Link: Venom VB-303 VSTi (Beta release)

[michat]

so this is roughly the layout..
i think i'll keep the LCD there, maybe i'll adjust it slightly lower so there's enough room to put the "VB-303" logos and stuff above it

usually when you adjust the distortion, you'd also want to touch the synth Volume knob, so i think the distortion should be on the same page as the synth front panel..
i could put it horizontally right between the black/orange toolbar-thing, and the synth.. it won't take much space, the height of the whole thing would be not more than 400 to 420 pixels..

Hi Antto,

please be aware that the first version of the d16 phosycon also looked like the original and "the queen" roland was not amused.....

[mztk]

wah
!!!

that looks f###en great.
they didn't hassle ABL, though did they..

er, does this have a flip panel with a graphic sequencer?
(eg: note/octave/acc/slide)

[guppi]

Beautiful

What's about shuffle?

[chk071]

that looks f###en great.

+1

[lalo]

Great work Antto!
I think Tristan Young has a very good point!
Alternative Horizontal Panel #1 sounds like the way to go.
I think that Roland might have something to say about it...sadly enough.
I think would be better a little bit of investigation on this topic.
Great work man!
a.

Cool, looks good so far.

How many knobs/buttons do you have for the distortion controls?

Here's an idea:

For this purpose, I label the horizontal panels sequentially from top to bottom.

Horizontal Panel #1:
- rear port labels: mix in, waveform, sync in, etc, leave them split into two groups, one group on the left, one on the right
- synth title: VB-303 Venom Bassline (centered)

Alternate Horizontal Panel #1:
- rear port labels: mix in, waveform, sync in, etc, bring them all together into one group, align to the right
- synth title: VB-303 Venom Bassline (left justified)

Horizontal Panel #2:
- tuning, cutoff, resonance, etc on left side (1st group)
- distortion controls to the right side (2nd group)
- space all the knobs in this panel out more for aesthetics

Horizontal Panel #3:
- space out and re-align the knobs and LCD display on the next panel for aesthetics (very small change)

Horizontal Panel #4:
- step sequencer controls
- love your sequencer panel layout - don't change a thing

This way, you will still increase the vertical resolution of the synth, but not nearly as much, and you have a nice bank of knobs on the next panel.

[mztk]

if it's free, release it and see. change it if they moan
at you>

edit: no, you'll have to change the 'bass line' logo, of
course, that's bound to be copyright. no harm in showing
us a picture, though.

[Kriminal]

i think its safe to say Roland will slap a C+D on this one

also, if that image is full size its way too small to be usable, hopefully its not full size

[mztk]

so why didn't they c+d ABL?

(and it's bigger than antto's last GUI. he must
have good eyesight or a big monitor)

[Kriminal]

so why didn't they c+d ABL?

prob cos it looks nothing like the tb303

[mztk]

er, yes, ok.. forgot what it looked like before
they revamped it.

[robogone]

so why didn't they c+d ABL?

prob cos it looks nothing like the tb303

But the one thing to bear in mind is that they need to have a legal case if they're going to follow through with any action. As long as there are no patents or copyright infringed, their threats are hollow.

A few years back I was working with a startup company who started getting letters from a company that accused them of infringing their copyrighted name due to the prefix on the company name. The MD was concerned so he took it to the lawyer the company had on retainer. She just laughed at it and told him that companies do that all the time as they're looking for an easy fix outside of the courts and scary lawyer letters work in many cases. She told him to file the letters away somewhere safe and ignore them.

The bottom line is that Roland would be looking at launching action based on no legal standing if they're just saying "Hey, that looks like a piece of hardware we once made". It's also usually bad publicity for a big company to go after the little guy, so they would think very carefully before actually doing anything.

[thecontrolcentre]

so this is roughly the layout..

Very nice

[antto]

thank you guys, i really appreciate your support!

as for the layout, i have new ideas.. the LCD would be above the synth, it would *look* like it's connected via a 25-pin serial port, and the distortion knobs would also be above the synth, so everything will be in one page

progress: i finaly managed to code a native LCD module which uses GDI (i just make a image buffer and draw directly into it, then i Blit..)
so no longer do i have 80 bitmap modules.. O_o
i'll be working on the pattern/memory load/save functions these days/weeks
this version of Venom will have a new .NSP format, which won't work on the beta versions, but the existing .NSP patterns will work (it'll detect and convert them)
new .303 format (plain-text based 303-style format, which will work with Roland's original pattern sheets)
and of course, FreeBee .pat format

.NSP will be directly compatible with n0nx0x (if i ever continue developement of it)

Memory files will only be in .NSM (raw) format

[Kriminal]

so why didn't they c+d ABL?

prob cos it looks nothing like the tb303

But the one thing to bear in mind is that they need to have a legal case if they're going to follow through with any action. As long as there are no patents or copyright infringed, their threats are hollow.

A few years back I was working with a startup company who started getting letters from a company that accused them of infringing their copyrighted name due to the prefix on the company name. The MD was concerned so he took it to the lawyer the company had on retainer. She just laughed at it and told him that companies do that all the time as they're looking for an easy fix outside of the courts and scary lawyer letters work in many cases. She told him to file the letters away somewhere safe and ignore them.

The bottom line is that Roland would be looking at launching action based on no legal standing if they're just saying "Hey, that looks like a piece of hardware we once made". It's also usually bad publicity for a big company to go after the little guy, so they would think very carefully before actually doing anything.

well, it looks a LOT like the original...same knobs, same font, 'bassline' and 303 in the name..too much of a coincidence really, and its asking for trouble

if Roland had a big market in the software world they would be all over this in a second, but we'll see.

[FarleyCZ]

I've competely missed that one. :-O Looks amazing.
Is beta still available? And any ide how it will be priced in the future?