Adding your own combat music

[Deleted147363User]

For anyone confused about adding their own custom music with the Creation Kit I thought I'd share what I've learned.

 

You can adapt this scenario for your own tastes. See the official Wiki http://www.creationkit.com/Music_Type

for info on what the music track options do.

 

To play your own combat music this is what you're aiming for:

 

 

 

1. Using your music converter app of choice (I use Soundforge Audio Studio) prepare your track so it lasts around a minute or two. Any longer than that and it's just wasting memory and loading time. Convert your .mp3 into .wav format then save it in skyrim/data/music/combat

 

2. Load up the CK and save your active plugin with skyrim.esm as the master file only.

 

3. Go to Audio > Music Tracks, right click and select new. Choose single track, browse to your file and give it a unique ID preferably. I used _MUSCombatDisturbed to put it at the top of the list. It's worth knowing that each track has a condition to see whether a dragon is the current target in combat. I think this has something to do with stopping it from playing during dragon fights. I recommend using the same condition for testing.

 

4. Look at the other combat tracks and you'll see each combat track is a single track with a fade duration and a finale track that plays when the current track has ended.

 

5. Now you have setup your track go to Audio > Music types and open MUSCombat. Right click and choose new then browse to the track ID you created earlier. Next move your track to the top of the playlist, and delete the remaining tracks ones then uncheck 'cycle tracks' and 'ducking' to make sure your track is the one that plays.

 

Save and quit the CK.

 

7. Fire up your game launcher and move your .esp to the top of the load order so it is just below the .esm master files ensuring your music takes priority.

 

If you've done all this correctly your track should play instead of the default one when a fight starts for that location playlist.

[bben46]

And now that you know how, Please don't use this to upload music changing mods with copyrighted content to the Nexus. :rolleyes:

 

We do ban for that here as it's easier than dealing with rabid copyright lawyers suing us. - Or confiscating the site and throwing us in jail as happened with Megaupload and several other sites.

 

However, you are free to use whatever music you want - at your own risk of course - on your own computer. Please note that most of the music you find on those free music sites is actually copyrighted. They just haven't gotten around to them yet. Youtube (owned by Google) is in bed with the music industry and therefore gets away with it. But as we are not affiliated with the music industry, and don't have an army of lawyers standing by - we can't get away with what they do.

 

Any music that you have the copyright owner's permission (we will ask for documentation) is welcome. :thumbsup:

[NoAardvarksAllowed]

For anyone confused about adding their own custom music with the Creation Kit I thought I'd share what I've learned.

 

You can adapt this scenario for your own tastes. See the official Wiki http://www.creationkit.com/Music_Type

for info on what the music track options do.

 

To play your own combat music this is what you're aiming for:

 

 

 

1. Using your music converter app of choice (I use Soundforge Audio Studio) prepare your track so it lasts around a minute or two. Any longer than that and it's just wasting memory and loading time. Convert your .mp3 into .wav format then save it in skyrim/data/music/combat

 

2. Load up the CK and save your active plugin with skyrim.esm as the master file only.

 

3. Go to Audio > Music Tracks, right click and select new. Choose single track, browse to your file and give it a unique ID preferably. I used _MUSCombatDisturbed to put it at the top of the list. It's worth knowing that each track has a condition to see whether a dragon is the current target in combat. I think this has something to do with stopping it from playing during dragon fights. I recommend using the same condition for testing.

 

4. Look at the other combat tracks and you'll see each combat track is a single track with a fade duration and a finale track that plays when the current track has ended.

 

5. Now you have setup your track go to Audio > Music types and open MUSCombat. Right click and choose new then browse to the track ID you created earlier. Next move your track to the top of the playlist, and delete the remaining tracks ones then uncheck 'cycle tracks' and 'ducking' to make sure your track is the one that plays.

 

Save and quit the CK.

 

7. Fire up your game launcher and move your .esp to the top of the load order so it is just below the .esm master files ensuring your music takes priority.

 

If you've done all this correctly your track should play instead of the default one when a fight starts for that location playlist.

I just want to make some quick comments here, since I've become quite familiar with the subject after doing a bit of music modding over the months.

 

1. Skyrim will also play the compressed .xwm format, which takes up much less space than .wav (maybe around one sixteenth or twentieth in fact, depending on encoding). Using xwm is a good idea if anyone plans on adding a lot of tracks and/or if the tracks are long and therefore start hogging RAM when they are played in the game. There are at least three mp3 -> xwm converters available on the Nexus and they are very simple to use.

 

3. Combat tracks reserved for regular combat should have the condition GetCombatTargetHasKeyword Keyword: 'ActorTypeDragon' = 0, while tracks for dragon fights should have the same condition set to 1.

 

5. i) If you let the original tracks remain in the list, they will play TOGETHER with your added ones. The game plays the tracks in a playlist in random order, unless the Maintain Track Order box is checked.

 

ii) If Cycle Tracks is unchecked, the game will only play the track(s) in the list ONCE for any combat situation and then stop. This means that there will be no combat music played after the track(s) in the list has played through in a particular fight. Only starting a new fight will get the combat music to play again. Having the combat music just end in a middle of a long fight is not a good idea, IMO. Keeping the Cycle Tracks box checked means the game will start playing the playlist over again, when all the tracks in it have been used (it's a playlist repeat function, basically).

 

iii) It's actually a good idea not to un-check Ducking for combat music. Ducking means that the track with a lower priority number (which gives it a higher actual priority) plays OVER the other track, i.e. the other keeps playing inaudibly in the background, and when the combat is over and the combat music stops playing, the previous track continues to play as before. This gives a greater sense of music continuity--especially for when the player gets in quick fights.

 

7. Moving something to the top of the load order actually means it has the LOWEST priority, i.e. every plugin loaded under (and therefore after it) takes precedence over it.

[Deleted147363User]

And now that you know how, Please don't use this to upload music changing mods with copyrighted content to the Nexus. :rolleyes:

 

We do ban for that here as it's easier than dealing with rabid copyright lawyers suing us. - Or confiscating the site and throwing us in jail as happened with Megaupload and several other sites.

 

However, you are free to use whatever music you want - at your own risk of course - on your own computer. Please note that most of the music you find on those free music sites is actually copyrighted. They just haven't gotten around to them yet. Youtube (owned by Google) is in bed with the music industry and therefore gets away with it. But as we are not affiliated with the music industry, and don't have an army of lawyers standing by - we can't get away with what they do.

 

Any music that you have the copyright owner's permission (we will ask for documentation) is welcome. :thumbsup:

 

Obviously as an adult I realise that any topic about adding custom music to your game instantly gets people twitchy about copyright infrigement, and the heavy handed tactics of the US government hence the boilerplate disclaimer. I can assure you this is a How-to and I'm not encouraging players to start flooding the nexus with copyrighted material. I searched for a long time to find a template esp where I could simply replace the references to tracks within my own game.

[Deleted147363User]

I just want to make some quick comments here, since I've become quite familiar with the subject after doing a bit of music modding over the months.

 

1. Skyrim will also play the compressed .xwm format, which takes up much less space than .wav (maybe around one sixteenth or twentieth in fact, depending on encoding). Using xwm is a good idea if anyone plans on adding a lot of tracks and/or if the tracks are long and therefore start hogging RAM when they are played in the game. There are at least three mp3 -> xwm converters available on the Nexus and they are very simple to use.

 

3. Combat tracks reserved for regular combat should have the condition GetCombatTargetHasKeyword Keyword: 'ActorTypeDragon' = 0, while tracks for dragon fights should have the same condition set to 1.

 

5. i) If you let the original tracks remain in the list, they will play TOGETHER with your added ones. The game plays the tracks in a playlist in random order, unless the Maintain Track Order box is checked.

 

ii) If Cycle Tracks is unchecked, the game will only play the track(s) in the list ONCE for any combat situation and then stop. This means that there will be no combat music played after the track(s) in the list has played through in a particular fight. Only starting a new fight will get the combat music to play again. Having the combat music just end in a middle of a long fight is not a good idea, IMO. Keeping the Cycle Tracks box checked means the game will start playing the playlist over again, when all the tracks in it have been used (it's a playlist repeat function, basically).

 

iii) It's actually a good idea not to un-check Ducking for combat music. Ducking means that the track with a lower priority number (which gives it a higher actual priority) plays OVER the other track, i.e. the other keeps playing inaudibly in the background, and when the combat is over and the combat music stops playing, the previous track continues to play as before. This gives a greater sense of music continuity--especially for when the player gets in quick fights.

 

7. Moving something to the top of the load order actually means it has the LOWEST priority, i.e. every plugin loaded under (and therefore after it) takes precedence over it.

 

Thanks for clearing up a few things I didn't fully understand.

 

1. However in the Creation Kit the Browse to file dialogue only gives you .wav as the accepted format. I've used .xwm myself to replace the main menu music as I've seen other mods do but I'm unclear how we're supposed to do that within the Creation kit menus.

 

3. Yes you can copy this condition and paste it into the conditions tab. It's buggy because it doesn't show up right away.

 

5. i) OK well the cycle tracks label is confusing because it sounds like it will shuffle the tracks. So Maintain track order is the only way to get your track to play if it's at the top of the list right?

 

5. iii) Tried this and got the silent track treatment to start with and then the default combat tracks playing after a short time.

 

7. Fair enough, but since I'm not using any other music based mods it doesn't conflict. If I was using say Sounds of Skyrim then I would put it at last in the load order.

[NoAardvarksAllowed]

1. That's just the CK being silly and uncooperative. What you do to get it to recognize .xwm files is, first you add your music file (with the .xwm extension) where you want it inside the Music folder. This is essential. Then, when you create your MUST in the CK and assign the file path to your track, you have to manually write (or copy/paste) its full name, including the .xwm extension, in the file name line in the Select File window. It doesn't show up in the list of files, so you can't just click it to choose it as with .wavs. But writing it's name works if the file is present in the folder you work under.

 

It took me a long while to figure this out. Initially I only used .wav for my music mod, which resulted in problems for people who used it to add several hundred tracks to the various playlists of Skyrim. Xwm is just better, so it's good to start out using it for your modding. That way you won't have to switch over later, which is a pain if you've added lots of music. Which I found out the hard way.

 

5. i) Yeah, Cycle tracks is just a repeat for the entire playlist. Maintain track order will make the game play the tracks in the order specified in the playlist, so putting a track at the top of the list means that will always be played first. Seems a bit boring to do that though. The vanilla game has 3 regular combat and 3 dragon combat tracks, IIRC, that it varies between.

 

iii) That shouldn't happen, if you set the whole thing up right. Since Ducking is set for the entire playlist, both your track and the vanilla combat tracks would be treated the same way--if they play, your should as well.

[Deleted147363User]

1. That's just the CK being silly and uncooperative. What you do to get it to recognize .xwm files is, first you add your music file (with the .xwm extension) where you want it inside the Music folder. This is essential. Then, when you create your MUST in the CK and assign the file path to your track, you have to manually write (or copy/paste) its full name, including the .xwm extension, in the file name line in the Select File window. It doesn't show up in the list of files, so you can't just click it to choose it as with .wavs. But writing it's name works if the file is present in the folder you work under.

 

It took me a long while to figure this out. Initially I only used .wav for my music mod, which resulted in problems for people who used it to add several hundred tracks to the various playlists of Skyrim. Xwm is just better, so it's good to start out using it for your modding. That way you won't have to switch over later, which is a pain if you've added lots of music. Which I found out the hard way.

 

5. i) Yeah, Cycle tracks is just a repeat for the entire playlist. Maintain track order will make the game play the tracks in the order specified in the playlist, so putting a track at the top of the list means that will always be played first. Seems a bit boring to do that though. The vanilla game has 3 regular combat and 3 dragon combat tracks, IIRC, that it varies between.

 

iii) That shouldn't happen, if you set the whole thing up right. Since Ducking is set for the entire playlist, both your track and the vanilla combat tracks would be treated the same way--if they play, your should as well.

 

Thanks for that advice that saved me hours of frustration. That's gotta be the most unfriendly UI I've ever seen to link or import tracks.

Edited August 24, 2012 by Guest