☆ MIDI & GAMEPLAY

:!: WORK IN PROGRESS! :!:

The third tab in Magma is where you put in your MIDI and add in additional important gameplay information for your custom.

1. MIDI

Drag and drop your exported MIDI file with your chart into this bar.

2. AUTOGENERATION THEME

If you have no venue in your MIDI, this dropdown menu will determine what kind of autogenerated venue will be used. Be aware that you need playtest sections for this to work, and it is highly discouraged to use an autogen venue for your final released build.

3. ANIMATION SPEED

Decides which animation pool to use for the in-game characters. They include the following:

Be aware that this doesn't change the actual tempo of the in-game animations, just what type of animations occur. If you pick “Slow” for a song that is way above 100bpm, all your characters will move very fast, and if you pick “Fast” for a song way below 160bpm everyone will move in slow motion, as an example.

If your chart has wildly fluxating tempos its usually better to pick a animation pool reflecting the highest tempo in the song. For example, if your song jumps between 100bpm and 180bpm, picking “Fast” will usually look the best.

4. HOPO THRESHOLD

This determines the note intervals required for a note to automatically become a Ho/Po on Guitar, Bass and 5-lane Keys. In most cases its best to leave this at 170 (default), but for faster songs it might also be worth bumping it up to 250 to make 5-lane Keys more fun to play if playing it on a guitar controller.

5. VOCAL GENDER

Determines the type of character to sing the song when nobody is playing the Vocals chart, either Male or Female.

Sadly there is no Non-Binary option like in Rock Band 4, so for NB singers pick which one seems closest to their preferred gender expression and write a note about the vocal gender online when posting your custom.

6. VOCAL PERCUSSION

Picks which type of percussion instrument will be used for clap sections on Vocals:

Be sure to add a matching animation event in the Vocals track in your MIDI.

7. VOCAL SCROLL SPEED

Determines how fast the vocal tubes and lyrics will scroll in-game. You usually don't want to go below the default (Normal - 2300), but if a song has a lot of fast lyrics in it (for example “They're Red Hot” by Red Hot Chili Peppers), you'll want to use one of these options:

Be sure to test it in-game with Scrolling Vocals on to make sure the lyrics don't trail off the notes. In extreme cases, such as certain Vocaloid songs, it might be impossible to achieve perfect results.

8. VOCAL GUIDE PITCH

Changes the volume of the vocal guide pitch in practice mode. Usually best left alone.

9. TUNING CENTS

If the vocals are between normal pitches (such as for old songs that are slightly sped up during mixing) use this to adjust it to work properly in-game. If needed, you'll probably already have adjusted this in ReaSynth during Vocal authoring, and you'll just have to use the same tuning value as there.

10. VOCAL TONIC NOTE

Allows for advanced pitch information on Harmonies. Best left disabled unless you know exactly what to do with it, as it is not needed.

11. MUTE VOLUME VOCALS / MUTE VOLUME

Changes the volume of stems when missing notes. Best left alone in most cases.

12. SONG RATING

What age rating your custom will have, shown in-game under more info. Useful in case somebody wanna play the game with their kids but don't want them picking very raunchy or scary songs, for example. Here are the ratings available:

1 - Family Friendly

2 - Supervision Recommended

3 - Mature

4 - Unrated

Album art should also factor into the age rating, so a song labeled as Family Friendly should have a fairly unobjectionable album cover used in-game for example. In cases where you want to have a lower age rating for a song with an inappropriate album cover, see if there exists different cover art you can use, such as a single cover, best of compilation cover or even just replace it with a picture of the band's logo.

13. DRUM KIT SFX

The drum sound used when playing Overdrive fills or freeform drums before or after the song on Drums. The kits available are:

Pick a sound you think will work well with the vibe of the song. Also remember that if you chart a song without multitracks, the drum audio from the song will not cut out while playing fills, so keep that in mind when picking a sound as well.

14. SOLOS

Used to mark if your song has a solo marker on any instrument for the sake of under-the-hood metadata. This should be done automatically when you import a new MIDI into your project, and is best left alone unless changes are made later to add/remove a solo marker.

15. PRO GUITAR / PRO BASS

This determines the tuning for a ProTar chart, with the basic value of 0-0-0-0-0-0 being E Standard. To get a different tuning for chord notations in-game, adjust each number up or down to change the base note of that particular string.

16. SONG ID

Used to tell the game the identity of your song, which helps differenciate it from previous versions, alternate charts, etc.

17. DIFFICULTY

These show how hard a song is to play in the song select screen. It is rated on a scale from 0 to 6, and should be based on how hard or easy the song is to play on Expert compared to other songs in Rock Band. We recommend basing this on the standards of official DLC rather than customs in most cases.

Tier 0 - Warmup

Some of the easiest songs available, perfect for beginners. Must contain no parts that could feasibly fail out someone, assuming they pick an instrument difficulty they are ready for. Any vocal song that is all talkies should also be labeled as 0 dot.

Examples:

Tier 1 - Apprentice

One step above the easiest; can have a few harder parts while still being mostly passable.

Examples:

Tier 2 - Solid

When songs start getting a bit trickier while still below what one would consider the midpoint on the difficulty scale.

Examples:

Tier 3 - Moderate

The midpoint of the difficulty scale; songs here should be somewhat challenging but manageable with some practice

Examples:

Tier 4 - Challenging

One step above the midpoint on the difficulty scale; can include trickier riffs, harder solos, bigger vocal ranges, but should still not be completely

Examples:

Tier 5 - Nightmare

This is where stuff starts getting pretty though; can include really fast riffs, shredding solos, complex rhythms and mind-bending vocal pitches. Just, you know, in moderation compared to the final tier.

Examples:

Tier 6 (aka. Devil Tier) - Impossible

Songs that are so though a majority of people wouldn’t be able to pass it without practice and well timed Overdrive activations. This often entails breakneck note speeds, incredibly complex patterns, huge vocal ranges, and other elements you would find in the final challenges of one of these games.

Examples:

Additional Tier Information