Karmeleaux

http://customsforge.com/topic/60107-customsforge-april-newsletter-newsletter-issue-18-cf-charting-creators-special/?do=findComment&comment=336062

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I do kinda feel the 'more paths imply higher quality' one doesn't hold much weight for me - I feel a bass-only CDLC will usually have a higher chance of having a quality bass part than a lot of songs with less time specifically spent on testing bass. Ideally the situation would be true for lead-only, but not necessarily in my experience.

As firekorn said, ultimately clear feedback will help more than any sort of voting and rating system - these come up a lot and I feel they're most often hijacked by how excited users are for content rather than any mark of quality anyway. And no shade against excited folks, just these systems often end up fuzzy on what they represent.

For a recent example, my database entry for Do Not Disturb was sitting at four stars twelve hours after I uploaded a wrong file that didn't even have the right dang song. So like, the rating didn't clearly communicate to other users there was a error and didn't communicate what kind of error to me. Thankfully, folks did give clear feedback on this error and I was able to correct the mistake.

And all my great strides in improving the overall quality of my CDLC has come from other people than just sitting by myself. It's largely been overhearing things in the creators room of the Discord, but that's again because other locales are often so quiet. I do confess I tend to be resilient to making changes when folks first offer feedback, but that's a personal flaw I'm working on that not every charter has and even I relent quickly when something's brought up again.

All that said, I do confess I am guilty of going silent on feedback as well. I have a big ol' spreadsheet of my feedback for all the customs I've downloaded but I stopped sharing them for various reasons. I'll try to get back into the habit of posting them over the summer, at the moment I don't quite have the free time, I shouldn't have even typed this message, oops.

http://www.cdlc.wit-n-wiz.com/RamblinMan/

For me, this notes.eof should demonstrate both of these issues I was having if one tries to create a new handshape or precise select like in tech note view. As I realized after some testing, it seems like it might be exclusive creating a notes.eof from a GH/RB notes.mid than any created from New. This is how I personally do most of my charts, but I imagine I'm in a very select minority that does so nowadays.

EDIT: For clarity, I mean I'm importing from notes.mid from projects that ripped GH/RB songs to formats for FoF and Phase Shift.

Re: Handshapes: Unfortunately I can't screenshot that it's showing h because it reads Print Screen as I press it, but I can confirm that it's saying "104 ('h')" and still creating arpeggio markers. In one file I was working on (A RB3 Pro chart I was updating) so far it ALWAYS becomes an arpeggio without fail, before that one it seemed to be somewhere about one in three or two times in other projects (but I'd simply tap the same key again while holding down CTRL+SHIFT so I'm pretty confident I was hitting h every time). I am someone who very often uses the Rock Band .mid's as starting points (for beatmap and lyrics), if that might be relevant to pinpointing this issue.

Re: Tech Note Selection: Similarly, I have tried SHIFT+L when in tech note view and it still selects every tech note in the file for me, regardless of lane or status.

Re: Slide Preference: I would very much like that slide preference if it's not a hassle to introduce; as mentioned none of these make anything impossible for me, they'd simply be more convenient.

EDIT: Addendum: Tried handshapes and tech notes in a project that wasn't started from an imported .mid (I do have some of those!) and both worked as intended as far as my testing went. So likely this is some oddity created from importing the .mid from a GH or RB3 file. It's a niche case so unless you think it's simple to solve or related to some deeper problems that need fixing probably isn't a priority.

Hey! I noticed fairly recently there was an update for when loading an ogg it defaults to the project folder rather than having to navigate specifically there, which saves me some notable time on every project, thanks! I thought about requesting this at some point but felt it might be too niche to put time into, so it was a very pleasant surprise when it happened on its own.

Some fairly niche requests I would like to make, as someone who does the majority of their tabbing out in EoF:

-It's common for me to hit Ctrl+Shift+H to create a handshape and for it to create an arpeggio marker instead. This isn't a huge deal, hitting it again on the same area DOES create a handshape the second time and then I just have to hit T to remove crazy from the notes, but it does throw off my flow a bit.

-Dead notes (both the Shift+X and Ctrl+X kind) don't change in fret number when you select them and hit +/- or Ctrl+Scroll Wheel. A lot of times I'll be tabbing something out and realize 'Oh that's actually a string higher/lower' and move the riff to the string and adjust the fret values as necessary with a quick scroll wheel, but then again I have to hit Shift+X for any dead note and scroll wheel, then hit Shift+X again to toggle back to the actual riff. (Ctrl+X dead notes probably don't need to change because I imagine anyone using that is intentionally setting the fret value to zero, but Shift+X saves the specific fretting so)

-Tech notes have no 'select like' options. Both internet tabs and myself have a bad tendency to exaggerate bends to twice their amount. I've been trying to right this recently, but I've found with a full tab if I try to select like on any tech note, it selects every tech note, making it a daunting task to manually correct. I think this might have come up before and it was an oddity of how tech notes are done, apologies if so.

Nothing huge, I still remain amazed at the program's stability and versatility.

EDIT: Oh in addition to dead notes, increasing/decreasing slides would be nice (pitched and unpitched) when changing the fret value for a selection of notes. I know changing tunings changes these values, and I think I personally routinely run into wanting to change slide values with the fret than just wanting to change the fret value (especially with pitched slides, wherein I often change the fret value for the start of the slide and the end of the slide it's linknexted to with shortcuts, but I forget to get the slide so all the slides look wonky in first test).

Yeah I ran into this same behavior when I was doing Start a Band and at the time my solution was just removing the handshape marking from the specific chord iteration that slides up. I didn't think to share the behavior for deeper investigation though.

"-(minor) Consistent 'miss' markers"

 

Disconnected mode won't display any miss marker though.

 

I think it's largely more important to see how the chart is. If there's a good amount of work spent on the chart, i don't see any reason to doubt that the tone won't at least be somewhat fitting. And tone can always be switch if the user feel it's not good enough.

Disconnected mode isn't available for mulitplayer. I have previously thought of doin' separate lead and bass videos in disconnected mode and really I guess I should, I need to recognize I'm probably in the minority of players who feels it'll be more convenient to see them at once.

Thanks for your input.

EDIT: For clarity, I mean 'playthrough' videos of CDLC, but I'm a doofus and used vague terminology and can't figure out how to edit the title because of prior-mentioned doofusness

Hey y'all, slowly workin' on a big update of old CDLC and I was thinking of just uploading videos of multiplayer with no input for video previews for interested parties. As far as I've considered, the pros and cons:

Pros:

-A preview of lot of information in one video (lead, bass, vocals)

-Saves me time, I don't have to play a song two or more times (and I can do something else while it's recording)

Cons:

-No preview of tone

-Scrunched up UI makes it difficult to get a full feel

-(minor) Consistent 'miss' markers

By and large I feel like the cons are counterbalanced for what I personally use video previews for, which is a general glance at the chart(s). A viewer might not get a feel for the entire chart from such a preview but any big mistakes would usually still be noticeable, so if one sees a big mistake it gives them reason to pass or leave feedback. And if one does not, it seems like it'd be worth a download (and then leaving feedback if one notices a mistake then).

However, I can very much understand tone previews being an important part. I know I have downloaded some CDLC that have fairly accurate charts but tones that make it a really rough experience - in fact I know I've RELEASED some in the past (and probably still have a few out there, in part hence the update).

So I guess this comes down to - for people who watch preview videos - what is important to you? Just getting a general feel of the chart visually, or is tone preview an actively important part of a preview video?

And if you don't watch preview videos, do feel free to share what WOULD be important to you and/or your general feelings on this approach. I'll certainly consider everything I hear in here.

Thanks!

Adding just an additional leading two seconds of silence did fix this visual glitch, thanks. Apologies, it was my first song since my return that had such an early tone switch (possibly ever? Likely, if a song's tone heavy I usually consider it a hard pass).

I poked some tips and tricks when I returned to get a refresher, but I'll take a harder look at firekorn's tutorial to make sure I've got a handle on everything that's considered common knowledge nowadays.

@@Karmeleaux your PC is old and slow? I've got significant delay in graphics part of the tone change after I manually switch it I can hear it faster than amps drop down or sometimes it takes some time to load tone to the rs input mixer, but for powerful PC\MAC you won't met those circumstances at all. and yes @@iminashi has tools to fix ddc work after, not sure why @@Chlipouni haven't fixed at leas 0 sec bug yet?

My computer is like three years old, but it was an above average spec at the time. I suspected the tone actually was changing, but tones are something I have very low confidence about so if the game displayed something different than what I thought I trusted the game over me.

As stated, it's near definitely a visual glitch due to a tone change before the ten second mark, I'll add two seconds at the beginning later today when I rotate back to it and that'll likely solve it. It was upping my anxiety so I'm working on my off-project at the moment, as this is a cycle I developed for myself to avoid burning myself out with stress.

I do appreciate all the information offered though.

I took a three year break from charting, I looked at some refreshers when I came back but I'm sure that's not the only 'general rule' I missed (I legit wish I could just transcribe the songs and have someone else worry about tone nonsense et al, but such is life). It's definitely a bit unusual to have to add an extra two seconds to the beginning just for that, but I guess if that's how it goes then that's how it goes.

I tested it and the tone change itself happens at the correct time, only the "tone switch" text comes late.

It may be due to the difficulty setting stuff the game displays at the beginning of a song (or not).

Adding more leading silence might fix it.

Interesting, thank you! The song has some non-negligible leading silence already, but it's got a very fast tempo so it's probably not making the usual difference to hide this quirk.

There's a good chance this isn't a Toolkit issue, but I was told to post near this area because this is where all the peeps who know the guts of Rocksmith hang.

Short version:

Got a custom right now where if I select it under Learn a Song, the first tone change starts late. If I choose to restart it from the pause menu, it changes at the correct time. But if I back out and select it again, it starts late again. Choosing restart from the in-song menu has it start at the correct place again. And so forth.

The EoF and XML have the correct start time:

http://www.cdlc.wit-n-wiz.com/AirbrushedAlpha/EoF-XML.jpg

But the first time it starts about here:

http://www.cdlc.wit-n-wiz.com/AirbrushedAlpha/20181010193033_1.jpg

And on in-song restarts it correctly starts around here:

http://www.cdlc.wit-n-wiz.com/AirbrushedAlpha/20181010193046_1.jpg

I'm stumped how I hecked this up so the files are up at:

http://www.cdlc.wit-n-wiz.com/AirbrushedAlpha/

I've changed default tones and moved the first tone change markers around a bit in various iterations as well as deleted and regenerated the XML and arrangement in the Toolkit, but they've had no impact on this issue. The part in question is on REAL_GUITAR (Lead in-game), REAL_GUITAR_22 (Bonus Lead in-game) is synth and has no tone changes.

Tones are lifted directly from Chompers.

Any help would be appreciated, thanks for your time.

As both a charter and someone leaving feedback, I do think autofollow for the uploader would be nice - I do click the follow button after upload myself, but even that's also made more difficult with the not uncommon CloudFlare error and having to navigate to the page from elsewhere. Automentioning the charter in comments could be a nice alternative as well, especially as it's difficult to navigate to the forum post to click the mention button (and I don't see a way to mention elsewhere, but no doubt button blindness on my part) as there's a way from the specific forum post to go to the specific CDLC page, but not vice versa (back to the forums button literally just takes you back to the forums instead of the specific topic).

I don't think this would solve the lack of meaningful feedback, but I do think it would ensure the charter is alerted to any meaningful feedback they get.

Honestly, though, this forum gets so weird sometimes that someone quoted and mentioned me in a topic I followed and I STILL  didn't get an alert, so now I actually keep the submitted CDLC forum open and just check that as far back to the last topic I know I saw feedback on, which like not everyone can be that committed/obsessive.

I'll also crosspost my musing on a non-rating feedback system to ensure more meaningful (but likely less used, unfortunately) feedback because why not, who's gonna stop me.

I've been thinking on this after some discussion on the Discord the other day, and I think the most informative way would be something like a feedback form like:

What path are you providing feedback on?

(Dropdown menu of Lead, Rhythm, Bass - one at a time if the person desires to offer feedback on multiple)

What, if any, audio issues did you experience? (choose all that apply)

Dead Tone

No Tone Changes

Tone Loud

Tone Quiet

Song Loud

Song Quiet

Clipping or Other Audio Issues

Something like that, also for Chart (including fretting and sync/beatmap) and Lyrics (though definitely not as important, it'd be nice). Probably an open-ended response form for specifics in each section if the person desires to specify.

Though you'd have to be logged in, of course, I think having the feedback be anonymous would allow people to be more honest.

After this information is collected, it could be displayed like:

'2 people have provided feedback on this CDLC on Lead

Dead Tone: 100% of feedback reported this issue

Song Loud: 50% of feedback reported this issue'

This would give an idea of how many people provided feedback and what are the most commonly reported problems. Because it's focused on specific but common issues and explicitly for feedback people who misuse rating systems would likely be discouraged from engaging in it and fudging it up.

Of course, while this a nice li'l fantasy, it's non-negligible work to consider and I think where the community is now engagement would be too low to have it be meaningful or worthwhile for the effort to set up something like this, unfortunately.

Ultimately this post is just where a mental exercise to try to collect meaningful feedback ended up.

Looks like that works, thanks. Sorry about the slow response, was plannin' on PMin' later today.

 

. . .

Hm, that sounds unlikely to me but you probably know better than I do. It does seem to work on ultimate guitar though.

 

I'm curious to what kind of rating that would be and I would warmly welcome any kind of rating system.

Thanks for taking the time to reply btw! :)

 

Having come from multiple sites that rate rhythm game charts, I can confirm how much someone likes a song very much factors into how most people rate things. How well the person can play it also is routinely a factor. Actual quality is unfortunately not one of the ruling factors because it's not something we're quite as emotional about.

Even here I have definitely seen people rate my topic five stars if it's a popular song shortly after upload, and I've seen other inaccurate ratings as I go on my great CDLC quest.

It's a very nice idea, but as said I don't think there's a way to enforce a rating system that's meaningful and helpful to others.

This local rating thing seems like a good compromise.

@@cozy1

Doin' quick tests looks like 2 is addressed, thanks. However, the file naming issue still seems to be present in my experience.

Regarding 2:

Nope, they're 2014 CDLC. Double-checking it's actually only a small minority of my old CDLC templates, but in fact all my new CDLC templates are suffering from this now that I've reloaded them.

Screenshot of Land of Sunshine - one of the few old ones affected, but it's the same for every one of my new CDLC:

http://www.cdlc.wit-n-wiz.com/export.jpg

When I'm creating a new CDLC template or loading most of my old CDLC templates it has the full default 'All supported files' as well as the drop-down for each individual type.

http://www.cdlc.wit-n-wiz.com/Land%20of%20Sunshine/Faith-No-More_Land-of-Sunshine_RS2014.dlc.xml

That's a link to Land of Sunshine's dlc.xml template, which was the first old project I noticed it in. But as I mentioned this narrowing of available audio type selection seems to be affecting all of my modern stuff now I've double checked, so I could easily upload any of those for further examination, as well as anything else you need/desire.

Hopefully I'm not being as foolish this time. I noticed these previously and tried to see if they were exclusive to older versions, but then I tripped over my own incompetence in updating. Still got them in the new Toolkit, though:

1. '.' in artist name (possibly song name too) ends filename early

When I try to generate Birth in Reverse by St. Vincent, it says it'll automatically generate it as 'St.-Vincent_Birth-In-Reverse_v1_1' but when I generate it simply is named 'St_p.psarc'. Manually deleting the '.' seems to have it generate the full name.

If multiple charters do not manually edit the filename nor choose artist name acronyms, this could lead to some filename conflicts, but that's kinda a nested if.

2. loading a really old package leaves the only option of compatible audio as .wem for that package

I got some really old songs (three-plus years) I'm trying to update, but I notice when I load the package and want to generate new audio (usually changing the song preview) it only lets me choose .wem files for that.

If I switch to a newer package it goes back to the default more expansive options of including .wav and .ogg, and obviously the same if I just create the package from scratch (which isn't that bad due to all the automation of the process now), but just figure I'd mention.

@@Karmeleaux

 

Hey, Karm, didn't you tried to unlock your .zip file you've dl'ed from the toolkit site? that should rempve message about cas policy and such!

 

there's a lot more topics on this over CF

http://customsforge.com/index.php/topic/40454-problems-getting-v2841-69972b7e-win-to-work/?p=269540

http://customsforge.com/index.php/topic/45118-rs-toolkit-net-sandboxing-error/?hl=policy&do=findComment&comment=281084

 

Fair enough, the first one came up but didn't seem relevant, I feel like a fool now. Oh well, thanks!

Apologies if this has been covered elsewhere, I did a cursory search and couldn't find anything.

When I start up the Toolkit, I get this error:

http://www.cdlc.wit-n-wiz.com/Error1.jpg

Despite that, it seems to work fine after dismissing it.

When I try to update to the beta, I get a similar error:

http://www.cdlc.wit-n-wiz.com/Error2.jpg

However, this time the error does impact the function and the update does not apply.

I'm using Windows 8, assistance would be welcome, thanks.

Did a few Five Iron Frenzy bass customs to test out my ears, and unfortunately found myself wanting. Largely a ska-punk band, but the two customs I explicitly got to testing are Third World Think Tank and Get Your Riot Gear, the former of which pushes harder into punk and the latter is definitely a swing song, so I can understand if they aren't exactly what testers are expecting. Rambling aside:

Third World Think Tank

-Another set of ears on this would be good.

Get Your Riot Gear

-In particular opinions on the chorus. It doesn't sound good to me an octave lower, but the current octave makes that chord way harder. Opinions in general are welcome.

Third World Think Tank uses Time Bomb as a tone and Get Your Riot Gear uses Guns of Brixton.

I assumed they got rid of all pro parts since i haven't heard of the fact that they still support pro drums, my bad.

 

I'm curious about why you aren't appealed by that idea @@Karmeleaux

No worries.

I thought about mentioning the reasons, but I felt I might have come off as negative when it's largely personal stuff.

First and foremost is my electric drumset is on the other side of my apartment from my PC, and there's no easy way to move or connect them.

Second is I feel using the Rocksmith 2014 interface for drums is sorta like using the Rocksmith 1 interface for guitar: It's 'neat' in a 'gimmicky' sort of way, but it's not that intuitive or polished on its own (this wording sounds WAY more dismissive than to this idea than I intend; exactly as dismissive as I am towards Rocksmith 1's interface, though, god, those were dark times).

I feel like if I did have a way to easily connect my drumset to my PC, I'd probably default to Frets on Fire/Phase Shift/other free games in that vein designed with drums in mind over this, as this is a new language to learn to analogue to drum sheet music with the most notable advantage being the ability to mark a few techniques that cannot be well-represented in a three tom/three cymbal language (i.e. differentiating between playing the bell, among some other things like when those charts do get superweird or ugly because the toms and cymbals played share the same lane).

I suppose another advantage this does have is making Rocksmith 2014 one's one-stop shop for playing music which is a nice sentiment, but if I'm at my PC I don't have much problem switching between applications, especially if I feel like one is better suited for the task at hand.

I feel like I am coming off as overly critical here, but I'm not trying to be. The idea has merit and clearly has people interested, it's just not my jam.

@@Rockfirstlast I wouldn't wait on RB4 since they get rid of the "pro" part which included the 3 cymbals on the drum kit which makes a lot of difference when it comes to realism.

Wow that sucks if they really did get rid of cymbals.  Hopefully they change their minds and at least let us use the old ones.  I guess it'll probably be set in stone if that's what they have at E3 in a couple weeks.

Where did you hear that? Literally the first announcement for Rock Band 4 included the fact they're still supporting Pro Drums, just not Pro Guitar with the quiet implication that Rocksmith 2014 won out there (nor Keys at all because ???). It's likely cymbals will be an add-on as per the Rock Band 2 set, but I have very little doubt that they won't release 'em.

That said, as someone who used to identify primarily as a drummer, I'd strongly recommend the alternative of finding a cheap electronic drumkit and getting a MIDI adapter for Rock Band (which this time is an assumption on my part they're gonna make again) because I went through like four of the Rock Band kits before that was an option. Though maybe they've fixed it in the Rock Band 4 kit (probably not).

On the specific general topic of this thread, I don't think this option holds much appeal to me for a variety of reasons, but it's an interesting idea and exciting for people who are, so keep on rockin'.