MilkyTracker
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MilkyTracker is a multi-platform music software, more specifically part of the tracker family. It started on the Windows Mobile Pocket PC but has grown to support a variety of platforms. The original goal of bringing trackers to handheld devices has changed to bringing the module replay and user experience of the popular DOS tracker, Fast Tracker II, to modern platforms with compatibility being the highest priority. This means all the replay bugs of FT2 are being cloned too, in order to have the two programs behave virtually identically. MilkyTracker features two editing modes, namely MilkyTracker and Fast Tracker II. The former is intended to be more intuitive for handheld device users as well as users who have no previous experience of Fast Tracker II usage. The latter attempts to make the smoothest transition possible between the two programs.
Fast Tracker II is a pure DOS program only supporting legacy audio hardware. As such it requires software emulation of the DOS environment and may be difficult to get running on modern computer setups with acceptable levels of sound quality and responsiveness. Therefore modern platform native alternatives have always been welcomed by the tracker music community and FT2's success has driven many people to attempt to duplicate the software on more recent platforms. So, by no means is MilkyTracker the only or the first FT2 clone but it claims to achieve the highest level of compatibility. Although MilkyTracker is a fresh competitor on the "market" of FT2 clones, the player code that underlies it has origins dating back to 1997. Back then it was written for a player library to be used in demos but was never used. In 2003, the player code was ported to Windows CE and the PocketPC module player project MilkyPlay [1] was started. At this point a lot of file formats were added to the player since the support for these formats elsewhere was inaccurate or non-existent. This is why MilkyTracker can also import a variety of file formats. However, some of the supported file formats are more advanced than the FT2 eXtended Module format (e.g. more complex instrument structure, more effect columns) and since MilkyTracker is an FT2 clone, some things might get lost during the process of importing a more advanced format and fitting it to the FT2 limitations. If only the replay of these formats is required, MilkyPlay (for Pocket PC) or MilkyPlayLite [2] (for Mac OS X and Windows) is the better suited software.
MilkyTracker started as an attempt at bringing trackers to Windows Mobile Pocket PCs but the tedious process of Pocket PC software development soon gave birth to a portable environment which enabled the essential parts of the program code to be executed on a number of platforms with only minor modifications to it. The current release of MilkyTracker (v0.90.50) supports Pocket PC (2000 and above), Unicode Microsoft Windows, Windows 9x and Windows Me, Windows CE, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris and Mac OS X but the platform coverage is rapidly growing with the help of the SDL library. MilkyTracker has already been seen running on at least the GP2X, AmigaOS, and the Xbox. The program is closed source, yet freeware. The developer, Peter Barth, has announced open-sourcing is not out of the question but will happen only once the program is finished.
