this format is so much more awkward than i thought it would be when i added it. out of all the formats in Oops! All New Formats, this one is by far the most problematic. i'll go over the issues - and i'd love to hear input from YOU! reading this! so we can figure out how this format should be defined going forward.


1) it's not multiplatform
BotB formats should be free and multiplatform (or at least able to be emulated well) for maximum accessibility - Buzz proper is Windows-only software and apparently not usable in WINE. going into this battle, i had found Buzztrax which claimed to be a Buzz-like for Linux. it was so focused on cloning Buzz's capabilities that i just thought it was cross-compatible with Buzz projects; however as nitrofurano reported apparently it isn't. it's just a separate thing. this strikes me as the biggest issue with the format.

because running this experimental major required me to answer questions quickly and make calls when necessary, i made the call to allow Buzztrax submissions as well to O!ANF, in the spirit of inclusivity. i posted about it here but to summarize, i think this would be a terrible fit for XHBs. Buzz users won't be able to interact with Buzztrax submissions, and vice versa, leaving voters beholden to somebody being around to upload renders. i don't want that; battles need to run in a consistent manner.

the best answer i can come up with to this problem is simply to disallow Buzztrax and have the format support Jeskola Buzz only. (splitting the format into two would just be turning one problem into two problems.) but this still sucks because that would make the Buzz format accessible only by Windows users and that goes against one of the main tenets of BotB format eligibility.

to summarize, i kind of fucked up with this one 😅 there's also the option of retiring this format or making it XHB-unhostable, but i'd feel bad about that one too; it's brand new! what do you all think?


2) third-party machines
as first mentioned by Lasertooth here, Buzz's individual modules, called "machines", can have their roster expanded significantly via "third-party machines", most of which can be donloaded from within Buzz or on their site. i allowed this because it's not unlike the VCV Rack format - which supports "the entirety of freely available modules in the VCV ecosystem".

however, this is still tricky in terms of voting on XHBs; machines may need to be donloaded by voters to play back the entry correctly. and, in the long term, machines might disappear from Buzz's catalogs, making an entry some degree of unplayable in the future. agargara proposed answering this by adding .zip to the filetype list - something i probably should've actually done for the major but slipped my mind. this future-proofs the entry by including the third-party machines alongside the submission, and makes voting easier so people don't have to go hunt down the machine(s) to play back the entry.

i think allowing .zip would be an OK answer to this particular conundrum, but should it be required to submit .zip if third-party machines are used? also i'm assuming there's going to be once again no cross-compatibility with Buzztrax... all the more reason i don't think Buzztrax will fit in this format going forward.

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those are the issues that i'm aware of - are there more things that stand out to you? how do you feel about this stuff? i don't wanna be the one making final judgment calls here, i only did what i needed to in order to keep the major running smoothly. but now that its entry period is coming to a close, it's time to figure it out!

Of course being multiplatform is always better but I didn't know it was a required condition for botb formats :o In this case, what about klangfreude? I tried it once with Wine under Linux but it didn't work, is there another way to use it?

For both these formats, another solution is to set up a Windows virtual machine with either Virtualbox (Linux/macOS) or Gnome Boxes (Linux). I never tried it myself yet but since buzz (and klangfreude) doesn't seem to be very heavy on computer resources but this should probably be ok. Of course this solution has drawbacks, but this is still a way to get things working

klangfreude worked fine on wine here (as i actually submitted entries) - maybe was a wine version compatibility issue, or needing to change something on winecfg?

oh thanks I should try it again then! So the problem only concerns buzz

It would be useful to submit the entire catalog from buzz.robotplanet.dk to the Internet Archive. This would also save the time to download the machines one by one.

By the way, did anyone have trouble with the modules in the More Machines tab? I had to move them to the main Gear directory to make them work.

It looks like some people have been able to get Buzz working with WINE, although it sounds a bit finicky and tricky.
https://forums.jeskola.net/viewtopic.php?t=2674

If we could find a reliable setup for WINE that would solve the multiplatform issue. Virtualbox seems like an easier solution, although it requires more resources and having a Windows ISO. It certainly wouldn't be the only format that people need to use an emulator for!

I like the idea of uploading machines to the Internet Archive, seems like a better long-term solution! I still advocate for .zip being an allowed optional format.

You can download free Windows ISO on the Microsoft website (here

is the Windows 10 page for instance) but yes resource is definitely a problem with virtual machines, especially for people using older/low specs computers

i have 0 opinion about the machines stuff, because i am simplistic enough to just use the few default ones anyway.

apart from that: yes its good if a format runs on multiple OS, yes its good if you can execute it on windows, linux, macos....
at best you can access all formats on a smartphone too!
but it shldnt be a requirement.

botb says "format shld be free and accessable", but to what extend are we going with this? the format itself (the tool) is free. but it only runs on an operating system which you have to purchase. suboptimal? yes.
but then again, linux might be free but it only runs on hardware you need to purchase, right? which needs electricity that isnt free. sorry, i know this is silly, so lets keep going.

windows is still the most used OS for desktop machines worldwide if im not mistaken - with a big lead too. i agree that we probably dont want a format that only 10 people worldwide cld run on their super customized hardware hack OS, but even tho i will get all the haeit from linux and mac users now: tools that run on windows-only are super accessable, because windows is super accessable. if you can buy computer-hardware, you can, with no difference in invested money, buy computer-hardware -with pre-installed windows-.
i think a format which only runs on windows machines isnt paywalled - its moral/ethical-walled or whatever. this is a different issue. it makes me feel "dont blame the poor format for it"

there are a few formats on botb which lack some support here and there. i think pandatracker doesnt load on linux either? or fsound? some others only perform very bad if you try wine.

in the end all i can say is: the cool thing about botb has always been that if there is a format with a lack of compaitibility or creation-tools, people will get creative and create clones/converters etc.
so lets see what happens