Labels:text | screenshot OCR: AM/FM Interview with Lars Hamre (Author of Protracker) We grabbed hold of Lars Hamre, author of Protracker, for a quick interview, thinking that we might fool him into revealing some of the secrets around the new project he's working on at the moment, a program called Apollon... Hi Lars, I hope I wasn't interrupting anything...? This won't take long. No problem, just get on with it. Who is Lars Hamre anyway? Could you tell us briefly about yourself and your background? I'm 22 years old and live in Strᵒmmen, Norway. I've always been interested in computers, and my first one was a Texas Instruments T199-4A with 16k RAM. That must have been early in the 80's. Soon it was replaced by a C64, which now collects dust in a closet somewhere. In November '85 I got a chance to test an Amiga 1000 that Norsk Data had borrowed from Commodore. Wow! It was the machine I wanted! I got my own A500 in '87 and started to learn 68000 assembler. Now I use an A3000 (25Mhz 68030/68882, 6MB RAM) with Kick 2.04, SAS/C, etc. I like: Italian food (Lasagne, Pizza, Spaghetti...), synthesizers (I'm a regular Keyboard reader), music (Genesis, Swingout Sister, Matt Bianco, Scritti Politti, Julia Fordham, Lisa Stansfield, Art of Noise, Basia, Mezzoforte, Jane Child, Tony Banks, Level 42 and many more), Microsoft Windows (for the look and API, not the speed!), Motorola (for the 680x0 series), Amiga (it's soo nice, but still not good enough) and, well... Opland Cider? I hate: cheap Japanese consumer electronics, the DCC cassette, Intel (for the 80x86), Rap-/Heavy-/Beat-/Yo!-/Svenskdansband- music, IBM (because they're IBM: big and blue), Commodore's marketing policy (who's the A3000 for anyway?), jeans commercials, Lutefisk (what's that in English?), CD players that can't play transparent CD's, bugs in my programs (I know they are in there…..), bugs in other programs, and Commodore's gadtools.library (it's so limited). I've heard that you have given Protracker the boat, and that you aren't planning to ever do an upgrade from version 1.1. Why let go of such an immensely popular program? There are several reasons why. The sourcecode is a single file >350k and very difficult to maintain. When I was developing PT I had only an A500 with 1 meg RAM, and that was just barely enough to assemble the code (PT1.1b). We continued to add features here and there, but what the program really needed was a major rewrite (structured pro- gramming, what's that?). PT may be a "user friendly" program, at at least when you know the basic functions, but it certainly not a a "system friendly" program. It ought to open a normal screen, and not patch library functions to get things to work properly. PT "IS" multi- tasking, but when it's idle, it just runs through a big loop, checking mouse clicks, notes etc. Rewriting it as an event based system would be a major pain in the ass! What made you want to program Protracker in the first place? In the beginning we were a group of four people (Lars Hamre, Anders Hamre, Rune Johnsrud and Sven Vahsen) just trying to make demos. We were never very good at that, but we thought we had to do some- thing. We liked Sound/Noisetracker, but believed the programs could be so much better if they just had added this and that feature. At last we concluded that the only way was to do the rewrite ourselves. After about a month of disassembling we had the ST2.5 source, and started adding stuff until it ended up as PT 1.0 (A). I think it was back in August 1990 or something like that. ...so you are actually confirming here, that there will never ever be any upgrades of Protracker? Well, we might release a V1.3 that runs under Kickstart 2.04 (37.175), which will be great for A3000 users. And there will probably be a new and bugless playroutine (the 101% routine from Bug/Network/Noiseless is still full of annoying bugs!). But that's the end of our commitment to Protracker. It's finally over! If you love Protracker and think it's sad that we've given it up, you will be glad to hear that the sourcecode is now Public Domain. That means of course that you can do whatever you want with it: grab rou- tines for use in another program, change the graphics, improve things here and there or make a completely new version (PT V39.85xyz Turbo?). ...but there can only be ONE original. We've heard vague rumours that you are programming on a completely new music editor, called Apollon? Is this true? Yes, it's true. We couldn't just give up programming even if we gave up Protracker. One of your members (Morten Lund) bought an A3000, and it was the perfect machine for developing the new program. Is it you alone who is behind this, or is it a team-work thing? Surely, you're not doing everything yourself...? Me, myself and Morten (that's three people: no, two) are the active people behind Apollon. Morten is at the moment doing military service in Honningsurg (not far from Nordkapp), but he's coming home now and then (4) weeks on, 2 weeks off), and then we get together at my place to work on Apollon. I'm moving to back to Halden in January '92 to finish my last semester in "Informatikk" at HD, so I think the Apollon project will be a little delayed. But we won't give up. What's so special about this Apollon program? Are you keeping the features secret until you are releasing it, or can you tell us a bit about it? * The program will in fact be several programs: At least a MIDI sequencer, a sample editor and a mixer/playback program: maybe more. * The programs can be used separately or linked together via ARexx. * Apollon will only run on machines with Kickstart 2.0. That means the A3000, the A500+, buying a new ROM or using ZKick to place the Kickstart in RAM. * The preferred display mode is 640x512, which means you'd better have a flicker fixer. The program also supports 640x256 or any kind of overscan mode Chow about 1280x1024?). * Apollon will have a dialog box and gadget system that has elements and ideas borrowed from both Windows and PPage. It sure looks better than Commodore's 'gadtools.library' In fact, it looks superb! * The sequencer will have "unlimited" number of tracks and patterns, a resolution of 240 PPQ, real time and step time recording (almost like on PT), a song editor where you can chain patterns to form songs; a tracklist for each pattern where you can change the name, instrument, record, mute, solo and loop status: a graphic editor which displays the notes in a "piano roll" fashion, an event list where you can edit lots of things: 64 instruments can be assigned to any MIDI channel (max 16 channels right now, but this may change if we can we can get hold of multi MIDI port interface), a new private IFF sequence format, but also Standard MIDI file import/export (maybe other formats), instruments can be assigned to MIDI or to the internal Amiga audio channels; we'll try to support the SunRize 12 and 16 bit cards in a later version. Morten is working on a DSP card for the Amiga, with a Motorola 56001 and 16 bit I/O, but I don't know if this will ever be finished. hold MIDI up/down- can 10au *The sample editor will be able to edit an "unlimited" number of samples (limited by memory of course); we will not try to make this a direct-to-harddisk recorder/player, so nondestructive HD editing will probably be impossible. 8, 12 and 16 bit samples are supported, and the 8SVX, SAMP, AIFF or RAW data formats will be used when storing samples on disk or in the clipboard. Sample over MIDI is currently only available with MIDI SDS. open several windows with stereo or mono samples, and we're also considering the possibility of having more than one sample per window. The editing functions are cut, copy, paste, etc. plus lots of DSP functions like: chorus/flanger/phaser/echo/reverb/early reflections/compressor/noise gate/gain normalization/fade/highpass/ lowpass/bandpass/bandstop/shelving bass & treble/comb/allpass/ FFT Analysis and resynthesis/3D graph/crossfade looping (not like on PT)/sample rate conversion/time compression & expansion and a whole lot more. MEREANN Are you going to release Apollon as Public Domain, like you did with Protracker? Certainly not! Apollon will be a commercial program, and there will be a lot of illegal copies around, but at least it's not going to end up in a PD library. implement any copy-protection, so the program won't have to be "Cracked". (please don't put your name in the about box saying "Spread by Quartex" (or such), ok?) We'11 not Anyone showing interest yet? Signed any contracts? There's a lot of interrest, but the program is only in the early stages, and we haven't signed any contracts yet. We're not really sure how, when, who and where we will sell the program. Have a look in Datatid 12-1991, page 153... Any idea what the price of the package will be, to the average software- buying musician? Somewhere between 1000-2000 NOK. Preferably more :-) (Ed: That's some 100-200 GBP, 150-300 US$) Are you planning on making a living by programming the Amiga in the future, or have you got some other job pointed out, while the Amiga is merely recreational spare-time thing? I intend to make a living programming computers, whether it the Amiga or any other computer I don't really care. Windows, Macintosh, NeXT and maybe something with X-Windows would also be nice. I don't really see the Amiga as a professional that. computer, but blame Commodore and the other developers for There's not another machine in the whole world that has as many lousy programs as the Amiga. The majority of Amigas sold is A500s, and you can't an A500 to be used as a serious machine. It's a games-machine! At expect least that what's what CBM seems to be thinking. Still like the Amiga, even if it sometimes makes me a little depressed. of any other projects besides Apollon? Plans Sven Vahsen claims to have started writing a game, but since he's also doing his military service, I doubt it'll ever be finished. The game is a sort of Giana Sisters/Boulderdash clone. Rune Johnsrud is writing BASIC programs that does the strangest things, as well as doing the Hypertext help files for Apollon (using AmigaGuide). My younger brother Anders Hamre has formed a music label with some friends called "Decibel Desperados". They hope to do music for games, demos and other commercial products, as well as supplying sound effects. Torgeir Houden is somewhere up north (near Morten) defending us from the enemy. Hansen is studying Mathematics at NTH in Trondheim. No further projects occupied until Per Chr. are planned, since Apollon will keep us at least late '92 (probably longer). Well, on behalf of all the AM/FM readers, all the best of luck with Apollon, and I'm really looking forward to the release. Just one last question - don't you feel sometimes like just stuffing the Amiga and the entire truckload of disks in the basement, and go out and have some fun? Look for a girlfriend? Take up jogging? Start playing the saxophone? Go fishing? Have fun? What's that? Girlfriend; well who might that be? Jogging; that's too much exercise. Saxophone: Yikes! How about a Berimbau? Fishing; too wet. I think I'll just stick with my Amiga. Ok, well for taking the time, and once again good luck with Apollon. now and then to get the latest news on the thanks We'll probably drop by every development. So long! BIBI :-) AM/FM
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