This tutorial is by AlBelGim, and slightly modified by OMFGDRPHL.
INTRO:
FeedBack (from this point onward, referred to as 'dB') is a custom chart editing tool which was designed to simplify the process of making custom note charts for the Guitar Hero games, and it can be used to make customs for Frets On Fire too.
FeedBack is currently the easiest way to create customs for Frets On Fire.
Its interface is designed to be simple and easy+fast to use, but I understand it can be a little confusing to first time users.
COMPATIBILITY AND SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:
FeedBack *should* run on any reasonably modern PC running Windows XP/Vista, THE LATEST DirectX-9 and recent drivers for your video card installed.
Windows 2000 is not currently supported. DON'T ASK ME WHY!
GETTING STARTED:
What you'll need to create songs using dB:
- A program called Leff's .chart2.mid converter
- Guitar Pro, Tux Guitar or any program that lets you use Tabs.
-Audacity or Xilisoft converter(the trial works better than audacity in my opinion).
ON TO FEEDBACK!
Download dB here:
FeedBack
Simply run FeedBack.exe, there is no installation required.
When you start the application you will see the help screen, this displays your current key-map configuration (which can be edited in the Config.ini file if it is inappropriate for you for whatever reason).
Press [Esc] to exit the help screen, and you will see the main editor window.
This is where you edit your chart, syncing to music, placing notes, etc. More about editing charts later.
So if you have gotten this far and the software is running correctly you will want to get started.
CREATING A NEW CHART:
The first thing you need to do is download a tab for the song you're making! This will make placement of notes easier. NOT ALL TABS ARE 100% ACCURATE! Use your ears and figure it out if it's making sense or not!
dB currently does support the .mp3 format for music. But I would convert to .ogg anyways because you'll need to for frets on fire.
You can use Audacity or Xilisoft to do the conversion
Just open your mp3 with Audacity, select "File" on the top menu and choose "Export as .ogg vorbis".
In Xilisoft, drag the file in and encode .ogg. You can convert up to three at a time with the free version.
Assuming that went well, you should have your song as an .ogg file.
Place the .ogg file in the 'Songs' folder that sits alongside FeedBack.exe.
Start dB, press [Esc] to exit the help menu, and [Esc] again to enter the main menu.
From the main menu, select 'New Chart'.
It should now display a list of all .ogg files it found in the 'Songs' folder.
Select the .ogg file for the song you just converted, and press [Enter].
It should load the song and return you to the main editor window.
To test that the song loaded properly, press [Space] to begin playback and you should hear your music playing.
If you want to edit the details about your chart, like wether the second co-op player is bass or rhythm, you can can enter the Main Menu again, and choose 'Chart Settings'.
Here you can edit the song name, choose the second player type, etc.
Once you're done with that, return to the main editor screen.
Now press 'S' to save your chart (even though it is empty).
It will play a 'save' noise, and it will create a .chart file in the 'Songs' folder next to your .ogg file.
Next time you restart the program, you can choose 'Load Chart' from the Main Menu to load the chart you just created.
SYNCING:
Now that you have setup your chart file, you can begin to create your note chart. You will need to begin by syncing the chart to the music.
To get the music to play, press the space bar. You should hear the music play and the chart begin to flow towards you. Now, to change volume settings, Press V and the mixer will appear. To stop music playback, press the space bar again. The fretboard will stop at the fret closest to the step you have indicated. To start playback from the beginning of the song, hold SHIFT and press the space bar. To go back to where playback started, while playback is going, hold SHIFT and press the space bar.
FeedBack is equipped with three key features to help you sync your chart perfectly to your song. The first feature is the metronome, which can be enabled by pressing the 'M" key. Now when you press the space bar, the music and the metronome play. Note the different sounds of the metronome. Beat 1 has a distinctively higher pitched sound than the other beats. This is important, and will help you sync your chart easier.
The next feature is the clap feature. This feature can be enabled by pressing the "N" key. Simply put, this feature plays a 'clap' noise every time a note passes through the fretboard. When you hear the 'clap', that is when the note will be expected to be strummed when playing it in the game, so you want to make sure this lines up as exact as possible.
The last and newest feature to help chart synchronization is the Anchors. More on that later.
OFFSET:
The first thing you need to do is set the offset of your chart. Basically, this is how far into the fretboard you need to go before the first note is played. There are two ways to do this, one is recommended, and one is more complex, and only for experienced chart makers.
The recommended way for setting the offset is to use the internal calculation in dB. The offset is controlled by the "[" and "]" key. To make this as easy as possible, place one note in the very begginning of the fretboard, and enable the clapping feature. Then press the "]" key to increase how much the offset is. You will see the offset number increase in the top left hand corner. Now this is a matter of guessing and checking, where you play the music and try to line up the clapping noise that you're hearing to the first note of the song.
The offset is vital to chart synchronization, so you have to be sure to get it as exact as possible. To do so, here are the values that the offset can be changed to:
"]" = Adds 1 to the value of the offset.
"[" = Decreases the value of the offset by 1.
SHIFT & "]" = Adds .1 to the value of the offset.
SHIFT & "[" = Decreases the value of the offset by .1.
CTRL & "]" = Adds .01 to the value of the offset.
CTRL & "[" = Decreases the value of the offset by .01.
SHIFT & CTRL & "]" = Adds .001 to the value of the offset.
SHIFT & CTRL & "[" = Decreases the value of the offset by .001.
I won't explain the complex way because the first one is enough for perfect charts in Frets On Fire.
TIME SIGNATURE AND BPM SYNCHRONIZATION:
Now we will line up the time signature to the song. Hopefully you have a basis of musical knowledge to know what time signature your song has (This is not important to Frets On Fire, but will help you sync your chart to the BPM of the song). Input that into dB using the "<" and ">" keys. The default time signature is 4/4. Once that is set, you adjust the BPM of the song to the beat of the Metronome as you move on the fretboard. IT'S REALLY IMPORTANT THAT YOU ADJUST THE BPM OF THE ENTIRE SONG BEFORE PLACING ANY NOTES ON THE FRETBOARD!!! This will make your work FAR easier when placing notes.
The BPM is also vital to chart synchronization, so you have to be sure to get it as exact as possible. To do so, here are the values that the BPM can be changed to:
"+" = Adds 1 to the value of the BPM.
"-" = Decreases the value of the BPM by 1.
SHIFT & "+" = Adds .1 to the value of the BPM.
SHIFT & "-" = Decreases the value of the BPM by .1
CTRL & "+" = Adds .01 to the value of the BPM.
CTRL & "-" = Decreases the value of the BPM by .01.
SHIFT & CTRL & "+" = Adds .001 to the value of the BPM.
SHIFT & CTRL & "-" = Decreases the value of the BPM by .001.
USING THE ANCHOR SYSTEM:
Here's the big feature of dB! It'll help you sync your notes to the song MUCH easier! When you're listenning to the song with the metronome on, and starts getting offbeat, just stop playback, press "A" on the spot that got off sync and adjust manually with "[" and "]", SHIFT and CTRL keys. That way you won't have to guess the BPM of the song, it'll calculate it automatically! You'll know how awesome is that when you start using it!
PLACING NOTES:
When your WHOLE fretboard is matching with the BPM of the song, you can start placing notes.
Notes are placed directly on the fret board using the keyboard. There are other means to place notes, as in hooking up a guitar hero controller, but I haven't tried it, nor am I going to write about it. To place notes on the fretboard using the keyboard, the keys 1,2,3,4 and 5 correspond to each coloured note. Use the keys above the QWERTY in your keyboard, not the number pad. In sequential order, they are:
"1" Key = Green Note
"2" Key = Red Note
"3" Key = Yellow Note
"4" Key = Blue Note
"5" Key = Orange Note
You can NOT place notes while the music is playing, and you don't want to, otherwise you'll end up with crappier chart.
To remove notes placed, just go to the line they are and press the key corresponding to it's color.
The space between one note and the next is called the step. To change the step, use the Left and Right arrow keys. Valid steps for dB are 1/1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/6, 1/8, 1/12, 1/16, 1/24, 1/32, 1/48.
To keep your chart smooth, you have to place the correct step during specific parts of the song…in other words… a sequence of notes of the same step, must have the same spacement, hence, the same step!
Notes from 1/16 to 1/48 are HOPOs (when they're different notes and not chords). Notes from 1/12 to 1/1 are not HOPOable. You'll understand this better when you start placing notes yourself.
CHANGING DIFFICULTIES:
To change between difficulties and instruments (Guitar, Rhythm/Bass), Press the F1 - F12 keys. They are the separate note track charts for the following:
F1 - Easy Single
F2 - Easy Double Guitar (Co-Op Lead)
F3 - Easy Double Bass (Co-Op Rhythm or Bass)
F4 - Medium Single
F5 - Medium Double Guitar (Co-Op Lead)
F6 - Medium Double Bass (Co-Op Rhythm or Bass)
F7 - Hard Single
F8 - Hard Double Guitar (Co-Op Lead)
F9 - Hard Double Bass (Co-Op Rhythm or Bass)
F10 -Expert Single Guitar*
F11 - Expert Double Guitar (Co-Op Lead)
F12 - Expert Double Bass (Co-Op Rhythm or Bass)
- Default. This loads when dB starts.
** Depending on the chart settings which can be found in the options menu.
Notice that dB has a lot more features, like Star Power, Events, Multiplayer, etc. But none of these are used by FoF! You won't need'em!
FINISHED SONG:
Well, you've made your song, but how the heck can you play it in FoF??
That's when Leff's converter comes into play! Open it! You are going to open leff's converter, but make sure you don't open it with winrar, you need to open it with java! Locate your .chart and click convert. This will put 1 note at the beginning of each empty track, because this is meant for GH and GH crashes if there aren't notes in each track. So now you have your .mid, make sure it's called notes.mid, otherwise it won't work.
CREATING YOUR SONG FOR FOF:
Create a folder with the name of the song you've created, and put the .ogg file and the notes.mid in that folder (don't forget to rename the ogg file "guitar.ogg").
Now use this great Song Ini Generator by Raph to make a song.ini and put that in your folder. Now copy you guitar.ogg and name it song.ogg
Now play your song in FOF, congratulations!
CREDITS:
Creds to TurkeyMan from scorehero for creating this wonderful program and for helping me with this tutorial!
Creds to Statice, for creating Final Fret (with me, of course…lol)
Creds to you, for reading my guide!
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