iminashi

FWIW I've been working on an editor. For now it's just a list of the notes and the GUI would need to be changed to something else to actually make more extensive editing of the showlights convenient.

And for the past two days I've been trying to get this thing working:

Not sure what was meant by "unlocking the zip in properties". 

Right click the zip file, select Properties and near the bottom of the window there should be a checkbox for "Unblock".

The cst_showlights.xml file is in all of my CDLC work directories.  :)

When you use your own file, currently the Toolkit requires that the filename ends in "_showlights.xml".

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.

This was an issue that @@I)ark_Seph mentioned to me.

Here's an example XML:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Pk4yEd8KB2vDTFTVX7Z5HXJEVQK5c9Rq

DDC will create a new empty phrase at 5.167, which breaks the handshape in game.

Somewhat related, I noticed that in one of my own customs there is an 8 bar phrase that ends with three empty bars and then a single sustained note. DDC creates an empty phrase for the three empty bars and places the last note into its own phrase. I guess I can live with that, though it is a bit silly to have a phrase with just one note in it.

Do you have knowledge about handshapes ?

Is it still possible to have the endTime of an handshape equals to the startTime of the following one ?

In customs that can happen. In ODLC there is always a small gap between handshapes.

However, handshapes can be inside other handshapes, which is needed if you want to use chords inside arpeggios.

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

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.

This reminded me that I had ran into this too but then forgot about it.  :P

https://drive.google.com/open?id=19KLiGZPTX--m_r6VbwYkn3-SsSYvSOC6

Here's an XML with a single phrase where it happens. DDC generates levels where the slide out has three notes when the chord itself has two notes.

Another issue with this phrase is that a muted strum at the end (at 15.895) gets the sustain of the previous chord when it is reduced to a single note.

Are you using the latest beta Toolkit where such an issue regarding linknext has been fixed?

And also, putting 'split' on a chord that EOF splits automatically will export duplicate notes into the XML.

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

http://guitarlist.net/ has scores for Japanese artists, but there's no way to download them as GP files.

I think I've gotten an error message like that before. It was because some of the Toolkit's files were blocked by Windows. Should be fixed by unblocking the zip file from the file properties before unzipping it.

It's just moving to the position beforehand, with an FHP set at the beginning of a noguitar section. It doesn't serve much practical purpose except maybe controlling the camera. Some ODLC also have an FHP at the beginning of the beatmap, but that's pretty rare.

Added some stuff about tones (10.).

The "m" chords is a bug in DDC that's fixed in v3.4.

Some of my favorites are:

Driver's High (Probably my most played CDLC. I was always under the impression that the one made by Anchang-Style was made by you  :P )

Lies and Truth (The arrangement is amazing)

Fate

Lover Boy (I'll try to make a playthrough video at some point)

And anything from the Dune album.

@@Berneer

I've been reading the tutorial and here are some thoughts:

-In Figure 5a, linkNext will not actually be used since the Toolkit ignores it in this case. Also, in the last three pictures (and in many of your other example screenshots), EOF optimizes the notes into a single note when you link one note into another one that has identical techniques (none in this case).

-The Toolkit selects the longest sustain of a chord's chordNotes and uses that as the sustain of the chord. In the SNG file, chordNotes do not have the attribute "sustain", so it is impossible for them to have different sustains. If you wanted to do that, linkNext is required (which is pretty much what chordify does):

-I tried creating the example in Figure 5 and it crashes the game for me... (and the culprit is not the showlights file ;))

-You can think of masks as on/off switches. In RS, the notes have masks for PALMMUTE, HAMMERON, SLIDE, etc. In the SNG file, linkNext is actually two masks: PARENT and CHILD. PARENT doesn't affect the appearance of a note, but CHILD causes the note to not be drawn.

-Open notes glitch:

The technical reason for why this happens is that a chord has an open note, but the chordNote doesn't have the OPEN mask. A chord that has open notes, but doesn't have chordNotes will cause this.

-As for the example from Tenacious D – The Metal; I don't own it so I can't look at the XML file, but it is not related to the sustain limitation of chordNotes since it doesn't use chords. I tried creating something similar quickly, and interestingly enough, I ran into the linkNext issue in the Toolkit:

I'll need some time to read all that.  :)  That reminded me of something though:

The current implementation in the Toolkit that applies the mask related to linkNext to the notes (the CHILD mask, which causes the note to not be drawn, only its sustain) doesn't check the linkNext status of the chordNotes. It only checks the chord itself. That's why this doesn't currently work:

Also, as I mentioned in the issue I posted at Github, Rocksmith will not draw the next note of a linkNext note (note with PARENT mask) even if it doesn't have the CHILD mask in the SNG file, except if the note is an open note. Which makes sense, since I don't think ODLC uses open string notes that are linked to a technique.

In official content, if any of the notes in the chord have linkNext, the chord itself has linkNext. Cases where only some of the notes in the chord have linkNext aren't that common, but I can find no exceptions (there are no chords with linkNext=0 that have chordNotes with linkNext=1).

Here are some XML examples:

As for chordify, I'm not sure I understand how you're supposed to use it. I apply it on a chord and it makes a chord that has linkNext, but doesn't have any chordNotes, which makes the game crash...

A while back I ran into a bug in the Toolkit's linknext handling. I've rewritten the part to fix the bug, but  I think a change should be made in EOF before I commit it.

Cases like these

should be exported in the same way:

<chord time="20.998" chordId="2" linkNext="1" >
   <chordNote time="20.998" string="1" fret="5" sustain="0.500" linkNext="1" leftHand="1" />
   <chordNote time="20.998" string="2" fret="7" leftHand="3" />
   <chordNote time="20.998" string="3" fret="7" leftHand="4" />
</chord>

I.e. linknext on the chord itself and only on the note(s) that should have it.

While doing some tests, I also came across some obscure cases where things aren't working as expected.

Here the second chord, with the slide out, doesn't get split into notes automatically.

In this case the first chord is split into notes while it shouldn't be.

Not related to linknext, but if you import a RS XML that has something like this in it into EOF, the sustain of the single note will be cut short (stops at the first chord).

Ubisoft's character substitution for the sortable fields is pretty inconsistent.

&:

I don't think the substitutions matter much, except for some artist names, if one wants them to be sorted together with ODLC (e.g. "B.B. King" is sorted as "BB King").

All the characters (except for ★ and ➨) from the lyrics font texture can be used in artist name and title.

@@raynebc The font texture used for lyrics can be easily found in the game files, but it's not the same font used for the artist/title fields.

I agree with Billkwando that when it comes to tilde, it has been tested enough to prove that it doesn't cause problems.

As for other characters in the artist/title/album names breaking the game, until someone demonstrates a case where that happens, I remain skeptical.  :)