pouët.net

Which one is the more coherent file format?

Saw .mod once and it looked very... weird (after reading KB's article, I understand why). And I hardly can find their specs.

D:

Not quite sure what you want, but if it's an alternative to the .mod format, I'd give Renoise's .xrns a look. It's a zipped structured XML-document. Rename the file to .zip, unzip it and there's your XML plain and simple.

there is none.
and yes, there is no good answer to your question unless you tell us what you actually want.

Well, I'd like to have the format specification document.

This might prove useful if you're looking for format specs.

Just say no to the XM format.

dv: whyes?

haha, i just opened a random protracker fx doc from modland... regarding the effect EFx, firelight says "This effect is not supported in any player or tracker. Don't bother with it."

the irony of it is - the very first thing i take a glance at is just wrong :) goes to prove how chaotic the .mod format and its interpretation is.

that said, the .xm format is pretty awful as well, but that's by design.

Danguafer: Pretty much the first thing you'll read in the XM specs is already wrong, and it's not the only mistake. Plus if you want FT2-compatible XM playback you'll pretty much go through hell...

Which one is more compression friendly?

none of the old module ones particularly, you can pull the individual tracks out of the patterns (on a per channel basis) and then reconstruct them before playback but tbh it'll only save 2-3kb on average. You'll get better results from compressing the samples instead but then you've got a block of already compressed data sitting in your exe.

well, just transform the the samples via wavelets like uncle hellfire does (from what i heard)..

generating/unpacking is widely used for xm in intros back in the 90s. Try looking at minifmod and its sample load callbacks