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Only 76 downloads for doitnow by Terrorizer?  Tragic.  "Amiga Hardcore" (yes, that's a genre) at its best.

I only just found out who composed this one - moonchild, the sole MOD credited to Manimal of Digital Technology.

The only ones I know out of that list are Mr. Man ("restricted" is awesome), Nutcase and Dr. Bully.  (I don't count Blue Fox since I only know him from downloading Subject's modules from AMP.)

One good source for judging "known-ness" is the lists of greetings in sample texts.  I've seen Moby mentioned in those loads more times than I've seen Yannis (not sure I've even seen him at all).

I'm quite proud of how many of the tracks mentioned thus far I've already heard.  "my wolf 2", "garbage collection" and "up in the woods" have all been in my collection for years (in fact, they were some of the earliest modules in there), and "dope for your mind" is one I was aware of but don't remember liking very much.  I've got several other Otis MODs, though. "vidars choice" sums up his typical style, but I've always had a soft spot for "we rule".

I should have remembered to mention this earlier: "tekknological" by M. Linde and J. Wilson.  Sublime.

This is drifting back into the territory of composers for whom I honestly have no idea whether or not they're 'unknown' to most people, but Yannis Brown has a lot of stuff worth looking at - mainly the older MODs.  Try "boing!!" and "voyager" to get started, but for something different, "jolly-tune" is a rather impressive orchestral piece.

I can't believe we don't have a topic for this already.  I hope to see lots of posts on this one!

We all know the big names of the tracker world, and we all know the most famous tunes.  Rare indeed is the composer who doesn't declare "savannah" or "cream of the earth" as a major inspiration in their interview.

But there's more to AMP's 120,000-strong module database than that, right?  For every Walkman or Lizardking there are a hundred smaller composers who never got the recognition they deserved, dropped out of the scene early, or just didn't choose to seek fame and fortune for their talents in the demoscene.  90% of them are, of course, crud.  This thread is dedicated to rooting out the other 10%.

So.  What tunes by lesser-known or almost completely unknown composers do you harbour secret admiration for?  Are there any people whose oeuvre you think deserves its moment in the spotlight?  Are there any tracks for which you're the only person you've met who's ever heard of them, and you think that's criminal?

I'll get you started with a few of my all-time favourites.  Note that I can't vouch for whether or not these modules are actually completely unknown; all I know is that I've never seen the names mentioned anywhere.

jazzmine by Juno (53 downloads)
orangejuice by U-Man (118 downloads)
keep-bustin by Commando (109 downloads)
cyberchrist by Vortex (133 downloads)
we need paradise by XS (76 downloads)
keep ya hyper by Strike (121 downloads)
can you hear me ? by Rico (64 downloads)

I quickly got very fed up with AMP's weird naming scheme and use of GZip compression (which is not impossible but definitely irksome to unpack on RISC OS).  The issue was compounded by NetSurf not converting %hex entities in URLs to proper characters, which affected most module names (any with a space in, for a start).

After downloading my first few modules, I wrote an entire helper program to claim the GZip filetype when I double-click on it.  This automatically decompresses any such file using a port of gzip that I found.  If it detects that the file is located beneath my AMP downloads directory, it calculates a correct, unmangled filename for the decompressed output - this consists of substituting the correct non-alphanumeric characters wherever possible, removing the "/gz" extension and removing the Amiga pre-extension (prepen-sion?).  It also attempts to set the filetype to an appropriate tracker format based on the prefix (RO doesn't do filename extensions).  Finally, after decompression, it deletes the original zipped file.

I still haven't figured out how to get VLC on Linux to play with them nicely.  I strongly suspect a similar rigamarole is in order.

Is this any relation to NRG as in "Ache & NRG"?

Nope, no other files, it's just a text file (like the much longer and more tutorial-like Jason Page one already in format_documentation).

Unless you meant the S3M conversions which I made applying what I learned?  Asle generously hosts them right over here.

swirlythingy,

if you can make the download available somewhere I could fetch it and incorporate it in to the database then.

It is.  It's attached to the post I linked to.

(And I observe the download count of said attachment has just increased from 3 to 4...)

Good to see Modland's back.  Any chance of getting my vanity project uploaded?

I'm probably showing my scene ignorance here, but what's CD48?

I have no idea what OMF is, which explains why it wouldn't be here . Can you point me to a tracker ? I'm not really up to date with all the existing tools available around .

Well, it was you who wrote the converter!

http://amp.dascene.net/forum/index.php/topic,117.0.html

RJP isn't on AMP at least because it's a two files bundle. Today's storing way of AMP is only a "one file" archive.

Ah, of course - separate sample files.  I didn't think of that.  That's one way of indicating a clearly exotic format, then.

So, the important thing is it has a title?

I'm just wondering about formats like OMF, which can be losslessly converted to and from MOD-like formats (and it even has a title), yet AMP doesn't store them.  (In the case of OMF, it stores conversions in FST format instead.)  Is this just because there isn't a commonly available player for OMF (yet), due to it being an 'uncracked' format until recently?

It's technically very similar to the vast majority of formats which AMP does accept, so it must be counted as an 'exotic' format for other reasons.

I can see why you wouldn't host, say, RJP or JPN files, as those are very different to standard MODs, and quite awkward to play in a dedicated music player due to the way in which they were designed to work.  But there does seem to be a quite large 'grey area' between MODs and their derivatives and clearly 'exotic' formats like JPN.

How does AMP decide which formats it'll accept?  I know you don't keep files in 'exotic' formats, but I have seen files in some very obscure formats, like BP and GMC.  Where do you draw the line?

Those first two images were taken in Torquay, Devon. Wonder if he lives or comes from down here?

It says on the Kickstarter page that he lives in Exeter.

...Er, well, it did, but he seems to have recently broadened its scope to "Devon, United Kingdom".