I might be picking up programming in LUA and I know a bit of C++ and will be reading books on audio engineering. I was wondering how possible it would be to learn how to make certain features added on to Renoise or to continue development on this wonderful DAW since Taktik may be taking and indefinite leave of absence for production on Renoise?
I want to make new tools, update some old ones that have become obsolete and make educational content on this program. I don’t want to void my own license if I want to study this program further (I don’t plan to open things up, and much more, I don’t even know how.)
I’ll be starting on XRNI tools of my own and see where else I can go with this, either making plugins of my own and see how much I fail or not, then see if I can replicate or solve features people ask for frequently on the forums.
So I guess to Danoise or anyone else reading, what do you think the best approach would be to help this program out?
I might be picking up programming in LUA and I know a bit of C++ and will be reading books on audio engineering. I was wondering how possible it would be to learn how to make certain features added on to Renoise or to continue development on this wonderful DAW since Taktik may be taking and indefinite leave of absence for production on Renoise?
I want to make new tools, update some old ones that have become obsolete and make educational content on this program. I don’t want to void my own license if I want to study this program further (I don’t plan to open things up, and much more, I don’t even know how.)
I’ll be starting on XRNI tools of my own and see where else I can go with this, either making plugins of my own and see how much I fail or not, then see if I can replicate or solve features people ask for frequently on the forums.
So I guess to Danoise or anyone else reading, what do you think the best approach would be to help this program out?
I’m glad to see that someone is so encouraged with the issue of creating tools.I suggest some steps to follow (from a humble point of view):
Examine Renoise thoroughly, to know their most striking deficiencies.There are many improvable details, in the sense of improving the speed of the work flow, especially in repeated operations.Here is “a technique” that I have used to proceed: I call it “anti-clockwise”:Imagine that Renoise is a clock rods.You can start with the pattern editor, then with the matrix editor, then with the dsp chains, then with the automation editor, then with the instrument box and then with the instrument editor and all its parts.You can proceed in this way, by sweeping all Renoise in this orderly fashion, following the opposite direction to the hands of a clock.
Examine the Renoise API to know its limitations (the available documentation).There are certain things that can not be done. This will save you time.You can use the previous technique"anti-clockwise" too.
Once you have a general idea of what you can program and what you can not program, try to build your own tools, with what you think is useful. You can be inspired by the requests of many users. But most are small things here and there.
Share code in the scripting forums. Tricks, things that you think interesting. On many occasions we fall into the error of commenting on code without writing it. In many scripting questions you will see solutions without writing code. I think the best way to enrich the scripting forums is to discuss with written code.
I would not try to improve or update others’ tools. Each person should be responsible for the maintenance of their tool. If a tool becomes obsolete, simply forget it or create your own.This will save you headaches and time.
Creating interesting tools can take a long time, and in my opinion, is very little valued by the community, possibly due to ignorance. Try to invest it in what is really useful.
One very interesting thing is to publish LUA code videos. How to build a basic tool? The video does not have to be correct with the code. It would be very interesting to do something else, move forward when it comes to building tools for Renoise. But I recognize that this is a huge job.
Finally, you ask anything concerning scripting that you have not previously been able to locate in the forums advanced search. Surely someone can help you…
Do not expect multiple tools to improve Renoise. Renoise can only be improved under the hood, with new versions. Consider the tools as small add-ons and be very careful with operating errors.This will allow you to focus on your tools and forget that Renoise “seems abandoned”.
Courage! See you in the forums … :lol:
Edit :It’s never too late. When I started in these forums I thought I arrived too late. Even so, you will find hours and more hours of fun. If you love the code, it is as rewarding as composing music. You are creating new things!!!
By the way, I forgot to answer your thread question:Buy a license. Have others buy a license. Advertise Renoise! It is so logical. If there is no money, there are no updates. As simple as that.
I’ve bought a license for myself and bought a license for my friend because I love Renoise so much. I advocate it on Twitter and rave about how fast the work flow is paired with Reaper.
I would love to create tools or use other DAWs, such as FL Studio, Ableton Live, Bitwig, Cubase, Logic Pro, Reason, and have Caustic and Sunvox on my iPhone / iPad.
I want to see if I could find a way to create portable versions for Renoise, or eventually develop my own DAW with a similar philosophy to Reaper where people should pay but will not be stripped away from their options to slap them on the wrist.
I feel like increasing access to users only empowers them and improves the music making community.
Thanks Danoise for your encouragement, it means a great deal to me and when I reach that phase where I’ve delved into my own scripting and built confidence in myself this year, I’ll try to message Taktik and see where I can go from there.
To Raul:
I would like infinite nested groups, the ability to select multiple tracks, to be able to create a horizontal moving track list where the notes show up vertical. I’d also like more features like being able to turn the tracking part more into the whole Ableton Live looking scheme which probably would require insane amounts of work. I’d also like to make LFO shaping and Automation Shaping with curves more adjustable like how Serum does it, or other programs. It’d be fun to make drawing tools possible so people with pen tablets like the Intuous can create really interesting effects. There’s some issues with the Modulation tab from what I’ve read on the forums with inaccuracies or discrepencies. Native pitch shifting tools, a saturator, and other wave table shenanigans like Frequency Modulations or Detuners would be really nice for me. There’s a lot of great Renoise tools that I think could benefit by becoming native. I don’t know to what degree I’d be able to do all of this. I also think rebrushing up on calculus would give possibilities to make 3D wave tables similar to the ones in Serum. Adding the scream filter from Redux to Renoise too would be lovely.
There’s a numerous amount of possibilities to open up once I learn more out of programming, but the main issue I have is time and energy. I know the labors of programming from working with one who is making an indie platformer game of dis design in C++. A lot of it is grueling work and testing, having others figure out bugs. For me I would want to learn or teach others how to delegate or break up these tasks to the users so if they wanted to help they could integrate it in my process if I have an off day or a season where I have to dip and work on something else to get money or finish a big project.
I’ll look at your API wishlist and try to figure out what’s doable. Programming is black magic, it costs a lot to do a lot, and there are certain things as you said that are beyond the scope of doing at all.
I definitely will start small and build my way up.
I tend to leave comments for myself in code and having pretty code is an art form in and of itself. My programmer and I talk a lot about his systematic approach to making tools like an editor mode in my platformer game, or even a cutscene editor and hitbox editor. The gist that he does is he does a lot of recursive work making scripts readable via number systems in .bin files to load his code fast that can be accessed from a more complex interface, then reduced again.
I intend to start my ideas from the ground up. I agree that working on someone’s own writing would be hell especially if I don’t know what every interaction does in the code itself. Not knowing why something works in code spells out disaster for debugging and understanding why something breaks.
I will try to do what works for me. This will be so I can make Renoise the best DAW for me, not for others, as selfish as that is, and hope for those that get me, will enjoy it.
I will be publishing videos on Youtube to explain my process with illustrations and ask help from the community.
I’ll ask around if so! Sometimes it’s tough to figure out an answer, I’ve known some projects end prematurely because no one can figure out how to hurdle a nasty debug.
Renoise is a massive DAW I think. In the end it’s not the parts that make the car, the car is a body in and of itself.
Music is fun, and developing games is my passion. I want to make good for myself and others. I hope that makes sense! I find it better to do that, than to be querulous and mean-spirited.
so far i’ve only seen the renoise documentation be updateable via PRs on the github. obviously the renoise code itself is proprietary and accessible only to those within the dev-team, as otherwise we run the risk of it being leaked and we start bumping into dozens and dozens of variations that all suck and have no cohesion amongst themselves.
and then suddenly no-one actually buys the license.
would be cool to be able to pay a premium price for access to the codebase - but i’m sure the vetting process would have to be extremely harsh, to get rid of timewasters (i count myself in that group).
if there’s no time to update the app, there’s no time for the strenuous on-boarding required to teach a person to move around the codebase without wrecking everything.
would be interesting to see how many PRs are awaiting review in the Renoise codebase, though, and if someone doing manual QA testing on the PRs could somehow help it, even under NDA.
Hire some people to work for them on tasks that are relatively simple but involve a lot of repetition and take a long time so that developers time is spent on audiotracks and fixing vibrato, tremelo and autopan so they cycle in time with song settings.
Pay for yearly renoise boat party. Pay for celebrity star trek actor to advertise renoise at NAMM and MusicMesse.
Making more music videos including shots of people using renoise.
I am also intrigued by the crowdfunding suggestion… Funny thing, us Renoise users with a license, and who understand the product I think are mostly willing to pay extra for improvements. Almost like the Renoise team undersold themselves on the initial licensing prices. I bet we would have all been happy to pay more to know there would be ongoing support and updates.
I think that Renoise, and to extent also other mainstream known DAWs are generally “complete”
(IMHO other general desktop software and tools too).
I mean 96% complete. The rest 3.99…% is marketing hype, featuritis and users personal, how can I say it nicely, ocd-ish demands.
Comparing to what folks had in for example 1991 - we are living incornucopia. Think about it - you get a sampler, synths, sequencer and full rack of most necessary effects for +/-100$.
I think that Renoise, and to extent also other mainstream known DAWs are generally “complete”
While that might be “largely” true for the software itself, it doesn’t exist in a vacuum - it depends on platforms and technologies that change as well.
If a software does not keep up with these things, it will be rendered obsolete - just a question of time.
For example, @ffx has experienced a few of those since updating to a newer version of OS X. Just as much a testament to Apple not giving a s*** about backwards compatibility as a result of Renoise-development being on a hiatus.
@Zhu.It would be great to see some of your tools announced. This would indicate that your efforts have reached somewhere.It is not the first time that someone has intention to do something and then it stays in nothing.
@EatMe. Thank you very much!The best way to support or encourage to the programmer who create a tool is to make him know that you use the tool. Wasting time discussing these things enriches the forums…
Renoise developers should get in touch with Nick Batt and Gaz Williams from sonicstate and go to their place to demo renoise. People would be blown away if the demonstration showed renoise’s full potential ( with midi controllers, phrases and all that ). It would make for an interesting segment on their show, getting quizzed by Nick Batt about the features. He will ask about pulse width modulation though, not sure if it can be done in renoise with single cycles or something?
I’m still developing my game and music for Renoise. I think about this a lot and still want to learn programming in LUA to make tools and scripts to start out. I want to take a more active approach by the end of this summer to go through the process of bug testing and posting my progress here.
Thanks you guys for your responses. I’m super into the idea of crowd funding or gathering community support or skills to make something happen. Money is not the cure to everything but it sure can help those that want to put their full time into it. I know Danoise and Dblue still roam around, and the twitter is still active, so Renoise team seems dormant but listening.
I plan to both post albums and ideas on here. Hard thing for coding is where to start. I heard it’s hell.
