G-Stomper Drum Machine/Groovebox for Android

[nikolatesla20]

Actually ndk will run fine in the emulator just not opengl. On my galaxy tablet the text on buttons cuts off. Seems like a dpi issue. On my droid it looks fine.

[planeth]

Thank you for the hints! I noticed this yesterday too.
I get a galaxy pad today, so I can start fixing it this evening.
Lucky to have a device, using the emulator is really exhausting

Andreas

[planeth]

I have the Galaxy tab in front of me now.

Is it that what your see on your side?

- The main screen looks definitley a bit weird, especially between the sample parameter faders and the right border (play controls, etc.).

- On the Pattern Set screen the 'Load Set' is cut off at the bottom side


Pattern conf and Efx edit screens look fine.

On my galaxy tablet the text on buttons cuts off. Seems like a dpi issue

@nikolatesla20: Is it that what you mean with the cut off text?
If not, it would be great, if you could send me some screenshots to the mail address, which is related to G-Stomper in the appmarket (it's also in the help/about dialog within the app).

Thanks a lot
Andreas

[kuniklo]

Lucky to have a device, using the emulator is really exhausting

I fired up the 3.1 emulator this morning to have a look at some of the new features. After clicking on the menu button and waiting five minutes for *anything* to happen I closed it back down it disgust. I guess anybody that wants to try 3.1 dev is going to need a real tablet.

[nikolatesla20]

On the Galaxy tablet the layout actually looks ok to me, it's just that the text on the EFX buttons is cut off on the bottom and a few other buttons have cutoff text too. It's probably just a text size thing.

Also just for kicks tried it out on my 2.1 original droid. Does NOT run well of course lol. Gap mania. Even with just two sounds playing only and no FX. I'm pretty sure this won't run on anything but 2.2 well since 2.2 introduced the JIT. Obviously my origninal droid is slow too at only 550mhz, but I think the JIT is going to make the biggest difference here. On my overclocked 2.2.2 droid (1Ghz) it runs fine so far. So I think if you support older than 2.2, you should probably forget that idea...I don't think there is a chance in hell it will run on anything older!

It's pretty nice to have the whole thing in Java though, I have lots of NDK code in my apps and it does take more work to maintain across the code. I should go with SingleCell's method and just use all NDK and OpenGL and save Java just for the "shell" app to get the program running.


-niko

[planeth]

Thank you nico for this test and info for the buttons. Strange is, that there are many installations of the demo with 2.1, and no one of them mailed me or put any comment of that. Anyway, I have to check this. That would probably explain the glittering noise on some HTC Desire devices.
The gui issue will be fixed soon.

Andreas

[planeth]

Do you eventually know what will happen to the existing installations with 2.1 if I raise the minimum API Level to 2.2 within an update?
They just can't install the update?

[nikolatesla20]

I believe that's what happens. But if you have users that have 2.1 and seem ok then I guess you could just leave it. I just did one test on one of my devices, that may not be enough to decide

By the way, played some more with the app. I'm more impressed now that I found you can do step edit, etc. And even have as many sounds as memory will allow. Very nice. I am feeling pretty afraid for my apps now.....well there's always room in the market for some competition I guess (I'm the dev of Electrum if you did not already know that).

Ugh both you guys are ahead of me in DSP coding. Grr.

-niko

[planeth]

I didn't know .. but I guessed so, because of your name . Be sure, there is way enough space on the market for all of us, since every user has his own unique way of creating music, and I mean, it's pretty cool to have multiple pro audio tools to choose, or even use them all together.

I just uploaded a new release (1.1.2) with the fixed layout for 1024x600. Looks much better now on my Galaxy tab.. hopefully on yours, too. It would be great if you could give me a short feedback in that.

Thank you:), yes the step edit is new since 1.1... I love to play around with that. Hopefully I get the song mode running soon.

Andreas

[planeth]

Also just for kicks tried it out on my 2.1 original droid. Does NOT run well of course lol. ... Obviously my origninal droid is slow too at only 550mhz

Thanks again Niko, for your hint. Helped me a lot dealing with many performance issues last month. After all I can say, that the minimum cpu speed is 800mHz. I had to sort out every slower device from the supported device list.

Since my last posting, G-Stomper got a bunch of new features:

Song Mode:
Chain up to 100 Pattern changes to a song. Either live recording or creating the song step by step is supported. Doing manual pattern changes during the song playback will interrupt the song, and it just continues, if you stop hitting the pattern slot buttons. The complete song can be esported as audio as well as a single pattern.

Tempo Lock:
When chaining Patterns with different tempo settings, it's now possible to lock the current playback tempo by long clicking the play button. The tempo will be locked on the current speed as long as the sequncer is running.

EFX Tempo Sync:
X-Delay, Chorus/Flanger and Phaser can now be synched

Added 2 Demo videos to the Help/About section

Limited Load/Save feature for the demo version

Many minor bugfixes and improvements

Check the release notes, if you want more details.

Hope you enjoy it

[bmot]

wow, this brings back memories of my ESX.

all I can say is very well done. it runs very smoothly on a Samsung Galaxy S too, very impressive.

On a small screen there will obviously be compromises. For me, the mute and FX sections took a big hit. Also the Filter section is missing. Can I suggest a few idea to your fine piece of software?

1. What about having 3 programmable "solo/mute" settings? Probably accesible by long press on the solo/mute button with a pop-up. So for example setting 1 with just Pads 1 and 2, setting 2 with Pads 1,2,3,4 etc. This might sound pointless, but there is a reason I suggest this. It would mean you could add 3 "solo/mute" buttons to the FX edit screen on the left, plus also needed would be an "unmute all" and a "mute all". Why? Well, on my ESX, I loved to solo just one or 2 instruments and build up the reverb or delay, or maybe play with the filter. When it reached a peak I would bring the FX right down to 0 and bring back more instruments. Unless you can fit the FX on the main screen this might be a soultion.

2. The sliders in the top left could be switchable, so you could either show these or a filter section.

3. If you need more space, I think 8 instruments would be enough, I would prefer more controllers. Not sure if others would agree on this one!

4. Is it possible to make it multi-touch?

5. Haptic feedback (with selectable strength) would help confirm when a controller has been selected

[planeth]

Hi bmot

Thank you man, that's great to hear. Yeah, Tribes definitely rock. Unfortunately they didn't fit in my pocket..

On a small screen there will obviously be compromises

Absolutely.. I've planned a tablet version when all pending tasks are finished. There will be way more space.

Also the Filter section is missing

Yes, I agree. I tried to add a filter section for each track, but it blew up the performance.


I'm not sure, if I understand you right about the mute section.
Did you noticed the different track pad modes?
The Mode Button is right next to the T.. buttons (default mode: play/menu). By hitting it you can switch between the following modes:

Play/Menu:
Short click = Select Track and play Track Sample (and unmute, if muted)
Long click = Track Menu

Sel/Mute:
Short click = Select Track
Long click = Mute/UnMute Track

Mute/Sel (blue):
Short click = Mute/UnMute Track
Long click = Select Track
Long click on Mode Button: UnMute all Tracks

Solo/Sel (yellow):
Short click = Solo/UnSolo Track
Long click = Select Track
Long click on Mode Button: UnMute all Tracks

Having a UnMute all in the efx section is a great idea, changing the screen to unmute all takes a bit long.
Also having programmable solo/mute settings sounds very interesting, muting/unMuting multiple tracks at once would be very useful in some cases.
Maybe I could add all 11 Track Pads (and the mode button) for mute/unmute at the bottom of the efx screen, with lower hight than on the main screen.

The sliders in the top left could be switchable

That one is brilliant.. definitely thinking about that. This would give a lot more space.

8 instruments would be enough

Partial, I agree. On the other hand, having 11 Tracks gives more space for the beat. A friend of mine did a live gig one month ago, using a Galaxy Tab and a Nexus one. He first tried with a 9 Track version, but he told me it's too less, so I added 2 more. Maybe I could add a setting for that, the possibility to use less tracks would give some performance (and also memory) headroom for slower devices

Is it possible to make it multi-touch?

For the moment, unfortunately not. But it's a plan for a future release. I'm pretty new in Android development;) and I still have to learn a lot about this stuff.

Haptic feedback (with selectable strength) would help confirm when a controller has been selected

Goes right into the queue..

Thank you very much for your input. Now, after finished the LVL issue, I'm looking forward to go back into audio programming.

[bmot]

hey planeth, good to see you like some of my suggestions.

I saw the switchable mode button, and I think that's really well thought out. Thanks for the explanation by the way, it makes it clearer. If it's too much to put in all track buttons in the FX section, an "unmute all" button in FX would be enough to start with. And the icing on the cake would be programmable mute. Thinking about it, 1 is enough.

I can see how some people will want all 11 pads, fair enough. An option to use less pads to save on CPU and screen space would be good but then that leaves the problem of what to do with the empty space. Maybe that's not a great suggestion.

I also tried the free version on my friend's galaxy tab, and it made me a bit jealous, all that screen space! The only slight glitch is that the "EFX Chain" button doesn't show all the text properly (box is too small for the text).

Anyway, great work so far. I've now bought it, looking forward to seeing what I can do with it, and seeing any updates you decide to do.

[planeth]

Hi bmot
Thank you for buying the full version:).

The only slight glitch is that the "EFX Chain" button doesn't show all the text properly (box is too small for the text).

Thanks for the hint, I fixed the text scaling now for a couple of buttons. Will be in the next update. Could you tell me what size that Galaxy Tab was? 10 or 7inch? Would be interesting, since the EFX Chain button was showing well on my 7inch Galaxy Tab.

As far as I see, it should be no problem adding the track buttons to the EFX screen. I'll check that soon.

Thanks for your feedback. Getting such specific input really helps to improve Gst.
planeth