As of Firmware 1.7 the .mod and .it format support has been removed.
We’ve already seen utilities that have reverse engineered the .pti format, but this was based on trial and error, blood, sweat and tears (shoutout to Jaap Roes for his work on that).
This is a formal request to Polyend, to create a living document that details these files so that community developers could create utilities for the Tracker and / or converters so that Tracker Files could be used in other Software Trackers or Tools.
What is the problem?
As of FW 1.7 there is no more importing or exporting to a common file format
There is no official documentation / specification to the Trackers Project / Song / Pattern / Instrument Files
What do you want to achieve?
Allow the community and 3rd party developers to create tools that would benefit the Tracker Ecosystem
Allow the community to create Conversion Utilties for other popular tracker formats
To do this, it would be helpful if we knew the specs/structure/content of the following files:
project.mt - The Project File
pattern.mtp - The pattern files
instrument.pti - The instrument files
Are there any workarounds?
Reverse engineering
Any links to related discussions?
Any references to other products?
Possibly the Deluge? This wish is not about opensourcing the firmware though. This is purely about opening up or documenting the files that make up a tracker project so developers could build tools for them or around them.
I’m not entirely sure, i’ve done some testing and it seemed to work. But you are right, eventually this will become an issue, the further along we go with the updates.
I personally would love if Polyend would open up the Fileformats for the Projectfiles (Song, Pattern, Instrument) so that Devs in this community could actually build tools for the Tracker to enrich the ecosystem.
This could include importers/exporters to the now infamous .mod and .it files, but go even further with support for maybe Renoise or even other software.
It would be a benefit for the community and a benefit for Polyend, since their Team could focus on other tasks, while the community can geek out and build all sorts of funky tools.