Yes... !Amp is another music player. BUT, it's based on the PC program WinAmp. This means that you can use the hundreds of PC skins available to totally change the look. It has a compact layout, and can fold up into it's titlebar for when you're really short of desktop space!
It's also really easy to park the window where you want it to be - it clings to the edges of the screen and the icon bar.
In theory, you should be able to use any of the thousands of PC skins available, but in practice, not all work 100%. In most cases, this simply because ChangeFSI can't understand the BMP. The solution in this case is simply to find a program which does (you might have to resort to a PC) and reconvert the file to a proper BMP (or in fact any other format understood by ChangeFSI).
It is possible though that this is not the only reason, and if you feel that this is the case (eg you can load the offending BMP in ChangeFSI manually), then email me and let me know about it. I might ask you to send the skin so that I can investigate.
Anyhow, to install a skin, simply click 'Skin...' from the Amp menu, and then close the skin browser window with Adjust, or hold down SHIFT and double-click !Amp to open the application directory, then double-click on the 'Skins' directory. Now make a directory for the skin. This is the name the skin will have in the browser window. Put all the relevant BMPs and textfiles from the skin inside the new directory. (You can remove any DLL files, since these are x86 code.)
WARNING: Don't delete anything from the Original directory, since if a skin is broken or has bits missing, Amp will resort to this to replace bits.
Even if Amp is already running, the skin will be picked up next time you open the skin browser. Choose it and it will be converted to a spritefile called Skin inside in the same directory. Depending on your machine, either 256 or 16 million colours will be used. You can force one or the other by editing the application's !Run file. If you want to save space, you can delete the original BMPs, but I'd advise you to keep them just in case you want to swap between 256/16M colours later. They are also needed if you ever flush the browser preview file.
You can even use !Squash to compress the sprite file if you like! It'll be automatically unsquashed into RAM when you use it. If you have the 'Squash' app in your path (e.g. in Boot:Library, or you have run !Squash) then the skins will be automatically squashed just after being converted by ChangeFSI.
Amp works by using plug-ins to play everything. This means that it's easy to add another plug-in to play a new type of tracker, and if you can program yourself, you can easily write one without hacking about with the main program.
The current plug-ins are as follows (in various stages of completion):
* Midi
* BASIC prog based on Linux playmidi sources
* Only plays one track before it breaks
* Not the best if you're actually using the computer!
* matrixTracker
* Uses matrixTRK (Michael Pohle & Marko Lukat)
* Kinda always repeats
* Audio CD
* Supports track naming via CDDB
* Supports balance adjustment (assuming your drive does...)
Amp also supports playlists. These are basically text files which contain your favourite lists of tunes in whatever order you choose. You can easily edit the text file. Don't mess it up though - the program doesn't really like mangled lists!
You can currently drag a music file to the playlist window to add it, and double-click on an entry in the window to play it.
Drag a previously saved playlist to any Amp window (or the iconbar) and it'll try to load it as a playlist. If you save your playlist as !Amp.PlayList or Choices:Amp.PlayList then it will automatically be loaded every time.
You can quit the program without stopping the music. This means that Amp is still using memory after you quit it. If you are using dynamic areas, this is fine, since the area will be reused when you next load Amp and if you quit stopping the music, it will be removed then. However, if you are stuck with using the module area, it will leave a chunk (possibly quite large, depending on the song/plugin playing it) which you can never reclaim without resetting the machine. You have been warned!
