Cold's Crap

 

We need more stuff going on in the modding bit so I thought I'd show off how I screwed up my game and how you can do it too. I'll try to format it decently with different reply's for different things and I'll have this as the index or something. No I'm totally not doing this to put off doing songs what u on about.

Also the tutorials only work when your listening to Undead Corporation

 

Contents

 

Basics of modding.

 

Whats in what.

 

Audio.psarc and cache.psarc

Every other psarc in the root folder

"interesting" stuff in the Base sub folder

 

Stuff

CGT site is dead, here's a reupload of the installer.
 

Custom string colours.  Just use the CGT or RSMods.

Custom colour generator  Just use the CGT or RSMods.

Custom text.

Extra tunings. Just use RSMods.

Inlays (they count I guess)

Shader stuff (just speculation)

Custom intro (needs a bit more work)

Custom loft Just use the CGT, can replace loft files and its easy peasy

Custom note colours Just use the CGT or RSMods.

Custom highway colour Just use RSMods.

ReShade stuff

Highway colour generator Just use RSMods.

Custom menu fonts/Colors

Custom loft/Model swapping

Full fret inlays

 

 

 

 

More stuff when/if I do it/figure it out.

Custom string colors sounds cool.

Does it change the note colors too?

Custom string colors sounds cool.

Does it change the note colors too?

 

Nope, I couldn't get custom note colours working so I settled with strings. At least then you can still tell the notes apart.

 

Whenever i changed what looks like a note colour file (Note_gradient_map.dds) the game would crash or nothing would happen. That file is in lots of the different .psarcs. Either it does nothing or you need to change them all. But I dont see why it would need a map, why wouldn't it be like strings in a .json file?

 

If I ever get it working I'll let ya dudes know

 

Edit: If you wanna see how it looks heres a playthrough vid I made of a song

Basics of modding

Tools

 

Roit to do the modding you need some tools, I bet most of you have them already but maybe your missing one or two IDK but here's the shiz you need.

 

RS toolkit. For unpacking and re-packing .Psarc files. At first I thought the Pack/unpack menu was just for songs but nope it works on the game archives too.

 

Custom game toolkit. For most basic stuff this is all you need, custom inlays, intro screens and custom textures.

 

7zip. No offence winrar but you need this to add files to the .7zip files inside cache.psarc. You can open them in winrar but good luck adding files.

 

Paint.net/photoshop/gimp. To open DDS texture files. Paint can't open them.

 

Nifskope. To open .nif (model) files. I don't think we can add custom models without finding the specific version of nifskope they used (maybe you can find it by snooping around) but if adding custom textures its good for seeing how it looks.

 

A decent text editor. So you can see the text formatted decently. Noptepad++ will do fine but I like to use VScode. You need this for the .json and .csv files.

 

JPEX free flash decompiler (I think, I installed so many different ones) can open .gfx files (just fancy .swf files) for the menus but you can't really do anything with them since it can't access the assets.

 

Or you can do it this way if you hate yourself. Maybe you can modify more stuff if you do it this way but the extra effort is not worth it tbh. Use above method if you just wanna snoop about.

 

Useful tips

 

This stuff is probably common sense to most people but why not. Back up your stuff. Unpack your psarcs in a sub folder in the rs directory and before replacing one with a modded one back it up. Just to be safe. If you have a lot of mods verifying your cache will remove em all. But if you have backups of the modded files then its ok.

 

Roit this sections was useless since that's all I can think of.

 

How to do stuff

 

This is probably more useless than the section above.

 

Anyway here's the general overview.

 

Backup Psarc you want to modify

Unpack it

Modify the files in it

Repack it

Replace the normal with modded one

Hope to yohane-sama that the game dosen't crash

It works yay. Or it dosen't and you replace with the old one

 

God if the rest of the posts are like this its gonna be pointless to read them

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Whats in what.

 

Just a general overview of what is in what psarc. Most of it is an educated guess, do some more fiddling if you want.

 

NamesBlock.bin is just a list of files in the psarc and should be in all of them you unpack (except cache, cache is special)

 

Audio.psarc

 

Voiceovers I guess. Obviously in .wem format. No folder for english, maybe in cache.psarc. They are somewhere since "audio_aggregategraph.nt "references  "/audio/windows/english(us)"

 

Also has a few .bnk files. Videos using the  Huh I guess .bnk is audio too. .bik and .bk2 are bink video files and I got them mixed up.

 

Cache.psarc (should've done a seperate post on this one but oh well)

 

This is the main boi, most of that you need/want is in here. Contains the most used files to speed up loading I guess. The files in here can be found elsewhere in other psarcs but if you modify it in cache.psarc its probably gonna change.

 

Contains 9 .7z files. You can open with winrar but cant change files which is why you need 7zip.

 

Cache 0

 

Nothing too interesting, just some files to do with setting up logging. Rocksmith 2014 is referenced as Rocksmith2

pkgconfig.ini is a bunch of rubbish.

 

Cache 1

 

Assets folder contains airial font in .nff format. Maybe you can replace it I haven't tried. Also contains loading screen with the flashing rs logo (.dds file for textures)

Contains shaders. .nsb .pso .vso .fxo files. Maybe you can de-compile them and modify them, opening in text editor does nothing. I know hardly anything about shaders tho.

 

Cache 2 (dosen't exist?)

 

Well yeah nothing here I guess.

 

Cache 3

 

Audio, two files per folder? Do bnk files contain more than one audio, nah I guess next cache has more audio. nope, hmmm.

Actually has some english voice over for once.

 

Cache 4

 

Localisation.csv contains the games text you can change it if you want or add new strings (used for adding more turnings)

gfxassets folder has the textures for the rs setup screen and fonts.gfx file.

Flatmodels folder, nothing interesting.

behaviors folder, nothing interesting

 

Cache 5 (dosen't exist either)

 

RS devs learn to count pls.

 

Cache 6

 

Shaders folder, cached shaders. nothing too fancy

\assets\gameplay\tail has stuff related to the note tails (my note map gradient map is already modified, it should be smooth blocks of colour)

assets\ui\phrasebanner has what you'd expect. Colours/textures for the phase bar including the score attack colours

 

Cache 7

 

Oh boy, quite a lot of .json, .hsan , .hson(database files?) files

Not sure what you'd be able to do with most of 'em. Worth a look if you're interested

img link

 

Cache 8

 

Audio folder not worth checking, only one file "tonedesigner.bnk"

Assets/vfx has the speaker rings texture and model (idk how to modify .nif but you can open them in nifskope, more stuff to add to first post)

GFX assets folder has the cd key menu screen and a lot of menu icons. Like you could completely change how the menus look if you wanted.

I also think the notes are here too, Nope just for the chords ui menu

 

Seriously this is the one to check out and screw with, look at this

 

Roit I'm splitting this post up. I'm too scared of chrome crashing and loosing all this

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Whats in what continued

Crowd.psarc

 

Contains nif files, I guess of the crowds of people since I don't have nifskope. Probably has the background and light models as well.

 

Etudes.psarc

 

Stuff about the lessons and/or how the different techniques are defined and detected.

 

Definitely about lessons tho since gfxassets\album_art\missions has the album art for the tutorials.

 

It contains the videos in bk2 format, and arrangements in sng and xml format.

 

I remember seeing someone working on custom lessons to get customs with video backgrounds but I think they gave up.

 

 

Gear.psarc

 

Amps, cabs, pedals models, textures, icons

 

You can probably add your own if you tried hard enough, or change how they sound.

 

Guitars.psarc

 

assets\gameplay\inlay Contains the default inlays. .Nif and .dds files.

flatmodels\rs Nothing interesting

gamexblocks\nguitars contains .xblock files for the inlays

manifests\guitars .json files for the inlays

 

wow that was a boring one

 

Session.psarc

 

Stuff for session mode. Not sure you can change too much.

gfxassets\instrument_art has icons

Rest has samples for the instruments (I'm guessing) and .json files and stuff

 

Not really worth checking out.

 

Songs.psarc

 

All the in game song files and stuff.

 

assets\ui\lyrics\ultrasoul has a different font for the song using japanese characters. (oh yea check out the toolkit version that lets you do custom fonts if you want to do it yourself too)

 

Not too interesting tbh.

 

Static.psarc (aka cache 2.0, worth a look at)

 

assets\gameplay\showlights Might be worth checking out if you are interesting in custom show lights

assets\gameplay\tail. Same as in cache.psarc

assets\ui\lyrics Good if you want to change the default lyric font

gfxassets\views has more menu stuff

localization folder. Same as in Cache.psarc.

 

I'll be here all day if I list everything. But if you want to change something and it wasn't in cache.psarc check Static.psarc next.

 

Video.psarc

 

Contains the credits video and calibration/first time launching videos.

 

Well that's all the main ones in the root folder. There's more in the subfolders but I'm not doing all of them.

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Now for the moment you've been waiting for (probably)

Custom string colours

 

 

Ok first I gotta find the file since I can't remember where it is. I bet its in Static or cache tho.

 

Right, I found it. It it in Cache.psarc. Cache8.7z in the flatmodels\rs subfolder. And the file is "gamecolormanager.flat" You can open it in a (decent) text editor.

 

File should look like this

 

Now if you don't get how to pick a colour the first number is the Red value the second is the Green value and the third is the Blue value. So if you want just red enter "1, 0, 0", but if you want purple enter "1,0,1". And yes you can enter decimals to get any colour you want, but keep it to 7 decimal places to be safe.  Just use this and divide the rgb value by 255 to get your colour.

 

The index value is what string, you can have every string a different colour or all the same. Indexes start on zero so don't get confused.

 

There are two options for each entry, the normal and colour blind option. If you want you can change just one and have an option to swap pack or just have two different colour sets.

 

There is a lot of values to change and it takes a while maybe someone could make a tool to make changing it easier

Oh btw this also can change the tuning peg colour and a bunch of different things if you want to.

 

When your done replace it in Cache8.7z and rebuild the .psarc and replace your old cache.psarc with the new one.

 

Roit I hope this makes sense and works. Yell at me if it doesn't its been a while since I did it.

 

"You can however share modified game files here (custom loft, custom artwork, fast load up, etc.)". 

 

I guess I can share my blue string file then if you're too lazy to change the values. Here have a pastebin. Here's how it looks in game (more undead corp lol)

 

Also here's one for easy changing, just use the search and replace function to change the values. Search for "one" "two" and "three" and replace them with numbers for different colours

 

Share your own too lets get a rainbow going.

 

I'll do the other topics tomorrow I need a snooze 

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"I'll do the other topics tomorrow I need a snooze". lol who needs sleep when its time for

Custom text

 

This ones pretty easy tho so yeah.

 

Like most other stuff its in Cache.psarc, Cache4.7z to be exact. Open the localisation folder and copy "maingame.csv". Now it is a .csv but don't open it in Excel, just use your fancy text editor. It'll take a bit to load since there's tons of text.

 

So this contains all the text strings in the game in all the different languages and you can just "ctrl + F" to find and replace words with whatever you want. It also contains an ID for the string so if you see any random numbers in other files chances are its a reference to a string.

 

When your done put it back in Cache4.7z and rebuild the psarc and replace your old one with the modded one.

 

Here's what I changed. (you can be more creative I just wanted to test it out lol)

 

Btw to save you a headache song lists don't support different names per song lists. It just takes the song lists string and adds a number on the end. It used to be possible but stopped working when they updated from 4 to 6 song lists. Since there are strings for song lists 1-4 in the file but not for 5-6.

 

Back to top

 

Custom string colors sounds cool.

Does it change the note colors too?

 

Nope, I couldn't get custom note colours working so I settled with strings. At least then you can still tell the notes apart.

 

Whenever i changed what looks like a note colour file (Note_gradient_map.dds) the game would crash or nothing would happen. That file is in lots of the different .psarcs. Either it does nothing or you need to change them all. But I dont see why it would need a map, why wouldn't it be like strings in a .json file?

 

If I ever get it working I'll let ya dudes know

 

Edit: If you wanna see how it looks heres a playthrough vid I made of a song

 

 

A really good friend of mine has a "different colour blindness" to the one the colourblind mode in RS is designed to accommodate. I have spent many, many hours trying to get the string and note colours changed too. Definitely keen to see what other things you come up with here.

Extra tunings.

 

Fed up with seeing "custom tuning" on anything that's not pop music, here ya go. Wanna tune to something fancy but cba for the songs to load, here ya go (not like you can press space to view the notes you are playing).

 

If you just want a pre-done list look here (mod by ZagatoZee)

 

Ok so for this you need to modify tuning.database.json (Cache.psarc cache7.7z Manifests folder)

 

Now the tunings are the same as how they are entered in the toolkit. So to add C# Drop B it would be (-5,-3,-3,-3,-3,-3)

 

Copy paste C# standard (or any tbh)

Put it in relation to the other tunings, the order in the file reflects the order in the menu (Does it tho?)

Change the tuning to whatever one you want

Change the name

Remove the "$[number]" or it will have the same name as the tuning you copied (or add a new number in maingame.csv)

Save the file

Put tuning.database.json back in Cache.psarc cache7.7z Manifests folder.

 

Remove your excess folders so you don't double your file size and increase load times (your game wont crash 'cus of this but don't do it)

Rebuild Cache.psarc

Replace it.

Hope to yohane-sama that it works.

 

Noice.

Noice2

 

I'm not sure on how many you can add, I think the tuning menu scrolls but I'm not 100% sure. Nope the text scales instead

Currently have 5 extra and they all show up

Currently have 12 and it still works

Currently have 32 and it still works

 

Roit thats all, back to top

 

 

Custom string colors sounds cool.

Does it change the note colors too?

 

Nope, I couldn't get custom note colours working so I settled with strings. At least then you can still tell the notes apart.

 

Whenever i changed what looks like a note colour file (Note_gradient_map.dds) the game would crash or nothing would happen. That file is in lots of the different .psarcs. Either it does nothing or you need to change them all. But I dont see why it would need a map, why wouldn't it be like strings in a .json file?

 

If I ever get it working I'll let ya dudes know

 

Edit: If you wanna see how it looks heres a playthrough vid I made of a song

 

 

A really good friend of mine has a "different colour blindness" to the one the colourblind mode in RS is designed to accommodate. I have spent many, many hours trying to get the string and note colours changed too. Definitely keen to see what other things you come up with here.

 

 

I might have figured out custom note colours. Big old might, I haven't tested it yet and it probably doesn't work. If this way doesn't work I'll look through cache7 again and/or see if I can fiddle with the shaders.

 

I'll test it tomorrow.

Inlays

 

BTW don't have tons of custom inlays since having too many means you cant scroll all the way down. 

 

I'll put some here when I make them I guess. Probably gonna be weeb AF

 

Yohane Inlay (art by deadnoodles cus his work is cute af), here's an image of my switch theme using his art too

 

A more practical version using a neso as a fret marker

 

If you wan't a tutorial and you don't have photoshop I guess I can help you. (Although I now use photoshop)
 

UV ACCURATE INLAY TEMPLATES (use these to make your life way easier, make sure to set it as the correct fret number in toolkit though or it won't match)
 

Get the templates from here. Give the site a good read and say thanks to Cozy.
COZY CGT TEMPLATE REUPLOAD

 

Now, they are photoshop files but you can get an addon for paint.net to open psd files.

 

Get this plugin for paint.net. Read the site it says how to install.

 

Now to make a sick icon you open icon.psd

 

Move base black up and change the opacity

 

Put your image the layer under light effect and crop the edges

 

It looks good., Save as a .png

 

For the inlay open the inlay template

 

Add a black layer so you can see how badly you removed the background and so you can spot things easier

 

Add whatever you want. Stuff on number 10 appears on fret 10 and yeah. First 5 frets cut off stuff so keep it in the middle to be safe.

 

Disable all layers except the images you want on your inlay.

 

It looks good, Save as a .png

 

Open the Custom game toolkit or rs toolkit. Both work (CGT discolors inlays, use toolkit)

 

Set RS directory if you haven't done it yet

 

Set your images as the icon and the inlay and give the template a name

 

Save the template and give that file to people

 

Click build and put the inlay.psarc in the inlays folder in your DLC folder. Make one if its not there.

 

Wow custom inlay yay. Select it and use it and stuff.

 

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I'd like to point out that there's no need to edit the maingame.csv when you add custom tunings (unless you want to localize the text).

You can just put the name straight into UIName, e.g:

 

"UIName" : "B Drop A",

I'd like to point out that there's no need to edit the maingame.csv when you add custom tunings (unless you want to localize the text).

You can just put the name straight into UIName, e.g:

 

"UIName" : "B Drop A",

 

Oh so you just can just remove the "$[number here]" bit and it falls back to the one in the file. Cool, I'll make sure it works and update the guide (I bet it does just wanna be sure lol)

 

Edit: yep it worked, and I've updated the guide. Thanks for the hint mate.

After defining your custom tunings you can select them with '[' ']' keys and this is my favorite thing from all of this, because previously it would just stop at first "custom tuning" and I would have to scroll trough the rest of the songs to get to specific tuning.

After defining your custom tunings you can select them with '[' ']' keys and this is my favorite thing from all of this, because previously it would just stop at first "custom tuning" and I would have to scroll trough the rest of the songs to get to specific tuning.

 

Ooh that's cool, I just used to swap back to artist sort, hover over a song in the tuning I wanted and change back to tuning sort. 

 

I didn't even know the '[' ']' keys go to next/prev section lol

@@theSG That's incorrect though, all custom tuning are correctly sorted when you sort by tuning and can still move from one tuning to another with the [ and ] key as you do with all the other tuning. Adding a name is purely a cosmetic change and won't technically alter the way the list work as far as i know.

@@theSG That's incorrect though, all custom tuning are correctly sorted when you sort by tuning and can still move from one tuning to another with the [ and ] key as you do with all the other tuning. Adding a name is purely a cosmetic change and won't technically alter the way the list work as far as i know.

Well I'm using those keys all the time and this is how it works for me. Maybe it has something to do with the specific tunings I'm using. I have songs in B standrad, 7string B standrad (BEADGB), A# standrad, A standrad, 7string A standrad. And for me it stops at first custom tuning (7 string B standrad) and wont go any lower. They are correctly sorted though.

Right didn't noticed it stopped working when going down low like this but all other custom tuning that are higher works fine.

 

I'm curious though how many tuning can be added cause i recall some people saying it won't scroll.

Right didn't noticed it stopped working when going down low like this but all other custom tuning that are higher works fine.

 

I'm curious though how many tuning can be added cause i recall some people saying it won't scroll.

 

I've added 3 so far and I can see them all, but I'm running out of space (ignore the bad capitalization lol). You can just replace ones you don't use from the default if you want more.

 

Gonna test adding more later to see how far it goes and if it scrolls or not.

The ideal would be to edit the tuner.menu.gfx (whatever it is called) and add in a scroll function - then "in theory" we could put out a few modified files that would have a full "proper" tuning list and dispense with "custom tuning" all together. Koko and I haven't found how to do that yet however.

 

 

 

Custom string colors sounds cool.

Does it change the note colors too?

 

Nope, I couldn't get custom note colours working so I settled with strings. At least then you can still tell the notes apart.

 

Whenever i changed what looks like a note colour file (Note_gradient_map.dds) the game would crash or nothing would happen. That file is in lots of the different .psarcs. Either it does nothing or you need to change them all. But I dont see why it would need a map, why wouldn't it be like strings in a .json file?

 

If I ever get it working I'll let ya dudes know

 

Edit: If you wanna see how it looks heres a playthrough vid I made of a song

 

 

A really good friend of mine has a "different colour blindness" to the one the colourblind mode in RS is designed to accommodate. I have spent many, many hours trying to get the string and note colours changed too. Definitely keen to see what other things you come up with here.

 

 

I might have figured out custom note colours. Big old might, I haven't tested it yet and it probably doesn't work. If this way doesn't work I'll look through cache7 again and/or see if I can fiddle with the shaders.

 

I'll test it tomorrow.

 

 

Didn't work, turns out it was the sprite for the chords menu. lol

 

Maybe if you wanna be consistent you can change it as well as the note colours when we figure it out.

 

Its in cache.psarc cache8.7z gfxassets\libs subfolder and heres what I changed

 

This to this

 

Given the filename what was I expecting lol

The ideal would be to edit the tuner.menu.gfx (whatever it is called) and add in a scroll function - then "in theory" we could put out a few modified files that would have a full "proper" tuning list and dispense with "custom tuning" all together. Koko and I haven't found how to do that yet however.

 

Yea gfx files aren't too easy to modify at the moment. Given how they are pretty much just swf files though it would probably be possible to merge the scroll function from the LAS menu. It's a bit of a longshot though.

 

I'll probably screw around with it at some point but I highly doubt I'll get it to work or anything.

Worst case you'll just have 3 extra tunings and the others unselectable just to add to the LAS menu

Thing is that getting rid of already existing tuning won't solve the issue of theSG entirely and considering the jump function in the list is linked to that tuning list to some extent, it would be problematic if it ended up breaking that part higher up in tuning than it already do :)

 

 

Yea gfx files aren't too easy to modify at the moment. 

 

This is what the speed intro mods and a few others that we haven't put out publicly yet (still tweaking them  to our liking) were done with the help of - https://github.com/jindrapetrik/jpexs-decompiler - it can mod the gfx files used with ease.

Thing is that getting rid of already existing tuning won't solve the issue of theSG entirely and considering the jump function in the list is linked to that tuning list to some extent, it would be problematic if it ended up breaking that part higher up in tuning than it already do :)

 

Hmmm.

 

Wait what actually is the limit I just added 3 more and it still works, does the text re-scale?, is there no limit?

 

Anyway if there even is a limit they go in the order in the tuning database file, so instead of removing ones you don't need entirely just move them to the end of the list