genuine question i've been wondering for a while.
i understand why its not used it most of the mod*k formats, and in a s3xmodit minor battle, since in mod*k it removes the point for smol samples and in s3xmodit minors, it basically give a middle finger to the bitpack...

...however, then you have mod64k...
the only mod*k format to give mixist points instead of chipist, so obviously file size is the least of your concerns

but more importantly, s3xmodit in majors. this one i just dont get. ik its meant to be sample based, but then that basically makes opl useless as hell in battles. furthermore, unless you are doing a mptm format, there's no reason to touch OPL. (ik opl mode aint that good, but still, its there)

so uhhh
why?

imo if s3xmodit had different rules for battles and majors, that would be extremely confusing -- it should be "OPL always available" or "OPL never available"

also, is OPL inherent to all of the DOS module varieties and can it be used in, for instance, both openMPT and schism?

bro.... :(

@syntheicgoddess and yet, s3xmodit has different rules for major & minors (if its a minor, only use the bitpack samples (usually))
also it apparently was only used in .s3m (scream tracker 3), no other format besides mptm supports it

by that logic all formats have different rules for major & minors by virtue of majors normally not having any sort of bitpack (if it's summer/winter chip or spring trax at least) compared to xhbs (which have text/sample bitpacks)

i believe s3xmodit was always intended as a sample-only format, same with the mod*k formats - there is adlib for opl2/3 and i think mptm allows opl3 stuff as well?

Its easy to forget that openmpt got adlib s3m support fairly late in the history of the format on botb. Before then you'd have a hard time playing back those adlib s3ms unless you already had either schism or the og st3 to hand. I don't think even xmplay played them. I could be wrong on that though.

why don't you just do mptm