How do I make custom boss combat music

[morrowind1979]

Hi all im am trying to add music to my final boss that only plays when the player is in combat with him and when the boss is not in combat or dead I want different music to play. Does anyone know how to do this with a script or something its driving me nuts

[morrowind1979]

bump

[morrowind1979]

bump

[morrowind1979]

Bump, Come on surely someone must know how to do this!!!!!! LOL

[anelusive]

Do you want to replace all the boss songs or just one?

 

It's actually really easy once you have the right instructions but I understand your frustration because it took me about 2 days of forum & google scouring before I discovered the easiest way.

 

Here's a quick tutorial if you just want to replace one boss song, say the dragon boss theme.

 

1. Get the Skyrim Audio Converter mod. It has the option to dl with Nexus Mod Manager but I don't recommend that, do it manual, pick where you want to put it. It's an .exe and you'll want to run it by clicking on the file. Skyrim Audio Converter is by far the easiest to use out of all the conversion programs I looked for.
2. Find your Skyrim Data folder. If you have Skyrim through Steam, standard configuration, on a 64-bit OS, it will here: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Skyrim\Data For a 32-bit OS, take out the (x86) from Program Files. If you have it some other installation type then I don't know where it will be, but I am sure you can find it!
3. Create a file in this folder called "music" (without the quotes). Inside that create another folder called "combat" (again, no quotes), so your full location is something like C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Skyrim\Data\music\combat
4. Open SkyrimAudioConverter.exe from wherever you saved it. Drag in the song you want to use. It can be aiff, mp3, flac, aac, ogg, or wav file. Click on "Convert Selected."
5. You will now have a version of that song (in the same folder as the original) with .xwm extension. Assuming you want to replace the dragon boss music, rename it "mus_combat_boss_02.xwm" and put it in the music\combat folder you created in step 3.

VOILA! Now when you fight a dragon, that song will play instead of the regular boss song!

 

I'm guessing you want to replace more than just the one song though, in which case you'll probably want to extract the full music and sound folders, and you need a BSA extractor for that like BSA Browser. It gets more complicated that way.

 

For that whole shebang, I recommend this very thorough YouTube tutorial: http://youtu.be/l3TW85BmUEw?t=3m45s

(I have it linked to start at 3m45s because that's where he starts explaining the longer process. Before that he explains the same steps I outlined above, but for the main title music instead of dragon boss music)

[anelusive]

Now, for other modders who see this, I came to this topic because I have my own question about the combat music! You will likely wonder the same thing if you get into modifying more than one song so hopefully someone can enlighten us both.

 

Each combat song has a corresponding "finale" file, which plays when the battle is over, to transition back to the world music. For example, along with "mus_combat_boss_02.xwm" there is "mus_combat_boss_02_finale.xwm" which plays once you've killed the dragon. These transitions are very short so I generally leave them alone and let them play as they are.

 

BUT, two combat songs ALSO have a "cg" file, which seems to be the same as the combat music, minus the finale. What's weird is that only two out of all the combat songs have this, "mus_combat_04_cg" and "mus_combat_boss_cg". What are those?? Why are there only 2 that use them? Do I need to replace them?? For the life of me I cannot figure it out. Well, I'm still trying through experimentation and I will update if I figure it out before we get an answer.

[Caithe]

Music Track in game can have a condition tab so we can make certain music only play under certain conditions.

The way I created custom boss music for a boss I'm currently doing is basically to copy what was done for dragon. I started by giving a new keyword to my boss Actor in the Actor Keyword tab. Something like "TheBoss".

I created a new single track in Audio>Music Track with the music file I wanted and put the condition GetCombatTargetHasKeyword, Keyword: "TheBoss" == 1.00, Run on Player in the condition tab. Then I copied this condition in every other MUSCombat and MUSCombatBoss but I put the variable to 0 instead so it looks like GetCombatTargetHasKeyword, Keyword: "TheBoss" == 0.00, Run on Player. This way they only play if they are not "The Boss".

I added my music track to Audio>Music Type MUSCombat and that was it. When my boss get in combat his music is playing and when he dies or combat end, the music changes back like it does with other combat music in game.

 

This method most likely conflicts with mods such as Personalized Music System since he edit the MUSCombat Music Type to add more track and we do too.

You can also add music to quests from what I could see in CK. If you were to make a more complex boss with stages you could probably even put a new music for every stages. This is too advanced for me though.

 

I hope this help

 

 

And for Geshtinanna, those cg files are used in MUSCombatChargen and MUSCombatBossChargen which are used for the quest Unbound. Which is the introduction in Helgen. They probably did it this way to make sure it's those two specific files that plays when they needed.

Edited June 3, 2013 by Caithe

[morrowind1979]

ah thanks ppl for your replies and thanks Caithe as you answered my problem. will try this out soon