playdate-reverse-engineering

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Unofficial Playdate reverse-engineering notes/tools - covers file formats, server API and USB serial commands

⚠️ This documentation is unofficial and is not affiliated with Panic. All of the content herein was gleaned from reverse-engineering Playdate tools and game files, and as such there may be mistakes or missing information.

Documentation

• File Formats
  • Playdate game formats
    • .pdz - Executable file container
    • .pda - Audio file
    • .pdi - Image file
    • .pdt - Imagetable file
    • .pdv - Video file
    • .pds - Strings file
    • .pft - Font file (TODO)
  • Other formats
    • .fnt - Font source file
    • .strings - Strings source file (TODO)
• Server
  • Playdate API - Main Playdate server API
• Misc
  • USB - Playdate USB serial interface

Tools

• pdz.py - Unpacks all files from a .pdz file container
• pdex2elf.py - Converts a pdex.bin to an ELF file that can be analysed in a decompilation tool such as Ghidra
• usbeval.py - Uses the Playdate's USB eval command to evaluate a Lua script over USB. Has access to the Lua runtime of the currently loaded game, except for system apps.

Special Thanks

• Simon for helping with some ADPCM audio data reverse engineering
• Zhuowei for this script for unpacking Playdate .pdx executables, which was the base for pdz.py
• The folks at Panic for making such a wonderful and fascinating handheld!

2022 James Daniel

Playdate is © Panic Inc. - this project isn't affiliated with or endorsed by them in any way.