Guidelines for Official-Looking Customs

rev. 3.2 (2021-04-05)

Much of this information is probably out there already, but I thought it would be nice to have it in one place with plenty of screenshots and examples with explanations of how to create them.

This tutorial concerns mostly minor details about the appearance of the chart that most people probably do not care about.

1. Basics

2. Sustains

3. Handshapes

4. Repeated Chords with Notes in Between

5. Chord Names

6. Pick Slides/Scrapes/Scratches

7. Bends with an Unpitched Slide Outward

8. Lyrics

9. Crowd Events

10. Tones

11. Misc.

12. Showlights

13. Further Reading

1. Basics

1.1 Editing a Note in EOF

Selecting a note in EOF and pressing 'N' or clicking a note with the mouse wheel opens the “Edit pro guitar note” window. This is where you can edit the note(chord) name and apply attributes like sustain, linknext, etc.

Edit note window in EOF

1.2 Marking Handshapes in EOF

 

1. Select the notes

2. (Optional) Use the mouse wheel to lengthen the sustains of the notes so they cover the area you want the handshape to cover

3. Press 'Ctrl+Shift+H'

4. (Optional) Edit the sustains to proper lengths

 

1.3 Fret Hand Positions (FHP)

Example of a bad FHP: position switch into a pull-off?

 

Fret hand positions set the position at which (the usually 4 fret wide) area showing where to put your fingers is located. In the game it is called the "anchor zone". Editing the FHPs should be one of the last things you do in your project since you don't want to have to do it again and again if you do any major changes.

 

To display the FHPs in EOF, go to preferences and set "Top of 2D pane shows" to "Hand pos", or simply press Shift+F11 to cycle through the options. Before you start, also make sure the automatic FHPs are up to date by pressing Ctrl+Shift+F and then press "Generate".

 

Moving around:

To move from note to note: Shift+PgUp, Shift+PgDown

To move from beat to beat : PgUp, PgDown

To move in the grid set in Grid snap: Shift+Ctrl+PgUp, Shift+Ctrl+PgDown

 

If there is an FHP you cannot reach with the above options, you can seek to it (and/or delete it) with the FHP list (Ctrl+Shift+F).

 

You add/edit an FHP by pressing Shift+F. Many incorrect FHP changes can be removed at once by selecting a range of notes and going to Note->Rocksmith->Remove FHPs. Using "Generate FHPs" on a range of notes can be a useful time saver when you do major edits in an arrangement that otherwise has manually edited FHPs.

 

DDC requires that FHPs are placed on a note. The only exception is the FHP at the beginning of a phrase/section. For example, your slides should look like the second one in this picture:

 

 

EOF will handle the width of the anchor zone automatically. For example, an FHP of 12 on a note on the 17th fret will make the anchor zone stretch to the 17th fret (6 frets wide). You can reset/change the width by placing a new FHP. In this example the first anchor zone will stretch to the 17th fret and the second one to the 15th fret.

 

 

Very rarely, ODLC will use a 5 fret wide anchor zone to indicate that notes four frets away should played using the 3rd finger instead of the 4th. You can use ghost notes in EOF to achieve this.

 

1.4 Chord Fingerings

 

To save you some time, I recommend using my chordshapes.xml.

 

Since the correct fingering of some chords and especially double-stops depends on the situation, you will almost always have to correct some fingerings.

 

Correcting the fingerings of many chords at once:

 

Select a chord and press Shift+L (Precise select like), then press F to edit the fingering. You must use "Precise select like" if there are fret-hand-muted variants of that chord. If there are not any, you can use Ctrl+L (Select like).

 

When you use "Precise select like" and there are chords that are the same chord but have statuses like "crazy" (or indeed, "string mute" i.e. fret hand mute), "Precise select like" will not select them and you will have to correct their fingerings separately.

 

1.5 Other Prerequisites for Good Quality Customs

 

A good quality CDLC should ideally have (among other things): properly synced, correct notes in playable positions on the fretboard, a good amount of sections/phrases, proper slides (correct use of linkNext), properly synced lyrics, proper volume balance and custom tones.

 

If you have problems with any of the above, I suggest you look at other tutorials on this forum.

 

To be truly on par with official content would also mean manually created DD.

 

1.6 Suggested EOF Preferences

 

In Preferences:

"Don't auto-name double stops" enabled.

"Fingering checks include mutes" enabled.

 

"Min. note distance" is another setting you might find useful. A number between 50-80 ms or 32/measure (32nd note)  should prevent the sustains of most notes from touching the next note.

 

In Import/Export:

"GP import truncates short notes" enabled.

"GP import truncates short chords" disabled.

 

"Allow RS2 extended ASCII lyrics" enabled.

 

2. Sustains

2.1 Single Notes

Normally, short notes should have no sustain. This should be obvious to anyone who has played the game, and customs that get it wrong are thankfully very rare.

You will have to use your own discretion to decide if a note should have a sustain or not. As a bad example, in “(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction”, none of the notes in the main riff have sustains although sometimes the second note is sustained. It is unfortunate that Rocksmith has no way of indicating a note that should be explicitly played staccato (other than palm mutes of course).

Sustains should not touch the next note or appear to overlap with the next note. This can make it hard to see notes in the case when a note is partially covered by the sustain of the previous note on the same string. How much you should shorten the sustain may depend on which string the previous note is. A gap of a 32nd or 16th note is a good estimate.

Example of a sustain overlapping with the next note

2.2 Chords

2.2.1 Handshape Sustain

Whereas short single notes should have no sustains, even short chords should always have one.

In official content, there is always a gap between a handshape and the next chord/note. A larger gap is preferable if the chord is held for a long time.

There is a gap even if the following chord is the same one with the full chord box displayed again. (See also section 3.3 below)

Gap between A5 and A5 chords in “Blitzkrieg Bop”

2.2.2 Tail Sustain

From “Tornado of Souls” by Megadeth

Chords can be forced to show the tail sustain by marking them as 'sustain'. Since handshapes also work as sustains, a tail sustain on a chord without techniques applied to is practically pointless, and it is up to your preference how much you want to use it.

It can be useful when a sustained chord follows a flurry of short chords/notes, or it can be used for uniform appearance when a neighboring chord must have the tail sustain displayed because a technique is applied to it.

3. Handshapes

3.1 Quickly Arpeggiated Chords

From “Trust” by Megadeth

Handshapes can be used for quickly arpeggiated chords since they do not have the extra stuff that arpeggios have which can make it harder to see what notes you are supposed to play. As a downside, the chord name will not be displayed (although there is a way to show it).

 

 

Example in EOF

3.2 Chord Slides

 

The destination chord of a chord slide does not have a handshape applied by default. In official content it is often applied. When it is applied, the fingerprints displaying the fingering for the chord will move to the new position.

Here are two gifs that illustrate the matter:

Without handshapes vs. With handshapes

There is an issue in the current version of EOF where it makes the handshape of the slide chord continue to the end of the target chord, even if you mark a handshape on the target chord. DLC Builder fixes this automatically, but to make a valid XML file you would need to mark the handshape manually on the slide chord also.

Additionally, official files have a gap between the two handshapes. DLC Builder automates this, so you do not need waste time manually adjusting them. You only need to mark the handshape on the target chord.

Handshape manually marked on the target chord in EOF

 

Handshape manually marked on both chords to get an official-like result

3.3 Sustained Chords with Hammer-Ons

From “The Wind Cries Mary” by Jimi Hendrix

Notice that here there is also a gap in the handshape sustain (not that you will notice it while actually playing the song).

Above example recreated in EOF

3.4 Indicating Fingerings

In the Jimi Hendrix DLCs handshapes are sometimes marked even on single notes on the low E string when it needs to be made clear that they should be played with the thumb.

They can also be used to indicate the fingering in cases like below where you bend the B string with the 3rd finger then play a note on the E string with the 4th finger.

From “Fire” by Jimi Hendrix

3.5 Chords with Unpitched Slides

Chords/double stops with an unpitched slide out (when not using linknext) may look nicer if you shorten the handshape.

From "Knights of Cydonia" by Muse

Without shortening the handshape the above would look like this:

 

In EOF you would make the sustain of the chord shorter, mark the handshape, then adjust the sustain back to its proper length:

 

 

3.6 Chords with Linknext to Vibrato/Tremolo

 

By default the handshape may not cover the vibrato/tremolo. You should mark a handshape that includes also the vibrato/tremolo part.

 

Here is an example from "Stray Cat Strut" that has both tremolo and vibrato:

 

 

4. Repeated Chords with Notes in Between

There are two ways of charting these, both of which appear in official content. Which way you choose is up to your preference. If either one makes the chart easier to read, you should of course use that one.

1. Full Chord Panels

From “Holy Diver” by Dio (Note how the repeated chords have no names)

This is the default way the chords will appear and requires no editing in EOF.  

2. Repeat Panels

From “The Number of the Beast” by Iron Maiden

Requires editing in EOF. This is most appropriate when the single notes are the lowest note in the chord. In other cases it might be confusing.

You only need to mark the handshape to include all the chords and that's it. Previously you needed to use "high density". (Note: the "high density" status does not do anything at all anymore)

5. Chord Names

Chord names can be removed from any chord by using a space as the name. Double stops should not have names. EOF has a "Don't auto-name double stops" setting in the preferences. Note that it will also leave two note power chords nameless.

In some official content power chords have no names.

Chords that are merely effects (most common example: hitting three or more open strings) are best left nameless.

Otherwise, more complex chords should obviously have names (preferably correct ones).

Nameless power chords in “Run to the Hills” by Iron Maiden

6. Pick Slides/Scrapes/Scratches

From "Call Me the Breeze" by Lynyrd Skynyrd (tap, tremolo + vibrato)

In official content pick slides are marked with an unpitched slide and tremolo (and/or vibrato) and possibly tap and in rare cases with a fret hand mute.

From "Metropolis Part I" by Dream Theater

The above in EOF (both tremolo and vibrato are used)

In the above example, the FHP at the pick scrape is set at low position of the fretboard, to indicate that your left hand should stay where it is. In these cases a two note pick scrape is split into notes (otherwise the chord panel would stretch to cover the whole anchor zone which would look really bad. As an aside, I suspect that with the tools Ubisoft uses it is not possible to make a chord with tap notes.)

If you do not like the way the split notes look and want to use a regular chord at a high FHP position, you should use the 'fingerless' status on it. The 'ignore' status should always be used.

7. Bends with an Unpitched Slide Outward

From “Purple Haze” by Jimi Hendrix

It is not necessary to chart a bend down before the outward slide, unless it is audible of course.

You can also chart a bend down during the slide:

From "Always With Me, Always With You" by Joe Satriani

8. Lyrics

The preference is for short lines, each line beginning with a capital letter (exceptions are found in early DLC and RS1 imported songs).

Words are broken into syllables.

Periods and commas (barring a few exceptions, e.g. "American Pie") are not used for punctuation. Exclamation marks are also used very rarely. However, periods are used in words such as S.O.S., L.A., "G.I. Joe", etc. Other special characters appear occasionally. (An exception are the romanized lyrics in the Japanese DLC, where periods, commas and exclamation points are used)

 

Double quotes in “Peace Sells” by Megadeth

In the romanized Japanese lyrics, を is romanized "wo" (instead of o), and katakana loan words may be written in English. For example, in the lyrics for "Paradox Taisou", アフリカ (afurika) is romanized as Africa, but broken into syllables "A-f-ri-ca" like the Japanese word (the correct English hyphenation is Af-ric-a).

Enabling "Allow RS2 extended ASCII lyrics" in EOF allows you to use all the characters that are included in the default font.

9. Crowd Events

 

In EOF, the applause events can be placed with Beat->Rocksmith->Place RS Event (Although it currently uses E0, E1 and E2, which are not the same as e0, e1 and e2).

 

9.1 Crowd Excitement Type/Speed (e0, e1, e2)

 

In official content one of these is used on the first beat of an arrangement. If none is used, the game defaults to e1.

 

e0 - The crowd waves hands in the air, relatively slowly. For down-tempo songs.

e1 - The crowd jumps about, with hands in the air.

e2 - Similar to e1, not sure what the exact difference is (faster, higher jumps, adds headbanging?). For up-tempo songs.

 

These can be used many times in an arrangement. For example, a fast heavy metal song might start with e2, switch to e0 during a quiet/slow part, then switch back to e2.

 

NOTE: These events do not seem to work correctly if placed between E3 and E13.

 

Here are some examples from official content. The number in the parentheses is the average tempo of the song.

 

e0:

• Queen - We Are the Champions (62)
• Jimi Hendrix - Red House (65)
• Bob Dylan - Knockin' on Heaven's Door (70)
• Bobby “Blue” Bland - Ain't No Love in the Heart of the City (80)

 

e1:

• The Smashing Pumpkins - Cherub Rock (88)
• Dream Theater - Pull Me Under (102)
• Asia - Heat of the Moment (138)
• Chicago - 25 or 6 to 4 (142)
• Devo - Girl U Want (173)

 

e2:

• Ramones - Blitzkrieg Bop (176)
• Brian Setzer - Rock This Town (197)
• Golden Bomber - Earphone (199)
• Iron Maiden - Fear of the Dark (200)
• B'z - Giri Giri Chop (238)

 

9.2 Intro and Outro Applause (E3, D3, E13)

 

E3 begins an intro applause. Although normally used near the beginning of a song, it may be used as late into the song as you like. Often the "correct" place for the applause (where the crowd might actually applaud in a real concert) comes so early that the venue has not faded in yet.

 

D3 begins an outro applause. It seems to have some sort of accuracy check included: miss all the notes in the song and no-one will clap. Used near the end of a song.

 

E13 ends an applause (gradually). Used after both E3 and D3. If not used after E3, the crowd will keep on applauding until the end of the song.

 

In official content the average length of an applause is about 2 seconds (E13 does not have an immediate effect).

 

10. Tones

 

10.1 Tone Change Placement

 

From "Death Mental" by Golden Bomber

 

Tone changes should preferably be placed before the note they occur, not exactly on the note. Otherwise there might be an audible delay of a split second when the tone changes, especially when switching between a clean tone and a distorted tone. In the above picture the tone change is placed a 16th note before the note.

 

10.2 Five Different Tones

 

An arrangement can have five different tones if you set the base tone as different from any of the four tones available for switching. This means that you cannot switch back to the tone the song begins with.

 

1. Add the four tone changes to your arrangement in EOF as you normally would and set any of them as default. 

2.A. In the DLC Builder, change the name of the base tone.

2.B. In the Toolkit, uncheck the checkbox "If checked..." and change the base tone to the tone you want the song to begin with. It should look something like this:

 

11. Misc.

11.1 Scroll Speed

 

The default maximum scroll speed in official content is 1.3. More specifically, if an arrangement has 18 or more difficulty levels, the max scroll speed will be 1.3 or faster (0.6 for "Satch Boogie" lead). Arrangements with fewer difficulty levels will have slower scroll speeds (most often this will mean bass arrangements).

 

Here are a few examples of slower scroll speeds from DLC:

• 1.6 — Nazareth - Hair of the Dog (Rhythm / Levels: 15)
• 1.9 — Frédéric Chopin - Funeral March (Alternate Lead / Levels: 13)
• 2.1 — Spinal Tap - Gimme Some Money (Bass / Levels: 12)
• 2.4 — Howlin' Wolf - Spoonful (Bass / Levels: 11)

Newer DLC seems to stick with 1.3 as the fastest scroll speed, even for fast and difficult songs like "Through the Fire and Flames", "Play With Me" and "Starship Trooper".

11.2 Preview Audio

In official content, the preview audio is 28 seconds long and has a fade-in of up to about 2 seconds and a fade-out of around 3 seconds.

11.3 Tremolo/Whammy Bar

Vibrato may be marked with a normal vibrato, even on open strings.

 

Notes with whammy bar dives usually have no sustain.

 

Dips may be indicated with a short vibrato.

 

From "I Remember You" by Skid Row

11.4 Examples of Ignore Usage

Here a some examples of when the ignore status may be used.

• Notes on the 23rd and 24th frets

This is the only case where the ignore status must be used. Newer versions of EOF handle this automatically.

• Pick scratches (cf. section 6)
• Long trills

From "'Little' Fugue in G minor"

• Effect/ornament slides

From "Foxey Lady" by Jimi Hendrix

From "Gimme Some Money" by Spinal Tap

From "Rainbow in the Dark" by Dio

• Chords with linknext

This will prevent getting "random" misses on a note in the chord.

From "Stray Cat Strut" by Brian Setzer

• Hard to hit harmonics and harmonics not exactly over the fret indicated

From "Pull Me Under" by Dream Theater (Bass)

A harmonic slide up and down the string from "Nemesis" by Arch Enemy

• Last strum before chord change

From "La Bamba" by Ritchie Valens

12. Showlights

Unfortunately there is currently no graphical editor for showlights, and making any large changes to the XML file manually is really tedious. I have been working on an editor which is not much, but is still better than doing it manually.

 

The format of the XML file is easy to understand.

<showlights count="94">
  <showlight time="11.815" note="31"/>
  <showlight time="11.815" note="55"/>
  ...
</showlights>

Time is obviously the time when the note will take effect.

Note can have a value of 24-35, 42, 48-59 or 66-67. Other values are not used in official content and will be ignored by the game.

 

With the showlights XML file you can control three different things: the colors of two types of lights and the time when the laser lights turn on. Everything else (e.g. when certain lights turn on) is controlled by the game.

 

Here is a 7zip archive with screenshots of all the fog and beam colors.

 

12.1 Fog Colors (24 - 35)

27 (beams: 42)

 

These set the color that most of the screen will have. There's not much else to say about them.

 

Imgur gallery

 

12.2 Beam Colors (42 and 48 - 59)

 

58 (fog: 35)

 

These set the color of some lights here and there in the venue. The exact number and type of lights affected will depend on the venue. For example, in at least one venue these set the color of a laser light that is turned on by note 67.

 

42 turns the lights off.

48-59 are the colors in the same order as the fog colors.

 

Imgur gallery

 

12.3 Laser Lights (67 and 66)

 

Off (before 67)

 

On (after 67)

 

67 turns on the laser lights (or spotlight/whatever, depending on the venue). In official content, it is often used at the start of a solo.

 

66 doesn't appear to do anything. From the way it is used (always after 67) my guess is that it was supposed to turn off the laser lights. In official content, very often it is the last showlight note.

 

If there is no note 67, the laser lights will be on from the start.

 

12.4 Misc. Observations

 

A strobe effect can be achieved by simply changing between two colors very quickly. For example, in "Cold Company" there is a part where it switches between 28 (dark blue) and 35 (dark purple) about every 0.2 seconds.

 

Sometimes the last fog color will glitch and become a different color. It will look like this:

 

From "GO FURTHER" by Tak Matsumoto

 

Notice that there are actually three different colors in the screenshot above, when normally you can only have two. I don't know why this happens, but you can avoid it by adding an extra fog color change, at the very end of the audio for example.

 

The pattern any moving lights move in depends on the name of the section, and the pattern will change/reset every time a section changes.

 

A showlights XML file must have at least one fog note and one beam note. Otherwise the game will crash.

13. Further Reading

DDC Improver - A tool created by me that has some features that help you make your customs look more like ODLC when using the Toolkit.

Few Misc. Tips for Beginners (by me) Concerns some basic problems that many customs have.

Polishing Your CDLC (by L33tr) Covers some of the same things as this tutorial. Still, I highly recommend that you read it.

Edited April 5, 20214 yr by iminashi
Removed section about multi-part tone descriptors

Comments are more than welcome.

 

The idea for such a tutorial came to me while I was improving my earlier customs (which is still in progress). It works also as a kind of checklist for myself.

 

I looked through the tutorial list and the closest I found was this tutorial by L33tr, but I wanted something with many pretty pictures in it.

 

I plan on adding to this as I come across anything interesting and as I recall all of the things I probably forgot to mention.

 

Kudos to all the people who put in the extra time and effort to polish their customs.

Note that all official chart are still made by humans and error can and will appear, calling out small irregularity should be avoided as it's clearly not the norm of what DLC looks like. Also avoid any RS1 on disc song or DLC as reference and stick to the most recent DLC cause the RS team chart has change dramatically over the years.

 

Section 2.2.1 :
 

You do want/need a new handshape in some specific situation :

 

 - there's a long run where you might want to put a little reminder

 - but mostly when you are crossing over a section or phrase because RS will break the handshape if it crosses one of those so by displaying it again, you avoid having chord with no handshape at all.

 - indicating a rest between the same chords as you can see in some DLC

 

Section 2.2.2 :

 

That is used to the charter discretion to make it clearer when chord need to be held or not (One exemple)

 

All DLC might use it to different degree of efficiency as it's really up to the creator or tester to see if the chart do convey the correct information at first sight.

 

Section 3.3 :

 

They add handshape to be able to indicate the fingering that the screenshot don't actually show, on some case it might seems useless but can still be an important information for beginner and shouldn't be overlooked

 

Section 9 :

 

If DLC don't do it, i prefer people not to do it first and then ask themself if it's really the way to go...

 

Section 9.1 :

 

I would tend to indicate the chord again just for clarity sake and i think custom tend to display the full chord again too. Unless you're at really high speed, it shouldn't clutter the screen to display the chord again.

 

Section 9.2 :

 

God fucking no... DLC tend to indicate staccato with the accent marking but that's a really on a song per song basis and depending on how you want the accent to be a staccato indication or an actual accent but one song should stay true to their own indication and shouldn't try to mix both. In the worst case scenario : do nothing!

 

_______________________________________________________________________________

 

 

Overall you do cover some interesting point but for me you are going way off on some and completely forgetting the most basic and yet important : Fingering and Fret Hand Position.

 

those are overlooked way too often and i'm pretty sure some beginner might get some pretty bad habit because of it... I mean, who cares about chord name when you don't even know which fingers go where for that crazy ass chord!

I agree with @@firekorn that chord fingering and FHP (especially for tapping or in solos) are very overlooked and have a much more significant impact on the playability of a song than many of the things that are already here (some of which I'd never bother with because of the benefit vs. the amount of time it takes to implement throughout a song)

 

A few other things I'd mention follow.

 

Sections/phrases: You don't mention these at all, but IMO they're an incredibly important part of making good CDLC. From what I've seen most (recent) DLC are pretty densely sectioned (there are definitely exceptions in old DLC like The Thrill is Gone, where the entire outro is one section). I'd say usually something like one every 4 or 8 measures depending on the speed of the song, and maybe more frequently for technical things (like solos). Moreover, recently they seem to have one phrase per section most places, occasionally doing two phrases per section.

 

Another thing that happens with sections is that they control the how "zoomed in" the note highway is, which is why a lot of unsectioned DLC are zoomed all the way out for the entire song.

 

Linknext/slides: There's very little about using linknext status (and maybe also crazy status), but I'd say it's a big part of making some of the things that you've shown (like the chord slides) that tons of people miss.

 

Lyrics: A lot of people just do whole words (or even whole lines) at once instead of syllables. I'd think this should be mentioned if you want to cover all aspects of making a DLC look official. Not to mention the sync is often off, but I don't think I've ever seen someone complain about the sync of the lyrics, even on some DLC where they're rather obviously off.

Writing too elliptically and taking much for granted is a bad habit of mine. I said this was about minor details and I don't consider correct FHPs, chord fingerings, sections, slides and synced lyrics to be minor details, and there are already tutorials for those. I should have at least mentioned them. My bad.

 

I guess there's just so many customs out there that don't bother to have correct FHPs and chord fingerings that those who begin to create their own customs after playing tons of others think that why should they bother with them either. I think that was my attitude when I began (but I have since mended my ways).

 

I guess I should add more content so this tutorial won't just be about minor details. Although I did write about slides in my previous tutorial, I will add something about the things @albatross213 mentioned in the future. For now I've added a brief mention of FHPs etc (1.3).

Thanks for making this guide.  Lots of good stuff and easy to understand.

The main advantage of Handshape over the Arpeggio Box is that it shows the fingering on the guitar displayed at the bottom,

leaving the RS Highway more easy to read.

Your pictures however only show the RS Highway, (just a small detail I noticed in your excellent thread)

The main advantage of Handshape over the Arpeggio Box is that it shows the fingering on the guitar displayed at the bottom,

leaving the RS Highway more easy to read.

Your pictures however only show the RS Highway, (just a small detail I noticed in your excellent thread)

 

The fingering is displayed at the bottom in the same way in both cases. Arpeggios just have the chord box, those bracket thingys and the chord name that handshapes don't have.

 

I'm aware that animated gifs would be better for some of the screenshots.

The main advantage of Handshape over the Arpeggio Box is that it shows the fingering on the guitar displayed at the bottom,

leaving the RS Highway more easy to read.

Your pictures however only show the RS Highway, (just a small detail I noticed in your excellent thread)

 

Oh yeah, I had to stare hard at it for 2 minutes and was still confused. The only difference I could tell between handshape and non-handshaped was the additional sustain. LOL I was going to ask what the point of handshapes was at all (sad, I know, since I've made 50 billion customs).

Finally got around to doing a bit more substantial update.  :ph34r:

 

Added some stuff about FHPs (1.3) and chord fingerings (1.4).

Added links to illustrative animated gifs in 3.2.

Added a tip to 4.2 (High density repeats).

 

Might add something about showlights and crowd events later.

@@iminashi i think you would be better off not talking about showlights, crowd event (and the metronome event) can be interesting but without knowing how many user have deactivated the venue mode ingame and looking at the fact that most of these aren't manageable inside EOF makes me think it's not worth much effort right now.

The crowd events can be done in EOF, but definitely not showlights.

Just checked out the update: cool gifs.

 

As mentioned in 3.2 it's nice to add a handshape to the "destination chord".

 

In addition, ODLC often manipulates the handshape of the initial chord.  You can apply the rule you mentioned in 2.2.1 about leaving a gap between chords.

 

If you need an ODLC example check out the octave slides in Cherub Rock.

 

Whether or not this is worth your time is up to you, but it does help make a chart easier to follow.

If you decide to write about showlights, it would be nice to learn how to shut off all lights (temporarily).  Also how to create a strobe effect. It would be cool to create customs that give people seizures :lol:

@@Rockfirstlast There's no way to shut off all the lights, not that I know of anyhow. The closest thing would be beams off (note 42) and dark purple fog color (35).

 

The strobe effect can be achieved by simply changing between two colors very quickly. For example, in "Cold Company" there is a part where it switches between 28 (dark blue) and 35 (dark purple) about every 0.2 seconds. You'd preferably need an algorithm to generate it, otherwise you're in for some tedious copy-pasting/editing.  :P (I've thrown together such an algorithm in Ruby, but haven't tested what kind of crazy stuff you might achieve with it.)

@@iminashi, I wonder if it was some other song, I fail to find it but I was like is it strobe efferct and when I tried to reproduce it i was like wtf it doesn't work so I guess it depends on bpm and maybe song itself?

@@Alex360 Well, I haven't seen any other notes being used in the DLC that I have, and how quickly you can change the color isn't limited by the song bpm. For example, changing every 0.033 seconds (1/30s) works. ...That gives me an idea to see what it looks like when you make the color changes faster gradually.

@@iminashi, maybe I've got wrong showlights back then I'll look into it soon, maybe we're ok charing fast switching things with fog notes and stuff for creating epilepsiastarting custom :D

jk

Added a new section about crowd events (9.).

Added some stuff about tones (10.).

Added a section about showlights (12.) and some misc. stuff (11.).

Added more minor stuff about handshapes (3.5 & 3.6) and examples of how ignore may be used (11.3).

Also made some updates to sections 6, 7 and 11.1.

Excellent job.  Can you please make a PDF version and post the link?

Excellent job.  Can you please make a PDF version and post the link?

 

I was just thinking that I should probably make a PDF version.  :D

Can you elaborate on showlights?

 

Where in the XML do we put the code?

 

Does the count matter?

 

In a song with more than one arrangement do you need the code in every XML file?

 

Showlights are easily the most exciting thing I've learned about in years of making customs! It's like a whole new world! Lots of my tabs are live songs too so I can even find recordings and try to somewhat match the lighting changes. You rock thanks for putting this together!

The showlights are a separate XML file that you add as an arrangement like guitar or bass.

The toolkit automatically generates showlights into a file cst_showlights.xml.

 

About 'count' I'm not sure if it matters.