Rock Band Tracker v 0.9b Released

I have uploaded a new version of Rock Band Tracker, version 0.9 Beta, which can be downloaded at the links at the bottom of this post. There are several important features in this update, but in order to use them you will need to take advantage of a great feature of Keldon.net's Rock Band website. Please read this post carefully so you fully understand how to use the new features and what their implications are to new users versus existing users. I apologize for the length of this post but it really is necessary to explain this fully.

The program now has the ability to process a particular format of a spreadsheet and import the scores found in it into Rock Band Tracker. This process will also automatically update your Collection file to include all songs found within the spreadsheet. This can be done in two separate places. If you select "Import Keldon.net Spreadsheet" from the "Update" menu, score results will be added and your collection will be updated. If you prefer manually entering your scores but would like to be able to use this spreadsheet to automate the maintenance of your Collection (which would spare you the pain of using the lousy Collection Editor in the program itself, you can select "Update Collection from Spreadsheet" under the "Collection" menu. The latter option will not update or add any new scores from the spreadsheet; it will only search for the presence of scores for songs you have not yet specified as being in your collection and add it.

IMPORTANT NOTE: It is very important that you make sure you have the latest update file to be sure this will work properly. I haven't been able to test yet for how the program handles situations where the song title doesn't exist in the master song list in Rock Band Tracker itself. I hope that it will just ignore it, but it's hard to say for sure at this point. If you are a new user and download the "full" package below, the data file supplied is completely up to date. For existing users, I have included the latest update.dat file in the archive with the new executable. If you haven't updated in a while, be sure to process that update file before attempting to use these new import features.

As a general rule, I would recommend that you vigilantly update your Rock Band Tracker data file to ensure that you get optimal results from this feature.

ANOTHER IMPORTANT NOTE: Because of the complexity of this feature and the various scenarios that can arise, I would recommend making manual copies of your data.dat, log.dat, and collection.dat files before using this new feature to make sure you don't lose anything if an unexpected problem arises.

In addition to these new features, I also corrected the Visual Star List to no longer include "blank" results for songs that are not in your collection. You'll also notice that there are checkbox menus at the top of the panel. This is a preliminary feature that has not yet been completed. At the moment, only the Difficulty filters on Guitar actually have any functionality. I hope to complete this addition in an upcoming version, but I didn't feel like stripping out what I had done so far.

Here are the instructions for obtaining the spreadsheet file that these new features work with:

1) Go to http://www.keldon.net/rockband in your web browser.
2) Click "My Scores" in the menu at the top.
3) In the box for "Player/Band Name", enter your PSN ID or XBL Gamertag.
4) For the "Instrument" box, select "All Solo."
5) Set your platform appropriately and select "Rock Band 2" as your game.
6) Select "Expert" as your difficulty.
7) The default checkbox settings should work, but make sure that "Show songs without scores" is NOT checked. It should be unchecked by default. The checkboxes for "Show RB2 scores", "Show RB1 scores", and "Show DLC scores" should all be checked as well.
8) Click the "Get Scores as CSV File" button at the bottom.
9) Save the resulting file as "scores.csv" to the root of your Rock Band Tracker directory. It might take a while to generate if you have a lot of results.

That's it. Once the "scores.csv" file is in your Rock Band Tracker folder, you will be able to use these new features. You can also repeat this process periodically, overwrite the existing file, and import your newest scores again. There are no adverse consequences to repeat imports.

NOTES:

There are a few things that users should be aware of with respect to this new feature. First of all, the spreadsheet results (and, by extension, the RB2 servers) do not make any distinction between scores achieved at different difficulty levels. This means that if your best score is on Hard, it will be imported and Rock Band Tracker will treat it as an Expert score. To get around this, you can manually delete results for songs you know you haven't beaten on Expert or achieved as high a score, but unfortunately there's nothing else that can be done because Harmonix doesn't appear to make the difficulty distinctions anymore. Secondly, the spreadsheet does not contain any information regarding percentages and note streaks, so this data will be absent from results imported in this fashion. Finally, since the spreadsheet only stores your highest score on each song for each instrument, it will not track all of your results.

Because of the way this program was designed at the outset, the ideal way to use it is still to write down your scores and manually input the data. There are several things that the program tracks that will not apply or will not be comprehensively tracked using the spreadsheet import. However, this new option can help you maintain your collection or at least get you started with some base data instead of having to start from scratch. However, if you don't care about percentages or note streaks, and you are only interested in seeing how your scores have improved, then this new feature can still be used exclusively and spare you a lot of tedious data entry.

Here are the links for the new versions:

FOR EXISTING USERS ONLY:

Rock Band Tracker v0.9 Beta EXE only (includes update.dat file):

http://www.geocities.com/angrysportsguy/rbt09b_exe.zip


FOR NEW USERS ONLY:

Rock Band Tracker v0.9 Beta Full version:

http://www.geocities.com/angrysportsguy/rbt09b_full.zip

NOTE: New users should simply extract the folder contained in the .zip file above to any location to which they have full rights. The desktop should work fine for most people. Make sure you keep the directory structure intact. Then just run the RBTracker.exe file. You will need the latest version of Microsoft's .NET runtime to use this program. If you are prompted in this way, you can get this runtime environment at Microsoft's website.

Enjoy!

Update File (7-6-09)

I have posted another update file to get the song list completely up to date, including star cutoffs, for all songs up to and including the Foreigner and second Warped Tour packs.

I have a rather exciting feature in the works, which will primarily be useful to new users, but there are still some bugs I'm working out so it's not quite ready for release at the moment. Stay tuned; I hope to have a new version of the software out soon that will conceivably make this program much more user-friendly in terms of input.

Get the update file at the usual location:

http://www.geocities.com/angrysportsguy/update.zip

Enjoy!

Another update file

Nothing major here: just another update file to get the song list up to date. Unfortunately, there are no cutoffs for any of the songs past the Iron Maiden pack, but I hope to have those included shortly.

Get the file at the usual place:

http://www.geocities.com/angrysportsguy/update.zip

Progress on a software update has been slow as I've been distracted by a couple other projects. I hope to have something soon.

Enjoy!

New update file posted

I apologize for the paucity of updates in the last couple months; I've been distracted by a few other things.

I have uploaded a new update.dat file that contains full data and cutoff information for every song up to and including the Iron Maiden pack. This brings the total number of songs tracked in the game to 712.

I have not included the bonus live tracks from the re-release of Pearl Jam's Ten. I plan to do so if and when they are made available on XBL and PSN.

I plan to add some new features soon, including hopefully adding filters to and speeding up the presently horrific Visual Star List.

Enjoy:

Link:

http://www.geocities.com/angrysportsguy/update.zip

New Update File Released

I have uploaded a new update file that is current up to and including the release of Pearl Jam's Ten album. This file has accurate cutoffs for all songs to this point.

I have not included the live tracks available through pre-ordering the Ten re-issue at Best Buy. The word is that these songs will be made available for purchase via normal channels, so I will wait until that happens to include these songs in the program.

Get the update file at the usual link:

http://www.geocities.com/angrysportsguy/update.zip

Minor update to software and new update file

I have uploaded a new version of the 0.8b executable and full install. This includes a minor tweak to allow people to re-size the Visual Star List to show more items on screen at once. It is not recommended that you attempt to resize the screen horizontally, because there will just be dead space (I haven't yet figured out how to account for this.) It should still functionally work, though.

I also made a tweak to the way the program internally handles songs without vocal parts. The hope is that the user will see no difference in this respect from before. Let me know if there are any issues with it.

I have also uploaded a new update file that brings the entire song list up to date, with accurate cutoffs up to and including Texas Flood.

The links in the post below are still valid. Enjoy!

Version 0.8 Beta Released and New Update File Posted

I have uploaded version 0.8b of the Rock Band Tracker executable at the link below. The most noteworthy change is that users can now individually delete Rock Band 1 songs from their collection (essentially, RB1 songs are now treated as regular DLC.) The checkbox indicating the state of "Rock Band 1 ownership" has been replaced with a button that will alternate between Add Rock Band 1 songs (which will place all of the Rock Band 1 songs in your collection) and Remove Rock Band 1 songs (which will remove all Rock Band 1 songs from your collection.) They then can be added or deleted from the collection in the same fashion as any other DLC.

Please note that this archive contains only the executable, so if you are using the program for the first time, you should download the 0.8 full install archive also posted below.

I have also posted a new update file which is current up through the Texas Flood album release. Unfortunately, these songs, as well as the Jimmy Eat World and Alt Country packs from the previous weeks, do not yet have cutoff information. I will upload a new update file as soon as this data is available.


Links:

Rock Band Tracker Version 0.8b full install:

NOTE: Only use this file if you are downloading and using the software for the first time. Simply extract this folder to any place on your hard drive where you have full permissions, and run the RBTracker.exe file located within.

http://www.geocities.com/angrysportsguy/rbt08b_full.zip

Rock Band Tracker Version 0.8b executable only:

NOTE: If you are using an earlier version of Rock Band Tracker, simply overwrite your existing executable with the one found in the archive below.

http://www.geocities.com/angrysportsguy/rbt08b_exe.zip

Latest Update file:

http://www.geocities.com/angrysportsguy/update.zip