Installation
From RawkSD
RawkSD is brought to you by...
Forward
This project began late 2008, as soon as Rock Band 2 first launched in North America. Before the Music Store was available, Mrkinator was eager to try replacing various disc files, and had little success. DLC modifications became a reality in early February, when tueidj released basic DLC tools to a select few people. Progress was stalled due to Harmonix' new audio encryption system, until May, when Aaron joined the team and discovered that the game could be forced to accept an alternative audio format. Work on RawkSD was soon underway, and now, a month and a half later, we are proud to present RawkSD to the world!
Installation
PC Installation
RawkSD is distributed in a WinZip archive. This may be extracted to any location, and can be started by simply running RawkSD.exe. RawkSD requires the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 to be installed on your computer. If you are unable to run RawkSD.exe, you must install the .NET framework, which can be downloaded here. It can also be run on other platforms such as Mac OS X and Linux. You must install the Mono runtime. It can be downloaded from here, or can often be installed from your distribution's package manager.
Wii Installation
The RawkSD.zip archive also includes an "apps" folder within it. This must be copied to the root of an SD card in order to be launched from the Wii's Homebrew Channel. There are two Wii programs included with RawkSD. RawkSD Patcher needs to be run only once, and then it may be deleted from your SD card. It prepares your Wii for Rock Band 2 customs via RawkSD. This installer may not be required if you already have a patched IOS37 installed on your Wii, which could be the case if something like cIOScorp or SoftMii is installed. NOTICE: Since the 4.3 update, the RawkSD Patcher will no longer patch IOS37 correctly. There are other methods to obtain and patch an older version of IOS37, however the recommended action is to wait until RawkSD3 is released.
Usage
When you start RawkSD, you will be thrown into the main screen. If this is your first time running it, you won't have any customs available to you yet. Your first goal is to get some songs packaged together so that you can put them on your SD card and start rawking!
To start, you have to get a custom song from somewhere. You may import songs from one of the many discs that RawkSD supports, or you can scour ScoreHero for the custom song you're looking for (you're usually expected to provide the MP3 audio on your own). The Rock Band side of ScoreHero has a master thread for a number of full-band customs.
If you get a Guitar Hero custom and find it in the .chart format, you'll have to use Leff's chart2mid2chart program to convert it to a MIDI chart. If you do this, don't forget to check the "Convert GH Star Power to Overdrive" option that you'll encounter when you create the custom; otherwise you'll end up with a large number of solo sections and no overdrive!
Creating Customs
At this point in the guide, I assume that you have a .mid note chart custom, and an audio file for the song (such as an MP3). On the main RawkSD window, select the New Custom toolbar button, or use the Customs -> Create... menu. You will be shown a window where you can select those files.
NOTE: You are able to revisit the file selection dialog at any time on a custom with the Replace Custom Files button, or Customs -> Replace Files menu.
The file selection dialog is comprised of the following options:
- 'Audio'
Use the "..." button to select an audio file, of virtually any format. If your music doesn't appear under "Supported Audio Formats" give it a shot with "All Files" anyway. - 'Preview'
Select the times from your music for RawkSD to generate the preview clip from. - 'Chart'
Use the "..." button to select a MIDI note chart. This can be a Rock Band custom, a Frets on Fire chart, or a Guitar Hero custom. - 'Convert GH Star Power to Overdrive'
If your note chart is in the Guitar Hero format (or converted with chart2mid2chart), it likely has solo sections where Overdrive should be. Use this option to make Rock Band 2 compatible with Guitar Hero star power. If your chart was specifically made for Rock Band (for example, a full band custom), you should not have this checked.
If you're playing and you find that your custom has a lot of little solo sections in it, go back and replace the chart with this option checked. - 'Add Empty Drum Track'
If you're creating a custom that has the drums instrument charted, select this option, otherwise the game will crash when you try to play a custom on drums. The only time you have a drum custom and don't want to check this is if you have access to the master tracks of the song, which is a fairly rare case. - 'Fix Chart for Quickplay'
This option makes a note chart compatible with Rock Band 2, making it work better in Practice mode, and run without crashing in Quickplay (and therefore the custom will be online-capable). It will also add some random camera and light animations to make the chart feel more dynamic.
You will only want this option unchecked if the chart you're importing was specifically designed with animations for Rock Band on the Wii, XBox 360, or Playstation 3 systems. - 'Silence'
The Audio Delay specifies how many seconds of silence should be added to the music. When you download a custom chart, the creator usually specifies the "offset" of the chart, typically in milliseconds. This is the Audio Delay that you want to add. Time can also be clipped from the audio file by using a negative value.
You also have the option of adding silence to the note chart. You may have played a custom and felt that the notes are coming too soon, before the audio. In this case, you can replace the chart and specify a Chart Delay in order to get the chart syncronized properly.
Once you press OK, RawkSD will start to work. Encoding the audio can take a few minutes, so you'll probably have to wait. Once it's done, you will be directed to the customs editor in order to fill in information about the custom. This window will be detailed in the next part of the guide; you can always come back to the editor later.
Editing Customs
You are able to edit a custom at any time with the Edit Custom toolbar button, or Customs -> Edit... menu.
When editing customs, you are presented with a large number of options. The most common ones that you'll be editing are those under the Song Info header:
- 'Identifier'
This is how the game identifies any song. It uses this name to put the song on the leaderboards, and decide whether other people have the same DLC as you when playing online. It is essential that the identifier is exactly the same between two people in order to play customs online with each other.
Good practice for choosing an identifier is using the song name without spaces and in all lowercase. - 'Name, Artist, Album, Year, Genre'
These fields are used to display information in the track list. - 'Track'
This is the track number of the song in its album. It doesn't actually seem to be used by the game... - 'Vocalist'
The default gender of the vocalist when there isn't a player on vocals. - 'Master Recording'
Specifies whether the song is actually the master tracks by the Artist, or whether it's "made famous by." If this is unchecked, the Album name does not show up in-game.
The Advanced Info should rarely need to be modified. The Animation Tempo is often a power of 2, and the default HOPO Threshold (which specifies how far apart notes should be for them to be considered hammerons or pulloffs) is 170 when it is set to 0.
The Audio Tracks section allows you to select an audio channel and specify the volume and balance of the track. The Core value can be ignored. For a track's Balance, a value of -1.0 completely pans it to the left, 0.0 is centered, and 1.0 is panned to the right.
The instrument tabs are used to map audio channels to each instrument. The Difficulty Tier decides where in the setlist the song appears. A setting of zero will prevent that instrument from being played on the song. Unless you have the master tracks to a song, you won't want any instruments mapped to a track. Note that there is one exception to this rule: drum customs *must* have a track assigned to them in order to be played. The Add Empty Drum Track option in the File replace dialog automatically adds an extra track to the audio and will map the drum track to it. Don't uncheck this.
Once you're done editing a custom, pressing OK will save your changes and bring you back to the main window.
Importing
RawkSD allows you to import songs from a large number of music-rhythm games. At the moment, it supports:
- Wii
- Rock Band 1
- Rock Band: Track Pack Volume 1
- Rock Band: Track Pack Volume 2
- Rock Band: AC/DC Live Track Pack
- Rock Band: Classic Rock Track Pack
- Rock Band: Country Track Pack
- Guitar Hero 3
- Guitar Hero: Aerosmith
- Guitar Hero World Tour
- Guitar Hero: Metallica
- Guitar Hero: Smash Hits
- Guitar Hero 5
- Rock Band 1
- Playstation 2
- Guitar Hero 1
- Guitar Hero 2
- Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s
To do this, RawkSD requires that you have the disc files on your computer. The RawkSD Wii Installer includes a special button that will rip the songs from the discs specifically for use in RawkSD importing to multiple SD cards or USB drives (it even supports your PS2 discs!). Another alternative is to rip a disc using one of the many Wii homebrew tools available, such as SuperDump. You may also use FTPii to rip the disc over a wireless connection.
Importing from a disc is easy once you have it on your computer. The RawkSD installer will rip a disc to the /rawk folder on your SD card or USB drive. If the rip didn't fit on one device, make sure you merge all the separate parts by copying them to the same place on your computer. Then you use the Import -> Songs From RawkSD Disc Rip menu to select the folder for the game you wish to import. Choose which songs you'd like to import and let it go. Note that any disc imports that are not based on the Rock Band 1 engine (all Guitar Hero games) will take a considerable amount of time to convert.
If you have a dump of the disc rather than using RawkSD's built-in ripping system, select the appropriate game from the Import menu instead, and choose the game dump. For the Playstation 2 games, you can import them straight from your computer's DVD drive.
Installing Customs
Installing customs onto your Wii is a simple process. You must first follow the instructions about creating and editing customs in order to have a custom ready to be installed. Then you place your SD card into your computer, and use the File -> Open SD Card menu or button to select your SD card's drive. Then select Customs -> Install. In the window that appears, check off the customs that you want to install to the SD card and let it go. Make sure you've copied the apps folder to the root of the SD card as described earlier in the guide.
Afterwards, take your SD card out (don't forget to Safely Remove it!) and place it in your Wii, start up the Homebrew Channel, and launch the RawkSD Installer. Select Install and wait for it to finish the installation. Now you're ready to play Rock Band 2 customs!
NB: If you're using the PAL (ie European) version of Rock Band 2 you need RawkSD Pal. It still has a few bugs, noticeably you will need to use the non PAL version for ripping songs from discs.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I run this with Mono on Mac OS X / Linux?
RawkSD can be run on Mac OS X and Linux if you're willing to take the time to get all the components together. You will need to get the following:
- Mono - Mono is needed to run RawkSD. Once installed, RawkSD can be started from the commandline with the "mono RawkSD.exe" command.
- FFmpeg - FFmpeg is required to convert your audio for RawkSD customs (not required for imports).
Note that RawkSD also relies on some native libraries included with it that will only run on Windows, an Intel Mac OS X, and 32-bit Linux.
Help! I downloaded a song from the Music Store and all my customs disappeared!
This is unfortunately how the game is designed. You must start the RawkSD Wii installer and press Install to force your customs to reappear.
Why don't my customs show up in-game?
Have you run the RawkSD Wii installer from the Homebrew Channel since installing it? It has to be used every time you add a new custom to your SD card.
Why don't my customs show up in-game? Yes I ran the Wii installer!
Did you properly set the tier difficulties when editing/creating the custom on the PC? If a tier is set to 0 for an instrument, you will not see the song in your list when playing as that instrument. If the song shows up in the Local Band Quickplay mode (but not solo quickplay), this is your problem.
I get an error whenever I try to start the install process on the Wii!
Have you run the one-time RawkSD Patcher from the Homebrew Channel? It needs to be run in order for customs to be installed on your Wii.
Why does Rock Band 2 say my customs are "Out of Date"?
If you're playing Rock Band 2 through a backup loader, the cIOS you are using is incompatible with Rock Band 2 DLC, and therefore RawkSD. Also, make sure you're not running system menu 4.3, as the RawkSD patcher does not patch IOS37 properly. If this is the case, you have to wait for RawkSD 3.
Why does my custom freeze when I try playing it on drums?
Make sure that the Add Empty Drum Track checkbox is set when you are importing the audio (use the Replace Files window again if you have to), and that the Drum tab has audio checked for the last audio channel. Otherwise the game will crash when you play as drums.
Why are there so many short solo sections in my custom?
The custom you're playing was made for Guitar Hero, or was converted with chart2mid2chart. Go back into the Replace Files window, and make sure you check Convert GH Star Power to Overdrive when you import the chart.
How do I get my Rock Band / Guitar Hero discs on my PC so that I can import it?
You can use the built-in disc ripping function of the RawkSD Wii installer to copy the files onto an SD card or USB drive.
