How to [somewhat] make older themes compatible with this Steam version.

[D.Sofren]

Hey guys. I did a little bit of fiddling around last night because a long time ago, someone made this extremely gorgeous Rockband 3 theme for the old Phase Shift, and that alone kept me playing.

Today, I would like to let everyone know that I have been successful in making some of that theme work again, but it's not going to be as grand as you think.

It's very easy, and I hope this helps a lot of you:

Step 1: Locate the "themes" folder within your local files for Phase Shift (Steam)
Step 2: Locate the "default" theme, copy, and paste it. Make a duplicate, basically.
Step 3: Rename it to the theme you're about to install.
Step 4: Open the new folder. You should see the folders "dynamic" and "static."
Step 5: Locate the "static" folder of the theme you downloaded and want to install.
Step 6: Copy/Merge this folder with the "static" folder of the duplicated "default" theme.
- If it asks if you want to overwrite any files, say yes.

That's it. You should now have board and frets matching the theme you wanted to install. Unfortunately, I have not yet dug deep enough to find a way to get files in the "dynamic" folder to work properly. That's going to take some research for sure. Until then, this next step is optional.

(Optional) Step 7: Copy the "dynamic" folder from the theme you want to install and merge it with the "dynamic" folder of the duplicate theme you created earlier. When it asks to overwrite, choose "skip these files."

Let me clarify that this does not change the menus of the game. For the most part, this will only change your board and frets.

At the moment, overwriting most of the files in the dynamic folder will cause the theme not to work properly. If anyone knows what files are okay to replace and what files are not okay to replace in that folder, do let us know in the posts below.

Thanks for reading, and good luck out there!

[IdiotGamer]

I just tried this without the optional step with the Rock Band 2 theme and it works! Thanks a lot!

[Dannyyy]

I'm currently in the process of porting the Rock Band 2 and Rock Band 3 themes. Any contributions are appreciated. https://github.com/TheRealDannyyy/Phase-Shift-Theme-Ports

(It's in a very early stage and I just started setting things up. So far I just got them to run fine.)

[RobotJesus420]

I created a new folder in D:\Program Files\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Phase Shift\themes called "Warriors of Rock" and put that theme in there and it seems to be working alright https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwZlCnKdJck

[D.Sofren]

Originally posted by TheRealDannyyy:

I'm currently in the process of porting the Rock Band 2 and Rock Band 3 themes. Any contributions are appreciated. https://github.com/TheRealDannyyy/Phase-Shift-Theme-Ports

(It's in a very early stage and I just started setting things up. So far I just got them to run fine.)

Rock on and good luck in your work. I have a feeling that some of it may just be layering issues, judging by how the text tends to disappear in the profile choices and song menus, whereas the game settings menus seem to work just fine (until it asks for a restart). I'd definitely look in those areas.

My original post is more of just a temporary workaround until someone (such as yourself) has managed to get the themes to work correctly again.

[D.Sofren]

Originally posted by RobotJesus420:

I created a new folder in D:\Program Files\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Phase Shift\themes called "Warriors of Rock" and put that theme in there and it seems to be working alright https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwZlCnKdJck

That is awesome. Just to clarify, did you put the theme into an empty folder, or did you merge the files into a copy of the default theme folder?

[RobotJesus420]

Originally posted by D.Sofren:

Originally posted by RobotJesus420:

I created a new folder in D:\Program Files\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Phase Shift\themes called "Warriors of Rock" and put that theme in there and it seems to be working alright https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwZlCnKdJck

That is awesome. Just to clarify, did you put the theme into an empty folder, or did you merge the files into a copy of the default theme folder?

Empty folder titled "Warriors of Rock", I left "default" alone and it still seems to work just fine - my original plan was to just overwrite default with contents of Warriors of Rock, but didn't seem to be necessary.

To be honest, I'm not huge on the entire reskin and would like the Phase Shift default theme just with GH style gems - going to play around with it a bit later/tomorrow and will post my results

[D.Sofren]

Originally posted by RobotJesus420:

To be honest, I'm not huge on the entire reskin and would like the Phase Shift default theme just with GH style gems - going to play around with it a bit later/tomorrow and will post my results

You should be able to accomplish that by making a copy of the default theme, then overwriting everything in the "static" folder of it with the static folder of your warriors of rock theme. Basically all it does is change the board and frets/notes.

[RobotJesus420]

Originally posted by D.Sofren:

Originally posted by RobotJesus420:

To be honest, I'm not huge on the entire reskin and would like the Phase Shift default theme just with GH style gems - going to play around with it a bit later/tomorrow and will post my results

You should be able to accomplish that by making a copy of the default theme, then overwriting everything in the "static" folder of it with the static folder of your warriors of rock theme. Basically all it does is change the board and frets/notes.

Ahh, fantastic, thanks for the tip! Screenshot of results: https://i.imgur.com/H9APirq.jpg

[Tephlanto]

An even quicker workaround for me, I just deleted the entire dynamic folder, then set my theme to RB2, and voila. my Fret board is RB style, while my menus are Phase Shift.

I like it way better that way, as I hate the modded in RB2 theme.. looks really fake to me

[Dannyyy]

Yes, no major issues with broken themes. None of them seem to crash very often or at all and most of the problems are related to newer features.

[Ryllix]

I have tried both the Rock Band 2 and the Warriors of Rock theme. They look amazing in game, but for some reason I am unable to hit notes properly with them. I can play the same song with the default theme and then with either of those themes and it won't register my notes properly. Is there something else you have to adjust in game settings for these?

[RobotJesus420]

The only setting I had to adjust for the Warrior of Rock theme was to set my neck angle to 2 - the hit window is much tighter in Phase Shift vs Clone Hero, but I was getting about the same experience between the default & WoR theme. A lot of people have reported issues with themes on this update though, and after a night of playing I've noticed a few graphical glitches with the WoR theme so it may just be a while before everything gets sorted out/patched.

[D.Sofren]

Originally posted by Tephlanto:

An even quicker workaround for me, I just deleted the entire dynamic folder set my theme ton RB2, and my Fret board is RB style, while my menus are Phase Shift.

I like it way better that way, as I hate the modded in RB2 theme.. looks really fake to me

That's kind of cool that it replaces missing textures with the default ones. That certainly does make things easier. Thanks!

Originally posted by TheRealDannyyy:

Yes, no major issues with broken themes. None of them seem to crash very often or at all and most of the problems are related to newer features.

Some themes, like the Rockband 3 theme, have more major issues such as the inability to display text for profile settings, parts of song menus, etc. This post is for themes of that nature.

[Dannyyy]

The display text issues are most related to z-order problems. Basically meaning that everything works as expected but it's behind the background layer or similar.

Once I got the RB2 theme in a working state, I'll try to fix the RB3 theme as well.

[D.Sofren]

Originally posted by TheRealDannyyy:

The display text issues are most related to z-order problems. Basically meaning that everything works as expected but it's behind the background layer or similar.

Once I got the RB2 theme in a working state, I'll try to fix the RB3 theme as well.

That was my thought on that also, but my only reference to z-order was CSS's z-index attribute. Wasn't sure what route PS themes went.