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RB3 Cymbal Penny Mod

Rock Band 3 pro drums are a lot of fun, but as soon as I started playing, I noticed a big problem: My blue and green cymbals were over-hitting (i.e. being struck only once but registering multiple hits), and they were doing it a lot. Holding a 4x multiplier was just impossible in a lot of songs. And even in songs that were mainly snare/bass/hi-hat, as soon as I'd hit the green crash to activate overdrive, that 8x multiplier would turn into a 2x.

I spent a while fiddling with the screws that hold the cymbals down on the supports and control their tightness, and that helped some. Instead of over-hitting every single time, no matter what, I got it so they wouldn't over-hit as long as I hit them softly. Better, but still not practical on fast songs.

After a couple minutes of googling to see if others were having the same problem, I came across the penny mod. I also found several posts that said people had talked with Mad Catz support on the phone and had been pointed to this mod as a possible fix that wouldn't void the warranty, which I think is pretty cool. So, I decided to give it a shot and got out my screwdriver.

Ten minutes and two cents later, I now get zero over-hits on my blue and green cymbals, even when whacking the green hard at the end of a drum roll.

Beautiful Day

Yes, I'm jumping on the bandwagon for this post. But it's amazing how much anime-related stuff I've done today, yet none of it was simply watching anime.

First up was creating the SRT version of the script from the ASS script for Goku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei ep2, which is the last thing I do before release. (Since you want the SRT script based off of the latest version of the ASS script and that gets tweaked throughout the quality checking.) Easy enough, since Aegisub has a handy-dandy line selection tool that makes picking the dialogue and lyrics lines out from among the typesetting lines simple. Then it was just a matter of exporting them in SRT format and doing a quick check through the episode to tweak some stuff.

So, finally, the episode has been released! A big thanks to Dagger for translating every little bit of text in it. And I can't believe I actually typeset all of it... On the plus side, ep3 looks like it will be substantially easier to typeset since two of the three chapters in it only have minimal amounts of on-screen text. Well, minimal for Zetsubou Sensei, but it will probably seem like a walk in the park compared to ep2.

After that I played Rock Band 2 with my brother for a while, which is the only thing I've done so far today that was not anime-related. Unless you count eating a delicious hot pepperoni and mozzarella sandwich. But even then, I was muxing together an h.264/AAC encode of GSZS ep3 while I ate... Anyway, RB2.

My brother seems to have gotten fed up with trying to play drums on hard so lately he's been playing expert guitar instead. Which is fine by me, since that means I get to play drums instead – I always thought I'd enjoy drumming, since I have good rhythm, and I was right since I'm enjoying it more than the guitar parts. Guitar is still fun, of course, but drumming just feels awesome when I'm banging away and thumping the bass pedal and nailing every beat. I've been getting noticeably better (especially in getting through more complicated fills without breaking multiplier) and can play nearly every song on hard now, but there's still a long way to go before I master expert difficulty.

Next up was preparing stuff for the Anime Club. In case you missed it, well, you missed it; voting for next two anime we'll be watching, that is. We ended up with a three-way tie between Escaflowne, Ichigo Mashimaro, and Kanon and I rolled a die to determine which two would be picked. And I know they were the two I voted for, but I swear it was chance that Ichigo Mashimaro and Kanon ended up winning the rolls. It still feels a bit wrong, though, since those were the two I most wanted to watch while, on the other hand, I'm not a fan of Escaflowne so I was kind of hoping it wouldn't get picked. Please don't hate me, Miss A.

To go along with Kanon being chosen, I decided to download Exiled-Destiny's DVD rips of it to replace my old a.f.k. TV fansubs. I'm still debating over whether to watch it subbed or dubbed during Anime Club. I've watched it subbed before, obviously, but have not heard the dub at all. The main thing I'm wondering about is whether or not Ayu's "Uguu~" is preserved in the dub... What do you peoples think?

Finally, I retimed the Shugo Chara ep74 script to my re-encoded raw (transport streams where?), which ended up taking both more and less time than usual. More because there were a ton of cross-fades between scenes in this episode while subs were being displayed, so to make it look nice I had to time a bunch of fade effects on the subs to match up with the scene transitions. There was also a bit of typesetting to do – there usually isn't any of importance in Shugo Chara – which was sort of a slap in the face after finishing GSZS ep2. But less time overall because I was doing this late at night/early in the morning and thus was not in chat, thereby increasing my efficiency by, like, 50%.

And guess what! I still have a few episodes to write about for my next week in anime screen shots post. It never ends.

I've got a fever...

What I feared yesterday has come to pass. I woke up this morning with a sore throat that somehow manages to feel both dry and like there's gunk from my sinuses running down it at the same time. Joy. I'm not sure if I actually have a fever, but if I do it's at least not a bad one. I've been a slight bit dizzy at times but that could just be the sinus congestion throwing my balance off. My sense of taste is also a bit off.

Anyway, rhythm: I has it. I moved up to medium drums in Rock Band 2 yesterday after playing a few songs on easy and figuring out what the heck I was doing. Lots of five stars so far, with the occasional four creeping in. (WTF is with Tangled up in Blue by Bob Dylan? The actual beats in it are simple to play but there's not a steady pattern anywhere to be found in that song.) Sometimes it takes me a bit to pick up the beat, but once I figure it out I can usually stick to it consistently. Like, 600+ note streak on a song without having played it on drums before, consistently. I figure I'll finish out most of the tour on medium to refine the muscle memory and get better at fill transitions—I still accidentally hit the edges of the drums instead of the pads sometimes lol—then move up to hard. I may just end up enjoying drums more than guitar.

If anyone wants to take a look, I made a profile on rockband.com. Not much there yet but it's got a picture of my character. Yes, I made him look like Link. I was browsing through the various clothes and happened to notice this particular combo. I dunno if I'll keep him that way but for now I find it amusing. It's just too bad that there's no pointy hat to go with the rest of the outfit.

Jester is my brother's character. I have serious doubts about his taste in headgear.

My 21st birthday went well, better than I thought it would. I kind of expected to have to crash at my friend's place for a day or something to avoid my brothers trying to get me drunk. The two oldest returned home to the Bay Area before that, though, so nothing ended up happening. In fact, the whole thing was rather uneventful other than having some friends over Friday night to play RB2. But that's fine by me since I don't like making a huge deal out of my birthday.

Work on Goku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei ep2 is slow but continuing. I'm currently waiting for more sign translations from Dagger so go poke her if you're impatient. :p

And speaking of anime, the new winter season shows have started. Shin put up another thread on OB for talking about them and I listed the ones I'm interested in. I haven't seen much of them yet but once I do I'll probably post more thoughts in there.

Jingle Bell Rock Band

Well, Christmas has come and gone once more. I had a lot of fun yesterday and none of it involved my PC or the internet—OMG, like, I know, right? My two oldest brothers are up from the Bay Area for Christmas so all four of us have been hanging out.

Anyway, I'm guessing people will skim the post looking for the list of loot before reading the rest of it (or is that just me? >_>;) so, without farther ado, here it is:

• Rock Band 2 Special Edition bundle for the Wii
• Component video cable for the Wii (for hooking it up to the huge HDTV out in the living room)
• Digital converter box (for the crappy old analog TV in my room)
• $50
• A bunch of candy

Not a huge list but I'm happy with it. RB2 was my one big present that most of my family went together to buy me since it cost a little over $200 after tax. But, considering how I got Guitar Hero II shortly after Christmas last year and was playing it off and on until a few days ago, I think RB2 will last me a long time to come.

Speaking of RB2, we had to go on a small adventure to find one of the bundles. See, Harmonix put out a press release saying that the bundle would ship out to retailers on Dec. 18 and that it wouldn't arrive for 5-7 days. That is, retailers wouldn't get it until a couple days before Christmas. So, me and my mom happening to be up bright and early on Dec. 23, we decided to go look for one. (Yes, I went with her to buy my own Christmas present. She knows by now to bring someone along who knows what they're talking about so that she doesn't accidentally buy the 360 version or RB1 for the Wii or something by mistake.) It turned out they had actually shipped earlier than announced and retailers had gotten them the previous week, with the result being that everywhere in town was already sold out. ... Thanks, Harmonix, you guys did a great job on not saying anything about that.

When we checked at one of the GameStop stores in town they said there was, however, a bundle available at a GameStop in a city about 40 miles away. After checking one more place in town and coming up empty, I was surprised when my mom said she'd drive all the way out there to get it. I hadn't said anything about it and had just resigned myself to waiting until a bit after Christmas to find a copy, but she said it was fine when I asked if she was sure she wanted to bother. So we had the girl at GameStop call the other store and hold the bundle for us and off we went. A couple hours later we were back home with a shiney new Rock Band 2 bundle in hand—which then promptly disappeared for two days until I unwrapped it yesterday. :p

I seriously was not expecting her to go through that much trouble, though, so it gave me that warm fuzzy feeling inside when she did. My parents can be pretty cool at times. ^_^

So, anyway, I haven't played it much yet but I'm already loving the drums in RB2. I have pretty good rhythm so I jumped in and immediately did excellent on easy. Medium was a bit more tricky 'cause I haven't developed any muscle memory whatsoever for drumming yet, but I can definitely see myself rocking out on expert eventually. Also, having the green notes swapped from the left to the right side of the note chart was screwing me up because I'd be wanting to hit the yellow pad for blue notes since I'm used to blue being farther to the right on the chart; I cannot see any reason for swapping green's position other than to screw people over and it annoys me.

The new guitar is going to take a bit of getting used to as well. I like that the fret buttons don't stick up and that they're a little closer together than on the GHII guitar so that I don't have to move my hand as far when sliding to reach green and orange notes. But I don't like that they feel squishy, without any click to them whatsoever; it's harder to tell when exactly the button gets pressed and it was screwing with my timing for hammer-ons/pull-offs. That will take some adjustment.

The strum bar is also a lot looser and kind of squishy feeling. So far I like it more for double strumming since it takes less strength to move it (and its shape is just easier to grip between the thumb and index finger), which translates to more accurate timing for longer periods of fast double strumming. But it seems a little harder to do fast single strumming with it since it doesn't spring back to center as fast after a strum as the GHII guitar. I think it should still be possible, it will just require some adjustment to the strumming motion to take into account the lack of springiness.

And now I am going to go pwn the game's solo guitar career on hard to unlock more tracks.