Getting rid of battle music

wogya · Post by **wogya** » Mon Jan 29, 2007 12:12 pm

As a total noobie to the CS and scripting, I figured I should be capable of creating an interior where the player may fight without listening to battle music. This might come in handy in Quagmire, where we don't want our cool nightmarish atmospheric soundscapes to be interrupted by battle music. I don't have Oblivion, so I tried my theory in MW. Maybe some Ob-modder can tell me if this works there as well. Just load the plugin, console coc "no_battle_music_hall" and you get to fight four rats while listening to the beautiful morrowind title theme.

The trick is a paralyzed scrib above the roof, with an attached script to immediately attack the player and start playing the morrowind title one second later. For some reason the one second delay was required for this to work (on my old and slow computer, the regular battle music didn't start within this second). As the scrib is already attacking the player, no further attacks will retrigger battle music and the morrowind theme may play uninterrupted, no matter how many dremoras you console in to the cell.

In this plug, random battle music will start once the morrowind title has played through, but this should be possible to fix with another timer.

I admit that this is probably not a very elegant way to do it, with the extra creature outside the room, but it works. Could a clumsy idea like this be used? Any good ideas of how to make it more elegant? Any other good ideas of how to avoid battle music?

groza528 · Post by **groza528** » Mon Jan 29, 2007 12:46 pm

I recall reading in GhanBuriGhan's tutorial that you could trigger events based on whether a certain sound effect was playing. Does the same apply to music? Incidentally, it might be possible to script a Thu'um that way (am I spelling that right? The nord battlecry.)

wogya · Post by **wogya** » Mon Jan 29, 2007 2:01 pm

I'm not sure if it applies to music. But even if it did, it wouldn't help. Scripting "if battlemusic is playing -> play something else" would cause "something else" to start from the beginning whenever the player is attacked, as battle music will always start when combat starts. My plug gets around this by keeping the player in a constant state of combat, attacked by the creature that he cannot see or reach. I think it would be cool if something like this could be used in Quagmire. No battle music to warn the player of approaching enemies would certainly turn up the scary factor.

Morden · Post by **Morden** » Mon Jan 29, 2007 5:18 pm

It works well to stop the battle music, but I found a couple problems with the Scrib. His shadow casts down into the room, and you can hear his little scrib noises

Starcrunch · Post by **Starcrunch** » Mon Jan 29, 2007 5:35 pm

You can change his location or create an NPC as they can be made silent (and invisible too, just apply an invisibility curse, or if you're feeling really audacious create a new race with no meshes).

-Starcurnch

PoHa! · Post by **PoHa!** » Mon Jan 29, 2007 5:59 pm

Wogya wrote:This might come in handy in Quagmire, where we don't want our cool nightmarish atmospheric soundscapes to be interrupted by battle music. I don't have Oblivion, so I tried my theory in MW. Maybe some Ob-modder can tell me if this works there as well.

Unfortunately, it seems that things work slightly different in OB.

[url=http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/StreamMusic]From this page:[/url]

Wiki wrote:StreamMusic will also not override combat music, the combat-music that is currently playing will be restarted, though.

wogya · Post by **wogya** » Mon Jan 29, 2007 6:31 pm

PoHa! wrote:Unfortunately, it seems that things work slightly different in OB.

Well, that's typical... Now I'm kind of out of ideas. Guess we can only hope that Bethesda adds some scripting features that allow specific battle music in the Shivering Isles.

However, if streammusic restarts combat music, then an endless loop of streammusic should restart combat music every frame, causing absolute silence (at least this is what happens in MW when looping streammusic). Silence can be a very scary effect. Might be a FPS killer though.

Nanu · Post by **Nanu** » Mon Jan 29, 2007 7:20 pm

Might be a FPS killer though.

Any script that does stuff every frame kills FPS.

Macar · Post by **Macar** » Tue Jan 30, 2007 3:56 am

Gosh- they really dont want you to controll the music!

I'll say it agian: Scheize- I should realy look up the spelling on that...

Morden · Post by **Morden** » Tue Jan 30, 2007 5:31 am

Its still worth doing some research at ESF to see what people have come up with. I remember a few people developing complex timer scripts to keep their custom music playing, ect....

wogya · Post by **wogya** » Tue Jan 30, 2007 8:16 am

The timer script to keep it playing is not complex at all, as long as you know how long your track is. I updated my plug to do this after I posted it. Only needed a few lines of codes and it worked immediately.

The ESF is quite useless when it comes to this. They haven't even figured out how to do it in Morrowind either. They seem to think that the best way in MW is to create an invisible companion and restart the desired track when the companion draws his weapon.

In the Oblivion forums every query is promptly answered by "it can't be done". I have a few ideas, but I'd need to install Ob and the CS to try them out, won't happen in the near future. If it really is so that the engine checks for battle status every frame and restarts music accordingly, then I'm afraid nothing will work. Unless we create the enemies like animated objects, they shouldn't trigger battlemode... Ok, I know that's probably a little too complex, just throwing out every idea I have. It could work with some wizard shooting fireballs from a distance though.

PS. sorry about the shadows, forgot that I turned of all shadows ingame when this wacko megalomaniac mod called "map 1" killed my frames.