Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Rock Band Score Reader

Note: The evolution of this tool is now the RockBandStats.com website!

You can see your scores there and it loads much faster than fetching your own scores with the Rock Band Score Reader. Enjoy!

See this post for more info.

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Would you like to see all of your official RockBand.com Leaderboards scores (Solo or Band) in one easy-to-read spreadsheet? Would you like to quickly know which are your best and worst ranked songs? Do you want to see how close you are to the #1 score for any song?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then this tool is for you!

Version 2.3 includes:

- Compatibility with the new RockBand.com website (all scores for RB2 and RB1, including RB1 Disk Export)
- Support for all instruments or band on PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii
- Support for DLC, including an option to specify songs you own for faster score retrieval
- Can get #1 scores and calculate spread
- Stats page
- An estimate of the time remaining
- The ability to select the range of ranks that the tool will search for your scores in
- Support for XP, Vista (32-bit) and all Excel versions
- Logging for better issue tracking

Here is a look at the tool in action:


Here is an example of the scores spreadsheet:


Download Here (no longer available, see RockBandStats.com instead)

Brought to you by Phoenix5096 (code master extraordinaire) and Bongoo (usability and QA).

If you have any questions or comments about the Rock Band Score Reader, please send an email to phoenix5096@gmail.com.

This tool has been very useful to 3 Macas and a Reject. We hope that it will also be useful to you and your band!

33 comments:

Phoenix5096 said...

All this hard work finally ready to show off :D

thanks for your help!

maybe with enought donations we can buy our Ion drum kits ;)

DMan3021 said...

that would be quite awesome...

Phoenix5096 said...

too bad deploying with .net is such a pain :(

and no, I am NOT re-coding this in C++ :p

Raikan said...

How about recoding it in Perl?

Bongoo said...

.Net is fine for now...

Fixing all current issues and getting Rock Band 2 compatibility when it comes out is the priority.

Amazing work Phoenix, you have put countless hours into this project, we are very grateful!

Getting a first donation would be nice though...

ironeagle34 said...

Again, good work man. Hopefully the spreadsheets I sent you help.

Ackpack34
'It Didn't Come Out Right'
'Squeeky Wheal'

Francisco "Franco" Acosta said...

Any word on compatibility with RB2 now that the new site launched? :)

Bongoo said...

To francisco "franco" acosta:

We are working on RB2 support, thank you for your patience.

DKage said...

I find your tool to be absolutely brilliant. I have an idea for consideration as you are working on the updated version. Under the DLC Options, would it be possible to either change the grouping or provide more than just the song title, i.e. artist name? I was thinking something akin the DLC arrangement used on Rock Heroes Online when adding songs to a collection. I think it would make it easier to decide what songs are owned if it were arranged by pack or week of distribution.

Also, can I inquire as to why you chose to make it selection based on songs to be skipped instead of songs that one wants included? I'm just curious about that since it feels a little counter intuitive. But your tool is one of the greatest things to come out for people who are serious about being virtual Rock Stars!

Bongoo said...

To DKage:

Thanks for the feedback.

The DLC Options do not have categories because it would require constant updates and maintenance. This was the best solution as it can read the new songs from the website automatically so people don't have to download a new Score Reader every week. Once people select what they don't have, it is saved in the Preferences so it's always excluded.

As for why it is an "exclude" list instead of an "include" list, the reason is that a lot of people buy most DLC but decide not to buy certain packs or albums (ex: Pixies). Choosing only that album takes less time than selecting the hundreds of song they have.

But you're right, there are people who buy only a few tracks and having to select everything else could be tedious. It also makes sense from a cognitive standpoint to select what you have instead of what you don't have... We'll keep your suggestion in mind and weigh the pros and cons. Thanks again!

DKage said...

Thanks for the reply! I look so forward to the updated version as I am really getting into using Rock Heroes to track my personal progress (until RHO adds the ability to track existing band performance).

I understand your reasoning for not grouping the DLC; that makes sense. I am not a programmer so I can only imagine the amount of time and energy required to put together the incredible program you have already created. Can I then throw my alternate suggestion of including, say, the artist along with the song title into the ring for consideration? For instance, it would prove to be very confusing if "Hey" by Red Hot Chili Peppers were released considering that the Pixies' "Hey" is already out.

Bongoo said...

To Dkage:

Artist information does not appear on the Leaderboards unfortunately but it is a neat suggestion. Thanks!

If there was a case where there is a duplicate song name, we would definitely consider making an exception by adding something to the title to distinguish one from the other.

Anonymous said...

A minor bug. I have the My Documents folder redirected to a separate harddrive (E:) and this tool tries to create the files in the E:\\your_rock_band_score_folder_name\ folder. This is an icorrect path (notice the double \) and no file is created.

It would be nice if I could manually choose which destination folder these files would go in.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Bongoo said...

To Pyret:

Thanks for the suggestion, I will mention it to Phoenix.

To everyone:

Good news, the Score Reader (version 2.0) is almost ready! Stay tuned for an update very soon.

Anonymous said...

im having problems using this program. it says to log into the rockband.com leaderboards when i alraedy am. why isnt it detecting my login. and yes i tried deleteing the cookies and it still wont work....

can some please help me?

Bongoo said...

To ryan:

The tool was not working because the RockBand.com website had changed. With version 2.0, everything should now work fine.

Unknown said...

Any chance of allowing excel option even though I don't have excel installed on my machine? I use Open Office and NeoOffice (on the mac) and both are excel compatible. I just started using the tool and would like to see that 2nd tab :)

Bongoo said...

To Marc:

I'll have to verify with Phoenix about that issue. As far as I know, Excel needs to be installed to be able to generate that page.

Anonymous said...

I just downloaded but have not yet tried it - just curious before I start using it - does it include DLC, and the AC-DC songs from the stand alone?

Good job from what I have seen thus far. Will be hitting paypal later today when I get home

Anonymous said...

And to add - Cool to see some boys from O Town having developed this. Ottawa boy myself, although I stick with the Xbox 360 version =).

Keep up the great work

Bongoo said...

To Aremis:

Thanks for your feedback, nice to see a fellow rocker from Ottawa using our tool!

I don't have access to the donations info page (have to ask Phoenix for updates, he told me earlier today that we were still at $0.00...), but if you donated, we greatly appreciate it!

Yes, the AC/DC songs are included as part of the "DLC" category. Make sure to select "DLC" for your game before clicking Start and the tool will retrieve scores for any song that can be downloaded. You can also specify the DLC that you own under "DLC Options..." in the "Tools" menu.

Anonymous said...

Guys,

I've been trying to use your tool for a couple of weeks now and I keep running into the same problem - it always gives an "Unable to obtain list of songs from rockband.com" style error message and dies. Any ideas if it's just my installation that's FUBAR, or is there something else going on here?

Cheers!

Anonymous said...

Nevermind - someone went and updated the program to add the Wii in and I'd not updated - working with the new version now!

Bongoo said...

To DJ Pooka:

Yep, me and Phoenix updated the tool just before Christmas.

zippy said...

Total Newb question here: for the WII, what names go in Player Name and Band Name?

Bongoo said...

To zippy:

Enter your player name (ID for Wii I assume, same as official Leaderboards) if you are searching for your solo scores.

Enter your band name if you are searching for your band scores.

zarlor said...

Any chance you guys might look at getting this tool to use the OpenOffice Calc program instead of just Excel? (I'm assuming you actually open Excel with your program, here, as opposed to just pulling calculated values and making an xls file to open with Excel. Since if you were doing the latter there would be no need to actually check for the existence of Excel as many programs besides Excel can open xls files granting a little better platform independence if you could skip that check.)

Bongoo said...

To zarlor:

Thanks for your interest in the Rock Band Score Reader, but further development on it is unlikely due to the release of RockBandStats.com.

You can get your scores much faster there.

Zarlor said...

Oh very nice. Thanks for pointing that out!

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