Clone Hero To Fret Smasher Transition Guide!

Coming to Fret Smasher from Clone Hero can be quite the hard transition. This'll help to try to make the transition a bit smoother with a few setting tweaks!

Intro

As most people might notice when coming from Clone Hero to this game, there's... quite the stark difference. It can be very much a shock to get use to but I hope with this guide, this might make it a bit easier to get use to and customize Fret Smasher so you can get into it.

I will be covering some basic stuff such as the Calibration but that's because unfortunately, Fret Smasher (as of writing this) doesn't have the best calibration system in place and it can be quite frustrating to get to a point of play-ability.

But I'll also be covering some Quality-of-Life stuff such as making Fret Smasher load your old Clone Hero song folder so you don't have to move your 30+GB song folder over AND make HOPO's work like Clone Hero's so you aren't throwing your (now priceless) guitar at your computer in frustration.

Let's get into it :) ♥

Small Note;
This information is from my own personal trial and error of getting Fret Smasher to feel more familiar to me after playing Rock Band and Clone Hero for a super long time. It might still be a little off so keep tweaking it if you feel it's needed!

Also I wrote this at like 5am with no coffee. Pls be nice 🥺

Calibrating Your Game

Now unfortunately it isn't possible to just copy your calibration from Clone Hero and just paste it into Fret Smasher as nice as that'd be. Instead, you will have to manually calibrate Fret Smasher as well. To do this, go into your settings and strum down to Calibration



Here you what is hopefully a very familiar screen. The tip the devs give that also really helped me, to get the correct calibration is to press the top button "Detect Audio Latency". This will give your computer's default latency to send audio.

This DOESN'T however include the latency that your headphones/speakers take to send audio. You'll want to do an ADDITIONAL +10 onto that amount and test it. After that, if it's still not in sync, do an additional +5 until you can get it to that sweet spot for your system.

Generally you won't need to change the video calibration unless you know your screen or controller has a bit of delay to it.

*DO NOT USE THE INGAME CALIBRATE TOOL
As of writing this [Feb. 14th, 2023], the devs are still in the process of remaking the calibration tool (seen just below Detect Audio Latency) as currently this tool will give you an INSANELY over the top Audio Calibration number.

HOPO/Tap Note Changes

The very first thing you might notice when getting into a song is that... Man, I'm missing a lot of things I really shouldn't be... And it always seems to be those HOPO's (Hammer-on & Pull-offs) or Tap Notes that seem to feck up... This is INTENDED by the devs to make the game harder.

As Fret Smasher works, you have to hit HOPO's/Tap notes as soon as they arrive at the end of the highway. Pressing your fret key too soon before will cause you to miss it. The devs intended this to make the game a bit more difficult but fear not, you can turn this feature off and play the game how you are use to... Unfortunately as it stands, you will have to suffer through this for a bit until you reach Level 2



Once you reach Level 2 though, you will unlock a "Cheat" called Infinite Frontend. Turning this on will allow you to pull off HOPO's and Tap Notes like you're use to by holding the button before it reaches the end of your board.

As far as I'm aware, this doesn't negatively impact your score in quick-play so you can still compete quite well on the in-game leaderboard for high-scores!

Import Your Clone Hero Songs

Of course with a game like this, one of the most important things is your custom songs! You could manually just copy the whole folder of your Clone Hero songs over to Fret Smasher but, if you're anything like me... that folder can get to a big size very fast! As well as, what if you want to go back to Clone Hero one day?

Luckily with a single .ini line, you can set Fret Smasher to load your song list directly from Clone Hero's folder.

You can do this by simple going to where Fret Smasher is located on your computer which should be under your Steam folder. Typically this'll be under Program Files/Program Files (x86). If you installed steam to a custom location, the game should be installed to where-ever you set that location to be.


(A good way to figure out your install location is when you press to download a game, it should tell you exactly where your games location is)

Once you find that, you'll open config.ini In Notepad++ (or regular notepad works as well)



Next you'll add at the top under [Gameplay];
Custom Song Path=[Clone Hero Location]/songs



Then when you launch Fret Smasher again, you can just go to Settings, open the "Gameplay" tab and press "Full Scan Music Folder."



Now all your Clone Hero songs should be loading in for you to play!

Shortening The Highway!

You might not immediately notice that can very much affect your perception of the game is that Fret Smasher's highway is longer than Clone Hero's which can massively affect how the game feels.

Luckily, there is a way to change this! If you go into the settings, you'll find an option called "Highway Length"



Tweaking around with this and comparing it to some of my Clone Hero songs, I personally felt like 0.7 Highway Length replicated Clone Hero's Highway Length quite well and made it a lot more relaxed and easier to see. You can of course toy with this if you feel it isn't completely right. I'd recommend changing it at .2 intervals as they do drastically change the length.

Themes/Mods!

Last but not least, if you're not a fan of Fret Smasher's default style for the notes, highway, or board, Fret Smasher does have integrated workshop support so you can easily download a theme that someone else has made to make the game seem more familiar, or even create and upload one yourself!

There's tons of different themes already on the workshop from Guitar Hero to Rock Band that you can download and install with as simple as a click of a button and turning it on in the game settings!

To get to the workshop all you have to do is press on the game in your steam library and press "View This Workshop" that'll be in the bottom right.

Enjoy The Game!

After that, All you have to do is enjoy the game just like you do with Clone Hero! And help support the development of Fret Smasher by joining their discord and submitting any bug reports, suggestions, etc.!

I hope this guide helped you to transition over and if it did, please feel free to leave a like so this can be discovered by others to help enjoy this game!

♥♥♥

[Rén]

I'm still waiting for RB4 theme as found here

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2807211134

Yes I do find the file in the discord but those are for older version of FS, so I was hoping one day someone could port that theme for newer version of FS :x

[Apathetic Twink]

I do believe Morgan is planning on adding solo scores sometime in the future as a warning, as I believe it's a pretty highly requested feature but other than that, yeah. I do believe the original Idea behind FS was to be more similar to the original Guitar Hero games both in difficulty and in gameplay.

Took me a while to come around to the idea and had access for almost a year before I actually got into it but am glad I finally did. The genius that is the level of customization this game has, leader boards, and steam integration always swayed me into enjoying this more than the other fan made games.

Reason why I created this guide to try to help others interested transfer over when they get their playtest access as I remember having lots of difficulty adjusting until I found these settings/changes scattered around the discord

[Rén]

yea because I've been playing Guitar Hero games with guitar controller since 2013 😊

Frets Smasher is just purist Guitar Hero clone without Rock Band solo scoring as found in Clone Hero, Fret Smasher is also support online leaderboard, Steam Achievements, and most importantly ability to change themes! this game have so much potential and I can't wait until full release.

[Apathetic Twink]

Glad it could help you!

It's genuinely amazing how much highway length can change how our brains are able to read charts.

[Rén]

THANK YOU!! I have trouble getting the hit window right until I found this guide, the solution is to set Highway length to 0.7 and it's absolutely changes the way it hit notes! I can't thank you enough for how much this help me


ps. old casual Clone Hero player here

[Apathetic Twink]

Thank you! I'm very glad you think so and hope it helped you

[Hemlol19]

more people should see this guide, it's too underrated and is one of the most useful guides ive seen

[Apathetic Twink]

You know, that'd make sense. too much sense that my coffee less and lack of sleep brain couldn't put the 2 + 2 together. Thank you for the clarification!

[Maeve]

Just going to chime in and let you know that your "Extend The Highway" section actually explains the setting in reverse. Setting the value to 0.7 shortens the highway length to 70% of the original length. If you wish to increase the length, go above the value of 1. Our default highway length is actually larger than normal as before the highway length setting was present, this allowed players to ramp up their highway speed to faster settings with an easier time reading the notes.