FastGH3

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FastGH3
Developer(s)	donnaken15
Targeted game(s)	Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (Windows, Wii for Dolphin emulator)
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows Wii (Dolphin)
Release date	v0.7: December 25, 2017 v1.0: July 9, 2021
Genre(s)	Music Rhythm
Mode(s)	Single-player Local multiplayer
Media	Digital distribution
Input method(s)	Guitar controller Gamepad Keyboard & mouse

FastGH3 is a portable, condensed version of the PC version of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock with only the gameplay elements and the game engine of Guitar Hero III with enhanced gameplay features from external plugins such as ExileLord's GH3+ plugins to enable gameplay features from later Guitar Hero and Rock Band games, and a handful of fixes for bugs left in retail.

FastGH3's gameplay. Black background by default.

By default, FastGH3 has no songs but FastGH3 can directly load song packages (including archived song packages) into FastGH3 and play them immediately. It supports Guitar Hero III PC & Guitar Hero: Aerosmith PC's packaged song files (in .pak.xen format), as well as .mid and .chart formatted song files that are used in other games like Frets on Fire, Phase Shift, Clone Hero, Fret Smasher, etc. It also has its own song package format (.fsp) that it can load.

Development log

NOTE: The text listed below were originally written by mod author donnaken15 in development log from the official website. Download links from it will not be included on this article but file sizes of the installer and installed game files will still be included.

1.0-999010889 | Released 07/04/2023 | 9.0 MB / 13.0 MB

• Decompiled qb.pak and rebuilt it's scripts (QUEENBEE IS DEAD!!_maybe)
• Optimized qb.pak (744KB!)
• Faster non-DDS texture loading
• Minimal SoX build only supporting MP3,OGG,OPUS,WAV
• New pause menu
• Player model/PAK files eliminated completely
• Fixed held notes being forcibly cut off upon unpausing
• Practice mode looping (section looping and A>B looping)
• Restored console version of highway animation, and reworked for >60 FPS
• Extras menu with tweaks including:
  • Disable HUD
  • No highway shake
  • Wider range of hyperspeed scales
  • FC Mode
  • Classic cheats such as:
    • Easy expert
    • Precision
    • Performance
    • Large gems
      and many more that were added before.
• Lefty flip toggle without restarting
• Fix for too many misses and hits causing highway to go off center
• Reduced scripts size by allocating blank arrays at runtime
• Removed more unused scripts
• Some encoding fixes + new faster encoder
• Moved almost all user config to INI
• Audio progress bars
• QB mod loader and user config support
• Changeable CBR for compiled chart audio
• (Weird) Fix for frame based whammy wibble animation
• Switched to NSIS for installer
• Read only version of DotNetZip
• Co-operative bot star power
• Properly saving video lag

1.0-999010723 | Released 10/29/2022 | 10.7 MB / 15.1 MB

• Post-release changes:
  • Fixed random game hanging when exiting out (THANKS VISUAL C++)
  • Fixed 7Zip registry error
  • Made a non-elevation friendly solution to exit the game when the launcher is converting a new song, and avoid the "access is denied" error when copying the FSB
  • (can't confirm still) Fixed FormatText null value error
  • Fixed chart offset value not existing returning null
  • Added default.scn.xen as required for zone swapping (originally wasn't copied in build creating script)
• OVERLAPPING STARPOWER!!
• Open sustains
• Custom boss battles
• Opus audio support and fresh update of SoX
• COMPRESSED GH3 EXE!!!
• Game size is now 15 MB! (13 MB without the launcher)
• Unified modifiers plugin (to toggle All Strums, All Taps, etc)
• Changeable keybinds
• Background videos (requires Bink encoded video)
• Open 7Z/RAR files in the launcher if user has either file type's extractor installed
• Chart downloads through Google Drive / chorus
• Solos are now automatically parsed and scripts calculate how many notes belong within the markers
• Parse solo and event markers in MIDI
• Compressed DLLs and plugins
• Zip caching
• Updater (for release builds and dev builds)
• Removed an unused hardcoded font
• No venue models/files needed at all to play
• Press Select to restart in practice mode (controllers only)
• Toggleable highway/HUD intro
• Toggle particles (all, minimal, or none)
• Better controller entry for keyboard mode
• Face-off/battle power markers are now supported
• Various graphical fixes:
  • Particles' velocity and friction are no longer tied to 60 FPS
  • Whammy pixel width now resizes with game resolution, which originally depended on 1280x720
  • Fixed leftover starpower particles glitch
• Hide gems upon hitting and activate sustains early (turned off by default)
• Easily swap zones, highway GFX, highways, and background videos
• Fixed FPS based battle scripts
• New zones at Custom Themes / Zones
• Open FX on multiplayer
• Frame rate limiter
• Launcher logging
• Launcher error reporting
• currentsong.txt formatting
• Asynchronous NJ3T (drums,vocals,etc) track merging

1.0-999010574 | Released 05/07/2022 | 11.7 MB / 23.4 MB

• Post-release changes:
  • More qb.pak optimization
  • Game can run without ragdoll and skin files
  • Singleplayer doesn't require skeleton files
  • Fixed missing audio encoding DLLs since some users don't have them pre-installed
  • Additional audio calibration fix to make the audio play ahead of the beginning of gameplay. So, with 200ms, for example, the audio starts 200ms earlier than the notes starting
  • Starpower bot uses new beat waiting function and evades triggering while hitting a sequence
  • Little launcher fix for Linux users so audio encoding script runs correctly
• Improved chart converter/song PAK writer
  • Better programmed note and starpower arrays (works in 2D arrays)
  • Less messy code (but also still sort of messy)
  • Some tempo related fixes
• Discord RPC (Separate download) and proper song metadata in PAKs
• New separate PAK to store user configuration, which allows more portable and easy settings (and makes it easier for me to push updates :D)
• Reduced music tools size and made FSB encoding just a little faster
• Other various encoding related fixes
• More ultra optimization
• Fixed open note animation
• Bot star power/autowhammy (lazy)
• (Cheap) fix for calibrated audio syncing, so gameplay doesn't have to slow down to keep up
• Function to disable HUD intro (toggleable with disable_intro)
• Unique file date checker for downloads
• GH3/WT textures can have PNGs/JPGs stored, yay! (warning: may slow down loading to due compression)
• Solos (have to be inserted in song PAKs manually for the time being)
• - Removed Herobrine

1.0-999010389 | Released 11/25/2021 | 12.8 MB / 37.4 MB

• GAME IS NOW COMPLETELY PORTABLE!!
• Removed Aspyr registry key check, no longer needing admin rights
• Removed Massive Ad Client (cheaply, so venues won't work here)
• No fail setting with graphical change
• Magically randomly fixed some MIDI error happening on another computer
• Detect multiple files in a song package, ask user which one they want to play
• Async FSB building, making multitrack encoding faster
• Removed dbgq.pak and perm_anims.pak

1.0-999010247 | Released 07/09/2021 | 13.4 MB / 39.9 MB

• Reimplemented FSP + allowed easier creation, and web downloads
• More gameplay lock-in
• Disabling VSync independent of another program
• Moved GH3+ loader to execute before window creation
• Rebuilt optimized zones
• Patch launcher to support .chart Offset value
• Song cache viewer + write IDs to list
• Official public release

1.0-999010010 | Released 07/04/2021 | 15.6 MB / 37.6 MB

• Song caching + new hashing method
• New audio and chart converter
• Replaced game program with better executable
• Internally patched windowed mode
• Game fully functional without Soundcheck zone
• Proper data manipulation through launcher
• Rebuilt game data (for the infinith time)
• Dynamic game path
• Removed zones, models

0.8 | Released 01/XX/2018 | 47.6 MB / 174 MB

• Unknown
• Inherited changes from 0.7

0.7 | Released 12/25/2017 | 54.8 MB / 167 MB

• Optimized game
• Removed zones, models
• Windowed patch through DxWnd/3DAnalyzer
• Use songlist_editor, Mid2Chart, sox for song converter

External links

• FastGH3's official website
• FastGH3's previous website domain (web archived March 28, 2023)
• FastGH3's GitHub page
  • Wii branch (originally created since December 2022)