Visual combat/aggro indicator?

[Erilaz]

Would it be possible to have a combat icon pop up on the screen, or a red dot, or even just a message when you switch in and out of combat? Something visual rather than audible, kind of like being 'seen' in sneak mode.

 

Over a year ago, last time I was obsessed with Oblivion, I had to turn the music off after weeks/months of playing incessantly. It got lodged somewhere in the colon of my mind and was so bad I was having auditory hallucinations; not just playing over and over in my head, but I actually thought I could hear it faintly when I was in another room, or in my car, or while I was trying to fall asleep... and it happened again when I loaded up SI. (:

 

Ok, so maybe I'm just nuts. I wouldn't be surprised if others had that problem though. Which is a shame because the soundtracks are really good. But it wouldn't matter if it was death metal or country or elevator music either. Unfortunately, turning off the music entirely just traded one set of complications for another, because without the battle music cuing on and off, you're never quite sure whether or not you've got aggro.

 

Recently a mod popped up called No Battle Music. It simply keeps the environmental track playing, although occasionally it still gives away aggro by resetting the current track. Olurum wrote it because he thinks battle music sort of ruins an immersion factor: being surprised by attackers. I can see his point. I might counter that it's not too unrealistic for martial artists and thieves and even normal people to have a sort of sixth sense about some(one/thing)'s intention to kill them. But in game terms, if you eliminate the battle music with a mod or just turning the music off entirely, that still doesn't solve the problem of knowing when you can fast travel or repair or stop running away from a bad encounter. It gets really annoying.

 

I'm almost willing to mod it myself, but I'm not a coder, and I haven't found anything like this in over a year of scanning for new stuff. Any ideas? Thanks guys.

[Vagrant0]

When I was trying to get around my own problems of constantly being in battle without anything nearby actually trying to attack me (that was with music) I played around with a spell effect which was supposed to locate the nearest hostile thing and give you a direction toward it. I really didn't get much chance to use it since I ended up having to reinstall to fix other issues caused by the same mod. I did manage to get a modified version of it working for locating corpses. However it would still require you to use the spell frequently, and wouldn't let you know you were being safe so much as directing you toward the threat. Which works in one way since it would be a less psychic solution.

 

As someone else mentioned something about wanting to turn off music, but not turn around and find an army of daedra following them, I had thought about another way using a scripted ability. However as I havn't tested it, I don't know if it'll work. Anyway, if a player.isincombat check returns a 1 when the player is being attacked (when music normally plays) and returns a 0 when the player is free to travel, repair or whatever, then you could just setup that scripted ability to display a simple message when being attacked, or when they're no longer in combat. Could also set it to misfire on occasion using timers, positions and random variables so that you would occasionally get a false alarm, or a false sense of safety. Depending of course how much you feel like scripting.

[Erilaz]

if a player.isincombat check returns a 1 when the player is being attacked (when music normally plays) and returns a 0 when the player is free to travel, repair or whatever, then you could just setup that scripted ability to display a simple message when being attacked, or when they're no longer in combat.

 

Cool thanks, I'll check that out. Ideally what I'd like is a simple check every one or two seconds and flash something unobtrusive on the screen. That way there's still something of a surprise factor if you aren't paying attention, and it might also let you know when you're out of combat sooner because I've noticed sometimes the combat music keeps playing to the end of the track before transitioning back to environmental, even when I'm technically out of danger.

 

There seems to be another factor, which is 'enemies nearby'. I've noticed sometimes I can't repair/wait/fast travel but I don't appear to be in combat either, or rather the combat music isn't playing. It does that most often with mudcrabs near water, sometimes you have to get fairly close before they aggro. Is there another check for close enemies that just haven't spotted/targeted you yet?

 

If that's the case and I'm going to dive into interface mods, I'm thinking it would be neat to have a low res icon/texture of crossed swords or something that shows up faintly with an enemy nearby, then pulses brightly every one full second when you're in combat. That doesn't sound like something that would take up too many resources even if it's constantly checking once every second.

 

But UI mods look pretty complicated to me, considering the problems and conflicts that Dark/Darnified/MajorJim's UIs can cause. But hey, no pain no gain. So I'm checking out stuff like wz_Builder and pouring through the UI mod index to figure out what I'm getting into. As far as I can tell no one has tried to add a new icon, just changing existing ones. I might end up doing something with the crosshair instead.

[Vagrant0]

Well the problem with anything like an icon would be that you can't script with it. You cannot make an extra icon show up via scripting, you cannot make and icon disappear with scripting. Even if you were an xml god and could locate the internal variables that control if there is something hostile in the area, you still probably wouldn't be able to do anything. Even using timed spell effects for that little visual cue would likely prove difficult to script in any manner that would be useful. The two methods I mentoned are likely the only two that could be done, and they each have their faults. You might be able to script around those falts, but you'd be looking at other problems.

[Hsandman_1]

Well the problem with anything like an icon would be that you can't script with it. You cannot make an extra icon show up via scripting, you cannot make and icon disappear with scripting. Even if you were an xml god and could locate the internal variables that control if there is something hostile in the area, you still probably wouldn't be able to do anything. Even using timed spell effects for that little visual cue would likely prove difficult to script in any manner that would be useful. The two methods I mentoned are likely the only two that could be done, and they each have their faults. You might be able to script around those falts, but you'd be looking at other problems.

 

Way around this would be to make item display enchantment? Like sword glowing red, or make your char use voice file comenting on start/end of combat. Simple "Oh-oh!" and "Whew!" voiceovers would be enough to make you aware of combat status.

 

Or you could just use "mesage" to display text on screen once hostile has been detected. Add the script to a Quest that starts running as soon as character is created. make it check for hostile say every 2 seconds when not in menu mode.

 

Should not be that hard to do :S

[prometheos]

Would it be possible to have a combat icon pop up on the screen, or a red dot, or even just a message when you switch in and out of combat? Something visual rather than audible, kind of like being 'seen' in sneak mode.

 

I've just uploaded a mod to TESSource that might help. I'd grown tired of the music so I turned it off, only to discover that I'm prone to mini-heart attacks when my character gets an unexpected axe-blow to the back of the head. This mod, Combat Alarm gives both a visual warning and an audible warning. Now those "skinned hounds" from Shivering Isles can't get me with a first strike. :D