Introduction

This document is a formal specification of the file format used in Trackerboy module piece files, or *.tbi, *.tbs and *.tbw files.

Piece files contain a single instrument (*.tbi), song (*.tbs), or waveform (*.tbw) that can be imported into or exported from an existing module. Piece files allow users to share parts of their module with others, for easier reuse and collaboration.

For the module file format see here.

The libtrackerboy library provides a reference implementation for serializing and deserialing module pieces with this format. See the io module for more documentation.

Structure

A piece file consists of a header followed by a payload. The payload is a single INST, SONG or WAVE block. A terminator is not used since there is only one block present in the payload.

Header

The figure below defines the Header structure for all piece files. These files use a reduced version of the header used in the module file format. The fields are exactly the same as the module format, see that specification for more info.

     +0         +1         +2        +3
 0   +-------------------------------------------+
     |                                           |
     | signature ( TRACKERBOY )                  |
     |                                           |
 12  +-------------------------------------------+
     | version major                             |
 16  +-------------------------------------------+
     | version minor                             |
 20  +-------------------------------------------+
     | version patch                             |
 24  +----------+----------+---------------------+
     | m. rev   | n. rev   |
 28  +----------+----------+

Payload

The payload is a single INST block for *.tbi files, a single SONG block for *.tbs files or a single WAVE block for *.tbw files.

The format of these blocks are the same as the ones used in the module file format except for one key detail: the id is omitted for INST and WAVE blocks.

Revision history

Module pieces share the same history as Modules.