JokerD MOD Player Version 2.2

Documentation
by Gareth Griffiths.

 JokerD
Visit our website today! http://www.jokerd.freeserve.co.uk

[ INTRO ]  [ SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS ]  [ USAGE ]   [ FORMATS ]  [ DISCLAIMER ]

Introduction.

MOD Player is a small utility for the Amiga series of home computers. Its function is simple, to play music modules. There exists on the Amiga various different formats of music module, be it a ProTracker module, an OctaMED, or various others. Some module formats are quite obscure, and others are just "clones" of existing formats, clones which may offer greater compression for example, or more player commands. But all this is besides the point. MOD Player is capable of detecting and playing five different formats at the moment, with more to follow (hopefully!). Go to the formats section for more details on the formats MOD Player can handle.

MOD Player was written in Blitz Basic II by Gareth Griffiths, as one of his first Blitz Basic programs. The very first versions of the program were only seen by him, and have now been deleted, because they were, umm, crap. Of course, you might feel that this version is crap, and that's you're own opinion! ;)

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System Requirements.

MOD Player is quite lenient on the system requirements of your machine. To use the program, you will need the following setup:

CPU:MC68000 or above, MC68020 recommended.
Workbench:2.04 or above.
Chip RAM:1Mb, 2Mb recommended.
Fast RAM:None required.
Misc:A mouse & music modules ;)

Note that the only time you will EVER need Fast RAM when using this program is if you are loading in a VERY LARGE module (i.e. 1.5Mb or more).

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Usage.

Using MOD Player is as easy as saying your ABC's ;), but before you can use it for module playing, you have to get it up and running! Here's how:

Loading from Workbench:

EASY! Just double-click on the program's icon on your Workbench screen. You should now be confronted by the GUI (Graphical User Interface)

Loading from the CLI (Shell):

A bit more complicated this one. First open up a CLI (you should know how to do this, if not, consult your Workbench manuals) and then CD to the place where MOD Player is stored. If, for example, it is stored in the C: directory (this is the recommended place) then you would type:

CD C:

Now simply type in MOD_Player to get the program running. If however, you want MOD Player to automatically load a module, type MOD_Player followed by the COMPLETE path to your module. For example, if I wanted MOD Player to load foobar.mod from my Music: directory on startup, I would type:

MOD_Player Music:foobar.mod

And MOD Player should load the module and start playing automatically. Obviously, if the module doesn't exist, then it won't be loaded! Now let me explain the GUI to you:

The MOD Player GUI

First of all, you can drag the MOD Player window around your Workbench screen by holding down the left mouse button whilst it is over the title bar, and dragging the window to your chosen position. Secondly, to quit the program, simply click once on the close gadget (in the top left of the window titlebar) and the program will exit. Note that you are not asked to quit in 2.2, because many people said they found it annoying. I may build it as an option in future releases.

OK then, on to the buttons themselves. First of all, LOAD, the button on the far left. As its name implies, this loads a module. Selecting it brings up a standard ASL file requester. Simply select your module from the requester, as you would a file in a text editor, and click OK. MOD Player will attempt to load in your module. If it is successful, the filename of the module will appear in the MODULE gadget, and it will start playing. While a module is playing, this gadget is ghosted. This is because loading another module whilst another was playing caused audio trash. Simply stop or eject the module to enable the LOAD gadget again.

Next, the REWIND gadget. This is only available for ProTracker modules at this time (check the format of the module by activating the MOD Player window (click once inside it) and then look at the SCREEN titlebar) and moves the song back one pattern. If the module loaded is an MMDx module, this gadget will appear ghosted.

The PLAY gadget does what the name implies. It plays the module from the beginning. This gadget is only disabled if no module is loaded.

The FAST FORWARD gadget does exactly the reverse of the rewind button, and moves the module FORWARD a pattern. Note that this button is, like rewind, only available for ProTracker modules at this time. If the module loaded is an MMDx module, the FAST FORWARD button will be ghosted out.

The STOP button. Hmm, does it really need explaining? ;) This button simply stops the current module from playing. If you wish to load another module whilst the current one is playing, you must stop it first. This was due to some audio trash which occurred. I know its annoying, but I'll fix it when I can ;)

The EJECT button frees the current module from memory, removing all traces of it from the program. All the gadgets are now disabled except for LOAD, and everything is as it was at startup.

The VOLUME slider is only enabled if the current module is a ProTracker module, because as yet, Blitz Basic does not support volume control for MMDx modules. The higher the box on the slider, the higher the volume. Simply hold down the mouse button on the box and drag to adjust the volume.

The MODULE gadget simply displays the filename of the current module. You cannot interact with it in any way (yet ;)

And that's about all you need to know when it comes to the Usage of MOD Player.

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Formats.

MOD Player 2.2 currently supports five different module formats, two of them being experimental. These are:

ProTracker:The most popular module format on the Amiga. Relatively standard module
MMD0:The first MED module format. used in MED and OctaMED.
MMD1:An improvement over MMD0. Used in OctaMED v3.0 and above.
MMD2:EXPERIMENTAL! Bigger improvement on MMD1. Used in OctaMED v5.0 and above.
MMD3:EXPERIMENTAL! The last revision of the MMD module formats. Used in OctaMED SoundStudio, contains mix-module data.
MMD2 and MMD3 are experimental, because I've only just started using that particular library. They shouldn't crash your Amiga, the worst they can (probably) do is play the module 'trashy'. Let me know what it's like on your system please.

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Disclaimer.

I, Gareth Griffiths, am providing this software "AS IS" to you, which means that I cannot be held responsible for any personal injury, property damage, or damage to your computer that this program may cause. Nevertheless, this program, during testing, has proved very stable. Indeed, whilst I was typing out all of this HTML, and doing the graphics for this document, I had it playing constantly. No bugs have been found, no crashes occurred. It is perfectly safe on my system, and on the machines of the other testers.

MOD Player is FREEWARE, which means that although you are free to use it, and to distribute it, you must NOT alter any of the contents, disassemble the program, do any reverse-engineering on it, or try and pass it off as your own. Also, if you redistribute the program, the MOD Player archive must be left untouched, and must be kept exactly as how you found it!

Feel free to send me any donations if you feel that it is justified, but if you do, I'm afraid I can only accept GBP (Great British Pounds)! Sorry!. E-Mail me if you use (but not necessarily like) the program. My e-mail address is gaz@jokerd.freeserve.co.uk and any feedback is appreciated. Thanks!

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MOD Player (all versions) is ©Copyright 1998-1999 Joker Developments.