Good news.!!

With lots of new updates.

 

Those two videos dont actually tell any why they should update from Kontakt7 to Kontakt8.

 

Unfortunately I agree. But like, 100%. WTF are they trying to sell in that video?

Most new features are literally already existing scripts with a GUI, others are similar but like stolen from a MIDI effect like Scaler. All MIDI to MIDI utils.

And the rest are new-browser search improvements.

You can see in the comments people are not exactly happy.

 

That's because people want a massive update. Rather than a couple of incremental add ons.

 

So true. A piece of software that's as old as Kontakt can't really receive massive updates unless they redo the whole shebang. And recreating an entire platform would be suicidal.

A couple of optimizations (workflow and otherwise) will do me fine, so I'm not complaining. If this thing works out well, I might even upgrade Komplete now instead of waiting for the next release.

 

Lua as an option for scripting instruments - total game changer. There's HISE, but HISE doesn't have the hundreds of effects that Kontakt has.

Hobbyist/entry level programmers, game developers, artists working on assets, so many more potential developers for Kontakt with Lua...

KSP is truly one of the shittest, most crippled DSLs out there. Not even the Sublime extension that adds a "standard library" to KSP makes it any more bearable.

 

I wonder why didn't they use Lua in the first place instead of KSP. That being said I think KSP was introduced as early as Kontakt 2.

 

I'm not too sure, even though it's a fairly old language I don't think it escaped the academia when Kontakt came out with scripting. I've got the standard basic moan about Lua, of course (yes, you all know what it is), kinda like why people hate Python because of that one thing.

But Lua with proper control bindings and I would be over the moon, I'd use it over anything for mangling live MIDI data. It would absolutely beat the pants off Max and Reaktor for that kind of thing.

I wonder how Halion is these days...

 

Yeah, they added Lua to Kontakt Creator Tools with 5 or 6, so I thought that by version 8 we'd have Lua in Kontakt itself.

 

Yeah, it's an old language designed to run fast and small in larger programs starting with games (low latency for a script language). Easy. It should be the best option. Ok, a few weird things (array[0] oops ) but no more.

Then again, Reaper's creator chose to make his improved version of another language (JSFX's Jesusonic), other have used some flavor of Javascript... But I get the point of using Javascript. Not the best for real-time DSP/MIDI but it's the most widely known language.

With v6 I think. And since v7 (?) you can run Lua scripts only with Kontakt. For creators it's a blast all right. For instance you can make a relatively easy script that reduces to a half the offset start of all the samples.

Edited: I forgot one of the most amazing plugins both in features and implementation is perhaps the only I know that uses Lua MIDI processing: Jam Origin's MidiGuitar 2

Not only that I think they use LuaJIT. Way faster, kinda like current Javascript compared to pre-Chrome Javascript. Only old fucks like me remember but that was the reason Chrome swept the floor with all the competition, with a JIT version of Javascript

 

Last edited: Sep 29, 2024

We need to have a dedicated "cranky old programmer fucks thread" really, but here goes.

LuaJIT is a goddamn dream to embed and use in code, I especially adore Sol for C++ bindings. Only Chaiscript comes close in a "perfect embedded scripting language" chase of the ultimate IMO.

Max/MSP uses Javascript, and it's... well... it's Max so it's going to be a confusing mess regardless of what they'd use. I don't mind JS but it's really only usable with DOM and DOM is a fucking nightmare so it's a match made in inferno.

While I'm daydreaming something like MicroPython would be nice and concise for these kind of apps, but let's not get carried away... Lua is our best bet at this point, one indexed arrays be damned.

If I ever create a scripting language it's going to have 1-indexed arrays, significant whitespace, and bash-like string and equality processing. I'm sure it'd be a ultramegamassive hit!

 

lol. I think you understood me well, but just in case I call myself "old fuck" instead of "old fart". Just because is better suited to me.

That's the thing, right? Lua is already there, battle-tested, fast. With "better than C-like" wrapper/bindings for C++. Sol2, like you well said.

Chaiscript is great, but is designed for C++ programmers. It's somewhat similar to Angelscript, used in the also great Blue Cat Audio "Plug'n Script" plugin.

 

What is still very bad is the tag system. A real mess, duplicate tags, inconsistencies. Totally useless. It is true that it depends on each company to tag their libraries well, but at least NI should allow editing them.