Rock Hero

BETA.

Welcome to a rhythm game that lives inside Big Walk.

A glowing highway rises out of the ground a few steps in front of you. Colored gems come screaming down it in time with the music. You have five fingers on the home row and a combo to protect.

Now you can wait five minutes for your friends to arrive without being left alone with your thoughts.

Hit the notes, build the streak, pop the star power overdrive. The first actual game tunrns 21 this year. You know how this works.

But how?

1. Press F9 to open the song menu.
2. Up / Down to pick a song. Left / Right to pick an instrument. Tab to pick a difficulty. Enter to play.
3. A highway appears in front of you with a short count-in.
4. Tap your fret keys as the notes hit the strike line. Default keys are F G J K L for the five lanes (green, red, yellow, blue, orange).
5. Hold the key through the long tails to rack up sustain points.
6. Hit the glowing white star notes cleanly to fill the overdrive meter beside the highway. At half full, press Space to double your multiplier.
7. F10 stops the song. F9 closes the menu or leaves the results screen to pick a new song.

Everything is local. You see and hear the highway, and nobody else does (yet).

But where do I get songs?

The few included tracks are for educational/juxtapositional commentary fair use purposes. Rock Hero plays most standard Clone Hero style charts, which their community has been making for years. Decent starting point is Enchor.

Each song goes in its own folder inside the mod's Songs folder. A song folder needs:

Songs/
  Chowderface - Trust the Governmment/
    notes.chart      (or notes.mid)
    song.ini
    song.opus        (or song.ogg)

Notes:

• Grab the folder / zip version of a chart, not a single .sng file. .sng isn't supported yet.
• Audio can be .opus or .ogg. .mp3 and .wav aren't supported yet.
• If you download a song with opus files for every part of a song, aka stems, that's unlikely to sync up properly currently. So skip the ones made by the little plastic baby guitar industrial complex. I hear the corporate suits screwed over the devs anyway.
• The subfolders can be nested however you like. Rock Hero will dig through them.
• Added songs while the game was running? Press R in the menu to rescan.

Where is the Songs folder?

By default it installs right next to RockHero.dll, in the mod's own folder. Usually that's:

BepInEx\plugins\RockHero\Songs\

The exact path is printed in the BepInEx log on startup, on a line that starts with Songs folder:.

You don't have to keep songs there. Set Folder under [Songs] in the config file to point anywhere you like, which is advisable if you already have a collection or don't want to risk some future mod update mistakenly wiping your collection.

But what instruments can I play?

Five-lane parts, switchable right in the song menu with Left / Right:

• Lead Guitar
• Bass
• Rhythm Guitar
• Keys

The menu only shows songs that actually have the part you picked (it reads the ratings in song.ini). Your last choice is remembered.

Drums, 6-fret guitar, and vocals are not here yet. See the to-do list.

But how does scoring work?

• 50 points per note, times your multiplier.
• The multiplier goes up by one for every 10 notes in a row, to a max of x4. Miss a chord and the streak resets.
• Chords count as one hit when every lane in the chord is pressed inside the window.
• Sustains: hold the key after hitting the head of a long note and you earn about 50 points per second, times the multiplier. Let go early and the tail disappears. Letting go right at the end is fine.
• Star power (overdrive): white notes come in phrases. Clear a whole phrase without missing a chord and you fill 25% of the meter. At 50% or more, press Space to activate. While it's on, your multiplier is doubled and the highway glows blue. A full meter lasts about 16 seconds.
• The default hit window is 150 ms either side of a note. Adjustable.

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But the timing feels off

Audio hardware and Bluetooth headphones all lie a little. Open the config and change AudioOffsetMs under [Timing].

• Hitting everything early? Make the number bigger.
• Hitting everything late? Make it smaller (negative is fine).

Try steps of 20 to 30 and restart the song. Wired headphones will want a smaller number than wireless ones. If you play Festival or Clone Hero or anything else with a lag adjustment tool built in, try inputting their adjustments.

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But the keys are already being used

You can change them in the cfg.

• Space is your overdrive button and probably also your jump button.
• D F J K L might also be used by flashlight mods and things. Rebind either side. The fret keys are in the config under [Keys].

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But I want to move the highway

It plants itself a few meters in front of you, at the start of each song, on whatever ground is there. Everything about it is in the config under [Highway]: width, length, how fast notes scroll, how high the strike line floats, how far it tilts away from you, and how far in front of you it spawns. Even turn the speed up if you're a menace.

You can also just wasd walk around the highway to your preferred viewing perspective and reset it with F9 until it's somewhere you like. I like to sit at that first sunset rock by the bridge.

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Controls

Key / Input	Action
F9	Open or close the song menu (also leaves the results screen)
Up / Down	Pick a song (in the menu)
Left / Right	Pick an instrument (in the menu)
Tab	Cycle difficulty (in the menu)
Enter	Play the selected song
R	Rescan the Songs folder (in the menu)
D F J K L	Green, red, yellow, blue, orange lanes
Space	Activate overdrive
F10	Stop the song / close out

All of these can be rebound in the config.

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Alternate Mod Titles

• Big Free Bird
• Big Walk This Way
• Big Bootleg Guitar Hero: Cease and Desist Edition
• But We Have Rock Band Back at the Tower

Config options

bigwalk.rockhero.cfg in the BepInEx config folder. It appears after the first launch.

Config Option	Default Value	Description
[Keys]
Menu	F9	Open or close the song menu (also leaves the results screen).
Stop	F10	Stop the current song.
Overdrive	Space	Activate overdrive once the meter is at least half full.
Fret1_Green	D	Key for the green lane.
Fret2_Red	F	Key for the red lane.
Fret3_Yellow	J	Key for the yellow lane.
Fret4_Blue	K	Key for the blue lane.
Fret5_Orange	L	Key for the orange lane.
[Songs]
Folder	(empty)	Where your songs live. Empty means a Songs folder right next to RockHero.dll.
Difficulty	Expert	Expert, Hard, Medium or Easy. Drops to the next lower one if the chart doesn't have it. Cycle in the menu with Tab.
Instrument	Guitar	Guitar, Bass, Rhythm, Coop or Keys. Cycle in the menu with Left / Right.
[Highway]
WidthMeters	2	Width of the five-lane highway.
LengthMeters	5	How long the highway is (how far ahead you see notes).
SpeedMetersPerSecond	3	How fast the notes scroll. Length divided by speed is your look-ahead in seconds.
StrikeLineHeightMeters	0.5	How high the strike line floats above the ground.
TiltDegrees	30	How far the far end of the highway leans away from you.
PlaceDistanceMeters	3	How far in front of you the strike line is placed when a song starts.
[Timing]
AudioOffsetMs	0	Latency calibration. Bigger = notes come later (use if you hit early). Negative = earlier.
HitWindowMs	150	How early or late you can be and still hit a note.
LeadInSeconds	3	Count-in before the audio starts.
PenalizeExtraPresses	false	If true, pressing a fret with nothing to hit breaks your streak.
[Overdrive]
FullBarSeconds	16	How long a completely full meter lasts once activated. Each star phrase fills 25%.
[Audio]
Volume	0.8	Song volume (0-1).

Known Beta Quirks

• There is no strum bar. No hammer-ons or taps either. Every note is just a press.
• Carpal tunnel inducing metal songs are probably too fast for accurate rapid tapping of the green key.
• .opus and .ogg audio only. No .mp3, .wav or .sng.
• Keyboard only. You could probably manually bind the lanes to joystick controls if you're using an actual plastic guitar.
• It's currently a local experience. Other players can't see your highway or your score yet.
• Some charts have a built-in delay in their song.ini. If one feels off by a consistent amount, nudge AudioOffsetMs or change the ini.
• You can put on a song and wander off to just listen to it. The audio is attached to the player instead of the highway.
• Updating or uninstalling a mod can remove its folder in some mod managers. Back up your Songs folder, or point Folder somewhere outside the mod's folder.

To Do, Maybe

• Drums.
• 6-fret (GHL) guitar and vocals.
• Strum bar, hammer-ons and taps for anyone who wants the full thing.
• Better Controller support.
• Multiplayer: shared highways, band mode, everyone sees everyone's score. Or one person plays and the whole lobby judges them.
• Searching and downloading songs from inside the game, so nobody has to manage folders and unzip anything.
• .mp3, .wav and .sng support.
• Practice mode: slow it down, loop a section.
• More feedback when you hit and miss, and a better looking results screen.
• Option to mute and play the sour note of failure when you miss a note.
• Optimize, optimize, optimize.

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Feedback

This is a beta so I'm mostly curious. Bugs, ideas, "I played with my elbows". All welcome over on reddit.com/r/bigwalkmodding

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Digital Tip Jar

Whether or not you have a cocoon parked in a tree that is full of guys that do nothing but play a video game that uses a little plastic baby guitar, consider supporting on Ko-fi. Funds will be used to improve multiplayer testing.

Credits and License

• Please support the artists and the charters.
• I'm not affiliated with any rhythm game or its publishers yet. This is free for literal love of the game.
• Audio decoding uses NVorbis (OGG Vorbis) and Concentus (Opus), both bundled under their own open source licenses.
• The usual CC BY-NC (Attribution-NonCommercial) with a Skiwsgaard non-commercial fishing license addendum. Reach out if you do something cool with this.

^{_{pro-tip: stretch your hands first and take breaks. interphalangeals arthritis is no way to live.}}