What is hUGEDriver?

hUGEDriver is a driver for hUGETracker. What does that mean?

Well, think about an MP3 file: a program like VLC is required to play those back. Similarly, hUGETracker “only” generates music data, and something has to interpret it to actually produce sound.

This is also why hUGEDriver is also called a “player” for hUGETracker, though this is slightly inexact, because hUGEDriver is not a complete playback solution: it’s meant to integrate with your code, that will decide what music must be played, when, and how. For more information about that, please read the next chapter.

Notes

Make sure to always use compatible versions of hUGETracker and hUGEDriver together!! For example, you cannot use hUGETracker 1.0b10 with hUGEDriver 1.0b9, as the data format is different between those two versions.

hUGEDriver is the reference driver, meaning that it will always be kept up to date. Other implementations (such as fortISSimO) are available, but they are not officially supported.

Under the hood, hUGETracker plays your songs by emulating a Game Boy running hUGEDriver. Doing it this way instead of interpreting the music data directly helps avoiding any discrepancies between playback in the tracker and on the console. If you find any, it’s probably a bug, please tell us!