Non-instrument Review Process

Checklist

The dirty details of all your non-instrument related needs. See below for more info.

• Does the song contain a count-in created from the source material?
• Are the instruments cutting out of the mix properly when they are not being played?
• Are all playable instruments clearly heard in the mix?
• Does the tempo map of the song stay in time with the actual song?
• If the crowd is clapping along to the song at any point, is it appropriate?
• Do the camera and lighting cues look good?
• Are the band members animating at a reasonable speed given the context of the song?
• Is the crowd animating?
• (Optional) Can the song be gold starred on each individual instrument, and in a four-player band?
• Are the difficulty ratings of each instrument (and a full band) accurate to the difficulty of the specific part?

Song Setup

Each song should begin with a count-in that's roughly three seconds long, and lasts for two measures. Note that there are a few instances where a count-in isn't needed (like a long playable intro where the count-in would sound jarring). The most common count-in used is a "one, two, one, two, three, four" rhythm, but that's not required. If the author has a better idea of how he wants to do it, he's more than welcome to. Not only are there a few bugs that will pop up if gems are authored prior to this point, but the count-in helps the player know the tempo of the song before he needs to play any notes.

It is very important that the correct instrument is cutting out of the mix when it is not being played. If the guitarist puts down his guitar and walks away mid-song, the part he's supposed to be playing should not be audible at all. Of course, if there's a large amount of bleed in the stems (such as an audible guitar part in the drum track), just make sure that it becomes as quiet as possible without harming the game mix. The only instrument where this isn't an issue is vocals, as the vocals do not cut out based on poor performance.

For the overall song mix, it's important that each instrument can be clearly heard in a four-player setting. Some of the subtleties of an album mix may be lost if the song is mixed in this way, but since you are trying to play along to a specific instrument, it is vital that you can hear the audio that corresponds to the gems you're hitting.

Each song in Rock Band has a meticulously authored tempo map. If this tempo map falls out of line with the song, it is very noticeable and will have a pretty severe negative effect on the song. While it is hard to point out when and where the tempo map may taper off, if you notice the gems stop lining up with actual music, that is a serious issue and should be mentioned.

One thing an author can choose to do is turn on an event that causes the crowd to clap along to the beat of the song. This is a really nice addition to songs when it's used correctly, but will also be awkward if it's used in the wrong spot. For instance, if you hear the crowd clapping to a very quiet, mellow part of a song, it may weaken the experience of the song.

Animation Issues

First, one of the things that the author has to do (or can have auto-generated by Magma) is to author a venue track. This track decides what lighting is used, and when the camera should cut to another band member (or members). What the camera is doing is mostly subjective, and there aren’t too many issues that arise out of this. Most importantly, check that there is lighting at all. This won’t pop up too much in RBN, but if a venue track isn’t authored past the initial cut, an issue may arise where the venue is pitch black the whole time. No one wants to see a show in the dark!

Also, make sure there aren’t too many camera cuts. Magma is pretty lenient for what it’ll allow for camera cuts, but if the author goes overboard with too many cuts, it’s going to look pretty jerky. In extreme cases, cuts in this magnitude can be painful on your eyes, as well.

Another thing to look for is how fast (or how slow) the band members are animating. Certain songs have a tendency to lead to the band members animating so fast that everything ends up looking jerky. There are a few things the author can do to fix this, so letting them know is a big help.

Crowd animations are also important. The most obvious issue is when crowd animations aren’t authored at all. The crowd will just stand around, looking bored with what’s going on. Make sure they’re rocking out! Also, since there’s a few states that they can have, if it seems like they should be more or less excited, it’s good to make a note of that.

If you want to know more about camera cuts, lighting options, and video effects, check out the RBN2 Camera And Lights page. It even has handy pictures.

Gold Stars

This section may be treated as optional, as being able to achieve gold stars on every song isn’t required for RBN. However, there is a decent-sized group of people out there who look forward to getting gold stars on anything and everything. Specifically, making sure that everything can gold star on each solo instrument and in a full four-player arrangement is what we look for. The other combinations aren’t vital, and tend to be a pain. (One specific combination that has always been difficult is the two-player arrangement of vocals and bass.)

Because of the way Gold Stars are calculated, it's also more difficult to Gold Star short songs, and easier in general to Gold Star longer ones. Songs that are extremely short may consider Gold Stars to be optional, to prevent the author from adding too many overdrive phrases.

The easiest way to check for this is to activate as often as possible, on the highest density of notes as possible. On guitar and bass, whammying notes (especially very long ones) is encouraged for these purposes. There’s no law that says each instrument has to end with an empty bar of overdrive in every song, so occasionally it may make more sense to leave a little bit left over. Make sure not to accidentally use the OD Fill cheat (by hitting Up on the directional pad of the controller)!

If gold stars are still not earn-able, the instrument can be switched to auto-play and the score monitored until the fifth star is earned. The five-star cutoff (the score total that earns the fifth star) can be multiplied by 1.51 in order to estimate a gold-star cutoff. If a score that follows a reasonable Overdrive path is close to the estimated gold-star cutoff, then gold stars may be doable, and can be expected. If a song is standard length (2-and-a-half to four minutes) and the best score obtained is not within 99% of the gold-star cutoff, then the problem should be mentioned in the comments. Remember that gold stars are not mandatory, so any song that is impossible to gold star should not fail peer review for this reason.

There are very specific methods to getting every point out of a song for each instrument available on the internet, but they shouldn’t be necessary to get gold stars.

Difficulty Ratings

A difficulty rating is assigned to every instrument of every song, and also a rating for a four-player band. In-game, they're represented with names (Warmup, Apprentice, ... Nightmare, Impossible), and also with "dots" on the side of the screen. A song can range from zero dots (warmup) to five fox-heads* (impossible), making for a range of seven "tiers."

We rate the songs based on the expert parts for each instrument. If a song is extremely easy, it would go in warmup, and if it's one of the hardest songs in the game, it would go in impossible. Everything else would fall somewhere in between. This is an extremely subjective process, and there will almost always be dispute on these ratings, but that doesn't mean this is something that should be ignored.

The best thing to do is play songs that are already in Rock Band, and compare it to the part you're currently trying to rate. If you can find a song that is very similar to the one you're currently working on, it makes this process a bit easier. There's no real equation to determining difficulty, however certain things tend to appear in higher difficulties for each instrument:

• Bass - fast notes, lack of overdrive during intense sections (especially guitar solos), chords
• Drums - many fast rolls or long disco-flip sections, off-beat kicks, non-consistent gems (sections that do not use one constant cymbal, for example)
• Guitar - fast notes that are not HOPOs, "snakes" (notes move up and down the fret quickly), Overdrive phrases appearing frequently during difficult sections, crazy guitar solos
• Vocals - lots of short slides, lack of spaces for breathing and/or overdrive activation, larger range from lowest and highest note, overall popularity of the song/artist
• Band - overall difficulty of instruments, alignment of instruments' difficult parts (whether everyone has their hard sections together or not), band-wide overdrive placement (lack of overdrive during intense sections, Unison phrases that appear in difficult parts of the charts, etc),

Once you have looked at enough songs both on disc and in DLC, you'll begin to get a feel for what should go in specific tiers.

(*)It's important to note at this time that, even within Harmonix, there's no specific agreement on what these things are. Some people call them Skulls, Demons, Dots on Fire, or Fox Heads.