Gaming DEFLEMASK TRACKER IS NO LONGER FREE

[biolizardshadow]

I know I am about a month late on this, but deflemask tracker is no longer free on any platform. I was very disappointed when I recently found out that it is a paid for program on all platforms now including PC. I honestly don't think that program is worth any money at all considering that there were quite a few bugs especially with the rom exporter that I have noticed when I used the program and there is no midi export functionality. I really only used it for the Gameboy mode; however, after learning how to compose and import music into GBA roms, that's when I pretty much dropped the program for the most part. Now I only use it to test the sounds of custom wave channel waveforms before inserting it them into a GBA project since it is a lot easier to pull deflemask up than it is to create a custom song and insert it to hear what my custom wave channel waveform will sound like.

I know there are a lot of chiptune artists like myself that are disappointed by this new development. The last available "free" version is on their website, however, there is no guarantee that delek won't take that down, or start charging for the legacy version of deflemask tracker sometime in the future. An individual on battle of the bits is trying to archive all legacy versions of deflemask tracker so if the last legacy version is taken down then I would recommend downloading it from there. Here is the link: https://kleeder.de/files/botbFiles.php

I don't think this is a good look for deflemask tracker especially since delek in the past has stated that deflemask tracker would remain "free forever" and, it was free for 1 decade, and on top of that, they are also asking for individuals who have purchased the program to donate money as well. I would like to know how everyone feels about this. Would you pay $10 for deflemask tracker? why or why not? This is meant to create a healthy discussion about deflemask tracker. For me, I won't be paying for deflemask tracker and if I decide to use it for a project I will stick to the legacy versions of the program, and hey; maybe one day deflemask tracker will become free again? I know that's wishful thinking, but a man can only dream at this point.

 

[CaptainMalware]

Hello. I'm CaptainMalware, and I've actually had an indirect discussion with Delek and fd about this.

When they explained it in the DefleMask Discord server, Delek said that he chose to make these future releases paid because it would be hard for them to develop DefleMask without any funds coming from it. Involving bugs, there aren't that many in the latest 1.0.4 release if you look at the bug tracker channel. FD has also stated recently that the updates in DefleMask would also bring more support to a broader range of hardware, such as the Raspberry Pi (He had mentioned that there were experimental packages for DefleMask on the RPi in an announcement on the discord server).

Delek has explained that he would leave the legacy versions available to the public for reasons I could not recall.

Most of my information came from the discord server, so you should probably check that out for some more info in the discord server.

 

[biolizardshadow]

Thank you for responding to my post CaptainMalware. I see and understand what you are saying; however, I would argue that it's hard for people who supported this for a long time to easily accept this. On the website it mentions that they wish to expand deflemask tracker to all of these different platforms like the one you mentioned above; however, my concern with this is that he might be asking for too much here. I can't speak for anyone on the discord server as my main form of communication with other people that use the tracker is the deflemask forums, but who is asking for deflemask to be on all of these platforms? I personally have not seen anyone asking for this. The most I've seen are people asking for their favorite console(s) to be added.

Another concern I have is that now delek is isolating his tracker behind a pay wall which may discourage new people from trying it out. The bar with trackers in the past such as famitracker, openmpt, schism tracker, etc, is that they offer so much for no price whatsoever. This makes it hard for him to compete with his tracker when almost all others are free with no strings attached; even sunvox tracker which is pretty much a synth generating program is free on non mobile devices.

The reason I am mentioning this is because I love the tracker and the community that surrounds it accept for the bots that invade the forums every once in a while. I think in the short term he will see success with this move; however, in the long term his tracker might be in jeopardy especially if user growth for the tracker stagnates. Apologies for this long response, as you can see I am very passionate about this tracker.

 

[Kelvin_Wolf]

This is more of a closed source problem. Since deflemask is closed sourced it means that contributions to code are limited to a selective bubble which makes it harder to update and less sustainable as a free donation-ware product. That being said, there are to many significant updates and improvements that it's still gonna be thriving for quite a while. Would I pay for it? No. The vgm format isn't all that good for hack and the driver doesn't function right. It's not very good for homebrews. I would suggest looking elsewhere, but people still have a use for it so let em have it.

 

[biolizardshadow]

This is more of a closed source problem. Since deflemask is closed sourced it means that contributions to code are limited to a selective bubble which makes it harder to update and less sustainable as a free donation-ware product. That being said, there are to many significant updates and improvements that it's still gonna be thriving for quite a while. Would I pay for it? No. The vgm format isn't all that good for hack and the driver doesn't function right. It's not very good for homebrews. I would suggest looking elsewhere, but people still have a use for it so let em have it.

You have a point. I just think it's just a shame that the developers decided to go this route since I don't see the long-term sustainability with their decision which hurts because I really liked this tracker.