Guitar Hero II Modding Tutorials | mari@macintosh.garden

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So, you're modding Guitar Hero II, and you want to...

General (file extraction, disc building, terminology, etc)

• Extract the game's archive off the disc and open it
• Build an ISO using CD/DVD Generator and Apache2
• Learn the DTA scripting language
• Build custom song definitions from a buttload of options

Scripting and configuration

• Use dtab (and the Command Prompt) to edit a DTB script
• Add new song definitions to songs.dta
• Convert a song definition from guitar/bass to lead/rhythm
• Add songs to the setlist
• Change the disc ID to protect saved scores
• Change the save name as visible in the PS2 browser
• Clean the game's files of useless scripts
• Change text strings

For further reading, I'd highly suggest you take a listen to (and read the companion slides of) Eric Malafeew's talk at GDC 2005 on Harmonix's homebrew scripting language. The knowledge will serve you very well if you're doing a deep dive into custom scripting.

Chart-related

• Tempomap a custom
• Author Expert guitar and bass
• Add lovely looking animations and flair to your charts
• Author lower difficulties
• Convert .chart to MIDI

For further reading (especially while I get this section written up), check out the C3 authoring documentation. It's for Rock Band, not Guitar Hero, but the stuff about authoring guitar is still fairly applicable.

Audio-related

• Find stems (separated instrument parts) to chart on
• Mix audio for the least headache in the editor
• Build audio the clean, correct way with RockAudio
• Build practice mode audio
• Change menu music (and add new loops)