Lasse Öörni (Cadaver)

Author of the goattracker editor ("Editor by Lasse Öörni", GPL; homepage Covert BitOps, covertbitops.c64.org, project on SourceForge) and its readme, which is the wiki's reference for the GoatTracker table model and for the tick-level mechanics of hard-restart (source: s-goattracker-readme). The readme credits collaborators: Téli Sándor (HardSID 4U support), Dag Lem (reSID), Antti Lankila (reSID distortion), Magnus Lind (6510 cross-assembler from Exomizer 2), Antonio Vera (icon), Simon Bennett (command quick reference), and patches by Stefan A. Haubenthal, Valerio Cannone and Raine M. Ekman.

On Lemon64 (2008, as "Lasse") he gave the concise explanation of the sid envelope lock-up: the test bit resets the oscillator immediately but "doesn't affect the envelope generator at all", a minimum two-frame gate-off period is needed, and triggering while the envelope is at maximum volume "will result in silence and lockup that lasts until the gatebit gets cleared again" (source: s-lemon64-hard-restart-threads). The 2015 thread refers readers to "cadavers replies" in an earlier discussion for the detailed story.

On Lemon64 again in 2020, answering "how does one learn SID sound design these days?", he described his own method — "Long time ago I used to play back songs slowed down so that I understood how drum sounds (e.g. Hubbard) were pieced together from frames of noise, triangle, pulse etc." — pointed to siddump (CSDb release 192079) as today's equivalent, gave the learning order "Basic waveforms, ADSR, pulse width + modulating it, vibrato and pitch slides, 'wavetable' programming", and one recipe: sync the lead voice to the bass voice for "a distortion or 'screaming' quality, somewhat like an electric guitar" (ring-modulation-and-sync) (source: s-lemon64-learning-sid-sound-design). siddump itself is distributed from his Covert BitOps site (source: s-ucapps-wavetable-sounds-tutorial-1); its 1.05 release (2013) added partial multispeed support after a chipmusic.org user wrote to "the SidDump creator" (source: s-chipmusic-sid-music-hints-n-tips) — whether that creator is Öörni is not stated in any source (siddump).

His code travels further than his own programs: cheesecutter's README credits "Parts of reSID interface (sid.cpp) by Cadaver / CovertBitops", and ct2util's man page names goattracker(1) in its SEE ALSO line (source: s-cheesecutter-repo-and-releases). And he took requests: nata, composing in GoatTracker 2.2 in 2006, said "Cadaver was very generous and implemented a lot of features that I requested" (source: s-sidin09-nata-interview).

hermit names GoatTracker first among the editors sid-wizard drew on and ships sng2swm to import its .sng files (source: s-witchmaster-creating-chiptunes-with-sid-wizard).

The 2002 SIDin interview#

Interviewed by e-mail for sidin #2 in November 2002 (source: s-sidin02-cadaver-interview):

• Lived near Oulu, Finland, studying physics, maths, chemistry and computer science at the University of Oulu — "I aim to be a teacher"; homepage www.student.oulu.fi/~loorni/, Covert BitOps at covertbitops.c64.org.
• Started "serious" C64 coding and cross-development "quite late, in 1998, after a break of several years"; Escape From New York, BOFH: Servers Under Siege and the Metal Warrior series were his own engines, graphics and music.
• Why so many players — "Music driver, SadoTracker, Goattrk and Ninjatrk": "each time, when starting a new game project, I also wanted to rewrite the playroutine for memory or speed (rastertime) gain. Sometimes, I even wrote editors :)" goattracker "was fast & easy to compose on, but finally I had to realize that music made with it takes too much memory (because of the patterns, they're like in Amiga/PC tracker programs)", hence "the quest for the extremely optimized playroutine/musicdata combination" — ninjatracker (sid-player-routine).
• In 2002 he saw no need for another player: GoatTracker had "reached the peak in ease-of-use vs. features (it is missing step-programming for sounds, that would add versatility at the cost of easiness)", NinjaTracker "in speed & size"; samples were unlikely ("I have no experience of sample coding"); next was music for MW4, with other people's tunes arranged for the C64 as on MW3.
• "A real SID is very much preferable for composing", emulators are "very powerful tools in testing your programs"; worst own tune the crapgame-compo Advanced Action Movie Simulator ("done that way on purpose"), best some MW2 melodies; favourites Hubbard, Galway, Matt Gray, jonathan-dunn ("the ultimate war-feeling/heroic SIDs") and reyn-ouwehand; best SIDs the sanxion loader and the Ocean loaders, the Platoon, last-ninja-2 and Last Ninja 3 soundtracks — "it's not the technicality that I care most of, but rather the melodies and the atmosphere". His two ways to get a C64 project cancelled: "a Zelda project with bitmap scrolling" and "another Turrican for C64".

Ninjatracker, and GT2 reviewed (SIDin, 2006–2007)#

• His second editor, ninjatracker, is native: V1.x was written "years ago" so that his games could have music with low rastertime and memory usage — "quite hard to use", but a converter took goattracker songs into its format; V2.x, released in February 2007 on the same day as laxity's SID Factory, is a duration-based editor with named commands, 16 subtunes, a packer, a relocator that saves a song without the player for game sound effects, online help, ProTracker or DMC note entry, configurable colours (grey by default, after GoatTracker) and published source — but no multispeed, and enough differences between v2.x releases (hard-restart type, note durations) that a tune is bound to its version (source: s-sidin11-sid-factory-vs-ninjatracker).
• Tognon's July 2006 review of GoatTracker 2 (around v2.35, built from source on Linux) praised the tables, the realtime playback, the mouse support and the F12 help, and asked for play-from-position that survives Rxx, instrument colours, HardSID MK4 output, an overwrite prompt and undo (source: s-sidin10-goattracker-2).

In the SIDin news (2002–2010)#

• The release stream sidin tracked: goattracker 1.33 (September 2002) to 2.69 (by 2010) including the stereo builds and the 2.68 reSID-fp integration; ninjatracker 1.0 (2002-11-01) to 2.03 (September 2006); sidid 1.0–1.06 (September 2006); Gufino's SidDasm hosted on his Covert BitOps site (2003) (source: s-sidin-news-digest).
• As a composer in the c64.sk compos: 7th in SID Compo II (2002, "TheConsultant"), audience winner of SID Compo III (2003, "Illumination", 413 points; 6th on the jury list), 6th in IV (2004), 10th in V (2005), 5th in the Goat Tracker 2 Music Compo (2005), winner of SID Compo 7 (2007, "Darkening", 1314 points) (source: s-sidin-news-digest).

Related#

goattracker · hard-restart · sid · hermit · siddump · tracking-workflow

Sources#

s-goattracker-readme · s-lemon64-hard-restart-threads · s-lemon64-learning-sid-sound-design · s-ucapps-wavetable-sounds-tutorial-1 · s-chipmusic-sid-music-hints-n-tips · s-sidin02-cadaver-interview · s-sidin11-sid-factory-vs-ninjatracker · s-sidin10-goattracker-2 · s-sidin-news-digest · s-witchmaster-creating-chiptunes-with-sid-wizard · s-cheesecutter-repo-and-releases · s-sidin09-nata-interview