QB64 TankDrum - Playable/Recordable Virtual Instrument

[FellippeHeitor]

Cool job, as usual, Dav. I like how recording works!

[Dav]

Thanks, Fellippe.  I had another recording method at first, using multiple arrays.  The first method had a timer running, and one array recorded the time a note was played, the other array recorded the notes.  Worked very well, until I added overdubbing.  For that I had to add two temp arrays and merge all array data.  Had a hard time making that work, so I decided to get rid of all extra arrays and just use one running array, which worked the way I wanted. Hmm...maybe I do have an array allergy after all.

I have some big plans for a new version...
- Add Save/Load
 -Increase to 15 notes, and major scale to play more kinds of songs
- Maybe some small extra percussion sounds
- A'Metronome sound for steady playing
-Time show for song length.
- Add looping Atmosphere sounds for background feel
- Move keyboard input to a GFX menu selection via mouse

I want to get it so it can play a real tankdrum song like this one

- Dav

[bplus]

I wonder if you can also get the notes up on some visual music bars.

[SpriggsySpriggs]

@Dav As soon as I try to record, the program behaves quite sluggishly. The delays for note presses are quite long (up to 2 or 3 seconds) and it will sometimes play a few notes together all of a sudden when it catches up. During normal playing, it works quite well, however. I was able to play part of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" using it haha

[Dav]

@bplus: I'll see about coming up with something for note display.  Thanks for the suggestion.

@SpriggsySpriggs : Maybe the _LIMIT value is too low for your system, and it doesn't help that I put the LOCATE/PRINT stuff inside the DO/LOOP which causes a constant write to screen which isn't needed and slows it all down somewhat.

EDIT: (code here was removed because latest update made changes to fix problem, hopefully)

- Dav

[Dav]

I have posted a new version of TankDrum.

For v1.0c drum notes are increased to 15, and changed it to a major scale.  Added UNDO after a recording in case you don't like what you recorded and want to do it over.  Also added crude but functional song save/load/delete functions (song saved to a file called TANKDRUM.SAV).  I increased _LIMIT number to hopefully prevent sluggish, and removed screen writes in the recording DO/LOOP.  I also organized .ogg and images into separate folders.

Check the first post for the new download link.

- Dav

[bplus]

Good, I can explore files again. Can't figure out how to load the ico, just have to comment it out I guess, all else seems to work.

[Dav]

I'm glad there's no more crashing, and it's working ok.  I may just ditch the .ico in the next release.

Trying to make it more visually appealing, I'm working on making every note highlight for a second when it plays.  I'm using TIMER and note flags. When a note is struck, its flag is on, and the note will highlight for 1 second, then turn its flag off (each note has 2 .png images for that, one highlighted and one off).  This makes a nice visual display going on while playing the drum.  I've implemented 5 notes so far and it's working - it will be interesting to see if all 15 notes can be going using this method without making it too sluggish to play.

I resorted to using TIMER and flags because I couldn't use _SNDPLAYING to see when a note is playing
(which would make it much easier).  I'm using _SNDPLAYCOPY to play sounds, and according to the wiki _SNDPLAYING only works with handles from _SNDOPEN and _SNDCOPY.

- Dav