Little Sound DJ is a wonderful tool that transforms your old gameboy into a music making machine. It has a thriving community of users that pushes their old hardware to its limits, in pursuit of new musical endeavours. It can however be cumbersome to manage songs and sounds outside of the gameboy.
In this light libLSDJ was developed, a cross-platform and fast C utility library for interacting with the LSDJ save format (.sav), song files (.lsdsng) and more. The end goal is to deliver libLSDJ with a suite of tools for working with everything LSDJ. Currently four such tools are included: lsdsng-export, lsdsng-import, lsdj-mono and lsdj-wavetable-import, and requests for other useful tools are very much welcomed.
The core library of libLSDJ was rewritten in v2.0.0 to be future-proof against changes in LSDJ. This means that the export and import tools should never corrupt your songs, even when LSDJ itself adds new features after the latest libLSDJ update (until the compression algorithm itself changes). Functions for tooling purposes do need to be added, but that is only a small task.
I'm also proud to say that TommityTom's RetroPlug is built on libLSDJ for its save file management. If you're using the tools or the library yourself, let me know, I'm curious to hear who depends on this. :)
The library and tools are open source and freely available to anyone. If you'd like to show your appreciation, please consider buying one of my albums or donate money through PayPal.
lsdsng-export is a command-line tool for exporting songs from a .sav to .lsdsng, and querying sav formats about their song content.
lsdsng-export mymusic.sav|folder
Options:
-h, --help Show the help screen
-v, --verbose Verbose output during export
--noversion Don't add version numbers to the filename
-f, --folder Put every lsdsng in its own folder
-p, --print Print a list of all songs in the sav, instead of exporting
-d, --decimal Use decimal notation for the version number, instead of hex
-u, --underscore Use an underscore for the special lightning bolt character, instead of x
-o, --output arg Output folder for the lsdsng's
-i, --index arg Single out a given project index to export, 0 or more
-n, --name arg Single out a given project by name to export
-w, --working-memory Single out the working-memory song to export
--skip-working Do not export the song in working-memory when no other projects are given
lsdsng-import is a command-line tool for importing one or more songs from .lsdsng into a .sav file.
lsdsng-import -o output.sav song1.lsgsng song2.lsdsng songs.sav...
Options:
-h, --help Show the help screen
-v, --verbose Verbose output during import
-o, --output arg The output file (.sav)
-w, --working-memory arg The song to put in the working memory
lsdj-mono is a command-line tool that transforms any .sav, .lsdsngs or folder containing such files to mono. In essence, it changes all OL_ and O_R commands to OLR (leaving O__ untouched), and sets all instruments to play LR as well.
lsdj-mono mymusic.sav|mymusic.lsdsng ...
Options:
-h, --help Show the help screen
-v, --verbose Verbose output during import
-i, --instrument Only adjust instruments
-t, --table Only adjust tables
-p, --phrase Only adjust phrases
lsdj-wavetable-import is a command-line tool that imports .snt files (directly containing bytes that represent wavetable data) into your .lsdsng files. A repository of .snt files can be found over at https://github.com/psgcabal/lsdjsynths.
lsdj-wavetable-import source.lsdsng wavetables.snt -[s 0-F | i 0-FF]
Options:
-h, --help Show the help screen
-v, --verbose Verbose output during import
-i, --index arg The wavetable index 00-FF where the wavetable data should be written
-s, --synth arg The synth number 0-F where the wavetable data should be written
-0, --zero Pad the synth with empty wavetables if the .snt file < 256 bytes
-f, --force Force writing the wavetables, even though non-default data may be in them
-o, --output arg The output .lsdsng to write to
-d, --decimal Is the number for --index or --synth a decimal (instead of hex)?
The nature of libLSDJ as a C library makes it compilable on nearly all common operating systems. Both tools included have been tested on macOS Sierra and Windows 7/10 and seem to be working. DigiPack has also successfully built libLSDJ on Arch Linux.
Precompiled binaries can be found under releases.
If you'd like to help out, please let me know!
Bug reports can be filed in issues. Feature requests can also be added there, appropriately labeled.
Developers that would like to help out are warmly invited to do so. This project is open source for a reason; I know the chiptune scene as a loving and caring, open community, and to me this seems like a good way to give back. I personally have little experience with open sourcing code, and view this as a good opportunity to gain some.
libLSDJ and its tools are released under the liberal MIT-license.
libLSDJ makes grateful use of the following dependencies:
Special thanks for Defense Mechanism (urbster1), .exe (rbong) and Johan Kotlinski (@jkotlinski) for thinking along and helping out where needed.