Originally, this library had started as a portable C API to an old and
stable Future Composer music player that has been used in several plug-ins
for versatile audio players like XMMS, BMP, Audacious, GStreamer and
others on various platforms. No list is known.
Availability of a native FC decoder has served the community of chiptune music enthusiasts in more than one way. Providing a convenient and reliable method to listen to memorable music in FC format has been the primary goal.
Whereas some guys have converted their personal chiptune collections to MP3 (or other formats) eventually, the majority seems to prefer the original files together with a solution to listen to them. An emulator as a last resort.
This library has also contributed to the hunt for truly invalid, damaged or dubious FC music files in module collections. The early code included several workarounds and safety measures already. Newly discovered defects in FC files could be fixed and documented within the player library. In a few cases, FC files have been broken for over 30 years because they had been converted incorrectly from TFMX format. Such as the soundtrack from the game ``Chambers of Shaolin''. Repaired files have been uploaded to https://modland.com as one of the primary sources of files that have been used for testing.
Future Composer on AMIGA was based on a machine code music player by
Jochen Hippel that used his TFMX data format (not to be confused with the
other TFMX by Chris Hülsbeck which expands to The Final Musicsystem eXtended
and is vastly different, but both guys have known each other. There have been
interviews with both confirming that Hippel's 7 Voices mode was adapted by
Hülsbeck. But has an interviewer ever asked about using the same TFMX acronym
for two vastly different music player systems?)
$ hexdump -C -s 2446 -n 16 Astaroth.hip
0000098e 54 46 4d 58 00 10 00 18 00 5e 00 d5 00 40 00 04 |TFMX.....^...@..|
As a machine code programmer and pioneer of computer music, the features of Jochen Hippel's music player enabled him to create a unique chiptune sound that could hardly be recreated with the early publicly available Soundtracker programs. Just like he had been inspired by Commodore 64 SID music, his own game soundtracks created during the golden era of chiptune music have inspired more than one generation of music composers and remixers around the world. Even after decades new remixes get published. See, for example, http://www.amigaremix.com and http://remix64.com as a hub.
Future Composer, apart from a few incompatible changes to the TFMX file format and player code, and with its publicly released editor as the most important feature and biggest achievement, was not just "based on" Hippel's TFMX player, it was a ripoff! After just a few changes to the file format loader, this FC library could almost play basic TFMX files found in major module collections.
However, innovative as TFMX has been during its era, at the same time it was subject to steady development, and thus its feature set and player implementation details changed more than once, which lead to several incompatibilities and intricacies. No single machine code player remained compatible with previously released music module data. With a second format (COSO = compressed songs) and a 7 Voices enhancement increasing diversity even further.
As one common solution to the problem, only with a matching pair of music file and its specific machine code player you could use that in an emulator, possibly a music player using sort sort of emulator engine as a backend. For convenience, often but not always, the machine code player is stored at the beginning of the music module file. Where the machine code player is unavailable, figuring out which specific player features are needed becomes tricky. Where all means of file content detection fail, a database of checksums could be relied on as a last resort.
Just as it's been done with the support for FC, this library implements native support for the TFMX/Hippel family of music files.
If you encounter unexpected behaviour or files that sound incorrect, please open a ticket at the following place: https://github.com/mschwendt/libtfmxaudiodecoder/issues
The terminology used in each source file differs from the documentation
that comes with the Future Composer editor. For instance, the pattern SEQUENCER is called track table to not conflict with real pattern
administration variables and not with the modulation sequence features
either. The FREQUENCE-Modulation sequence is called sound modulation sequence because it does not only affect the sample period,
but also the currently active sample. Also, the VOLUME-Modulation
sequence actually defines an instrument and contains parameters which not
only affect volume. It better ought to be called instrument definition
sequence. However, once the instrument has been defined, the rest of the
sequence does only do the volume envelope.
Future Composer v1.0 to 1.3 (SMOD) (C) 1989 The Superions
Future Composer v1.4 (FC14) (C) 1990 by Supersero of The Superions
Future Composer is based on the TFMX music player by Jochen Hippel. Most likely the one used in the AMIGA games "Astaroth: The Angel of Death" and "Chambers of Shaolin".
Screen-shots of Future Composer v1.4 main screen, pattern editor, and sound editor:
