Hello, all 4 people that play Rock Band 3 on Wii. I've experimented with playing customs and such on the Wii version of Rock Band 3 and will now explain how it can all be done. The Xbox 360 version isn't the only one that can can freely get in on the customs and upgrade fun! There's no need to worry about title updates, disc versions, losing access to your legit DLC, or online because the Wii has no updates or account-entangled online.
Start by grabbing these tools and files you will need for this guide.
http://ge.tt/8f2aVwf
These are some terms you should know about custom Rock Band DLC for Wii.
Code:
NAND: The Wii's internal storage. Normally it is about 200MB. It is not advisable to use this for DLC unless you are on an emulated NAND.
DLC: Download content. The Wii needs to see 2 files per song; one with metadata info, and the other with song data.
.APP: A container format for the Wii. This is how DLC is loaded onto emulated NAND systems.
.BIN: A container for DLC. This is only used if you're playing DLC from an SD card.
Ticket: A file stored on the Wii which allows you to purchase and repurchase songs. You need this to pack your own DLC if you're using an SD card.
Content Generation: Folders on the SD card such as sZAE, sZBE, sZCE, etc. that hold about 500 files each. Each generation needs different files, but this guide will focus only on sZAE. They appear in hexadecimal, such as 735A4145, for emulated NAND users.
.DTA: A file that contains meta information on songs. They are not entirely cross-console compatible.
Softmodding Your Wii
To begin, you must find out what the state of your Wii console is. It could be:
Unmodded ("virgin" Wii)
Softmodded on real NAND, using SD Card
Softmodded on emulated NAND
If you've never softmodded your Wii before, get started with
this guide. The Wii is super-easy to mod. The most important part of that guide is to get The Homebrew Channel installed, make a NAND backup of your console, and get WADs installed. I haven't heard of any customs working off the retail disc so if you can, try using a USB Loader to play the game.
By now, you should have a softmodded Wii. I'll go over how to pack DLC for use on an SD card which is a few steps more than packing for emulated NAND.
Download
RBWii-DLC-Packer from above. It should contain all the files you'll need to pack custom songs and upgrades, including the Rock Band Harmonies Project. What it's missing though is the Wii common key, in binary format, which you'll need to find and drop there. Also, you'll need to get your own ticket file.
Getting Your Ticket
On emulated NAND, go to /ticket/00010005 and find 735a4145.tik. Put that in the folder as title.tik.
On real NAND, since your DLC should be on an SD card, you'll have to remove your SD card and download one of the free RB2 songs, like Crazy Tuesday. It should let you download it if you have enough free space on your NAND. Then, download FSToolbox, put it on your SD card and run it with The Homebrew Channel. Navigate to /ticket/00010005 and copy 735a4145.tik to your SD card. Then take the file out and rename it to title.tik to put in the DLC packer folder.
If you've recently backed up your NAND, you should have keys unique to your console. Get your console ID and paste it in
ng_id if you're going to be packing for SD on real NAND.
Additionally, if you need to grab your own TMD and DLC save file, navigate to title/00010005/735a4145/content and grab the fie with the large number (000001D2 on NTSC). You may need these for packing DLC.
Learn The Packing Structure
Observe the naming convention I used to help you see important values directly from the file name.
For example:
This is the folder which will pack to 0000003d.app, which will then turn into 061.bin. Even if you're on emulated NAND, you still need to keep track of the .bin file name.
The first folder in the sample is a spoof file required by RBHP. It is simply a songs.dta file which can contain updated DTAs to force harmonies to load on upgraded songs. You NEED the Wii version of the DTA to upgrade songs, though. This spoofing file is set to overwrite song 001, which according to
this list, is "The Kill". If you do have that song, you'll have to overwrite it and add it back some other way.
Folder 002 contains upgrades. You can add in your own Pro Guitar and Harmony upgrades here, as long as you update the upgrades.dta correctly. Wii requires the file path to contain the following:
Code:
dlc/sZAE/002/content/songs_upgrades/
For content to be found, you need to include the content generation title and the number of the folder it's in, which in this case is 002. After that path, you then add the upgrade midi's name, such as "song_plus.mid".
I encountered a limit of about 13 song upgrades per pack, so I made another folder for it, which solved the problem.
Packing Your Own Songs
Understanding this, you can now begin packing your own songs, like customs. It is very easy to find custom songs for Rock Band 3, Xbox 360 at least. Find and download one you like. They are usually distributed in CON format. Unpack them with a program like Le Fluffie. It should make a Root folder where you unpacked. Inside, you will find all parts relevant to the song.
In the RBWii-DLC-Packer folder, we'll make this song 063/064. Make 2 folders and call them:
Code:
063_0000003f_songname_meta
064_00000040_songname_song
On the unpacked Xbox 360 file, copy songs.dta. Open the meta folder and make folders to match the structure below.
Code:
content
songs
songs.dta
songname
songname_prev.mogg
gen
songname_keep.png_wii
Make sure songs.dta is inside the songs folder. The gen folder will normally contain the album art, in png_wii format. You have to make your own, which I will go over later.
Optionally, you can also include a preview mogg. Because the Wii can't play the preview from the full song file, the preview mogg gets priority. It can be a mono ~10 second clip of the song in mogg format. There are problems with songs vanishing randomly with this, for some reason.
Now open the song folder you made for 064 and create the following structure. Drop the Xbox files where they are necessary.
Code:
content
songs
songname
songname.midi
songname.mogg
gen
songname.milo_wii
Normally customs come with milo_xbox files, and renaming them to milo_wii seems to work just fine. Now you should have all the Xbox files moved somewhere in the DLC folders.
Go back to the songs.dta file that was placed in the meta folder and open it in WordPad. In the name path, just like what had to be done with the upgrades.dta path, you have to add the Wii-specific path so it reads as:
Code:
dlc/sZAE/063/content/songs/songname/songname
The file has to point to the meta folder we created.
You can pack multiple songs into this file structure, though there is a limit of about 400MB for .APP files and 40MB for .BIN files.
Running The Packer
Songs get packed using the batch script file
pack-dlc. It uses u8it to make .app files and wadpacker to turn them into .bin files. Open the batch file with Notepad to add the song we just added. Notice what I had written before.
Code:
u8it 061_0000003d_upgrades 0000003d.app -pack
You simply copy the entire line and replace the folder name with the folders we created to read like so:
Code:
u8it 063_0000003f_meta 0000003f.app -pack
u8it 064_00000040_song 00000040.app -pack
The last part of the batch command is to use wadpacker to pack for SD. It's split up in 2 commands because the tool stops when more DLC can't be found. Paste the following at the bottom to pack 063 and 064.
Now, if you ever have to add more songs, in 065/066 and on, you increment the second number for every file you make. 63 4 would pack 4 files starting with 63.
Save that and run pack-dlc. If it was done correctly, you should now have .app files and .bin files. Real NAND SD users will take the .bin files and place them in the sZAE folder of their SD card. Emulated NAND users should take the .app files and put them in:
Code:
title/00010005/735a4145/content
Resetting The Cache
Finally, every time you add new songs or change the contents of a DLC slot, you must reset the song cache. Download the MSTORE.VFF file from above and put it on your SD card. To do this on real NAND navigate to the following with FSToolbox:
Code:
title/00010000/535a4245/data
Let it create those folders on your SD, then put the clean MSTORE file in the data folder and repeat. This time, press + to replace the file.
Emulated NAND users can go to the same path, only they can delete the file entirely.
Now, you can finally run the game. If you (and I) did everything correctly, you should see the songs load at the main menu. If it still hasn't frozen, you can now play your custom songs.
Because this part can get really repetitive, I made a video showing this final step.
And here is video proof of an imported song working, with RBHP upgrades included.
Otherwise, you are done!
Optional: Importing
Because the Wii can't legitimately import Rock Band 1, Lego, ACDC, and get later RBN stuff, you can manage to get the 360 version of the imports and follow the above steps just like you would for customs. They work with minimal problems. Lego is an exception to buggy 360 files because if you have the disc and snoop around for tools to grab your own files, you can pack your own DLC using the on-disc files. It is confirmed working.
Optional: Adding Album Art
The Wii can't use Xbox album art files, so you have to make your own. Download the AlbumMake ZIP from above. It's very easy to use. First. find the album art you want to convert.
In an image editing program, scale it down to 128x128 and save it as a PNG. Put the PNG in the
input folder. Run
convert-to-tpl and it should make .tpl file in the output folder. Now, using a simple hex editor like
HxD, open the output file. Go to
Edit > Select Block and choose a length of 40. Push delete to delete the bytes. Now, open header.tpl and copy everything and paste it at the top of the output file, exactly where you left off.
Save this file as songname_keep.png_wii and put this in the gen folder of the song in the meta folder where it was kept. It should work in-game since the files I made worked fine.
If someone is kind enough to write a tool to automate album-making further, please do so. It looks easy but tedious on the user.
____
Known issues
For Harmonies upgrading, if songs won't update, like they did for me when I had spoof files up on 061, then your only choice left is to edit the real DLC directly. PM only if that's the case.
There's score mixing on some custom songs. I don't know why it happens though.
Longer songs with more complex stems (usually from drum parts) can cause the game to stutter infrequently, though it also seems to come up randomly on some customs.
Very, very long songs like Foreplay/Longtime won't port easily. A solution would be quite tedious.
For songs without vocal parts, called out as "vocal_parts 0", you'll have to remove the line to prevent the value from showing up incorrectly in the sort.
Sometimes, user-created preview moggs force the song to hide until it is removed.
When you do get things working, memorize the folder structure and repeat the last 2 steps. It gets easier the more times you do it.
Questions? Please ask. I'm sure I messed up somewhere.
