0xtob’s coding blog

I finally made NitroTracker an open source project today! The code is available from:

http://code.google.com/p/nitrotracker/

This doesn’t only mean people can have the source, but also that I’m opening up development to the community. Or, to put it a little differently: NitroTracker needs coders!

I think there’s a lot of benefits working on NitroTracker. I’ll give you some examples of what I like about it:

• The thing that I love most about programming NitroTracker (this holds for most of my projects actually) is that it enables people to be creative. You make something and then people make something (in this case music) with that thing you made. It’s inexplicably cool, like being meta-creative!

• Working on NitroTracker has taught me many things. One thing was programming for the DS, but also how to design productive and easy to pick up user interfaces, how to write GUI toolkits, and how to write code that produces music.
• NitroTracker has a big community of users (over 100 beta testers!) that give a lot of very useful input in the shape of bug reports, feature requests and music (which can serve both as a motivation and as test cases for the XM player). It’s a lot of fun listening to your users and, learning design lessons from their experiences, and improving your software through feedback.

What I’m looking for are motivated people with good DS programming knowledge. Musical skills are a plus, but not required. Just check out the source (setup instructions here) and contact me if you’re interested. There’s really no commitment. You’re just part of the project and work on it whenever you feel like it.

Who’s in? :-)

Tob

A lot has happened with DSMI lately, so today I’m realeasing quite a bunch of updates:

• DSMI Server for OSX v1.02
  Fixes compatibility problems with Snow Leopard.

• libdsmi for DS v3.1
  Important bugfix: Re-enables sending of beacons (necessary for DS apps that receive MIDI)

• pulseDS v1.6, kaosDS v1.5, DS MIDI Keyboard v1.5, OSC Example v1.2
  PulseDS is now finally working again (tested!) The problem was that I accidentally disabled sending of beacons, so the server didn’t know which IPs to send MIDI messages to. Sorry about that!

All example apps are now compatible with libnds 1.4.3 and devkitARM r30 (latest versions as of April 2010) and have been updated to the latest devkitpro nds templates. KaosDS, DS MIDI Keyboard and the OSC Example now use the default ARM7 binary, which means they are much less code now. Thanks to Wintermute who kindly provided patches to libdsmi and the OSC Example!

Have fun!
Tob

r4revolutionds.co.uk ran a poll peoples’ favorite DS homebrew, and I’m very happy that both NitroTracker and Pocket Physics scored Top-10 positions! A big thanks to everyone who voted for my stuff!

It’s really worth checking out the top-20 list! There’s some great stuff in there:

• Places 20-19
• Places 10-1

TheRain has released the first version of the DSMI library for the iPhone! This library enables iPhone developers to create wireless MIDI controllers like xy-controllers, drum pads or keyboards! The iPhone applications can talk to any MIDI software on your computer through the DSMI server, making your iPhone a full-blown MIDI instrument! libDSMI for iPhone is available from the downloads page.

MIDI Motion Machine

TheRain has also released an exciting new app called MIDI Motion Machine, a tilt-based MIDI controller including 16 note trigger pads. The source code of a reduced free version of this app is available from the DSMI SVN. This should help you get started writing your own iPhone MIDI apps in no time!
You can get the commercial full application and the reduced free version (out soon) form the Apple AppStore. For more information on MIDI Motion Machine, check out the official site.

That’s right, a lot is happening with DSMI lately! I’ve ported libdsmi, KaosDS, PulseDS and DSMIDIKeyboard to the new libnds v1.3.1. This library introduces a lot of simplifications, making the code shorter and more readable. For developers, the libdsmi API has stayed the same, except that dsmi_setup_wifi_support is no longer necessary and has thus been removed. For end-users, nothing has changed.

To make collaboration easier, I set up a Google Code project for DSMI, which is now the official place to download the library and applications. Google Code features a nice source browser so you can check out the source code more easily. Also, there is an issue tracker that you can use to inform us of bugs.

One more thing: Collin Meyer has ported DSMI to the iPhone and released the first DSMI-enabled iPhone application! iXY is a Kaoss Pad style MIDI controller that lets you control your synth parameters or light effects with the touch of your fingers. iXY is available from the App Store for 99US cent / 79EUR cent. The library itself is work in progress and will be released soon, so everyone can write MIDI-enabled iPhone apps!

It turns out DSMI keeps facing trouble regarding its name. It first started off as DSMIDIWiFi. After I added hardware MIDI support through the DSerial, the “WiFi” part of the name was no longer appropriate, so I changed the name to DSMI. I didn’t call it DSMIDI in order to avoid the name collision with Collin’s DSMIDI hardware hack. It turned out this was the right choice, because fishuyo came along and added OSC support which would have made the MIDI part of the name inappropriate anyway. Now that Collin has ported DSMI to the iPhone, the DS part of the name would have to go. Nevertheless, we decided on keeping the name in order to avoid confusion. If anyone has an idea for a new meaning of the DSMI acronym, please let us know :-)

Thanks to Tim Wood (fishuyo) DSMI now supports the OpenSound Control (OSC) protocol!

OSC is an emerging standard for exchanging music control signals that is much more flexible and modern than MIDI. For example, OSC can directly communicate via network, so the PC-side DSMI server is not required.

fishuyo also made a nice demo of the new OSC capabilities with a Kaoss pad and sliders. It comes with a pd patch that is a nice little synth. Check out the demo’s source code! OSC is really easy to add to your application. And it’s the future! So, get libdsmi v3.0 now!

Ladies and Gentlemen!

NitroTracker v0.4 is finally here!

The main new features are:

• Looping

• Volume Envelopes
• Loops
• Multi-Sample Instruments
• Looping

Minor improvements:

• wav saving

• free ram indicator
• sample preview
• the file browser remembers recent folders and files
• improved xm player
• volume column editing
• sample panning
• improved left handed mode

Read the full story here!

I am pleasantly surprised by how easy it is to get started with coding for the Wii! As a first little project, I ported the Box2D physics engine and made a little demo app called Box2DBalls (source included).

I think the Wiimote and Box2D play together very well. There are a lot of possibilities for fun 2D physics games, so go make some! :)

Box2DBalls comes with source code. Check the Readme for instructions on compiling Box2D for Wii. It’s dead simple!

Sh4wn is running return1.net/site/pp, which is a great place for sharing your Pocket Physics productions and for browsing though what others made. Recently, the interactive flash player by emeric was included in the site so you can now play back the sketches online and even interact with them! Accuracy is not 100% but I’m quite impressed how close it is.

Even if you don’t have Pocket Physics, do check out the site. Thanks a lot to Sh4wn and emeric for their efforts!

For easier integration with NitroTracker, libntxm now includes editing functionality under the hood. There aren’t any changes for the end-user, except for maybe one or two new supported effects, so if you use libntxm 0.1 there is little reason to upgrade, but:

libntxm is now used as part of NitroTracker instead of being just a stripped down version of the NitroTracker arm7 code. Also, libntxm is now hosted on Google Code and has an SVN repository there. So, you can now easily add new features to libntxm, and I can integrate them into NitroTracker just via a simple “svn up”.

libntxm project page on Google Code

Currently, I’m searching for someone who wants to implement support for loading / saving new file formats like .it, .s3m, etc. Also, .wav saving and .xi loading / saving would be useful. If you want to help out, please contact me!