2x Bass Pedal Songs, No Free Upgrade?

[malice72]

I know the song didn't come out on RBN, but, think we'll ever see a This Calling - All That Remains 2x bass? Or is that just always going to stay a dream of mine? ahahah

[Zemanator]

it will always stay a dream. ANY songs released through official HMX DLC will not be getting the 2x bass treatment. Which sucks as well, but we've (the RBN) released over 125 double bass songs and have a lot more in the works, over different styles and genres, so you have tons to (hopefully) enjoy before a better solution can be implemented

[dansolo]

I would buy all the 2x upgrades if I could, on ps3 which is not compatible with RBN

[Bront20]

But when you purchase a song that has pro guitar, you purchase the song, THEN it allows you to upgrade to pro guitar for 80msp, why can't they do just that, but with double bass?

Pro guitar parts are separate charts for a new instrument. The only difference in a 2X bass pedal is the expert chart has the 2x bass pedal charting, otherwise the song is the same. The game doesn't see 2x as an extra difficulty level or set of charts to select.

Maybe they'll fix it in RB4 so that can happen (Expert 2X would be an option for drums/pro perhaps), or maybe not

[HMXLachesis]

While building Rock Band 2 (and later, when building Rock Band 3), we didn't see that the demand for 2x bass pedal songs was great enough to justify spending the development time and audio time to support such a system.

The Rock Band Network authors felt otherwise, and they wanted to support a 2x bass pedal option for their customers. There was a short discussion on the creators.rockband.com forums, and we decided that it was a worthwhile experiment. Because there were no built-in tools to support something like this on RB3, the RBN authors made two versions of each applicable song - one regular, and one exactly identical with a 2x bass pedal chart on Expert Drums and Pro Drums.

100+ 2x bass pedal songs later, I'm really glad that the RBN authors convinced us to try this experiment! However, the 2x bass pedal system still isn't native to RB3, and this is the only way that 2x bass pedal songs can be released.

[raynebc]

For a future release, the best double bass system would be to define MIDI notes specifically for just the double bass drum gems for each difficulty. It would then be exceedingly easy to author them or, as a player, toggle them on/off. The second best system would be allowing a drum upgrade to be purchased, and it would just replace the drum track of the regular RBN release.

[ThatAuthoringGroup]

I think the best bet IF it happens in a future RB title would either have it as a 5th 'difficulty' or an on off option like drum lanes. Off you get regular expert, on you get the double bass version of expert.

I'm not saying they'll be easy features to implement, but it'll be better than filling up the RB library with 2 versions of one song. Specially if the 3000 song limit is still in place for said future title.

[NoThru22]

We know it's not an ideal system. Frankly, it's about the least ideal situation imaginable.

I think that the least ideal situation would be no support at all.

[ricecake]

IF (and that's a big "if") they do decide to integrate double bass into the next version of Rock Band, I think a neat feature would be if it sees two copies of a song where the only difference is the expert drum chart and the title of the song (one of them would have "2x Bass Pedal" or however it's worded), then it would be smart enough to merge them into a single song and apply the double bass option to them. This is coming from someone who does not play double bass.

[wesjett08]

Just to start off ... I now very little about actually programming games so don't take this as one of those "HEY THIS SHOULD TAKE 2 MINUTES TO PROGRAM" kind of posts. I'm just throwing my guess at how it could be done out there. HMX, if you're listening and use my idea ... send me bacon*.


Since in the RBN charting template there is a blank midi lane under the pro-drums markers, I always assumed they could add a "Double Kick" lane. As an author you would either fully chart the drums and "hide" the added kicks with this lane. Or you would chart as we do now and then just add the extra kicks in this special lane. This extra lane could be toggled on and off in an options menu much like the pro-drums cymbal markers are now if you don't have all the cymbals.

This is how my problem solving brain figured it would go, sounds easy enough right?



*Don't actually send me bacon, I'm vegetarian. Chocolate cake will do though ...