Rocksmith

Rocksmith is a music video game produced by Ubisoft Entertainment SA whose ostensible purpose is to teach users how to play guitar through lessons, exercises, and playing actual songs in the manner they were played by the original artists using any real electric guitar.

The original version (‘RS1’) was released in 2011. A much improved update, Rocksmith 2014 Edition Remastered (‘RS2’), was released in 2013 .

Support for RS1/RS2 has since been discontinued.^[1]The end of DLC (see below for the definition of this acronym) production was announced by Ubisoft on 2 April 2020. A sequel, Rocksmith+, was released on September 5, 2022. It differs from the original game in that it is available by subscription rather than one-time purchase and requires an active internet connection, among other things. This new version has received mixed reviews and to date I have not found sufficient reason to subscribe.^[2]I had occasion to participate in the pre-launch beta and found the claims exaggerated and the software far more buggy than I would have expected, even for a beta version—to the point where the … Continue reading

Downloadable content

RS1 and RS2 came with a number of licensed titles by well-known artists out of the box, with more being made available for purchase over the life of the product (so-called ‘Original downloadable content’, or ‘ODLC’). That said, there were significant lacunae in the offering, presumably due to licensing issues. The Beatles, for example, were completely unrepresented.

To remedy this, a group of Rocksmith enthusiasts banded together and created a number of tools to facilitate the creation of ‘custom downloadable content’ (‘CDLC’). These tools and the CDLC which have been created are available at www.customsforge.com with the creation of a free account.

My contributions to Customs Forge

For many years, I was a passive member of Customs Forge in the sense that I availed myself of CDLC produced by others and hosted on the site. It wasn’t until April 2022 (give or take) that I started to consider seriously creating CDLC of my own. on 26 July, 2022, I uploaded my own coding of ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’, which so far has been well received. I am indebted to many of the members of Customs Forge who kindly took the time to walk me through the process.

In the hopes of in turn helping others who might like to try their hand at this, I am putting together a step-by-step tutorial reflecting my approach to creating CDLC by means of an actual example. Take a look!

In the meantime, I do my best to help those who experience difficulties in getting the system up and running as best I can 🙂

References