6 Release Trailer video link, for those who want to see it in action - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEO_H3IqIPs

So, how do you like that tracker, and how have you been making whatever music and/or sounds with it? The possibilities are truly endless!

If you have made such music and sounds, place links for us to hear.

Furnace sounds incredible! The ability to use multiple chips from various consoles at once is a game changer for chiptune music. I can't wait to try it out and explore the endless possibilities. Thanks for sharing the links and the video!

[Cyartog959]

Furnace sounds incredible! The ability to use multiple chips from various consoles at once is a game changer for chiptune music. I can't wait to try it out and explore the endless possibilities. Thanks for sharing the links and the video!

You're welcome! I know you'll have a blast with it, as others have.

It truly does takes care of such a long-standing obstacle that kept people using prior trackers from making more amazing chiptune music and sounds because of each chip's limited channel polyphony and, even before they arrived, prior composers and sound designers had to adhere through tight sound channel limitations while harnessing the chips' potential in many ways.

Say, for example, trying to write an "Act 2" theme in a level made for more than about Sega Genesis' 10 channels through both chips to maintain true authenticity, but had to make cuts to adhere to the limited polyphony, and with no duplicates to help overcome it. That kind of struggle hindered anyone's creative imaginations in music.

This brings another video to mind about that obstacle, having a bookmark in it often known as "Priority Mailboxes", or rather, "conditionals", that described how to adjust to those limits while using those chips within that quirk, too. A bit lengthy, but that'll explain it.

That video's called "How to make Sega Genesis music (in 1994)", made by GST Channel on Youtube.

Video link's here, with bookmark having said name at minute 10:39 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEvnZRCW_qc

[Cyartog959]

I almost forgot to mention...

Out of a lotta chips the tracker has, well, so far right now, I do notice key chips not in yet, the Sega 32X's sound chip, the SH-2, that adds 2 additional DAC channels, heard from Knuckles' Chaotix's songs via videos, and, of course, the Sega Saturn's sound chip, the SCSP, A.K.A., the YMF292, which has 32 sound channels that can be used in either FM synthesis, kinda said to be stronger and more advanced than prior key FM sound chips, by comparison, or by PCM digital audio recording and conversion.

I felt very awful the two systems launched too close to each others' dates, the 32X in the US, and the Saturn's launch in JP a day later, and because of it, the 32X's lifespan's been unfortunately cut short, and that hindered its potential a lot, being an add-on for the Genesis, and not even the greater potential with it plugged in to the Sega CD.

I wonder how much better Sonic 3's both halves would've been as one whole 32X game alongside the original split into 2 16-Meg carts, the latter's second half having its lock-on cart built in?

I could imagine seeing enhanced graphics by the 32X's capabilities, such as having one additional layer for backgrounds in pretty much every Zone in there, as the cases with Spider-Man: Web of Fire and the cancelled 32X version of Disney's Pinnochio(which looked better compared to the Genesis' version, just only saying), and lots more on-screen sprites, and much bigger sprites that could've been for bosses, even for the Kyodai Eggman Robo, the game's final boss at Death Egg Act 2 after the penultimate and final major boss, Death Ball.(Note: It still counts as a MAJOR boss, NOT a mini-boss. I can tell because it played the major boss music in all prior Zones)

If anyone could even conceive a 32X enhanced port of Sonic 3's both halves into one game that actually uses the 32X's capabilities one day, well, I'd be greatly elated to see it come to reality.

But enough of it. Moving on...

I could presume the YMF292's FM sounds were recorded and compressed into the PCM's audio channels, because even though the FM sound pallet sounds a lot more beautiful to hear, as the cases for sounds heard from Sonic R and Sonic 3D Blast's Saturn port, they're not completely heard crystal clear, as in, straight from the chip's FM channels themselves. A good guess, from my perspective and small insight, the latter's sounds were used as a soundfont of its own, rather than the chip's FM channels.

Of course, to better hear how those sounds were, I do have YouTube video links about them here...

Video 1 - Sound 3D Blast's sounds, by ClassicSonicSaturn - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIrqILk0Z6Y

Video 2 - Sonic Jam's sounds used in Sonic 1 through Sonic & Knuckles, by ClassicSonicSaturn - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSkPU8CHST8

Video 3 - Sonic Jam's Sonic World sound effects via Sound Test, by ClassicSonicSaturn - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oC9K4gztrd8

Video 4 - Sonic R's Sound Test, PAL ver., by ClassicSonicSaturn - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkRALJxJ6C4

Sonic Jam's sounds, on the other hand, are a bit of a mixed bag, from some people's perspectives. Some sounded rather less stellar, but others sound like they're better enhanced by the chip itself, example being the Continue sound effect sounding a lot more beautiful than before.

You could tell the difference from those recorded into the Saturn's PCM channels, and from the Genesis' channels' crisp and clear audio themselves via your ears.

I would REALLY love to see and have those chips added to Furnace. All that potential those chips still have, are still regarded, ignored, and taken for granted by a lotta people lately, as with loads of sound chips before that tracker's launch. If anyone could take the time to talk to TildeArrow about that, well, it would really help to add to the tracker's ever-growing collection.