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Lunatic Rave 2 (LR2) was created in 2007-2009 as a solo project by lavalse. While the game works fine, it has some quirks that may seem odd for somebody from 2019 or later.
Unless you've already done this before, getting LR2 to work can be tricky. This guide lists a series of steps that are known to work. You should follow all of these steps, in the order they were written. If you choose to skip any steps or do them in the wrong order, you may run into unexpected problems. Sometimes those problems won't happen right away, and you won't realize that a problem on the 10th step is a result of skipping the 3rd step. It would be much easier if you just follow along.
To start playing LR2, you need the following:
Also, while it is not required on a technical level, it's essentially mandatory to have a chart manager addon program to go with LR2. This program helps you easily find songs to play that are around your skill level.
LR2 was created before UTF-8 (unicode) was standardized. In old programs, non-English (non-ASCII) characters required a locale setting to display correctly. Modern programs use UTF-8 and are unaffected by your region locale setting.
LR2 uses SQLlite database to store song data, and requires correct locale to save your data without bugs. Using locale emulators such as AppLocale doesn't work. You must set your OS to Japanese locale before you ever open LR2. Also, since this will not affect any other programs you use, you should just keep your PC on Japanese locale forever. (in the rare chance that you will need a different locale, it will most likely be either for other old Japanese games, or Korean, or Chinese. In those cases, switch your locale as needed).
This guide will only cover how to set your locale for Windows 10. If you're using a different operating system, use an online search engine to figure it out.
To know that you changed your locale successfully, search for "cmd.exe" and open it. If you see yen symbols instead of backslashes in the path, i.e. C:\Users\Username shows up as C:¥Users¥Username instead, this means you changed your locale correctly.
This should be the only observable change in your PC. Everything else should work the same.
You can download LR2 from the official mirror on LR2IR: LR2IR LR2 Download Page LR2_100201.zip
After you download the game, unzip it into a reasonable location on your PC. You will have to link certain other programs (addons) to LR2 later, and if you move LR2, their path to LR2 will "break" and you will have to reset them, so it's best to put LR2 into its a permant location on your PC from the start.
Also, you will probably want to keep your BMS files in the same location as LR2, and once you have a lot of songs your BMS folder might get as big as over 200GB, so it would be best to pick a partition for LR2 that has a lot of storage space.
For example, if you have a C:/ drive with 120GB free space and a D:/ drive with 900GB free space, a good location for LR2 would be D:/LunaticRave2, such that LR2.exe will be located at D:/LunaticRave2/LR2.exe (you can rename the folder to anything you want)
LR2 comes with a default skin, but many players find it uncomfortable to play with. The most popular LR2 skin is Remi-S, and most players use a variation of it to play. You can experiment with different skins later, but to get started, get Remi-S.
You can download Remi-S from this mirror: Download
Unzip Remi-S into $(LR2_DIRECTORY)/ LR2files/Theme, such that 7key.lr2skin will be located at $(LR2_DIRECTORY)/ LR2files/Theme/REMI-S/Play/7key.lr2skin
Create a folder inside your LR2 directory called "bms". You can actually call it anything you want, but lets go with this for now. The path should be $(LR2_DIRECTORY)/bms
Download Grand Thaw's Eris, a popular BMS: Download Page Choose any mirror in the DownLoadAddress row
Download SHIKI's Pure Ruby, another popular BMS: Download Page Click "BMS" on the left-side menu, then Ctrl+F "Pure Ruby" and download
Unzip Eris and Pure Ruby into separate folders, and place those folders into your LR2 BMS folder. Make sure they're not inside sub-sub-folders. You should have $(LR2_DIRECTORY)/ bms/ERIS/ERIS[A].bms and $(LR2_DIRECTORY)/ bms/shiki_purerubymq/pure7a.bme
Start LR2.exe (not LR2body.exe) from LR2's directory. You should see an LR2 SETUP window show up. If you can't speak Japanese, select "Language > English" from the top-left menu. The rest of this tutorial assumes your LR2 is set to English.
If you didn't get an LR2 SETUP window, and got a NEW PLAYER window, just keep reading.
If "nothing happened", start manually minimizing every window you have open, until you see the NEW PLAYER popup window. It does not show in the taskbar, so you might not realize it opened (and it might be hidden behind another window).
Click on [New Player] (if you got LR2 SETUP), you will get a popup window with 3 inputs and a checkbox:
After you created (or used an existing) account, you should be back at the LR2 SETUP window; click on the PLAYER ID dropdown box, and select the account you've made. Exit the game and re-open it. Make sure your account is saved. Don't worry if you get a warning popup that says something about JUKEBOX.
Open LR2 to have the LR2 SETUP window if it isn't already open. There are six tabs on top, we will cover recommended settings in each one. You can change settings later, but for now use the recommended ones.
After making the changes, close and re-open LR2 and make sure they saved.
In the LR2 SETUP window, press [Play] to start the game. To close LR2 at any point, simply press ESC on your keyboard while LR2 has focus. You should be inside LR2's main screen now. Use your mouse to select and toggle options. In the bottom-left, there are six hexagon-shaped tabs. We will go over them one by one.
press [Key Config] (still in SYSTEM OPTION, bottom-left), make sure it says key config 7/14 keys on top, Press F2 to reset all keys, use your mouse to click each control on the left-side, there are a total of 9 that we care about: TurnTableLeft, TurnTableRight, Key1, Key2... all the way to Key7. There are also two small buttons between the turntable and the keys, you can ignore those. For the 9 buttons we care about, click on each one, then in the bottom 10 slots, click on the top-left-most slot, then press a key, to set a key for that button. You can use any keys you want, here's one config you can use if you're using a keyboard:
TTL=L.Shift, TTR=P, K1=S, K2=D, K3=F, K4=spacebar, K5=U, K6=I, K7=O; this config uses two pinky fingers for the turntable. If you want a thumb for the turntable, you can use something like:
TTL=Q, TTR=R.Alt, K1=W, K2=E, K3=R, K4=spacebar, K5=[, K6=], K7=\; this might not work with each keyboard layout. Pick keys that make sense based on your keyboard layout and your hand sizes.
If you're playing with an IIDX Controller, set keys based on logic.
When you finish setting your keys, go back using a right mouse click anywhere. Then, open the key config menu again, and make sure your keys saved. Then right click again to go back.
press [Skin/Sound] (still in SYSTEM OPTION, bottom-right), make sure you're inside the 7KEYS tab on the left-side, move your cursor over the skin preview and click on it (left or right side decides which direction to scroll), keep clicking to scroll over available skins until you land on Remi-S. Go back using right click. Make sure your skin choice saved, then go back again.
LR2 also provides options for filtering and sorting charts. At the top, there are three rectangles with text. You can click on those to toggle their state. Going from left to right, set them to:
SORT=Title, PLAYSTYLE=7Keys, DIFFICULTY=All
We've previously set the scroll speed to 180 in [Play Option], and lane cover is on 0% by default. Those values affect the size of the playfield and the amount of time you have to react to each incoming note before you have to press the corresponding button.
Each player has different preferences for those values, feel free to adjust them until reading the chart feels comfortable. Also, you might want to change them over time as you improve at the game.
If you followed this guide so far, you should have a blue rectangle named "bms" on the right, which is the chart folder we dragged into JUKEBOX1 earlier. Click on it.
Inside the chart folder, you will see a list of available charts. You can navigate by using the mouse scroll wheel. Find the one called "Pure Ruby [Light]", and focus on it (don't click on it, just scroll there). You can also find it by typing "pure ruby" into the Search (bottom-left) which will filter down the displayed charts to only ones matching the search criteria. Note that the chart display loops forever, so you might see the same chart more than once if less than 15-or-so charts match a search.
Press on [Autoplay] above the search box while "Pure Ruby [Light]" is focused. This will trigger a computer play of this chart. You can right click at any point to return. Don't return yet. During autoplay, use the arrow keys to adjust your scroll speed and lanecover. Up/Down keys adjust the scroll speed. Left/Right keys adjust the lanecover. If Left/Right does nothing, double-click anywhere inside the LR2 window and try again. If double-click didn't work, return to main menu, go into system option, and make sure Lane Cover is [On], then try again.
You don't actually have to use a lane cover. Just be aware that the option exists. For now, just pick a scroll speed that you feel comfortable with. You can still change it later. Close autoplay after you're done.
Left click on any chart on the list to play it. The Gauge in Play Option decides the life-drain policy you have while playing. If Gauge is set to Easy or Groove, you won't fail halfway into the song, even if your life drops to 0%. Do one play on any chart. Don't worry if you feel like you have no idea what's going on. If you see your life drop to 0%, it's fine, keep going.
After the play, return to the main menu from the score screen with a right click. Make sure it says NETWORK STATUS: ONLINE in the bottom-left tiny corner text. If not, restart LR2, and make sure you checked [v] LR2 InternetRanking in the SETUP window.
After you did a play on a chart while online, your LR2 account will be created. It doesn't matter if you succeeded or failed during your play. Close LR2.
Re-open LR2, and in the SETUP window, press [LR2IR my page]. If you finished at least one play on a chart while online earlier, this will open your browser, log you in, and bring you to your LR2IR account page.
The number next to LR2ID is your real player name. This is a unique ID that each player has. The line on top of it with a player name string can be any random word you want. You can change it whenever you want. It doesn't matter. It just helps people find you.
The textarea in the middle allows you to write a profile description, for yourself and for other people that see you. For example, you can write the date you started playing here, and dates of other milestones.
The row under your LR2ID is your dan ranks. These are essentially a badge that represents your general skill level as a player. Left-side is for 7K, right-side is for 14K. Since you're a new account, you have no dan rank.
In LR2's website, LR2IR, visit the 4th tab in the tab list. It is located here.
This page has a list of all the dan courses, and two download links that allow you to import the normal level dans and the insane level dans into your local LR2 client. The links are コースリスト(☆1-☆10)のダウンロード and コースリスト(★1-)のダウンロード.
Download each one separately (they both have the same filename) and drag it with your mouse into JUKEBOX1 in LR2's initial SETUP window. Once you drop it there, it should disappear.
After you added both dan course files, start LR2 again, enter the game, and you should see three orange folders: Course, Nonstop, and a third one. We DO NOT want the one called "Course", this is for custom user courses. Instead, we want the third one, with the Japanese name.
Inside of that third orange folder, you will have a list of all your dan courses. The easiest one is GENOSIDE 2018 段位認定 初段 (Normal-1) and the hardest one is GENOSIDE 2018 段位認定 Overjoy (Overjoy). All of the dans are listed, sorted by difficulty, on the LR2IR dan page.
To play a dan course, you need to have all four songs it is made out of. To find out which songs those are if you don't have them, open the corresponding dan course page on LR2IR, and they're listed in the STAGE 1 to STAGE 4 rows. You can click on each one to enter its LR2IR page, and find download URLs there.