Rock Band 2 Track Packs Vol.1+2

Porting Rock Band Track Pack Vol.1 + Vol.2 into Rock Band 2 for PlayStation 2

Features

1. Complete metadata for songs. (album title, album art, release year, etc.)
2. Multitracks are brought over and kept as is.
3. Background videos are also brought over and kept as is.
4. Optional patch to play drums with your Dualshock controller.

Requirements

1. Rock Band 2 for PS2. NTSC/PAL will work fine.
2. Rock Band Track Pack discs. NTSC/PAL doesn't matter, we only need the songs.
3. IMGburn
4. Apache3, DiscPatcher, ArkTool and ArkToolGUI - all provided in this repo inside the tools folder.
5. Any file compression/extraction utility. (WinRAR, etc)
6. A softmodded PS2 - you should be able to load backups or play via a USB drive using OpenPS2Loader.
7. A utility to help solve potential issues with dual-layer backups
8. A PS2 emulator if you don't have access to a softmodded PS2.

Recent changes

• [25-Mar-2021]
  • No updates, but please note that the latest nightly build of PCSX2 now supports emulation of the Rock Band drum kit. If you want to play drums on the emulator, you no longer need to apply the dualshock drums patch.
• [02-May-2020]
  • The dualshock drums patch method now no longer breaks actual drums functionality! Connecting your drums controller will still allow you to play on Drums as normal. You will, however, still lose access to Vocals. To activate Vocals with this patch in use, connect a PSX/PS1 controller instead.
• [01-May-2020]
  • Added joypad_pcsx2.dtb to the mod folder. This file will re-assign the button mapping for menu navigation, designed to aid playing with the drums controller on an emulator, e.g. L2/Red to go back, R2/Green to confirm, L1/R1/Yellow/Blue to navigate up & down, etc. If you'd like to use this, simply rename the file to joypad.dtb before executing the script.
  • Enhanced Dualshock drums support - you can now also press Square, Triangle and Circle for Red, Yellow and Blue respectively. This should aid players in getting past fast rolling sections.

How to do

1. Clone this repo.

2. Load the track pack disc/ISO image into your drive.

3. Copy all files inside GEN into the corresponding folders provided - RBTPV1 and/or RBTPV2

   • You can also just open the ISO image with WinRAR/7-Zip or the like and just copy the files that way.

4. If you already have RB2 in ISO image form, just load it in Apache3 and skip to #9. Otherwise...

5. Load the RB2 disc.

6. Open Apache3 and select your drive.

7. You should only see Layer 1 at this point; click the Create ISO image from CD/DVD button. (to the left of the gear button)

8. Save the ISO whereever, then open it in Apache3. It should now reveal Layer 2 in addition to Layer 1.

   • AFAIK, there are no other applications available out there that can reveal this second layer to you.

9. Right-click anywhere on the left-side window pane, and choose to Extract All.

10. Now copy over everything inside the GEN folder to the root of the repo's directory (where you cloned it).

    • You might notice there are MAIN3, MAIN4 and MAIN5 arks that are not inside that GEN folder. Those need to be in the repo's root as well.

11. Execute extract.bat, wait for it to finish.

12. Execute patch.bat, follow the instructions, and wait for it to finish.

13. Launch ArkToolGUI, open the repo folder (where the MAIN.HDR file is), then File > Save As, save anywhere in a folder labeled GEN. You will need this folder when burning to your new ISO image.

14. Exit ArkToolGUI, and move MAIN.HDR to your newly created GEN folder, housing the rest of the MAIN_ files.

    • You MUST exit the tool before performing this step, as this will update the MAIN.HDR file as needed.

15. Launch IMGburn, and choose to Create image file from files/folders

16. Go to File > Load Project and load the included .IBB project file inside the tools folder.

17. Now go to Input > Advanced, then click Show Disc Layout Editor.

18. Navigate to the folder where you extracted all the RB2 disc contents into.

19. Insert the following files & folders in the exact order as listed here:

    • SLUS_218.00 (might be SLES_xxx.xx if PAL)
    • SYSTEM.CNF
    • GEN/ (the new one you made, not the one from the original disc!)
    • IOP/

    (note: while IMGburn may not list the files/folders as such, it will burn them in the exact order you added them.)

20. Wait for it to finish, then patch the ISO with DiscPatcher.exe, with the Master Disc option ticked.

21. YOU ARE DONE, GO PLAY THE GAME.

For reference, the final contents of your ISO should look identical to the original disc, except now you only have these files inside the GEN folder (note the lower case letters!):

• MAIN.HDR
• main_0.ark
• main_1.ark
• main_2.ark

What's broken at the moment?

1. Tutorial Mode. This is on purpose, as it helps save disc space. Please don't go into tutorial mode with this disc.
2. Tour/Career mode is absolutely broken because it's not made to house these new songs. I will attempt to fix this up at some point.
3. Album art graphics is wonky because I don't have the right tools to have them render properly. Very minor issue though.