Frequently Asked Questions about MilkyTracker

Here are some questions answered which get asked on the forum and on IRC from time to time.

1. Why does MilkyTracker look different from Fasttracker II?
   • The GUI of MilkyTracker has been adjusted to fit low resolution displays with 320x240 pixels. Thus the screen can be more easily divided into seperate pages.
2. Where are the extended Sample Editor functions (S.E.Ext.)?
   • In the sample context menu, just right-click / tap'n hold in the sample area. The Pattern and Instrument Editors have their context menus too, you know.
3. Why does my .XM sound different from Ft2 in MilkyTracker?
   • MilkyTracker tries to play XMs as accurate as possible but there are still known and unknown issues. Most of them are rare but if you find one, report it to us and we'll try to fix it.
4. Why does my .XM sound different from ModPlug/Schism/WinAMP/xxx in MilkyTracker?
   • MilkyTracker aims to reproduce Ft2 playback as closely as possible while other players/trackers don't do that, so if you think your track is being messed up in MilkyTracker compare it to Ft2 first. If it still sounds weird, see the question above.
5. Why doesn't MilkyTracker load my .XM (created in ModPlug)?
   • Unless the module is otherwise corrupt, it probably features more than 32 channels. In Fasttracker II, 32 is the maximum.
6. Why does MilkyTracker play my IT/S3M/xxx module wrong?
   • Well, MilkyTracker is an XM tracker. It will play all other tunes (except for .MOD) the way Ft2 would do it. Every feature from other modules not being XM compatible will be thrown out when importing the song.
7. What do the buttons SEQ, CLN, F, P and W do?
   • SEQ stands for sequence, the button inserts the next unused pattern in the pattern order table.
   • CLN stands for clone, it does the same as SEQ but additionally it copies the data from current pattern to the new one.
   • The F button toggles song following. Disabling it enables you to better edit the song while it is playing.
   • The P button toggles prospective pattern view. When disabled, you see one pattern at a time. When enabled, the patterns show as a continuous strip.
   • The W button toggles pattern wrapping. Basically it either allows you to freely move from pattern to pattern while editing or helps you concentrate on one pattern at a time.
8. What are Jam channels?
   • Jam channels enable you to play notes live on your MIDI or computer keyboard independent of the song channels. If disabled, note polyphony is restricted to whatever number of channels the song has.
9. Does MilkyTracker support MIDI?
   • MilkyTracker supports some basic MIDI INPUT, which means you can use your MIDI device to feed notes into MilkyTracker. See the documentation for instructions on how to enable MIDI In on different platforms.
10. Where is the source code?
    • You can have it once I'm done working on MilkyTracker. This isn't to tease you, let's just say the code is a bit shy and not ready for public yet.
11. Can you port MilkyTracker to platform xxx?
    • Unfortunately my time is rather limited at the moment so first you need to know some things about MilkyTracker:
    • MilkyTracker is written in a platform independent fashion and uses a rather primitive approach of software rendering to make porting as easy as possible. On the downside this means MilkyTracker needs quite some CPU power. At the bottom end of the desktop version MilkyTracker requires at least around 300Mhz to run MilkyTracker in 640x480x16 bit color. This might seem quite a bit, but actually it's nothing compared to nowadays computer speeds. MilkyTracker was never written with old computer systems in mind. The low resolution version (320x240) will probably run on systems offering 150Mhz or more but 320x240 is the only supported low resolution mode.
    • MilkyTracker is *heavily* mouse centered. And I really mean *heavy*. Controlling MilkyTracker with a few buttons only will not be fun and totally useless and I'm not going to waste time on a port for a device without a mouse equivalent (touch screen etc.). Please understand that porting itself often requires quite an amount of time and still doesn't guarentee MilkyTracker to be fully useable.
12. Why isn't there a PSP/NDS port of MilkyTracker?
    • See question about porting above.