I built a chart manager for Clone Hero and YARG that downloads, organizes and auto-converts files. All in one app.
Hey everyone. I have been playing Clone Hero for a few years now, mostly on drums, and the thing I enjoy most is just playing along to my favorite songs. Up until recently I would download charts by hand from RhythmVerse, and whenever a song needed converting I would run it through C3 CON Tools manually. At some point I figured I would rather have one tool that could do all of that, nicely wrapped into a single app. That is how Chart Manager (CHM) came to be.
I know Bridge exists, but I wanted something that works across more than one database and has a few more features on top. So here is what CHM actually does:
- Two databases in one search. Bridge searches Chorus Encore. CHM searches RhythmVerse and Chorus Encore together, deduplicated, in one search bar. RhythmVerse is a much bigger catalogue, so a ton of songs that never used to show up for me are right there now.
- Automatic Xbox 360 Rock Band conversion. This was the big one for me. If a chart is an Xbox 360 CON or rb3con file, CHM turns it into a Clone Hero folder automatically, in one click. No C3 CON Tools, no manual steps. It uses the bundled Onyx engine under the hood. If you have ever wanted to play Rock Band DLC in Clone Hero, this is the part I am proudest of.
- Multi select and batch download. Tick a bunch of songs, pick one folder, and they all download at once.
- Drop in files. Drag a zip, rar, 7z, sng or rb3con straight onto the window and it extracts, converts and installs it for you. Great for when a chart is hosted somewhere the app cannot reach on its own.
- Instrument and difficulty filters. Narrow results by instrument and by difficulty with min, max or exact tiers before you download anything.
- In game overlay and hotkey. A little window you can pull up over the game with a hotkey, so you can keep grabbing songs without alt tabbing out.
- YARG aware. It detects YARG, can launch or switch to it, and the overlay works there too. To be clear, charts from most tools already work in YARG since it reads the same folders, this is just about launching and the overlay.
- Update check. It quietly checks GitHub on launch and lets you know if a newer version is out.
The limits:
- PS3 Rock Band content cannot be converted. Those files are encrypted and need keys tied to the original PSN purchase, so there is no way around it. The Xbox 360 version of the same song works fine, so CHM just hides the PS3 entries to keep things clean.
- MEGA and Mediafire links still need a manual download, then you drop the file onto the window. Those hosts are not reliable to automate.
- Bridge is more mature and has a chart issue scanner for charters that CHM does not. If you make charts, Bridge is still the better fit for that side of things.
It is open source, so the code, releases and issues all live here:
https://github.com/xlzipx/clone-hero-chart-manager
If you just want a quick look with screenshots first, there is a landing page here:
https://chartmanager.pages.dev
Right now it only runs on Windows, but if there is enough interest I am happy to look at a macOS and Linux port down the line. I made this for myself first, so I would genuinely love to hear what you think, what breaks, and what you wish it did.
Thanks for checking it out, and let me know what you think.
alternate download links:
installer: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AD1wuAZP4oLp6kJ8rRMeef5TdlX8piHb/view?usp=drive_link
portable: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZsqJi_AQbMKC6X58XnD-4NfMKha1xyWR/view?usp=drive_link
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TL;DR: Free and open source app for Clone Hero and YARG that searches RhythmVerse and Chorus Encore, downloads charts, and auto-converts Xbox 360 Rock Band files to Clone Hero, all in one place. Windows only for now. Get it on GitHub.
EDIT: Thanks for all the feedback, this got way more attention than I expected. A lot has been added and fixed since I posted, most of it straight from this thread:
- Difficulty tags: every song shows whether the chart is Expert only or has Easy, Medium, Hard and Expert, so you know before you download.
- Difficulty filter: narrow results by difficulty range, either for a specific instrument or across any instrument.
- DTXMania conversion: drop a DTXMania song and it converts to a playable Clone Hero chart through Onyx, same as Rock Band CON. Japanese titles work too now.
- Updates without the hassle: the installer version updates itself in the background, and there is now a "Check for updates" button so you do not have to restart to look.
- Batch and folder drop: drag in multiple files or a whole folder at once and it handles them all with one destination pick.
- Refine filters: narrow the loaded results by charter, album or year.
- "In library" tag: songs you already have in your Songs folder get marked, with an optional hide toggle. It scans subfolders too.
- Display scaling and UI scale: fixed odd sizing on 125 percent scaling and higher, and added a UI scale option in Settings to size the whole interface up or down.
- "What's new" panel: shows everything that changed since the version you were on, not just the latest one, plus the version number is shown in the app.
Plus a pile of bug fixes reported here (installing to the Songs root, Japanese chart conversion, folder naming, and more).
Current version is v0.3.7. Genuinely appreciate everyone who tried it, reported issues, and threw ideas at me. Keep them coming.
