Hacking RawkSD

[GusMing]

the FOF rips i think don't count as being real like we want cause i made those 3 months ago and the real rips i'm sure have vocals

Well, I feel dumb. I assumed GH VH didn't have any vocals at all... not that they were missing from the rips.


The Lego RB imports don't have that problem.

Huh? Hey man how did you manage to import Lego RB songs? I tried opening the Lego ISO but RawkSD refuses all options.

People have ripped the songs for use in FOF and we can use those to create customs so they are the correct charts but not strait rips from RawkSD doing it and theirs also have for some reason if you listen close the audio is from the song being played cause you can hear them getting stars and those powerup ones like the one you have to bring rain to the farmer the thunder in the audio is there too but they work besides that. The Van Halen ones from FOF don't have vocals in them and also the last few songs are missing the note midis, too but every other one works fine

 

[SFenton]

the FOF rips i think don't count as being real like we want cause i made those 3 months ago and the real rips i'm sure have vocals

Well, I feel dumb. I assumed GH VH didn't have any vocals at all... not that they were missing from the rips.


The Lego RB imports don't have that problem.

Huh? Hey man how did you manage to import Lego RB songs? I tried opening the Lego ISO but RawkSD refuses all options.

People have ripped the songs for use in FOF and we can use those to create customs so they are the correct charts but not strait rips from RawkSD doing it and theirs also have for some reason if you listen close the audio is from the song being played cause you can hear them getting stars and those powerup ones like the one you have to bring rain to the farmer the thunder in the audio is there too but they work besides that. The Van Halen ones from FOF don't have vocals in them and also the last few songs are missing the note midis, too but every other one works fine

I might add that doing this is morally questionable/slightly illegal.

*Looks at site name*

Oh, right, you can move along now.

 

[SSJ4-Cassis]

YAYYYYYYYY My RB2 dvd arrived at last!!!

Now that I have witenessed first-hand the RawkSD experience, I can finally see what amazing software it is!

A message to the dev team: guys, really really really thank you! This RawkSD software is the best thing ever on homebrew scene, period. You are really talented people and your work is deeply appreciated.

I sincerely wish you the best, and hope that all effort you are putting in this software will hone your skills so much that someday you will get big money working in/for the games/software industry (or at least, get the "big money" working wherever you guys feel good about).

Thanks again dev team, please keep up the AWESOME work!

 

[SFenton]

YAYYYYYYYY My RB2 dvd arrived at last!!!

Now that I have witenessed first-hand the RawkSD experience, I can finally see what amazing software it is!

A message to the dev team: guys, really really really thank you! This RawkSD software is the best thing ever on homebrew scene, period. You are really talented people and your work is deeply appreciated.

I sincerely wish you the best, and hope that all effort you are putting in this software will hone your skills so much that someday you will get big money working in/for the games/software industry (or at least, get the "big money" working wherever you guys feel good about).

Thanks again dev team, please keep up the AWESOME work!

Do let me know how the MIDI works out

Oh, I want to work in the game industry, but bad news hit today: Underground Development (GHVH, BMX XXX) shut down, Luxoflux (Transformers ROTF) shut down, Neversoft had some massive layoffs (and GH6 will be the last GH game that they create), RedOctane is moving locations, and overall my gut feeling isn't too good for the (music game) industry right now.

 

[Dr Awesomo]

YAYYYYYYYY My RB2 dvd arrived at last!!!

Now that I have witenessed first-hand the RawkSD experience, I can finally see what amazing software it is!

A message to the dev team: guys, really really really thank you! This RawkSD software is the best thing ever on homebrew scene, period. You are really talented people and your work is deeply appreciated.

I sincerely wish you the best, and hope that all effort you are putting in this software will hone your skills so much that someday you will get big money working in/for the games/software industry (or at least, get the "big money" working wherever you guys feel good about).

Thanks again dev team, please keep up the AWESOME work!

Yay! 'Happy for you, man. Welcome to ranks of the privileged owner of RB2, and the even more privileged user of RawkSD.

That said, did your Cosmo Customs ever work?
(Demenoid won't let me register, is why I ask. ^^)

 

[SSJ4-Cassis]

@Sfenton:

The industry will come around Sfenton, maybe the short-term future seems gloomy now but I'm sure we will have great/innovative music games in the future.

Also, what you guys are doing and learning in order to do it, will be knowledge you will be able to apply in other fields too.

About the midi swap trick: dude I'm so excited about all this stuff that I'm just importing/converting/going to play test on Wii/coming back to PC and trying dozens of my all-time favorite songs right now (Power of Love anyone?

) and didn't try that thing yet. LOL I feel like it is Xmas in February!!!

Probably by tomorrow I will get back to my senses then I will be able to focus and follow your tutorial/post here the results.

BTW I'm sure I will have a whole new batch of noobish questions just around the corner, about sync issues, how to start learning basic charting to fix songs etc, so don't worry, I will be posting here a lot on the next few days.

@Dr Awesomo:
It worked 100%. What I've learnt though: after you import the song from the ISO it will have the same name as the original GH3 song that ocuppied that slot BUT right after you Edit Custom, as soon as you change the name (and the Identifier), RawkSD will rename the folder to match the new Identifier.

So, an easy way to not overwrite the original GH3 songs you've imported before, is just moving those folders to a different place before you load RawkSD to import the custom disks. After you import and install the customs, you can move the original GH3 folders back.

Important reminder: DON'T manually rename the newly created folder when you've just imported the song from Custom disk. If you do and try to edit/work with the song later, RawkSD will crash.

I hope you can make it work now

 

[laki47]

Hi,

I have installed rawkSD patcher from this site: http://wiibrew.org/wiki/RawkSD

When I try to install custom songs I get this message: "An error occurred when installing customs"

I'm running System Menu 4.1, SoftMod, USB loader GX.

Thank you for help

 

[SFenton]

...never mind. I was thinking the patcher \/

 

[tueidj]

IOS36 has nothing to do with RawkSD/RB2 so I don't know why you'd suggest that.

Check the following:
- The game is an original copy and you start it from the system menu.
- You're using the RawkSD version that matches the region of the disc.
- You don't have cioscrap installed.
- RB2 has been played at least once to create a savefile.
- You've actually put customs/imports on the SD card *before* trying to install them.

 

[SSJ4-Cassis]

Ok people, most imports are working really fine so far, but I've encountered a few problems I couldn't find solution yet.

Some of the problems I think I will figure out after I finish reading all the mini-tutorials I've found on Fof and ScoreHero forums, but one situation I couldn't find anything about and is really bothering me: 3 custom songs I've got at FOF forums are working fine when played with FretsOnFire (I do that first to check what difficulties/instruments are available), but when I import them to RawkSD, they show up in game as if no instrument is available to play, so RB2 says it can't continue the song and I'm taken back to song selection. I did the import like all the other half-dozen songs I've got there, so I'm lost on what could possibly be wrong here... Any advice?

BTW, the problematic songs are "A kind of Magic - Queen" (2 versions there, both have this problem); "We're not gonna take it - Twisted Sisters"; and "Metal Gear Solid" the guitar theme from MGS2 game.

The other thing is just a doubt if there's a better way to solve: some songs have the 1st note right on top of you when it starts. To avoid this, I use the "Silence" delay on RawkSD and push the song (and chart) 4 or 5 seconds so I have at least 4 or 5 sec to see the "guitar arm" onscreen before the 1st note shows up. Problem is, instead of showing the regular dark "guitar arm" onscreen, these 4 or 5 seconds put like a "white veil" over the guitar arm (the guitar arm goes back to normal when the "real time" of the song/1st note starts appearing). How can I push the song/notes and keep the "guitar arm" looking the same since the beginning ?

Sorry if these are dumb/noobish questions but I'm still studying/learning how to convert songs. When I understand all the basics, hopefully I will help charting vocals and drums shortly after.

As allways, I thank you guys in advance for any help/advice you can offer here.

 

[Szalkow]

Ok people, most imports are working really fine so far, but I've encountered a few problems I couldn't find solution yet.

Some of the problems I think I will figure out after I finish reading all the mini-tutorials I've found on Fof and ScoreHero forums, but one situation I couldn't find anything about and is really bothering me: 3 custom songs I've got at FOF forums are working fine when played with FretsOnFire (I do that first to check what difficulties/instruments are available), but when I import them to RawkSD, they show up in game as if no instrument is available to play, so RB2 says it can't continue the song and I'm taken back to song selection. I did the import like all the other half-dozen songs I've got there, so I'm lost on what could possibly be wrong here... Any advice?
Did you make sure to set a difficulty value for each instrument charted? Any instrument without a difficulty assigned will not show up, and a song with no instruments won't play. You can also get into a habit of running the midi files through Magma (available at creators.rockband.com with free registration) to check for midi errors.

The other thing is just a doubt if there's a better way to solve: some songs have the 1st note right on top of you when it starts. To avoid this, I use the "Silence" delay on RawkSD and push the song (and chart) 4 or 5 seconds so I have at least 4 or 5 sec to see the "guitar arm" onscreen before the 1st note shows up. Problem is, instead of showing the regular dark "guitar arm" onscreen, these 4 or 5 seconds put like a "white veil" over the guitar arm (the guitar arm goes back to normal when the "real time" of the song/1st note starts appearing). How can I push the song/notes and keep the "guitar arm" looking the same since the beginning ?
The "white veil", or "gray bars of death" as I call them, is what you see when RawkSD adds silence to any song (as seen with RB1 imports). This is because to allow specific time offsets in the centiseconds, RawkSD inserts the silence into the chart as measures at 24,000 bpm - the white bar is what happens when you display several thousand quarter-note runway lines per second. There's no way to turn this off yet, but it won't effect gameplay. It may be fixed by the program in the future.

 

[SSJ4-Cassis]

@Szalkow:

About the difficulty value: I edited the customs and actually all instruments were at 0 difficulty tier

Dunno what happened, the other songs I've imported I didn't have to touch this.

What should I input there? 100 ? Also, I noticed that Guitar and Bass don't have any audio channel checked on this troubled songs. Wich one should I mark? Drums are on Audio Channel 3...

Talking about difficulty setting: how do I make that small square chart at the left of the select song on RB2 to show some of the little balls marked black? Or marked as a heart-thing for the really madning difficult ones? All my FoF imported customs show those little balls blank, as if the songs have no difficulty at all (but the songs work fine).

Last doubt of this batch: how do I remove unwanted custom songs from my SD card? Exploring the SD card I can see the individual song folders under RawkSD entry but they only have a 2Kb file. Under the Wii\Data\cRBA folder there are tons of files, but I can't identify what pairs belong to what song. Also I'm afraid of just going deleting stuff on SD card and getting things corrupted later. Is there a way to use RawkSD to correctly remove the unwanted files?

On first day I've gone crazy and installed tons of songs without checking them first on FoF to at least see if the charts were close to good and ended up with really bad charted stuff on my Wii - lesson learned, kids don't make the same mistake I did

OK, I think my noobish share was filled for the day, will settle down until tomorrow.

Thanks again Szalkow, I hope you can shed some light on the doubts above too.

 

[tueidj]

To delete songs: Start RawkSD, open your SD card, highlight the song to remove (under the SD card, not Local Customs) and click the delete custom button.

 

[SFenton]

To delete songs: Start RawkSD, open your SD card, highlight the song to remove (under the SD card, not Local Customs) and click the delete custom button.

Oh yeah, I wanted to mention the idea of a batch delete option, like there is a batch install option. Deleting one at a time just takes a while.

 

[Szalkow]

About the difficulty value: I edited the customs and actually all instruments were at 0 difficulty tier

Dunno what happened, the other songs I've imported I didn't have to touch this. What should I input there? 100 ?

Talking about difficulty setting: how do I make that small square chart at the left of the select song on RB2 to show some of the little balls marked black? Or marked as a heart-thing for the really madning difficult ones? All my FoF imported customs show those little balls blank, as if the songs have no difficulty at all (but the songs work fine).The difficulty will vary from 100 to 500 or so, with dots being assigned at different values for each instrument. Check the RawkSD wiki page about Tiers for details on what to use. Also, the "hearts" are demon skulls, it's just hard to tell on small TV's.

Also, I noticed that Guitar and Bass don't have any audio channel checked on this troubled songs. Wich one should I mark? Drums are on Audio Channel 3...Only assign audio channels if you have a multi-track audio file, like if you have the masters of the song (which for most customs you will not). If you don't have a specific track for one instrument, don't check anything for that instrument. The only exception is drums which *require* a track, so the RawkSD importer automatically creates an empty track and assigns drums to that.

QUOTE

Last doubt of this batch: how do I remove unwanted custom songs from my SD card? Exploring the SD card I can see the individual song folders under RawkSD entry but they only have a 2Kb file. Under the Wii\Data\cRBA folder there are tons of files, but I can't identify what pairs belong to what song. Also I'm afraid of just going deleting stuff on SD card and getting things corrupted later. Is there a way to use RawkSD to correctly remove the unwanted files?

Deleting them via the RawkSD program is the only way to remove individual files; there's no batch delete yet. However, there's no harm in deleting the cRBA and rawk folders from your card and reinstalling all the songs you want from step one.

 

[SSJ4-Cassis]

Thanks Szalkow, I really felt dumb last night about the songs not showing up...

Oh and thanks to you and tueidj about the "how to to remove songs from SD", it was really a relief to know I couldn't mess things up by just deleting stuff, but it is way better if I can do it the right way. About batch remove, since I'm trying the songs on my PC (FoF) first, I hope I won't need that for a while

About the "white veil", I was wondering but can't try this at the moment: if I edit the .ogg and .mid files and add 5 sec to the beginning of both, wouldn't that get rid of the "white veil" while pushing the notes to not start on top of you? Or could the song get out of sync by doing this ?

Oh and a new question

: I tried going to practice my GH3 imports and although it opens on practice mode and let you choose the section you want, it doesn't play the section. If you choose to practice the entire song, it works as intended. Did I do another dumb/noobish error here ? I tried it with other songs, and found out that the customs originally imported from FoF do work on practice mode, but none of the GH3 works.

I didn't import other GH originals to test... any ideas ?

 

[tueidj]

Choosing sections in practice mode does work, it just takes a really long time to load.

 

[SSJ4-Cassis]

@Sfenton:

Hey man, I tried the swap trick today and unfortunately it didn't work

The song appears to be played, you can pick guitar, select difficulty etc but when it starts, it plays the song but none of the notes comes down the screen.

Although you did a really detailed step by step instruction about what I should do, I confess Reaper is a little bit frightening at first sight, hehe

I felt like I was looking at an alien spaceship control panel

Anyways, I'm using Reaper 3.301 rev 11246 (Evaluation License). Most of the functions you told me to use aren't in the same place you pointed, but I believe I managed to replicate the corrrect actions. For example, the "double click the Guitar part to open a window with MIDI notes" didn't work like that. After dozens of double-clicking on Guitar Part different points, a mini bar graph of sorts (resembling some charting I've seen on other places") opened to the right of Guitar Part rectangle. A r-click on that graph popped up a window showing part of a piano-like keyboard and from that window I've found an option to export the file to a MIDI.

I skipped the steps about aligning the notes with the drum notes because I honestly couldn't find a way to show drum notes on screen. Today when I get home, I will try searching some youtube videos and try to find out where I should click to open the panes and options you told me to access.

A appreciate your help and I will try again today, but at first look, this really seems a little more daunting then I've imagined.

Thanks again buddy, will post my new attempt later today.

 

[SSJ4-Cassis]

Choosing sections in practice mode does work, it just takes a really long time to load.

Hmmm strange... I waited longer this time and indeed, the notes have shown up but the song didn't play - looked like I was playing with my TV muted.

Thanks for your answer, do you think a re-import could fix this?

 

[Deleted User]

Howdy folks. I'm new to Rock Band and RawkSD, but my experiments with it so far have yielded great fruit and obviously a few questions.

This is a great little program. Hats off to the developers for making something that basically the game creators of Rock Band don't want to do. A few basic questions:

1. The Guitar Hero import audio thing. I've read about this and know that the track volume is for some reason lower than Rock Band imports, but I was curious if there is anything that can be done either on the original import from the game itself or after you've created the customs and can edit them in RawkSD on your computer. I have fiddled with my volume settings in Rock Band 2 a bit, but the change in audio level is most jarring when going from an original RB2 song or RB import to one from Guitar Hero.

2. I've tinkered with a few created customs, from the Score Hero chart archive and such. Several of the tracks I've created have fairly obvious audio sync issues when playing; usually the notes are off a full beat or so from the on-screen charts. What's the best/easiest/most foolproof method for fixing this kind of thing? Is it usually from the chart I got or maybe the mp3 files I'm using?

Finally, I don't want to point fingers or anything but I have to put this out there and hope for a little guidance (or at least just to narrow down a current problem I have). I use a Western Digital My Passport hard drive for USB game loading and previously used it on the Homebrew Channel for homebrew games and such. It's got a ton more space than any SD card I have, and it worked wonders for a few weeks after I got it at Xmas. I apparently hadn't used the drive for homebrew for a while (but did and continue to use it heavily for USB game loading), but at some point between getting Rock Band and using RawkSD my Homebrew Channel inexplicably stopped being able to recognize the drive. This is doubly curious since my USB loader sees the drive and games I have loaded on it just fine.

The only reason I suspect anything related to RawkSD is twofold: running the RawkSD patcher is the only modification I've made to my system since using the hard drive with the Homebrew Channel successfully, and as I understand it (mind you, basic understanding) the patcher puts a specific IOS on your system to make the customs run in Rock Band 2. From what I've read with problems of the Homebrew Channel recognizing a USB hard drive, the IOS dependencies can make or break this. I will gladly absolve RawkSD of any guilt whatsoever if I can confirm it couldn't possibly affect my HBC from reading my hard drive, specifically if there was a way to "undo" the patcher program and see if that helps.

Thanks for any help and of course thanks again for a great program.