ShadeNBT

This Site/Directory is the main page for Versions of the ShadeNBT Specification.

The ShadeNBT Specification is used to provide some strong protection against corrupt save files, while maintaining Binary Version Compatability, using the easily used Named Binary Tag Format, created by Markus “Notch” Perrson, for the Game Minecraft.

The ShadeNBT Specification is designed to be easy to implement. Existing NBT Libraries may even be built ontop of to implement the specification. However, not all valid NBT Files can be used inside a valid ShadeNBT File, and not all NBT Files that can be used inside a ShadeNBT File are Valid Standalone NBT Files. There are various differences between the specifications:

1. The original NBT Specification allows for gzip compressed NBT Files, while ShadeNBT offers no such option. However ShadeNBT Files themselves may be compressed using a variety of compression algorithms, including gzip.
2. The original NBT Specification has a hard upper limit for the number of nested Compound and List Tags, at 32, while ShadeNBT Implementations are required to support at least 128.
3. For compliance with LCLib Binary IO, NaN values are prohibited in both TAG_Floats and TAG_Doubles. Note that this is changed in the 1.3, and the restriction is removed in 1.4.

The above list is not exhaustive, there are a large number of differences between the normal NBT Specification, and the Specification for the “NBT Part” of the ShadeNBT Specification.

Media Types

For transportation of ShadeNBT Files, the Media Type application/vnd.shade-save-file MUST be used.

ShadeNBT Files may be stored with any file extension, however it should use either .ssv, .sav, or .snbt.

CryptoShade files should use .ssv or .ssvc. The media Type application/vnd.crypto-shade-file MUST be used.

Released Versions

So Far, 5 versions of the ShadeNBT Specification have been released, the latest being 1.4. Each Version can be found here:

• 1.0
• 1.1
• 1.2
• 1.3
• 1.4

The permanent link to the latest version is https://chorman0773.github.io/BinarySpecifications/ShadeNBT/latest. The permanent link to the latest draft version is https://chorman0773.github.io/BinarySpecifications/ShadeNBT/latest-draft.

For the most part, versions of ShadeNBT will remain stable. From time to time, however, Retroactive Changes may be applied to correct Defects. As of this date, 1 Defect Report has been published, and the changes applied to the correct Versions:

• DR1: Versions 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, and 1.4

CryptoShade Variant

Certain extensions to the ShadeNBT Format MAY additionally be supported. These extensions can be found here