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42% goluigi

::|CONTENTS

1. Tools
2. Structure
3. Panda Pattern Compression Format
4. Restrictions on submit
5. Accepted file format
6. Playback (for voting)
7. Render to MP3
8. See Also

The filetype used for songs made with PandaTracker. It consists of 8 channels, each with their own unique instruments. They are generated through synthesis. Channels 1-6 are melodic and channels 7 and 8 are percussive.

Tools

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Check out PandaTracker for more infos about the tracker.

Structure

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0x00: PANDADEV (8 bytes)
0x08: 0x00 (3 bytes)
0x0B: 0x02 (version?)
0x0C: song data size (file size - 0x10) (4 bytes)
0x10: compression byte (explained later on)
0x11: pretty colors~ (3 bytes)
0x14: speed (1 byte)
0x15: order list (compressed)
0x??: pattern data (also compressed)

The order list is 64 bytes when uncompressed. 0xFF is used for empty orders.

Pattern data is 131072 bytes when uncompressed.
Pattern data is divided into 8 channels, each 16384 bytes when uncompressed.
Each channel is divided into 4 "sub-channels": note, volume, fx command, fx value, each 4096 bytes large.
Empty pattern cells use value 0x00

Panda Pattern Compression Format

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Compression occurs in the order list and pattern data, and is responsible for making the panda files nice and small. ;)

Anything that is not a compression byte, is an order list entry, note, volume (or fx) value depending on where you are in the file)

After encountering a compression byte, a variable length encoded value follows (similar to delta values in MIDI files), and 1 data byte. Then (variable length encoded value+1) bytes are set to this data byte. This is most commonly at the end of orderlist where the remaining bytes in the orderlist are set to 0xFF, and the end of a channel, where the remaining bytes are set to 0x00

I'm not entirely sure, but I think the variable length encoded value maxes out at 0xFFFF. It's then followed by another compression byte/VLE/data byte pair.

Restrictions on submit

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The submitted file has to be playable in PandaTracker!

Accepted file format

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The only accepted file format is .panda

Playback (for voting)

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Open up PandaTracker and press F10. Make sure the file you want to open is in the same dir as the ohc_tracker.exe and the filename only contains normal letters without spaces. Now type in the name of the file without the .panda and it'll be loading the file. Next Step is to press Enter and the Song will be played.

Render to MP3

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With the file loaded, press F9 to export the song as .wav. Now use a conversion tool to get your wav into an .mp3.

See Also

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PandaTracker
Additional format notes from Jangler on GitHub

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