Rock Band 2 Deluxe

Introduction

Rock Band 2 Deluxe is a Massive Quality-of-Life Improvement Mod by MiloHax

This guide contains full instructions on how to install Rock Band 2 Deluxe for PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360.

There is also a (less supported) PS2 version available in this branch.

Table of Contents

• Features
  • Quality of Life
  • Authoring
  • Additional Modifications
• What You'll Need
• Downloads
• How to Install
  • Installing on RPCS3 (Recommended for PC)
  • Installing on PS3
  • Installing on Xbox 360
  • Installing on Xenia (Advanced)
• Optional Upgrades
  • Songs
  • Custom Textures
• Repo Setup (Advanced)
• Dependencies

Features

Quality of Life

• No strum limit executable modification by GMS
• Fast start executable modification by ihatecompvir
• Additional intro skip scripting to skip the intro movie
• Custom settings loader as a frontend for Xbox and Xenia
• Overshell - a custom on-screen menu system for changing modifiers, speeds, textures, and more. Opened by pressing SELECT, SELECT on most menu screens
• 1080p support via PS3/RPCS3
• Full Combo indicator per instrument via the multiplier
• New tour setlists utilizing the Rock Band 1 setlist by C0Assassin
• Updated genres from Lego Rock Band/Rock Band 3/Rock Band 4
• Non-Playable characters now playable
• All modifiers unlocked by default
• Integrated Rock Band 1 unexportables
• No losing fans in career on quit/restart
• Flawless accomplishment replaced with Full Combo, and checks perfect note streak as well as all notes hit
• Double bass pedal port supported on stock rb2/rb3 kits
• Modifier for E-kits to fix an issue the above line introduces (midi drum bass kick fix)
• Disables drum fills by default and replaces activations with auto activations (static fills)
• Modifier to restore Legacy Drum Fills
• Bass streak effect from RB3/RB4 available on all instruments - modifier to restore vanilla functionality
• New menu, Tweaks, in game for additional modifications
• Selectable song speed and track speed by 5% increments
• Selectable venue framerate up to 60fps
• Black Venue modifier with decreased load times and system load
• Press select to restart the section in practice mode
• Default difficulty on first load is Expert
• Song title always visible modifier
• Detailed song title modifier including album, year, track number (does not work properly in random/setlists)
• Manual calibration adjusts by 1ms instead of 5ms

Authoring

• Author shown on song title - in your songs.dta (author Author Name)
• Autoplay modifier for chart demos
• Gameplay watermarks to deter abuse of autoplay including -
  • Disabling autosave
  • Replacing endgame percentage with BOT
  • Manipulating MTV Overlay
• Cycle camera menu button - available in-game when autoplay is enabled

Additional Modifications

• Selectable colors per fret
• Several modifiers to change the look of the highway/track
• Nice (69%) and Awesome Choke (98-99%) callouts on solo completion
• Various visual upgrades from the fourth main-line Rock Band title
• New main menu music pulled from other Rock Band titles
• Pad is guitar modifier - same functionality as GH1, GH2
• Pad is drum modifier
• Freestyle drums modifier
• Modifier to not force vocal gender per match song
• No flames modifier
• Firework gems modifier
• No crowd modifier
• No whammy effect modifier
• No track muting modifier
• No sustain tails modifier
• Rock Band 3 Sustain look modifier

What You'll Need

Playing Rock Band 2 Deluxe requires these things:

• A vanilla copy of Rock Band 2 for PS3 or Xbox 360 that you can extract onto your PC. The USA version is required.
  • (PS3: BLUS30147, 360: 45410869)
• For Console: A modded/hacked PS3 or Xbox 360 and a way to transfer files to it, we recommend using FTP
• For Emulator: A mid-to-high-end PC capable of running RPCS3

Downloads

Rock Band 2 Deluxe for PS3

Rock Band 2 Deluxe for Xbox 360

Have a modded PS2 or can't run RPCS3? Check out the PS2 Version!

How to Install

Installing on RPCS3 (Recommended for PC)

• Install your North American copy of Rock Band 2 through the emulator. The official RPCS3 site covers this nicely.

  • Remember, you need to be running BLUS30147. RPCS3 will tell you this in the game selection GUI under the Serial column.

• Download Rock Band 2 Deluxe for PS3.

  • Extract the zip and drag and drop the .pkg file on top of the main RPCS3 window to install it. Select Yes to confirm.

Rock Band 2 Deluxe is now installed! We highly recommend you check out Optional Upgrades for songs and other cool stuff you can add to your game.

To update Rock Band 2 Deluxe, re-download it and repeat the above steps. You can click the Watch button (All Activity) to be notified about any updates that occur.

Sidenote: we recommend enabling Write Color Buffers for Rock Band 2 to prevent any character model issues.

Installing on PS3

NOTE: You WILL need a HACKED/MODDED (CFW or HFW/HEN) PS3 in order to play this mod on console. We hope this is clear.

NOTE: Rock Band 2 Deluxe only works with North American (BLUS30147) copies of the game.

• Download Rock Band 2 Deluxe for PS3.
  • Extract the zip and copy the .pkg file to the root of a FAT32 formatted USB drive.
  • Navigate to Package Manager and install it like any other package.

Rock Band 2 Deluxe is now installed! We highly recommend you check out Optional Upgrades for songs and other cool stuff you can add to your game.

To update Rock Band 2 Deluxe, re-download it and repeat the above steps. You can click the Watch button (All Activity) to be notified about any updates that occur.

Installing on Xbox 360

NOTE: You WILL need a HACKED/MODDED (RGH or JTAG) Xbox 360 in order to play this mod on console. We hope this is clear.

• Install your North American copy of Rock Band 2 to your console's hard drive.

  • Remember, you need to be running the USA version of the game (45410869).
  • In case anything goes wrong, we recommend that you rename default.xex to default_vanilla.xex.

• Disable updates for Rock Band 2 in Aurora. Rock Band 2 Deluxe rolls TU6 into its base installation.

• Download Rock Band 2 Deluxe for Xbox 360.

  • Copy the contents of it to where your copy of Rock Band 2 is installed (we recommend using FTP to do so). Select Yes to overwrite the files.

• We also recommend clearing your song cache, as well as your system cache.

  • To clear your song cache, navigate to System Settings > Storage > Rock Band 2 and delete the song cache.
  • To clear your system cache, navigate to System Settings > Storage and press Y to clear the system cache.

Rock Band 2 Deluxe is now installed! We highly recommend you check out Optional Upgrades for songs and other cool stuff you can add to your game.

To update Rock Band 2 Deluxe, re-download it and repeat the above steps. You can click the Watch button (All Activity) to be notified about any updates that occur.

Installing on Xenia (Advanced)

Follow Repo Setup (Advanced) first in order to properly follow this guide.

• Extract your North American copy of Rock Band 2 and copy the contents of the gen folder to \_build\xbox\gen\.

  • Remember, you need to be running the USA version of the game (45410869).

• Navigate to _xenia and map your controller with x360ce.

  • When it asks you to create xinput1_3.dll, create it and rename it to xinput1_4.dll.

• Then, navigate to windows_bats if you're on Windows or user_scripts if you're on Linux and run build_xenia to automatically update, build, and run Rock Band 2 Deluxe.

  • You need to run this script every time in order to play and update the game. run_xenia will run the game only and won't update and build it unless a new update is available, so you can use that if build_xenia takes too long.

Rock Band 2 Deluxe is now installed! We highly recommend you check out Optional Upgrades for songs and other cool stuff you can add to your game.

Sidenote: if you're experiencing issues regarding character models, navigate to _xenia, open xenia-canary.config.toml in your text editor of choice, and change gpu from vulkan to d3d12 and d3d12_readback_resolve from false to true (you may need to press CTRL + F to find these). This will fix all texture issues but will drastically affect the framerate, you also may experience BSODs. If you don't want to deal with any of this, we recommend using RPCS3 instead.

Optional Upgrades

These are some optional, but very handy additions you can make to your Rock Band 2 Deluxe installation.

Songs

You can find song packs compatible with all Rock Band titles for both platforms on This Spreadsheet.

You can also use Onyx Music Game Toolkit to generate your own custom song packs for Rock Band games or convert Xbox 360 packs to PS3, and vice versa. Converting custom songs from games like Clone Hero is a breeze.

Installing Songs on RPCS3

• Download a PS3 song pack of your choice and open RPCS3.
• Drag and drop the song pack you want to install on top of the main RPCS3 window and select Yes to install it.

Installing Songs on PS3

• Download a PS3 song pack of your choice and put it on the root of a USB drive.
• Open Package Manager and select the song pack you want to install.

Installing Songs on Xbox 360

• Download an Xbox 360 song pack of your choice.
• Copy it to its respective folder.

For RB2 LIVE files, install them to:

Installing Songs on Xenia

• Download an Xbox 360 song pack of your choice.
• Open Xenia, navigate to File > Install Content, and select your song pack(s) of choice. You can select more than one at a time.
  • Xenia supports both CON and LIVE files.

Custom Textures

Rock Band 2 Deluxe has a variety of custom textures, found in the Deluxe Settings menu in-game, as well as a way to import your own with relative ease.

Importing Your Own Textures

Follow Repo Setup (Advanced) first in order to properly follow this guide.

• Copy any .jpg, .png, or .bmp file into \custom_textures\***\, then navigate back to windows_bats and run process_textures_***.bat.
  • These will make them show up in game, resize your images accordingly (including those with arbitrary resolutions), and convert them to the proper format for Rock Band 2 Deluxe to read.

You will need to rebuild Rock Band 2 Deluxe in order for these to take effect.

Repo Setup (Advanced)

Installing Required Dependencies

• Install Git for Windows, Dot Net 6.0 Runtime, and Python (version 3.9 or later).
  • Install Git and Dot Net 6.0 Runtime with their default options, and select "Add python.exe to PATH" on the Python installer.

• Open a new command prompt (press Win+R, type cmd and press Enter), type in pip install gitpython, and press enter. Close the command prompt when it's done installing.

Initializing the Repo

• Go to the Releases of this repo and download _init_repo.bat if you're on Windows or _init_repo.sh if you're on Linux.
  • Make a new empty folder, put _init_repo in the folder, and run it. This will pull the repo down for you and make sure you're completely up to date. This will take some time.

The folder should look like this once it's done:

The Rock Band 2 Deluxe repo is now set up! You can now return to Installing on Xenia (Advanced) or Custom Textures.

Dependencies

Git for Windows - CLI application to allow auto updating Deluxe repo files

Dot Net 6.0 Runtime - Needed to run ArkHelper

Python - For user script functionality (NOTE: 3.9 or newer is highly recommended!)

Mackiloha - ArkHelper for building Deluxe - SuperFreq for building .bmp_xbox highway images

swap_rb_art_bytes.py - Python script for converting Xbox images to PS3

dtab - For serializing .dtb script files