My songs.dta score saving tricks and tips
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So before I start, I think I should explain my current setup.
All my songs are saved into packs. Here’s my current setup.
I’m extremely organized with my setlist. I cherry picked all the Rock Band DLC that I liked and I’m currently working through Rock Band Network. Hopefully that will be done one day. But anyway, that’s how I have all of my songs sorted in Rock Band thanks to Trojannemo’s CONTools program. I should also point out I play on a TU4 only environment. I don’t waste my time switching between TU4 and TU5 because I don’t find online to be worth it at all compared to the benefit of custom songs and pack organization. I’m sure you could probably work this into a TU5 &TU5 swapping environment, but I’m not interested in figuring that out.
So I have a bunch of prebuilt con files with hundreds of songs in them. I also incorporate espher’s Rock Band Harmonies Project into my packs. I also care about saving my song scores. Not particularly about saving a really good high score, but more like saving a record of having played these songs. Anyone even remotely working with stuff like this will know you need to delete your song cache very often, and by extension, your scores. Which sucks, but very necessary.
But I’ve been using a specific method for retaining most of my scores and I’m finally going to share it. Here’s how you do it.
At any time, you can update to Title Update 5 by connecting online. We all know to avoid this, naturally. Because Title Update 5 prevents use of customs. But! Doing this uploads your scores to Harmonix’s servers for any official Rock Band song. And very rarely, a custom song. I don’t know why, or what causes it, but we will not be relying on that to maintain customs score with this method. So here’s how it works.
Connecting to Rock Band Central uploads any scores to songs that are official, because that’s what it’s supposed to do. So any of us, normally playing on TU4 would need to update to TU5 to upload new scores. Do it. After you update and load all your songs by going through the main menu and rebuilding your song cahce, you’ve uploaded your scores. At this point, you can go back to the dashboard and reupload Title Update 4 back into your Xbox in order to play customs again. When you go back into your game, everything will be as it should be.
But, if you update any of your packs like it do, whether it’s by incorporating new C3 customs into a previously built C3/customs pack or building your RB Harmonies Project files into cons like I do, the game’s song cache will need a rebuild to load any new entries. Normally, this means you need to delete your songs cache file. Which means you lose all your scores. All of them.
But! Because you updated your scores earlier by updating to TU5 and connecting to Rock band Central, your scores (at least, official songs) scores were uploaded. But since you normally would need to delete your song cache to rebuild your new song entries into your song cache, rebuilding the song cache while connecting online will download your previously posted scores into your cache, maintaining your previous score attached to official songs.
So after you rebuild your cache with your new packs and their new song entries, you can retrieve your old song scores for Harmonix songs. After the cache rebuilds, back out to the Dashboard and replace Title Update 5 with Title Update 4, and you’ll be back to normal. You’ll be able to play custom songs again and you’ll have an updated song cache to reflect new entries in your packs, as well as maintaining your previous scores for Harmonix DLC.
So, to retrieve previously uploaded scores, connect to Rock Band Online with a TU5 present and no song cache. Your scores will download. To upload NEW scores, simply connect to Rock Band Online with your songcache present for those new scores to upload. They’ll be part of your cache next time you go to retrieve them. And never play any songs on TU5. It’s possible it could convert your save file to a TU5 save and you won’t be able to revert or use it with customs.
It’s sort of alot of work. But if you’re like me and you want a record of the songs you’ve already played, it’s at least a start in maintaining that record with Harmonix songs. Since I’ve extremely picky and the current CONTools program has been heavily built towards my current style of maintaining my Rock Band playing style, I really recommend giving the program a try. I have 1,200+ songs incorporated into 29 packs. It really saves time on the main menu when loading songs and if you’re willing to stick with the upkeep of incorporating weekly songs, even if only into new weekly packs to save on load time, it’s really worth it. I got a friend into it and he built all of his previously acquired customs songs, which I got him into, into a mega pack, and subsequently built each weekly release into a weekly C3 weekly customs pack to save space. And he doesn’t know anything about these programs aside from the basics I’ve taught him that that he feels isn’t too much work to put in for someone who just wants to play.
So give it a try. CONTools is damn amazing:
I use it for practically everything Rock Band related that isn’t on the side of charting. You can change song names, album art and pretty much anything that isn’t relating to how you play the song itself. I personally use it to plug in songs that are 2x Bass Pedal and remove the (2X Bass Pedal) name for songs I only plan on having one version of and want the highest versions in my game. As well as changing album names and art to original albums like the No Doubt compilation album to their original albums. But something like that is really an entirely different thread because it takes alot of work. Maybe I’ll do a tutorial for that if enough people are interested and I could post my own dta info for those songs.
I miss having my scores only a bit. What I really miss is the play count. For some reason, I got a kick out of being able to see which songs I had given the most play time to. After all my cache wipes, I’ve kind of gotten over having scores, but I’m glad you’ve got a system that works for you. One of these days I’ll have to bundle my songs into packs, because I’m sure it makes for a sweet loading time!
I would be interested in getting dta info for No Doubt songs, because I have been meaning to get around to “de-greatest-hits-ing” them myself.
I’ll eventually get around to that. I also have things like cover songs (Black Sabbath songs, for example) displaying their appropriate album name and art that I could share. Generally, if a song in game has its album and album art that isn’t that song’s original album release, I change it. The No Doubt Collection, the Bon Jovi songs, ect.
I wanted to believe this could work on Wii as well, but because scores made offline aren’t uploaded next time you’re online and there are no title updates, customs will always get their scores erased on a cache reload. What’s wrong with fake IDs and would that work?
@bsbloom – If you download the C3 Con Tools, click on ‘Pack Creator’ and then the ‘Help’ button. There is a carefully written document that should explain everything to you.
Keeping the content Canadian since 2017!
SomeOldGuys: https://db.c3universe.com/songs/all/__user/someoldguys
MrPrezident: https://db.c3universe.com/songs/all/__user/MrPrezidentWhat we REALLY need to do is somehow figure out how to build the song cache and be done with all of this.
I’d love that. No more rebuilding, uploading scores, going online, then offline. What a pain just to keep my scores.
Has anyone else had a problem with the game freezing while uploading scores? It seem to be happening on the same song, but I have no idea which one.
EDIT: Okay, after some trial and error it turned out to be a GHWT export pack I had made. Not sure why that and only that one would cause an issue as the dozen or so other packs I’ve made worked without a hitch, but oh well. At least it works!
Thanks, Mr. Prez, but I am still a bit lost. I had around 600 “loads”. I am down to 160 now, so it is better. I packed all the Customs into 3 packs – that was easy. Then I tried to pack songs that were saved on the x-box hard drive. I don’t really know how to do that. I started with all the songs in the Rock Band Save file: These include many downloads, and the 50 or so songs carried over from RB1. I made two packs, one for the RB1 songs, which seemed to work, and one for the downloads, but I get garbage there, so I put them back onto the hard-drive.
My approach is to copy saved songs to the flash drive, move those to a folder, use C3Con, move back, etc. Seems like there must be an easier way.
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