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Bigjoe5
Joined: 27 Apr 2011
Posts: 114
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 Posted: Sun Jul 03, 2011 4:34 pm Post subject: Pro Guitar Upgrades for DUMMIES |
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This is a tutorial for creating pro upgrades for existing DLC, written for people who have no experience making custom Rock Band content whatsoever. Making customs is obviously extremely hard to get into, since there are a lot of necessary things that are "common knowledge" amongst creators of custom content which aren't easy for a new charter to find/figure out. After reading this guide, you should have no problems (with the technical aspects of) making pro guitar and bass upgrades for Rock Band 3.
This tutorial is only guaranteed for Xbox 360.
Step 1: First things first.
If you want to create an upgrade package, you need to know what one looks like. If you have no pro upgrades from HMX, download one now, then put it on your USB drive and transfer it to your computer (or use your other preferred method of moving files from your 360 to your computer).
| SUB-TUTORIAL: Configuring and using your USB drive wrote: | Configuring your USB drive for use with your 360 is easy. But in case you don't know how, I'll outline it here.
Insert a USB drive with ample free memory into any USB port in your Xbox 360. Navigate to "System Settings" under "My Xbox". Select "Memory", then select your USB device. If you're fine with losing everything on the device and devoting it entirely to the Xbox, choose the first option, which is to configure your device completely for Xbox 360 memory usage. If you just want to use part of it, choose the second option, which is to customize your USB drive usage so that only part of it is used for Xbox 360 memory.
Once this is accomplished, select the device in which your HMX pro upgrade is saved, select the file (conveniently labeled "(pro) (upgrade)"), and choose "Move" to move it to your USB drive.
Move your USB drive to your computer. Open USBXTAFGUI and select "Open First USB Drive". If it doesn't open, move your USB drive to the first USB port and try again, or select "Open USB Manually...".
Navigate to "Data Partition/Content/0000000000000000/45410914/00000002". Right-click the file and select "Extract". Expect it to have a long meaningless name. If you have several files, you can determine which one is a pro upgrade based on the size of the file. Save it wherever, and feel free to name it something useful. |
Now that you have the file on your computer, you'll need to open it with Le Fluffie.
| SUB-TUTORIAL: Extracting files with Le Fluffie wrote: | | Start Le Fluffie and select "Open File" from the File menu, then select your file. In the "Main" tab, hit "Extract Package", and choose a location (it's a good idea to create a new folder for this). You should get a couple of icons, some notes about the song, and a folder called "Root", which contains a folder called "songs_upgrades", which contains a file called "upgrades.dta" and another file called "(songname)_plus.mid", where (songname) is the name of the song you extracted. |
Observe the information in the upgrades.dta file. It has song name, song ID, path to the midi upgrade file, and Pro Guitar and Bass difficulties/tunings. There's also something called "upgrade version". I don't know what that is, so don't worry about it.
Step 2: Monkey See, Monkey Do
OK. You've taken a good look around a pro upgrade file and you're ready to make your own. The first step is creating the midi file.
| SUB-TUTORIAL: Creating the pro midi file wrote: | The first thing you always need to do before you can start placing notes is make a proper tempo map. This will ensure that the notes you place are in time with the music. Of course if you're a complete n00b, like me, you have no idea how to create the tempo map, and don't care to find out. So here's what you do:
Transfer the song you want to upgrade to your computer via USB drive or your other preferred method. If it's in a pack, take the whole pack - it'll take a bit longer, and USBXTAFGUI might say "(Not Responding)" for a little while, but it's actually working (hopefully). The file will show up on your desktop or wherever before it's done writing, so just wait until you can use USBXTAFGUI again before you try to open the file with Le Fluffie.
Once you have the file, extract the contents with Le Fluffie and open up the midi file with your midi editor of choice (mine is EOF). It may help you to use the notes in the existing guitar and bass track as placeholders so you know how many pro guitar notes to add and where they go. To do this in EOF, seek to the first beat marker, select all notes in the guitar track difficulty (CTRL+A), copy them to EOF's clipboard (CTRL+C), change to the empty pro guitar track (ie. CTRL+Tab or use Song>Track>"PART REAL_GUITAR") and paste the notes (CTRL+V). You can repeat this for each of the four difficulties and for each difficulty in the pro bass track as well. Now you can just author your pro guitar notes by editing the pasted notes, which should (more or less) be the exact number of notes you should need to add for it to be complete.
Now delete all the notes from the other tracks, and voila: you have a chart with a perfect tempo map for your song and placeholder notes for your pro guitar parts. Feel free to delete all the text events as well (Beat --> Clear Events in EOF) - they're just taking up space - and add your own for the Pro Guitar trainer (examine a pro upgrade midi for more details).
Hopefully you know enough about your editor of choice to take it from here. EOF is pretty self-explanatory with regards to Pro charting, so you shouldn't have too much trouble with it, aside from the few known bugs that lead to only 99% of things working in-game, but which will hopefully be worked out. Please please PLEASE slow the chart down in practice mode to isolate the track you're transcribing before trying to chart it. Trying to create a tab for a part that's still in the mix is stupid, and leads to all the POS tabs you find on the internet. Do it carefully.
Also note that if you're using EOF, you'll need to associate the project with an ogg that's about the right length for your song (what it's listed as in RB + 5 seconds or so is usually safe). The isolated istrumental track you're working on would be ideal, but I don't know how to make the extracted moggs usable, nor would I be allowed to post how here (I assume) if I did, so any placeholder music will do. To make an ogg, just take any old file, open it up in Audacity, add as much silence as you need (or delete as much as you need), and hit File-->Export as OGG Vorbis.
Another interesting thing you could do if you're feeling bold is add lead/rythm/bass to the lower difficulties in the guitar and lead/rythm/guitar to the lower difficulties in bass to allow a more flexible band setup. If you do this however, be sure to test it in-game first. Wonky things can happen when you try to put a guitar part in the lower difficulties of the bass part. When I charted Give It All, I had to put guitar in expert bass and bass in hard bass to get them both in the bass track. |
Once you have the midi file, the next step is to create the DTA file, upgrades.dta. Just take the one you extracted before and update it with your song's information - difficulty, path, name, song id and tuning. Name and song id can be acquired from the songs.dta file for your song. Path is just "songs_upgrades/(songname)_plus.mid" (or whatever you name your midi file, I guess), and you'll have to decide on tuning and difficulty yourself, as the charter.
If the dta file for your song doesn't contain the song ID, visit this thread to find its ID.
Note that for RBN tracks, the song_id is just the numerical portion of the song's internal name. It's also found under song_id in the dta near the end of the file.
Step 3: Moment of Truth
Now you have all the files you need for your package. It's time to make the file and put it back in the game. First, package everything up with Le Fluffie.
| SUB-TUTORIAL: Packaging upgrade files with Le Fluffie wrote: | Open Le Fluffie and select "Package Creation" from the File menu. There will be a pop-up asking for type. The default type, STFS, is the one we want, so just click OK. Now, in the Main tab at the bottom of the window, we need to fill some empty boxes and replace some full boxes.
Title ID: 45410914
This is the internal ID of Rock Band 3. You should recognize it as the folder your Rock Band 3 songs were in.
Description: You have an option between Display Title and Description. Click on Description and write a nice description such as "Song Name (pro) (upgrade)".
Saved Gave: There will be a little drop menu that says "None". Open it and select Saved Game.
Internal Title: Rock Band 3
Images: Those boxes on the side are for images. Right click them to insert an image. This is what those little "3" icons you extracted with the package are for. They're identical as far as I know, so don't worry about the order.
Save Display Title/Description: Click on this at the end, before you go to the Finalization tab. If you don't, your upgrade might not work for some wierd reason.
Now that that tab is taken care of, right click on Root and select "Add Folder". The name of the folder should be "songs_upgrades". Now click on the new folder to select it and right click in the big box on the right to select "Add Files". Put in your mid, "songname_plus.mid" and your DTA, "upgrades.dta".
Go to the Finalization tab. The default settings should be "CON (Provided KV)" and "STFS Type 0". If this is the case, you're good to go. Hit "Create Package" and save it somewhere accessible with a recognizable name. |
Next, inject the package into your USB drive with USBXTAFGUI, or use your other preferred method for getting the file on your 360. Fire up RB3, and you're good to go.
NOTE: While you must delete the song cache for ordinary customs, it turns out that you do not have to delete the song cache for upgrades. They will work just fine without doing so. This should cut down the time required to test a song by a bit, especially for those with a heftier DLC library.
***IMPORTANT***
If your customs aren't working and you have no idea why, delete the song cache anyway, especially after making important changes to the DTA that might make it work.
| SUB-TUTORIAL: The Song Cache and Injecting files using USBXTAFGUI wrote: | Remember how the files you got were in "Data Partition/Content/0000000000000000/45410914/00000002"? Well, now you need to navigate to "Data Partition/Content/0000000000000000/45410914/00000001" (emphasis mine). What if it's not there you ask? Good question, 'cause it's probably not. In order to create this directory on your USB drive, first go back to your Xbox 360 and move the file called "Rock Band 3 Song Cache" to your USB drive. Now go back to your computer, and open your USB drive to the correct directory.
Right-click anywhere on the right-hand side of the window and select inject, then choose your custom file and let USBXTAFGUI do it's job.
***THIS SECTION IS LEFT IN FOR YOUR INFORMATION ONLY. YOU DO NOT NECESSARILY HAVE TO DELETE THE SONG CACHE FOR UPGRADES TO WORK. IF YOUR CUSTOMS AREN'T WORKING, THE ABOVE BIG BOLD MESSAGE TAKES PRECEDENCE OVER THIS ONE.***
The one thing you have left to do before this file will be playable is delete the song cache. Don't worry, this will not get rid of all your songs. If the song cache was all your songs, it'd be a helluva lot bigger. It's more of an inventory of your songs, and your custom upgrade is not on that inventory. Delete it, then start up RB3. You'll get a prompt to choose a memory device - this is for the location of the song cache. Then, you'll have to wait for it to load all your songs, as the game is "taking inventory" again.
I recommend deleting the song cache via your Xbox rather than using USBXTAFGUI to delete it. I started experiencing problems that I suspect were related to that on my old flash drive, and I've had no issues with my new flash drive now that I've started deleting the song cache using my 360 instead of USBXTAFGUI. Mayber there's no connection, but better safe than sorry as far as I'm concerned. The same goes for old unwanted files. |
Step 4: Gloat
You're ranked #1 on the Pro Guitar Leaderboard!
And that should do it. If there are any questions, feel free to post them here. Thanks.
Last edited by Bigjoe5 on Wed Oct 12, 2011 1:27 am; edited 15 times in total |
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raynebc
Joined: 16 Jun 2008
Posts: 992
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| Posted: Sun Jul 03, 2011 7:00 pm Post subject: |
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Pretty cool tutorial. I have a couple of suggestions though:
*When you import the existing MIDI, it will import all existing events. In addition to deleting the existing notes (EOF will only export instrument/vocal tracks that are populated to the MIDI file during save), also erase the existing text events by using Beat>"Clear Events" in EOF.
*It may help you to use the notes in the existing guitar and bass track as placeholders so you know how many pro guitar notes to add and where they go. To do this in EOF, seek to the first beat marker, select all notes in the guitar track difficulty (CTRL+A), copy them to EOF's clipboard (CTRL+C), change to the empty pro guitar track (ie. CTRL+Tab or use Song>Track>"PART REAL_GUITAR") and paste the notes (CTRL+V). You can repeat this for each of the four difficulties and for each difficulty in the pro bass track (if you're authoring that instrument) as well. Now you can just author your pro guitar notes by editing the pasted notes, which should (more or less) be the exact number of notes you should need to add for it to be complete.
*For audio, it may be satisfactory to record the audio from in-game. Off the top of my head, I don't remember if you can prevent the audio for an instrument from cutting out if you miss notes. You could probably also just use the audio from a Youtube video of the chart. Provided the audio was accurate (no stuttering/lagging/etc), you could use that as the audio when importing the MIDI, just sync the first beat marker. You can display a waveform graph by pressing F5, and can click and drag the first beat marker (all notes and beats will move with it), and/or manually edit the offset by opening Song Properties (F9) and altering the offset (in milliseconds) in the delay field. Make sure to zoom in the chart with the plus key on the number pad to ensure that the beat markers line up correctly with the waveform, and optionally (recommended) test the sync by enabling the metronome (press M to enable the metronome, which will tick as each beat marker is reached) and playing back the chart (press Spacebar). If the metronome is out of sync with the audio, adjust the chart's delay in Song Properties again. Do note that you must be using the audio for the chart, a regular album version will often/usually not sync the same way as what's used in Rock Band. When you're done authoring the pro guitar/bass tracks, make sure to set the delay to 0 before you do your final save. Do not use Beat>"Reset offset to zero" for this, as that serves a slightly different purpose. Forgetting this part will cause the pro guitar/bass notes to be out of sync when you play the chart in-game, because you had changed the positioning of the chart to match audio you used for the authoring process, and the notes need to be positioned to match the audio used by Rock Band. |
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ComicBookGuru
Joined: 16 Dec 2007
Posts: 1678
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| Posted: Mon Jul 04, 2011 1:49 pm Post subject: |
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What if, say, we wanted to upgrade a CON file (RB1/2/GDRB/LRB)?
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pikminguts92
Joined: 15 Nov 2007
Posts: 153
Location: Virginia
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| Posted: Mon Jul 04, 2011 2:05 pm Post subject: |
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| ComicBookGuru wrote: | | What if, say, we wanted to upgrade a CON file (RB1/2/GDRB/LRB)? |
What do you mean?
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LyokoFreaks
Joined: 07 Apr 2007
Posts: 691
Location: Las Vegas, NV
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| Posted: Mon Jul 04, 2011 2:36 pm Post subject: |
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| pikminguts92 wrote: | | ComicBookGuru wrote: | | What if, say, we wanted to upgrade a CON file (RB1/2/GDRB/LRB)? |
What do you mean? |
It's the same deal. As long as you use the proper song ID in the pro guitar package, it will upgrade the proper song. |
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ComicBookGuru
Joined: 16 Dec 2007
Posts: 1678
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| Posted: Mon Jul 04, 2011 3:49 pm Post subject: |
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| LyokoFreaks wrote: | | pikminguts92 wrote: | | ComicBookGuru wrote: | | What if, say, we wanted to upgrade a CON file (RB1/2/GDRB/LRB)? |
What do you mean? |
It's the same deal. As long as you use the proper song ID in the pro guitar package, it will upgrade the proper song. |
Alrighty! Now I just gotta find me some tabs. >.> To UG I go!
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wesjett08
Joined: 30 Apr 2007
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Bigjoe5
Joined: 27 Apr 2011
Posts: 114
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| Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2011 1:00 am Post subject: |
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| ComicBookGuru wrote: | | LyokoFreaks wrote: | | pikminguts92 wrote: | | ComicBookGuru wrote: | | What if, say, we wanted to upgrade a CON file (RB1/2/GDRB/LRB)? |
What do you mean? |
It's the same deal. As long as you use the proper song ID in the pro guitar package, it will upgrade the proper song. |
Alrighty! Now I just gotta find me some tabs. >.> To UG I go! |
Oh my god please don't use internet tabs if you're going to distribute these. I have yet to see a single accurate tab online. They're practically all terrible all-power-chord versions. I only ever consult online sources anymore for comic relief.
If you're doing one that you can isolate the guitar and bass parts for, doing so and doing the tabs it yourself is probably your best bet by far (though time-consuming).| wesjett08 wrote: | | Just checking, Would there be any interest in unofficial pro guitar and bass upgrades for all of the released and upcoming Ultra Saturday RBN 2.0 songs? The guys are behind the idea of tabbing the songs out if people would be interested. |
I don't buy RBN songs. Know why? 'Cause they don't have Pro Guitar and Pro Bass parts. ;)
Any song with pro upgrades automatically goes on my list of songs to listen to and strongly consider buying. That's my 2c anyway. |
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ComicBookGuru
Joined: 16 Dec 2007
Posts: 1678
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| Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2011 1:14 am Post subject: |
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| Bigjoe5 wrote: | I don't buy RBN songs. Know why? 'Cause they don't have Pro Guitar and Pro Bass parts. ;)
Any song with pro upgrades automatically goes on my list of songs to listen to and strongly consider buying. That's my 2c anyway. |
Goes on mine too!
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wesjett08
Joined: 30 Apr 2007
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Bigjoe5
Joined: 27 Apr 2011
Posts: 114
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| Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2011 2:34 pm Post subject: |
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| raynebc wrote: | | *When you import the existing MIDI, it will import all existing events. In addition to deleting the existing notes (EOF will only export instrument/vocal tracks that are populated to the MIDI file during save), also erase the existing text events by using Beat>"Clear Events" in EOF. |
I already had something similar to this, but I added the exact command for EOF.
| raynebc wrote: | | *It may help you to use the notes in the existing guitar and bass track as placeholders so you know how many pro guitar notes to add and where they go. To do this in EOF, seek to the first beat marker, select all notes in the guitar track difficulty (CTRL+A), copy them to EOF's clipboard (CTRL+C), change to the empty pro guitar track (ie. CTRL+Tab or use Song>Track>"PART REAL_GUITAR") and paste the notes (CTRL+V). You can repeat this for each of the four difficulties and for each difficulty in the pro bass track (if you're authoring that instrument) as well. Now you can just author your pro guitar notes by editing the pasted notes, which should (more or less) be the exact number of notes you should need to add for it to be complete. |
Added.
| raynebc wrote: | | *For audio, it may be satisfactory to record the audio from in-game. Off the top of my head, I don't remember if you can prevent the audio for an instrument from cutting out if you miss notes. You could probably also just use the audio from a Youtube video of the chart. Provided the audio was accurate (no stuttering/lagging/etc), you could use that as the audio when importing the MIDI, just sync the first beat marker. You can display a waveform graph by pressing F5, and can click and drag the first beat marker (all notes and beats will move with it), and/or manually edit the offset by opening Song Properties (F9) and altering the offset (in milliseconds) in the delay field. Make sure to zoom in the chart with the plus key on the number pad to ensure that the beat markers line up correctly with the waveform, and optionally (recommended) test the sync by enabling the metronome (press M to enable the metronome, which will tick as each beat marker is reached) and playing back the chart (press Spacebar). If the metronome is out of sync with the audio, adjust the chart's delay in Song Properties again. Do note that you must be using the audio for the chart, a regular album version will often/usually not sync the same way as what's used in Rock Band. When you're done authoring the pro guitar/bass tracks, make sure to set the delay to 0 before you do your final save. Do not use Beat>"Reset offset to zero" for this, as that serves a slightly different purpose. Forgetting this part will cause the pro guitar/bass notes to be out of sync when you play the chart in-game, because you had changed the positioning of the chart to match audio you used for the authoring process, and the notes need to be positioned to match the audio used by Rock Band. |
I'm going to need to know more about this method (and try it out, so after I'm done charting the songs I've already done tabs for) before I add it to the tutorial.
It should be easy enough to isolate the specific track you're working on - just make a band with all instruments except the one you want to chart, set instrument volume, vocal track volume, backing volume, SFX volume and any other relevant volumes to 0, and all you should hear is the one remaining instrument.
Is there a way to record the audio directly by plugging the Xbox's audio cables into something? This would make it a helluva lot easier to chart songs for Pro Guitar/Bass. |
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raynebc
Joined: 16 Jun 2008
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| Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2011 2:54 pm Post subject: |
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If you're using component/RCA cables, you could use an RCA->mini stereo adapter and just plug it into a computer's microphone port and record with Audacity or something.
You might want to put the note about using the guitar/bass notes as pro note placeholders before you direct the charter to delete all existing notes in the imported MIDI. |
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wesjett08
Joined: 30 Apr 2007
Posts: 323
Location: Ohio
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DVDSmith
Joined: 09 Jan 2008
Posts: 1271
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
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| Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2011 10:11 pm Post subject: |
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| wesjett08 wrote: | | Does anyone out there have a Pro Guitar template for REAPER? We're all used to using it ... EOF looks great for charting but we've all gotten so used to REAPER we don't want to learn anything else :P |
I second this. I just got used to Reaper after changing from Feedback, I'm not looking to change to another one so soon.
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raynebc
Joined: 16 Jun 2008
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| Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2011 10:46 pm Post subject: |
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| I think it may be considerably more complicated than using something like the previous templates, as pro guitar authoring adds note velocities and channel numbers to the charting process. |
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