General Guides

General guides and ideas that don't need their own page are listed here.

Showing file extensions on Windows

~~If you do not see file extensions on your files, enable them in windows by going to the "View" ribbon in the file explorer, and making sure the "File name extensions" box is checked.~~

Adding Song Paths to Clone Hero

Want to keep your songs in a different place than inside your Clone Hero folder? There are three different ways you can do so:

First step for all of these options is to move your songs folder somewhere outside of your Default CH Songs folder.

In-game song path manager

As of v1.0, the game has a built-in song path menu in general settings. You may use that instead of editing the settings.ini file manually. It can be found in Settings > General, right under the Scan Songs option.

Editing your settings.ini

Open your settings.ini file and scroll all the way down to where it says [directories], then copy and paste the new directory for your songs folder after path1= (ex: path1=D:\Songs). Save the file, start your game, and rescan your songs.
If you want multiple songs folders to be scanned, just add another path#= line (ex: path2=, path3=, etc).

CreateCreating a Junction

The final option is creating a junction, this is an advanced technique and not recommended for users inexperienced with the command line.

You can find out how to do that here: https://pastebin.com/YTJVzHUG

Running CH Borderless

~~Borderless Fullscreen/Borderless Windowed mode can be enabled through the Fullscreen setting located in Settings > Video.~~

~~It can also be forced manually using command-line parameters, here's how to do it on Windows:~~

~~Create a shortcut to Clone Hero.exe, then right-click the shortcut and go to Properties~~

~~In the Target field, add~~ -popupwindow -screen-width <width> -screen-height <height> ~~to the end of the .exe path, replacing~~ <width> ~~with your screen's pixel width, and~~ <height> ~~with your screen's pixel height.~~

~~It should look something like this:~~ "C:\Program Files\Clone Hero\Clone Hero.exe" -popupwindow -screen-width 1920 -screen-height 1080

Graphics API Settings

Different rendering backends can be configured in-game in Settings > Video or through command-line parameters. Switching renderers can help (or harm!) rendering performance, depending on your hardware.

~~Command-line parameters:~~
~~Windows:~~ --force-d3d11 ~~(default),~~ --force-d3d12, --force-glcore/--force-opengl, --force-vulkan
~~Mac:~~ --force-metal ~~(default),~~ --force-glcore/--force-opengl
~~Linux:~~ --force-glcore/--force-opengl ~~(default),~~ --force-vulkan, --force-wayland

~~On Windows, you can set these parameters through a shortcut to the game's executable file.~~

Exporting Song Info Into a currentsong.txt File

Clone Hero can write information about the current song to a currentsong.txt file for use in things such as stream overlays. You can enable this by going to Settings > General and enabling the Export Current Song setting. After enabling this setting, you will need to start a song for the text file to be initially generated. After that, you can configure your streaming program to display the text file's contents (for OBS, use a Text source and set it to use the currentsong.txt file).

You can customize the info that gets exported by modifying the custom_song_export field found under the [streamer] section in the game's settings.ini file. This field can contain any text, along with any number of the following placeholders:
%s - Song name
%a - Artist
%b - Album
%y - Year
%g - Genre
%p - Playlist
%c - Charter
%n - New line

For example, Song: %s%nArtist: %a, %y%nCharter: %c would become:

Song: <song name>
Artist: <artist name>, <year>
Charter: <charter name>

Graphics API Settings

Command-line parameters:
Windows: --force-d3d11 (default), --force-d3d12, --force-glcore/--force-opengl, --force-vulkan
Mac: --force-metal (default), --force-glcore/--force-opengl
Linux: --force-glcore/--force-opengl (default), --force-vulkan, --force-wayland

On Windows, you can set these parameters through a shortcut to the game's executable file.

Running CH Borderless

Borderless Fullscreen/Borderless Windowed mode can be enabled through the Fullscreen setting located in Settings > Video.

It can also be forced manually using command-line parameters, here's how to do it on Windows:

Create a shortcut to Clone Hero.exe, then right-click the shortcut and go to Properties

In the Target field, add -popupwindow -screen-width <width> -screen-height <height> to the end of the .exe path, replacing <width> with your screen's pixel width, and <height> with your screen's pixel height.

It should look something like this: "C:\Program Files\Clone Hero\Clone Hero.exe" -popupwindow -screen-width 1920 -screen-height 1080

Showing file extensions on Windows

If you do not see file extensions on your files, enable them in windows by going to the "View" ribbon in the file explorer, and making sure the "File name extensions" box is checked.