EOF 1.8RC13 - Now with Immerrock support

[raynebc]

I might have changed redo to CTRL+R despite common conventions because I needed CTRL+Y available for marking yellow cymbals. For the sake of consistency, I'd prefer to keep related shortcuts consistent with each other wherever possible (CTRL+Y is mark yellow cymbal, CTRL+B is mark blue cymbal, etc).

The thick note marker line issue is likely that the notes's positions are rounding up/down during the paste operation, so when you paste over existing notes, it's possible that both the old note and the pasted note near that position are kept because they are at different time stamps. Since which direction the rounding goes depends on the anchors involved where the notes are pasted, there can be some inconsistency regarding which notes land EXACTLY on top of notes and which ones land one millisecond ahead/behind (this would cause multiple notes near the same position, resulting in the line markers that appear thicker because they are multiple lines that touch each other). I could probably add some logic that forces two notes that are within 1 or 2 ms of each other to merge, but I'm not sure what else can be done besides that as far as automated cleanup goes. I don't think EOF was ever meant to paste notes on top of other notes to replace them. The threshold for how close two notes have to be to merge is somewhat flexible though, I can probably raise it although I think 2 should be adequate for resolving these paste issues.

Without checking myself, I am not sure how FoFiX or Phase Shift would handle this. The two notes would be within 1 ms or so of each other, so their hit windows should overlap. However, it's quite possible that it still expects one hit per note and could force you to miss one.

Regarding the paste option, you can use "old paste" (CTRL+P) if you want to paste the notes so that the first pasted note goes EXACTLY where the seek bar is, and all other notes that are pasted are pasted using their original distances apart from each other. The normal paste logic will paste all notes so that they are in the same position within the destination beat as they were when they were copied, and is meant to try to retain grid snap between copy and paste operations. For example, if you copy just one note that is 57% into a beat, new paste will paste it 57% into whichever beat the seek bar is within, whereas old paste will paste that one note where the seek bar is.

[italianstal1ion]

CTRL+R: Alright, that makes sense. Didn't think about the pro cymbal shortcut.

The merging idea sounds great. I use copy/paste over old areas a lot and it'd be wonderful not to worry about doubling. I don't think anything else would be needed for automatic cleanup - as long as the notes that appear slightly before/after are within 1-2 milliseconds. I think merging within 2 ms would work.

Feedback just replaces the entire section with the pasted notes. If you highlight and copy 4 bars of a blank section, copying it anywhere will replace the next four bars with blankness. It doesn't leave the previous notes, it deletes them.

Old paste seems entirely useless unless you can snap the seek bar to a certain measurement, otherwise you'll probably always be off. Feedback snaps the seek bar to the nearest 1/4th, 1/8th, 1/16th (whichever you have the grid snap to). Old paste would work fine if there was some way to snap the seek bar to a certain measurement. Is that possible? And instead of freely moving when you press left or right, it jumps to the next measurement that you have the grid snap to? I feel like this would be an invaluable option. If the seek bar snapped to the closest 1/8th (again, whatever the grid snap is set to) and moved forward and backward on the grid snap you set, then you could chart without having to use the mouse at all (this is almost exactly how feedback works). Plus, I could snap the seek bar to wherever I like and use old paste to replace the notes.

I can definitely see the usefulness of the "paste" method though.

I don't know if Phase Shift or FoFiX would merge notes that were too close to each other. I have a feeling that they wouldn't though. So having doubling in the midi would require 2 hits within the hit windows of both notes, when really there is only one bass note there.

Let me know what you think, and thanks for the quick and serious replies!

[raynebc]

I'll see if I can add a seek to next grid snap feature. Until then, you may find some use out of seek to next beat (Pg Dn) or seek to previous beat (Pg Up).

[italianstal1ion]

Thanks, the Pg Up/Pg Dn will do for now - usable if the seek to grid proves too difficult/unmanageable. Shouldn't the controls be switched though? Pg Up goes to next beat and PgDn goes to previous? That's just me though.

Sorry about all the complaining, it really is a great editor!

[raynebc]

My take on it is that it makes sense in that it's similar to how you jump forward in documents, web pages, etc. where content is read from top to bottom.

[davidsevenfold]

whoa, you guys be typing essays all up in this thread

[Bigjoe5]

I would like to report that I have modified the midi file for "Have a Nice Day" by Bon Jovi to include a Pro Bass part created with EOF and played it successfully in-game (and posted a score for it to the leaderboard... perhaps I should have changed the song ID in the DTA :P). Slides are wonky, as predicted, but there were no other perceptible issues.

Some issues/suggestions with/for EOF:

1. Pro Bass charting is... weird. When I mouse-over the top string, the note appears on the bottom string, and is placed there when I double-click. Made charting the song really awkward. Pro Guitar does not have this issue.
2. I second what was just said about paste overwriting notes in a phrase (or at least have an optional different type of paste that overwrites all the notes in the selected area - is there a command to delete all notes in a selected area? edit: yeah, there is - that makes it a bit easier to paste over areas, since I can just delete them first.). Also, that "seek next grid snap" feature you just mentioned will be very useful for pasting, and I was going to suggest it.
3. Pro Keys and harmonies. Obviously you've got a lot of things to do, but I personally have interest in charting them for legacy RB songs.

4. Chord Notation.

It's pretty tricky to determine when to use / Chord notation, and it often depends on the context of the chord in the song (i.e. what the other instruments are doing). Here's what I'd suggest:

1st Go through the database of standard chords to see if there are any matches.
2nd If no matches, remove the lowest note and try again. If there are matches, use the matched chord, and add / notation.
3rd Give the player the option to add / notation and override EOF's auto-chord detection system if necessary (maybe that's already possible - I haven't tried, myself. edit: yes you can. Nice.).

Keep up the great work!

[raynebc]

I would like to report that I have modified the midi file for "Have a Nice Day" by Bon Jovi to include a Pro Bass part created with EOF and played it successfully in-game (and posted a score for it to the leaderboard... perhaps I should have changed the song ID in the DTA :P). Slides are wonky, as predicted, but there were no other perceptible issues.

I'm glad to hear it works well! If you have time, could you try resaving it as a 5 or 6 lane bass chart to see if RB3 can even handle bass tracks using more than 4 strings? My understanding is that all official pro bass charts have been limited to 4 strings.

1. Pro Bass charting is... weird. When I mouse-over the top string, the note appears on the bottom string, and is placed there when I double-click. Made charting the song really awkward. Pro Guitar does not have this issue.

This is a bit odd, it looks like the "pen note" is reversed if the following conditions are true: 1. You are using piano roll input mode, 2. You are authoring a pro guitar/bass track using less than 6 strings and 3. You do not have the "inverted notes" option enabled (this option displays lane 1 at the bottom of the piano roll instead of the top). I can offer a few workarounds until this gets fixed with the next beta release:

*Choose a different set of options, ie. try inverted notes or a different input mode. My own personal preference is Rex Mundi, you just mouse to where you want notes and use the number keys (1 through 6) to place gems in the specified lane number. Especially for pro guitar/bass authoring, I have to imagine it would be the most convenient way to go. If you are able to reproduce this inverse "pen note" effect with input modes other than piano roll, please let me know.
*It looks like if you change the number of strings, the pen note seems to work correctly until you access certain menus (ie. the Preferences menu) or until you change tracks. You could try setting it to 5 strings, back to 4 strings, and it should work correctly while you stay in the pro bass track.
*Leave the number of strings in the pro bass track at 6 until you're done authoring, then at the end, change it to 4 strings and save one last time. You probably don't even need to lower the number of strings to 4 as long as you only author for the 4 lowest strings, just ensure the DTA has the correct information.

2. I second what was just said about paste overwriting notes in a phrase (or at least have an optional different type of paste that overwrites all the notes in the selected area - is there a command to delete all notes in a selected area?). Also, that "seek next grid snap" feature you just mentioned will be very useful for pasting, and I was going to suggest it.

Would you guys like a prompt asking if you want the paste operation to delete notes (existing notes within the portion of the track difficulty between the first and last pasted note, which is what I understand Feedback does) or if it merges notes? Would you want it to be a permanently-configurable preference or a prompt that is asked (if applicable) during each paste operation?

3. Pro Keys and harmonies. Obviously you've got a lot of things to do, but I personally have interest in charting them for legacy RB songs.

I definitely will be getting to this, but getting pro guitar authoring perfected has been taking longer than I thought. I probably won't begin working on other instruments until EOF 1.8 final is released.

4. Chord Notation.

The 3 part method you mentioned just about matches exactly how I planned to implement it. If the first pass during a lookup doesn't find a chord match, I was just going to ignore the note played on the lowest used string and re-perform the lookup. If this second pass finds a match, it will be considered a slash chord (ie. (the matched chord) / (the note played on the lowest used string)). I was also going to add a check box to the pro guitar note edit dialog menu, so that you can manually indicate that it is a slash chord. This checkbox will alter the chord lookup to skip the first pass of the lookup and only run the second pass instead. This way you could get a chord to display as a slash chord instead of an inversion of a normal guitar chord. After some thought, I'd figured this must have been how Harmonix had done it, since they use a slash chord indicator to override the game's chord detection system, and in some cases, even use a manually defined name to override the detected name. It's good to hear that someone else thinks this is a logical way to handle it. Worst case scenario, if I can't get the detection logic working 100% perfectly, you can currently name slash chords manually (ie. A#/B) and the MIDI export will write the appropriate scale for the chord (A#) and the slash chord indicator. In-game, RB3 will determine how the chord name is supposed to be displayed based on the presence of the slash chord indicator, the root note (scale) indicator, the frets and strings used in the chord and the tuning information in the DTA.

Thanks to all of the testers so far for the bug reports and feedback, it really helps me improve EOF!

[italianstal1ion]

2. I second what was just said about paste overwriting notes in a phrase (or at least have an optional different type of paste that overwrites all the notes in the selected area - is there a command to delete all notes in a selected area?). Also, that "seek next grid snap" feature you just mentioned will be very useful for pasting, and I was going to suggest it.

Would you guys like a prompt asking if you want the paste operation to delete notes (existing notes within the portion of the track difficulty between the first and last pasted note, which is what I understand Feedback does) or if it merges notes? Would you want it to be a permanently-configurable preference or a prompt that is asked (if applicable) during each paste operation?

You mean a prompt comes up every time you paste? That would be awful. Please don't do that.

I think either method would work - the merging or the replacing. I assume the replacing would be easier though - since it doesn't require merging or anything like that, and you wouldn't worry at all about notes you are pasting over affecting the notes you are pasting. I think the best option would be is to have 2 sub-options in paste - "Merge" or "Replace." "Merge," when copying, would do what it does now (without the doubling, so extra coding for that), and "replace" would do as feedback does - deleting first the entire length of the section being pasted in, THEN pasting the section (therefore removing the risk of doubling entirely).

[raynebc]

It shouldn't be a problem. I'll probably add it as a user preference, defaulting to the behavior of merging, since that's closer to what EOF has always done.

[Bigjoe5]

K, I've been having troubles getting it to work in RB3 since I upgraded to this latest version of EOF yesterday. I'm getting messages in game telling me the file is corrupt, or else it's just not showing up in the setlist, and I'm having a lot of trouble determining the exact cause, since it only happens after a certain point in the song, and after that point, any number of things trigger its failure - adding an arpeggio phrase or adding a few chords at that point cause it to just stop working. And if I start from scratch, it doesn't seem to work at all.

Like an idiot though, I deleted the older version of EOF I had, so I can't really test if it's a problem with the latest version, or just some bizzare problem on my end. Could you repost the link to download r776 (or 778 - I don't remember exactly which... whichever one was released as a binary, I guess) so I can see if things still work with that version?

[raynebc]

Here's 1.8b10 (r770):
http://www.sendspace.com/file/56v4h6

1.8b11 (r776):
http://www.sendspace.com/file/ghy2cs

1.8b12 (r781):
http://www.sendspace.com/file/lnlptg

Troubleshooting the game stopping the chart while it's playing is going to be tricky, if you can give me a video, or the chart files with information about specifically where (ie. the timestamp of the chart) the game says it's corrupt, I could try to see what the game is having problems with. Since there's no official documentation, this is going to be complicated. Did you try creating a RBA file with Magma? If so, did it report any errors for the track?

[Bigjoe5]

Troubleshooting the game stopping the chart while it's playing is going to be tricky, if you can give me a video, or the chart files with information about specifically where (ie. the timestamp of the chart) the game says it's corrupt, I could try to see what the game is having problems with. Since there's no official documentation, this is going to be complicated. Did you try creating a RBA file with Magma? If so, did it report any errors for the track?

Thanks for the links.

I guess I wasn't very clear:

...it only happens after a certain point in the song...

This means after charting a certain point in the song. Ordinarily, this would make the cause very easy to track down. Trouble is, it's not any particular action that causes the problem. Starting from the exact same working midi file (one with completely charted Bass and partially charted Guitar, created with 1.8b11), I can either add the next phrase of chords, or mark the last phrase of chords as an arpeggio phrase. Either action, without the other, causes it to stop working when I put it in the game, and I have no idea why I can only chart so far and no further, especially when I was able to chart the entire song, complete with arpeggio phrases, in 1.8b11, and come up with a working chart (then lost it somehow, like an idiot - at least I still have working Bass). If I start from scratch with the latest version of EOF, I can't even get the Bass part working (i.e. charting the whole Bass part and trying to put it in the game yields exactly the same errors). The point at which the game is telling me it's corrupt is either when it's "Loading New Downloadable Content", or when I choose the song in the setlist.

Anyhow, I'll try again with the older version of EOF and see if I can get it to work like before. Also, no I'm not using Magma at all. Is it useful?

[raynebc]

You need to try to build the project in Magma, as it will report errors in your pro guitar/bass track even if it won't let you finish building the RBA file.

Edit:

1. Pro Bass charting is... weird. When I mouse-over the top string, the note appears on the bottom string, and is placed there when I double-click. Made charting the song really awkward. Pro Guitar does not have this issue.

This has now been fixed.

Edit 2: And it's time for another beta release. Changes since 1.8b13:

*Added a "pro_drum = True" song.ini tag that is written if any cymbal notes exist in the drum track during save, allowing games to be able to determine if a chart without tom drums is supposed to be all toms or all cymbals. This tag is being implemented in both Phase Shift and FoFiX.
*Fixed a MIDI parsing bug that could cause notes to be skewed by an amount of time equal to chart's MIDI delay if the note was more recently preceded by a time signature change than a tempo change.
*Added more logging.
*Added the ability to make text events track specific, which is useful for RBN authoring or adding features that require this capability (ie. disco flip events). MIDI import and export have been updated to support this, and the dialogs that display events will show which track they belong to, if applicable. EOF will disallow you from editing a track specific event if the track that event belongs to isn't active.
*Text events that are automatically added to the MIDI during save are removed from the chart automatically afterward. EOF will now only add the drum mix events to the output MIDI that you haven't already manually added to the chart ([mix 0...], [mix 1...], [mix 2...] or [mix 3...]).
*Used the cppcheck code analysis utility to fix various minor memory/handle leaks.
*Fixed pro guitar chord name export so that they are written as text events instead of lyric events.
*Corrected the 3D rendering of drum rolls and special drum rolls.
*Added the option to hide drum note tails from the editor window (File>Preferences>Hide drum note tails).
*Fixed a bug where the pen note wasn't tracking correctly for pro guitar tracks when the inverted notes option wasn't in effect.

[Bigjoe5]

OK, it's working again. I don't know if I can attribute it to switching back to EOF 1.8b11, or to the fact that I switched from altering the main midi file and re-inserting it as a full song to just charting Pro Guitar and Bass as a separate track and inserting it as an upgrade file (so less chance of somehow messing up the entire chart - also, I get to keep the parts that EOF doesn't support such as Pro Keys), but I'll definitely use the latest release for my next song so I can let you know if it works for upgrades.

I tried putting a note on the high E string on the Pro Bass track. It worked and played normally. I'll check whether the upgrades.dta file will accept more than four strings for Bass tuning. Is there any way to mark trainer sections for Pro G/B in EOF? That way I could check if the tuning for those strings on Pro Bass actually affects the name of the string in the trainer.

Anyhow, a few more observations about EOF, in no particular order:

1. Ghost notes (appear to)transfer as non-ghost notes with copy/paste.
3. Ghost notes (appear to) mysteriously stop being ghosted whenever "Undo" is used. Using "Redo" does not cause them to reappear. EDIT: I've confirmed that this actually does cause all ghost notes in the entire file to become unghosted, not just appear unghosted.
8. Another problem with ghost notes - they don't seem to save when I save the mid. Presumably this means they aren't playable (so to speak) in-game.
9. OK... it looks like the ghost notes do show up in-game - they just aren't displayed as ghosted in EOF. I can't tell which notes are real now... (!)

4. If the root is not the bottom note, / chord notation should be used (as in the "Inverted Chords" trainer in RB3).
6. "String Mute" and "Palm Mute" have no effect in-game (but setting the fret value to "X" mutes the note). Is this intended?
7. The fifth should not need to be present for major and minor (and perhaps some other) chords - for example, C and E would still be considered C major, even without a G present. Also, major chords don't need "maj" after them - if you just put "C" it's assumed to be "Cmaj". This is how it major chords appear in HMX songs. Major chords exported from EOF however, are displayed as "Cmaj", "Emaj", etc, which is unnecessary. EDIT: OK, maybe I was going insane when I wrote that, but major chords exported from EOF are showing up as just the note name, as they should be. Might have something to do with me manually assigning the chord name before?
10. When I manually define a chord name to be the same as an immediately previous auto-defined chord, it will still show the chord name instead of just a /, which clutters the interface tremendously. Similarly, if a chord is auto-defined to have the same name as an immediately previous manually defined chord, the editor will think it's a new chord and display the name.
11. Tryng to apply a chord name to an entire section (such as an arpeggio section) results in all of the chords actually becoming the same chord, since all the information in the note menu is applied to each chord. The ability to assign chord names to groups of chords without applying all the other attributes to every note in the section would be useful.
12. Forced HOPO notes immediately following chords don't seem appear in-game as HOPOs (I'll try to look for an instance of this in a HMX-charted song for comparison). EDIT: K... looks like forced HOPOs don't work at all. The only working HOPOs in my chart appear to be the ones that are within the automatic HOPO threshold.

...and that's all for now. Bear in mind that this is all from EOF 1.8b11, so hopefully it's still pretty current.

EDIT: Slides are SOLVED.

Well, sort of. Putting a ghost note at the end of a slide note's tail in the desired direction of the slide appears to cause the slide to go in that direction. Something really weird also happens though - the player gets points for "hitting" the ghost note, and his rock meter is automatically replenished to full. All of the ghost notes I added were 0s, so I'll try adding ghost notes of different fret values elsewhere and see if they have the same or a different effect.