Rock Band Megathread: 4,000 expansions weren't enough

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Rock Band Megathread: 4,000 expansions weren't enough

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

So, I've been fighting with my Xbox for a good number of hours now trying to get Rock Band 3 to recognize custom tracks before just hitting a brick wall, and it's time to toss up my hands and look for a bit of help. Is it okay to inquire here about technical issues?

# ¿ Nov 23, 2013 09:42

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 14:03

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

Alright, I'll describe all the points I've checked.

I have an MTV-branded disc; I bought it at launch.
I'm using a sandisk USB drive that has previously functioned as one of my main save drives, so it should work fine. It was cleaned off before putting it to its new use.
As far as I know the files (TU4 and custom tracks) are all going into the correct directories. They show up properly in the Xbox 360 storage menus. I'm using Party Buffalo to inject them into the USB drive.
TU5 was cleaned off and replaced with TU4 from the ScoreHero boards. The first time I downloaded TU4, it was corrupt and caused RB3 to crash on launch, but redownloading it seemed to fix that. The TU4 file seems to have the correct file size. I have, of course, been denying the TU5 install prompt. I looked at a different site's TU4 download and it seems to have the same size file.
I tried various troubleshooting pokes, like removing the Song Cache, removing the installed disc files for RB3, running from a save directly off the USB, trying out different tracks (to try and make sure I don't have a corrupt track). I've only been testing a few tracks at a time.
What it does after launching RB3 is that it finds my full set of official songs, loads them, and then goes as if there's one more downloaded track to cache. It goes for this last track even if it's done it before on the same cache file. However, none of the custom tracks show on the song list. Nor do they show up in Rock Band Blitz. It does this same thing when the USB stick is unplugged (i.e. running without any updates, I have my save backed up just in case), but it still gives that one track to cache that never actually gets cached, so it doesn't seem to be the fault of any custom tracks or my save game. All of my normal downloaded and imported tracks are displaying normally, however.
I went and reformatted the USB drive and started again from scratch. No luck there, same issue.
And I just tried it with the USB only, disconnecting the hard drive as suggested. There are about five custom songs, but it doesn't attempt to read or display any of them within Rock Band 3, but they display normally with the proper names and icons within the Storage menus. As a lark, I logged out my profile and tried that, too, but no luck.

Right now I guess my next steps would be to try a program other than Party Buffalo (after reformatting the drive, most likely), and if that doesn't work, try a different USB device. I'm running out of boxes to check, though.

Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 18:53 on Nov 23, 2013

# ¿ Nov 23, 2013 18:51

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

So:

I noticed my USB drive had a hidden partion (for Sandisk's U3 software). Removed it, reformatted, tried again from scratch with the hard drive still out. No luck. Once again, the files view properly in the Storage menus, nothing appears corrupt.
Reformatted the drive again to try with USBXTAF and started again from scratch with the hard drive removed. The files display properly, but RB3 still will not recognize there are any tracks to configure once again.
Grabbed an old PNY drive and tried the same process with USBXTAF and with the hard drive out, still won't recognize them.

I have a feeling I must be doing something wrong process-wise, but I can't figure out what. With the song files - those are supposed to go in the same folder as the save game, right? Is it normal if the songs show up as "Saved Game" in the Storage menus on the 360? I tried putting them in the same folder as regular DLC just to be sure, but I get a "corrupted data" message from that.

# ¿ Nov 23, 2013 21:57

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

pksage posted:

This still seems like a song cache issue to me, though it becomes more and more unlikely with each failed fix. Make sure that you've deleted every song cache -- none should exist on the hard drive, your cloud saved games, or the flash drive. Also, I know you've been following the process correctly, but it can't hurt to double-check everything. Watch this video on the customs-playing process (contains no :files: content) just to make sure.

SatansBestBuddy posted:

Also disconnect the Xbox from the internet, you shouldn't be getting an update prompt at all.

I watched the video and everything seems to check out, including the numeric names of the file paths. I went through and made sure to wipe all song caches, as well as clear out the system caches on all drives out of paranoia by this point, but no effect. It rebuilds the cache after loading, and shows "Loading downloaded content" "0 found", even though I have 4 custom tracks installed.

SatansBestBuddy posted:

Can you describe this in more detail? As in, what's the progress bar say? When you say "one track to cache that never actually gets cached", does that mean the cache rebuild just stops? How long does it spend on that one song?

Before I say much more, I think this is a red herring at this point. It still could be a symptom of something, but it doesn't occur now that I have my hard drive unplugged, so if it's an issue, I think it's an issue with an official track on my hard drive, if anything.

Basically, it would go through loading my 297 (or so) song packages, finish that, and then go as if it add one new song to the song cache, and then finish that, but when I reloaded, it would do the same thing as if there still was a song to add. It only flashes by for a moment, about the amount of time I would expect. But it's not doing it now that I have my hard drive out.

SatansBestBuddy posted:

What customs are you testing with? Are they from GHtoRB3, C3, or elsewhere?

C3. I've tried both "normal" and "full multitrack" songs.

SatansBestBuddy posted:

EDIT:
You should be getting the Title Update off of the official Xbox site. If the place you got it from didn't redirect you to a Microsoft site, then double back and find the real deal.

I didn't think that Microsoft distributed title updates outside of direct xbox downloads, and only current ones in that case. There are a lot of sites that distribute Title Update 4 for Rock Band 3, but as far as a direct download from xbox.com? I went and had a look around, but I admit to some skepticism as to getting a copy through Microsoft. I'd love to be proven wrong, though!

# ¿ Nov 24, 2013 01:19

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

Sure!

(Note the song cache hasn't generally been there when testing it, it's just there from the last time I tried it.)

# ¿ Nov 24, 2013 07:25

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

farottone posted:

Definitely wrong folder, it should go in the 0000... Saved Game subfolder, not in the one you have one. You will also notice there's no songcache file in the folder in your screenshot: if you moved it to your USB stick from inside the Xbox system, you will find it in the 0000... subfolder.

That seems to have done it! All the instructions referred just to the "save folder", which I presumed was the one that takes my save file, but I didn't realize there were two despite the amount of time I spent in that directory structure. Also badly assumed because they're showing up properly in the Memory menus, that that's correct. (Also using USBXTAF probably didn't help, since it doesn't display the directory name.) In any case, thanks a lot.

I just need to test it in the actual "play environment" (with the sandisk, my save game, and the hard drive) and hopefully I should be good to go.

EDIT: Tested it with my HD running and all that, and it seems to be working out alright. Thanks for the help, everyone! This'll be a great encouragement to start regularly playing again.

Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Nov 24, 2013

# ¿ Nov 24, 2013 17:42

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

I was curious about the process of moving Guitar Hero tracks to Rock Band. Are the note tracks completely redone, or are they translated over from GH, or somewhere inbetween? I haven't played Guitar Hero since GH2 or GH: Aerosmith, so I wouldn't immediately know the difference, but I was curious about the process.

# ¿ Nov 27, 2013 22:50

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

Holy crap, Rod Stewart. The work you folks do is mind-blowing.

With difficulty, I was curious - is there any sort of formula for that, or is it just judged by the track creator?

# ¿ Nov 29, 2013 17:56

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

What does the "Karaoke" tag refer to, exactly? Is it vocal-only, or is just that the vocals can be turned down? The C3 FAQ points to the karaoke tag, but no posts seem to carry that tag.

# ¿ Dec 1, 2013 01:43

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

bpc908 posted:

I always wanted the option of having the lead guitarist be the lead singer while playing guitar at the same time. Would've been cool

You can do that, but it's a bit messy. I know our vocalist always wanted to do that, but we never sprung for a mic stand.

# ¿ Dec 2, 2013 12:32

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

I had Harder, Better, Faster show up on my Pandora playlist last night and was just thinking if it would be viable as a Rock Band song. :raise:

# ¿ Dec 6, 2013 18:55

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

This poo poo is amazing, folks, keep up the good work.

# ¿ Dec 17, 2013 18:57

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

Orange Harrison posted:

The default 120GB hard drive is more than enough to hold the ~3000 songs that a Rock Band 3 library is software-limited to.

Wow, really? So if you - hypothetically - bought all the RB and RBN tracks, you wouldn't be able to play them all?

Macavity posted:

Not to mention the fact that nobody has time to play 3000 songs.

Yeah, when I'm playing I regularly do a half-hour session of drumming a day, which is like a half-dozen songs, so to get through C3's output would take me around four to five months. I have like 1500 songs between legits and customs, and just switched back to doing pro drums, so I have like 1300 songs left to play through.

:downsrim:

# ¿ Dec 19, 2013 18:44

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

I finally caught up on tracks and fixed my USB key that had gotten corrupted (accidentally passing the 256 file limit on Party Buffalo, whups). I realize even if I do like fifty songs a week it's going to be a long, long time before I can catch up with all the songs on my hard drive. Everything is amazing, and you folks do fantaaastic work.

# ¿ Apr 20, 2014 07:22

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

SublimeDelusions posted:

So how do you solve the problem with the 256 song limit?

I create a Rock Band 2 save directory (by transferring its song cache to the drive) and put songs in there. I've heard of people creating Rock Band (1) directories as well, but I haven't tried it yet.

# ¿ Apr 20, 2014 18:38

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

Orange Harrison posted:

Do the Bartman?!

Well, no.

# ¿ Apr 21, 2014 01:07

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

The mystery is solved, you just need to pay closer attention to the picture he posted.

# ¿ Apr 21, 2014 01:43

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

I don't because if I start mixing my official DLC and RBN releases with Custom Tracks I'll never know which is which beyond a certain point. Keeping track of 1,000+ tracks is not something brains are geared to do.

# ¿ Apr 21, 2014 02:08

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

I blew a screw off out of the chair I use when drumming.

I guess I rocked it too hard.

# ¿ Apr 23, 2014 20:56

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

My Lovely Horse posted:

I completely missed the window to get pro cymbals. There's one guy on amazon selling a complete with cymbals RB3 drum kit for � 2,500. They used to be absolutely everywhere.

If you already have a drum kit, the cymbals are only $40. I just bought a replacement set a little while back.

It's just the drum sets themselves that are rocketing up in price.

# ¿ Apr 24, 2014 19:27

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

Orange Harrison posted:

Use USBXTAFGUI.

Is there a way to inject a batch of multiple files in USBXTAFGUI, short of doing folder-based tomfoolery?

# ¿ May 3, 2014 19:37

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

Ah, okay, I was trying to do it through the Inject menu, which only lets you do them one at a time. I'll try that out the next time I'm adding songs!

# ¿ May 5, 2014 03:23

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

If she likes the classic Beatles stuff, I'd recommend The Zombies tracks. There's also Elton John, David Bowie, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Allman Brothers Band, and Simon & Garfunkel tracks, though I think the only exact song from that soundtrack is Skynyrd's "Simple Man".

# ¿ May 5, 2014 21:47

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

Yeah, there are a number of songs which are pretty sad to see gone. Bullets & Guns was the song for my band (back when I had a band), but now it's long gone. Shaimus is great, and so is That Handsome Devil. It feels weird that it was the license for such small-time groups that went away, but I suppose some of that related to MTV, at least as far as B&G goes.

# ¿ May 7, 2014 19:37

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

So, some questions!

How are drum fills implemented, I take it it's totally at the whim of the author? I've run into a few rare custom tracks with what I'd call "trap fills" where if you activate the overdrive you'll just run into a long space of dead air on the drums and the overdrive just runs out without actually benefiting any hits. Are those generally intended for unisons? I'm not playing with a band anymore, so I can't tell.

Another thing I was curious about is that Big Rock Endings don't generally seem to appear on custom tracks, for better or worse, so you occasionally has the "song fades out" album effect that Big Rocks were supposed to overcome. Does the custom community just not like them, or are they hard to implement in some way? They generally seemed to appear less and less in Rock Band's track history overall, so I presume they fell out of favor for some reason.

# ¿ May 8, 2014 19:55

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

Orange Harrison posted:

If you get a drum fill before empty space, that's just sloppy authoring. The official docs state specifically to avoid placing a drum fill right before empty passages, so players don't waste overdrive.

Yeah. One or two of them may have been C3; I wish I had written down the track names, I'll note it down if it comes up again.

whypick1 posted:

Not sure where you get that they solve the "song fades out" problem, as with those, HMX had the master tracks where they actually, you know, stop, and HMX charts all of that.

On the old Harmonix boards I recall it being claimed that this is why the ending of some songs were either edited or had BREs added, like "Enter Sandman" which fades out on the album. I can't find a direct Harmonix source for that, though, so YMMV. Granted, I have no idea why a song like "Heroes" would have a BRE - the original fades to silence, but they're doing a cover, so presumably that wouldn't matter? Rock Band did slather BREs around questionably at times (probably just to show off the new feature). So songs like "Black Hole Sun" inexplicably has a BRE added even though there doesn't seem to be any call for it.

# ¿ May 8, 2014 21:17

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

Geez, Queensryche, I haven't heard them in over a decade, but finally getting to Q in my music library sure brought back some memories, thanks.

Orange Harrison posted:

I just put the two windows on separate sides of the screen and drag and drop them.

Belatedly, when I tried it, it got USBXTAFGUI to leak memory and freeze for over a half-hour, sadly.

I went back to Party Buffalo to move the tracks over for now.

# ¿ May 10, 2014 03:16

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

Schles posted:

Seriously, what's with the Awesomeness Detection in Rock Band 2?

alexrigopulos posted:

I am reluctant to reveal this long-kept secret, but after 6 years, I think it's finally time:

Awesomeness Detection does...nothing. Absolutely nothing. One of our designers threw that in there for fun, basically just to make people speculate wildly forever about what it is.

# ¿ May 21, 2014 21:22

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

farottone posted:

People who made out in the 80s: you're welcome.

Just thinking of it means it will be stuck in my head all day. :geno:

# ¿ Sep 12, 2014 15:49

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

I recently ended up having to repair my Rock Band 2-era drum set with some glue; one of the cymbals tore off its spindle, and one of the drumheads was peeling up. But it's real testament that it's lasted this long. My pedal is actually an old Rock Band 1 pedal, believe it or not. I modified it with Pedal Metal wayyy back when and it's lasted ever ever since, and when the Rock Band 2 pedal came out, I was more used to the heavier weight of my existing pedal and just stuck with it.

Pretty good when I realize I snapped six of those early pedals before that and blew out two of the Rock Band 1 kits. Thankfully, that was ~~bad~~ back when EA's return policy was extremely generous, and I became an old hand at shipping my broken parts back to them and getting new ones on a regular basis.

Right now I've been looking at getting another kit just as insurance, but the price of the base drum kit has risen so high it's hard to justify. Hopefully my existing kit will stay together as I try and push through the 1200 or so songs I have left unplayed on Pro Drums...

Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 08:58 on Sep 14, 2014

# ¿ Sep 13, 2014 18:56

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

Who doesn't like some Cake?

# ¿ Oct 27, 2014 11:48

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

My question was supposed to be rhetorical. :ohdear:

# ¿ Oct 27, 2014 21:31

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

Well we've been waiting, waiting here so long.

# ¿ Nov 14, 2014 16:20

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

Anonymouse Mook posted:

I'm counting out time here!

Hoping it goes like they planned it.

# ¿ Nov 14, 2014 16:28

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

Abu Dave posted:

EA was just as guilty as Activision in killing the genre with over pressing titles with track packs also. I never understood the logic behind forgetting that like, 20 track packs existed to be bought at retail stores, also helping to clog the market.

There were 6 track packs over the course of 3-4 years. Adding in Green Day, that's about one every six months, which seems pretty reasonable to me.

# ¿ Feb 26, 2015 16:43

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

Abu Dave posted:

Band games were stupid, and they should've never happened.

I want you to look at the thread title, then back at your post, and consider where you may have gone wrong in life. :ssh:

# ¿ Feb 26, 2015 18:10

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

Abu Dave posted:

I think you should learn how to read.

Ooops. I thought you meant band games as in "games that support band play", not "games that support band brands". My fault.

Ultimately as much as we all love the digital revolt against King SKU, though, there was no way solely digital releases would have flown on the console from '08 to '11. The overwhelming majority of sales were still physical, and it was actually a severe minority of users who bothered to plug anything into the network port. Releases like the track packs were an attempt to sell to that fairly sizable gap of people and justify that DLC program. By no means could Rock Band have survived during its heyday without doing the SKU dance of regular releases that keep the brand on shelves, even without the competition.

The wisdom of this or that release can easily be questioned (Green Day? Really?), but it's easy to forget just how different the game market was just a short time ago. Hopefully any future music games can capitalize on those changes as Rocksmith has, but it's also a tough reality that physical sales will be a monkey on the console industry's back for a little while yet.

# ¿ Feb 26, 2015 21:27

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

A variety of tracks from the Silent Hill game series, which I'm delighted to see, since they have some of my favorite game soundtracks. I was always surprised to see the original theme done before Hometown, since Hometown is much better suited to RB. Great stuff, I've been holding off on updating my customs until I'm further along my track list, but it looks like I'll have to change that!

# ¿ Feb 27, 2015 19:09

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

Orange Harrison posted:

Also Zep and Floyd aren't excluded from music games because they were too expensive, they were excluded because of the rights-holder's zero-tolerance policy. If Harmonix could license The Beatles' ultra-paranoically-sheltered master tracks, Activision would have nicked at least one track by Zeppelin or Pink Floyd or Electric Light Orchestra by the time their last game came out, and presented it as that game's killer track.

Well, with Beatles, Harmonix was lucky to have an insider who was interested in the idea and approached them, not the other way around. Without Dhani Harrison pushing the project, it seems unlikely it would have occurred. It's not like Harmonix put forth the idea initially, but were very lucky to be in the right place at the right time. It's amusing that Metallica also got the idea of getting in on Guitar Hero from seeing their kids play the game.

If there's a lesson here it's "hook the kids and the band will follow".

# ¿ Feb 28, 2015 20:19

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 14:03

Alien Rope Burn: Dec 5, 2004; _{I wanna be a saikyo HERO!}

Been trying to upgrade to RB Harmonies, and it seems to be working as far as a spot check goes, but I keep getting one piece of "Loading Downloaded Content" showing every time I start the game after it goes through checking the song cache. I finished going through the Harmonies upgrade process but haven't readded any custom content yet, and figured I should check to make sure this isn't a cause for concern.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2015 05:12

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