Machines are divided into two categories, effects and generators, if you look in your buzz\gear directory you'll see that there are folders for both effects and generators. Machines are often stored in .zip files when you download them, in the zip files you will find 1 or more files. The file called x-x.dll is the machine itself, the file called x-x.htm is the help file for the machine. Note that all machines don't have help files, this is something the developer may not feel he has time or energy to write. Personally i think it's a waste to not write them and i encourage every buzz user to write help files for their favourite machines if there isn't one out already.

-Demo songs

Back to the zip file, there can also sometimes be one or more .bmx or .bmw files in the .zip, these are the demo songs for the machine. Unzip these into the buzz\songs directory or any other song directory you may have. Always listen to the demo songs if included, they will often give you and idea of what the machine can be used for, but still don't be afraid to experiment.

-Making sure the machines work

First you need to know where the machine ends up, just start buzz and all machines you've added that aren't mentioned in the index.txt file should be shown in the Effects/Generator-Unsorted menu. If it's not there then you have gotten your hand on an index file with a bunch of machines already added. Try searching through your machinelist to find it, it helps to know what kind of generator or effect it is, if the list is neatly divided into different sections. Now load the demosong, or just create the machine if there is no demosong for the machine. If you get no error messages including the machines name while doing this there is nothing to worry about. If you want you can stop reading here and be satisfied with what you've done, however if your newly installed machine was placed in the Unsorted menu or in some other menu and you want to move it here's how to accomplish that.

-Editing the index file with the text editor

Use notepad or some other pure texteditor, open the index.txt file in the buzz\gear folder, also open a copy of explorer and point it to your gear directory. Leftclick a machine once and keep the mouse still as if you were to rename it. When the name of the machine is marked just press ctrl+c to copy that piece of text, go into note pad and paste into desired section of the index file. Remember to remove the .dll ending, since this is not needed in the index file.

Here's how to tidy up the index file and make different sections for a better overview:

/Generator
/Drummachine
/..
/Synth
/..
/..

This may look a bit strange at first but it's quite simple really, all sections start with a [ / ] after that there's a name of the specific section and the section ends with a [ /..]. So [ /Generator ] will form a section/menu in buzz named [ Generator ] and everything between that and the [ /.. ] will be sub sections in the section called Generator. In other words the lines above will look like this:



From here on you just have to start organizing all machines into handy sections so you can easily find them, if you've added a machine to the index file and it shows up grey in buzz try check the unsorted folder, likely you have misspelled it. Remember that you need to restart buzz for updates to take place, happy editing.

-Editing the index file the easy way

A guy called Some-e has made a buzz indexer to speed up the process of index editing, the big advantage to do it this way is that his program can show you some information about what the machines are and sort out the machines that already have entries in your index file. It can also create subcategories and i promise you it will speed up the editing process 5 times. Here's the program

Buzz Indexer

Here's a little quickstart to get you on your way:
First of all edit the file called buzzpath.txt, change the existing path to the full path of where your buzz.exe file is located. Then start the buzz indexer, it will now make lists of all machine .dll's it can find in the two leftmost columns. Above them you can see a total of how many machines you have and how many effects and generators you have, to the right is how the index file looks. Right click in the index column to make new items and subitems, the ones i call sections. Now I'm gonna show you how to do three things:

Finding missing machines - This is used when you have downloaded an index file that has machine entries of dll's you haven't got, click the think menu button then click list missing machines. Either you can search for them yourself at www.buzztrack.com or you can goto #buzz at efnet and ask around for them. Keep in mind though that you can be very creative with few machines and that many machines are betas and are very unstable and may crash buzz.

Adding unindexed machines - This you use to make entries for machines which have no entries in the index file, click the think button and click remove indexed machines. Now only the unindexed machines will be shown in the effect/generator columns. Just drag and drop them to the place you wish in the index file.

Saving the index file - It's a bit tricky to find this one actually, right click in the index column and you'll see three options. Choose file and save as index.txt - You can also save it as index.new if you click the button called main, then you have to rename the file to get buzz to read it however.

All files above have been checked for viruses with a new version of avp toolkit pro, but none have been found, new viruses are always invented and spread, always check your downloads, i take no resposibility if the files are contaminated - http://www.avp.com

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