Hi everyone, I am hoping to learn the basics of a new format/software by the end of this summer so I can submit more entries more often. I want the your opinions on what the best/easiest/most versatile formats are (besides allgear and wild chip) I have heard a bunch about many different trackers and stuff but I don’t know which to go with. Thanks!!

openmpt is pretty much the most used tracker around here in many formats. there are a lot of mpt-converters for even more formats. and the tracker is very nice to use and has a lot of customization-possibilities.
another good-to-go tracker here is famitracker.

Nice! I have Famitracker installed on my PC but I’m currently doing research on OpenMPT. I might try and learn both lol!

For piano roll editor software, Pxtone and Jummbox are very easy to get into (I'd reccomend ptcollab over ptcollage), and can produce some great results.
I'm pretty new to trackers (and music production in general) but I fell in love with Renoise and aym instantly. (Vortex Tracker)
I wouldn't say that a lot of the other formats are really that much harder tho.
The NSF, SGEN, SPC, MIDI, MT32, snibbetracker and Gameboy formats are all pretty easy as well I'd say.

Just researched. I think PxTone looks sick. I would totally be down to get PXTone Collab and work on stuff with other BotBrs too. Looks fun

algear and wildchip are actually the technically most difficult formats for me, because they are too vague - and btw, once you figure out how openmpt, famitracker and furnace works, and how to interoperate them with a daw from your choice (not nessesarily, but its a huge plus), you will be easily able to submit to over 75% (i think...) of botb formats

The Mario Paint(s) are pretty simple to understand.

🗿 is a fun format

Furnace has a wide selection of systems that it targets, tho the only formats you can use it with right now are anything that allows .vgm files (Genesis, SMS, PC Engine, VGM (duh))

If you're into piano-roll style DAWs, I can also recommend trying out FamiStudio. Even as someone who has used Famitracker for years prior to FamiStudio, it's my go to tool for NES music and sketches

furnace has a very cool feature (i don't know if it is only available on the last unstable versions): it opens .mod files up to around 60 channels, meaning we can interoperate it with OpenMPT almost immediately, without having to use converters or text clipboard - i made some tests of .mod files and generating .vgm segapcm or qsound from furnace (keeping the samples, in these cases), and sounds quite alike - and cool also from furnace is that they are constantly adding new chips, like konami's scc and scc+ recently - i think that one of their goal is to support all chips supported from vgm format specification (which also has a dozen of chips to be included as well)

@3-Up. I will check out FamiStudio, thanks! ^^

Think it goes without saying that remix and visuall are right up there with allgear and wildchip in easiness.

LSDJ by far

visuall! just scribble!

Famitracker is a damn good choice. It's easily obtainable, has a good UI, covers a popular system, is simple enough to be SUPER effective in OHBs, and has lots of cool extension options (VRC6 for some extra channels, VRC7 for basic FM fun). It's my go-to for OHB.

The NES chip is also juuuust complicated enough to be interesting without being particularly tricky to learn.

That aside, Furnace is shaping up into a great jack-of-all-trades tool, so it's worth tinkering with a bit. LSDJ is great if you have an actual gameboy (or emu+controller in a pinch, but writing chip on the train is half the fun). There's a pretty steep learning curve to begin with but it becomes second nature surprisingly quickly.