Using Pacenote Plugin

Jan 2024: updated Laahanen's co-driver mod link (v3).

Installation
Forcing certain pacenotes/ranges ini file for all stages (the plugin's stock co-drivers)
Fixing the countdown samples (the plugin's stock co-drivers)
"Converting" any old co-driver mod to work with Pacenote Plugin
Things to live and learn (all-in-one)

Now there's a misleading headline for you, because I'll mostly neglect the nitty-gritty of how to actually use the The Beast. For that, you can consult the official Quick Start Guide (also included in the Pacenote Plugin package). It will tell you everything you need to know and more about "the Swiss army knife of RBR".

Caution! In order to use Pacenote Plugin, you must have DirectX End-User Runtimes (June 2010) installed. (Note that directx_Jun2010_redist.exe as such doesn't install the DirectX files, it only extracts the installer files to the location of your choice. The actual installation then begins by running DXSETUP.exe.)




Installation


  1. Download Pacenote Plugin by WorkerBee.


  2. Extract the pack to \Plugins.


  3. Done.

    On the stage, double-clicking left mouse button opens the pacenote editor and the right one opens the camera editor.


The biased list below showcases a few viable co-driver options for you to get started.

  • Testing the stock co-drivers: The plugin package provides an English, French and Czech co-drivers with extended terminology. They are chosen by editing the sounds line in PaceNote.ini (see PaceNote.sample.ini for guidance), and then in-game by choosing any pacenote type other than Rbr.ini or Rbr-Enhanced.ini (upper combo box) and Extended.ini for ranges (lower combo box).

  • Sticking to the RBR's original ENG co-driver (Robert Reid): The minimum requirement is to open PaceNote.ini and edit the sounds line to sounds=english. Alternatively, you can download and install this easy-to-install "expansion" pack to make everything work fantastically well at all times. More info.

  • Janne Laahanen's co-driver pack (EN/FI): Video (v3.0, Jan 2024). The new standard. Laahanen's English mod is one of the very few public alternatives to the stock one – with much broader terminology and taking full advantage of the Beast, that is – for you English speaking RBR enthusiasts.

  • Taking a risk with a porridge mod: Official site. Most of these entry-level mods haven't aged well but they're fully compatible so at least they work sensationally. Just (re-)install any co-driver on top of the Beast, and you're good to go. Has a very limited terminology compared to the stock ones.

Otherwise – and let's be clear about this now – any mods that aren't specially made for the Pacenote Plugin will not work properly (and that's like 97% of them). If you want to stay loyal to your trusty but incompatible co-driver mod, you can try to "fix" it with this guide.




Forcing a certain pacenote/range ini file for all stages (the plugin's stock co-driver mods)


Because your preferred ini settings for the pacenote type (descriptive/numeric/etc.) and ranges (distances) in the plugin UI don't stick from one session to the next, and they're rather determined by what settings have been used to save the pacenotes, you'll probably end up having to change the settings all the time, and that is just a bloody nuisance. Fortunately, there's a better way that doesn't involve saving pacenotes for each stage again, and not only that, for different versions of each stage (_M(orning)/_N(oon)/_E(vening)/_O(vercast)).
 
Let's pretend that you would only like to hear a certain style of numeric pacenotes (e.g. Numeric.ini) with the extended set of ranges (like with Extended.ini).

  1. Go to \Plugins\Pacenote\config\pacenotes → Open Numeric.ini, copy (Ctrl+C) its file0 and file1 lines → Paste (Ctrl+V) them to all the other ini files to replace the corresponding lines so that every ini would then have the same lines:
    file0=packages\Numeric.ini
    file1=packages\Extended.ini

  2. And very similarly for ranges, go to \Plugins\Pacenote\config\ranges → Open Extended.ini to copy its file line → Paste it to Rbr.ini to replace its current file line. Afterwards, both files would have:
    file=packages\Extended.ini 

  3. Done. Now the ini settings in the pacenote editor have basically been made irrelevant, they'll continue to change depending on a stage, but you will always hear numeric pacenotes with extended ranges.



Fixing the countdown samples (the plugin's stock co-drivers)


Let's get this right: The English co-driver (Steve) at least has the required samples, but unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the French one (Christophe).

"3", "2" and "1": Whether you rename the new countdown samples or edit some lines instead – or even both – it's totally up to you, I'm just telling you where the files should go and what lines to edit (if needed).

When the pacenote language is set to English in-game, the samples go to \Audio\Speech\Numbers.
For other languages, they go to \Audio\Speech\Num[Xxx] (recommended!).

Numbers.ini
(RBR pacenotes set to English)
Numother.ini
(other RBR pacenote languages)
[NUMBER::NUMBERS]
Sounds=15
Snd0=p1_   ← "1"
Snd1=p2_   ← "2"
Snd2=p3_   ← "3"
...
[NUMBER::NUMBERS]
Sounds=15
Snd0=p1~   ← "1"
Snd1=p2~   ← "2"
Snd2=p3~   ← "3"
...


"Go" is shared between all languages (in its charming unfinished way): \Audio\Game\Go.wav. And there's a catch right there: it's not an ogg file, instead it's a Wave file (11025hz 16-bit mono WAV). And there's no getting around this, so you must convert an ogg to wav.




"Converting" any old co-driver mod to work with Pacenote Plugin


RBR has dozens of co-driver mods that already existed pre-Pacenote Plugin and therefore are somewhat incompatible out of the box. If you don't know the difference between a compatible/incompatible mod, it's simple: a so-called compatible co-driver mod would install at least something to \Plugins\Pacenote, whereas an incompatible one would install files only to \Audio. This distinction is key; do not use this guide to fix badly made mods!

Making an incompatible mod work perfectly with the plugin requires a bit of tinkering but it's worth it; a mod would actually work better than it ever did without the plugin. This is because the plugin takes care of some of the unfinished business left by RBR devs; like enabling the previously unused pacenotes like care, plus, minus and onto. Doesn't sound like much, but it's something!


Step 1.

Go to \Plugins\Pacenote\Sounds and create a new folder, I'll name it codriver but you name it whatever you want.

Open \Plugins\Pacenote\PaceNote.ini and edit the sounds line to point to the newly-created folder. Like this: sounds=codriver

Go to \Audio\Speech\"PaceNote/Fre/Ita/Spa/Ger/Czh/Pol as in wherever your co-driver's files are" → Copy all .ogg files and paste them to \Plugins\Pacenote\Sounds\codriver. (Technically, you would only need to copy the samples that are used for Care, Caution, Minus and Plus, but indeed no harm in copying all files to Pacenote Plugin.)


Step 2.

Open \Plugins\Pacenote\config\pacenotes\Rbr-Enhanced.ini. Copy its file0 and file1 lines and replace the corresponding lines in all the other ini files in the same folder.

Go and open \Plugins\Pacenote\config\ranges\Extended.ini and edit the line file=packages\Extended.inifile=packages\Rbr.ini

Meandering explanation: This is to force the plugin to read from specific files at all times, regardless of a special stage. Essentially, the options for corner and distance calls (meaning upper+lower comboboxes in the main pacenote editor window) become effectively irrelevant; they'll continue to change depending on a stage, but in reality, the pacenote categories will always remain the same and only consist of notes actually available to you and the original RBR distances will be played out. You could even save pacenotes with "wrong" combobox settings and it'd make no difference whatsoever!


Step 3.

Open the following files:
  • \Audio\CoOther.ini (or CoDriver.ini, if the mod is overwriting the original English co-driver).
  • \Plugins\Pacenote\config\pacenotes\packages\Additional\Rbr-Enhanced.ini
  • \Plugins\Pacenote\config\pacenotes\packages\Cautions\Rbr.ini

From CoOther.ini, copy Sounds and Snd lines of Care, Caution, Minus and Plus and replace corresponding lines in Rbr-Enhanced.ini and Rbr.ini. Also, add a suffix .ogg to each of the new Snd lines (I've no idea if this is really necessary but why not).

Done. Now the co-driver files should play out flawlessly; no missing pacenotes and no different voices reading certain notes. The next chapter would be about translating the pacenotes for the UI but that should be easy enough even without porridge guiding you through. The main string files you'd want to look for are in \Plugins\Pacenote\"UI language"\pacenotes\Packages\ [Additional & Cautions & Corners & Line & Links & Modifier & Obstacles]. Naturally for this purpose, there will be lots of strings you don't need to translate.




Things to live and learn (all-in-one)


Save as BTB: Slightly unintuitively, when you save pacenotes in BTB format, you have to type the file extension (.ini) too. If you do forget it, don't worry, nothing's lost as you can always add the extension afterwards in Windows simply by renaming the file.

eqmix.dll: The file in question and Pacenote Plugin don't go together very well, the engine sounds tend to half-disappear when turning Pacenote Plugin on/off. If you've played with EQ on purpose, you might want to live with this bug, but if not, just delete eqmix.dll in \Plugins, and this will no longer be a problem. (Although it has to be said that porridge isn't really so sure anymore of what exactly is the origin of eqmix.dll, it could also be a mere third-party plugin that has been included into RSRBR for unknown reasons.)

RBRvr + Pacenote Plugin: This combination is known to cause crashes to desktop because they aren't all that compatible. However, WorkerBee added a working solution to Pacenote Plugin's version 1.11.0.11: Whenever VR is in use, turn off the plugin GUI (Pacenote.ini: enableGUI=1 → enableGUI=0). This will cut out the CTDs, and your pacenotes still get called just like you want them. (Of course, switching between "modes" by manually editing the files every time is hardly wise, so we strongly recommend using other solutions such as this.)  

RBRTM: The plugin's anticheat system, which is supposed to check only that the locations of start, splits and finish haven't been edited, doesn't always work as advertised and can cause DNF if notes have been added/edited after the finish line or added to close proximity of splits. Any faulty pacenote files can be "cured" afterwards. You can read more about this in here.

RBR-World: I haven't had RBR-World installed in years, but I expect it to still not allow Pacenote Plugin in online events. But you should be able to use it offline (Testing Zone) by opening Plugins.ini and adding a line:
PaceNote=[md5 hash of PaceNote.dll]
So if you have the version 1.11.0.11 (the most recent version at time of writing), the line should be:
PaceNote=d6c7ea429bbd09ea5da8a2b0e5fe48f4