Smarter Combat Music

Inspired by this Reddit thread, Smarter Combat Music disables the game's own handling of the combat music and replaces it with a more nuanced, customizable system.

What it does

In the vanilla game, the combat music is often the first sign that you have been targeted by an unseen enemy. Many consider this a break in immersion, as well as conferring an unfair advantage to the player.

SCM does away with that, forcing you remain alert and be aware of your surroundings. SCM keeps track of the player's combat state, as well as that of nearby hostile actors. When enemies detect you but you have not yet seen them, the normal music will continue playing as if all is well. Only upon hitting, being hit or spotting the opponent before they reach you will the combat music play.

You can also use a more subtle cue: the normal background music will fade when you are spotted. This provides a gentle, more immersive warning and allows you to better hear your attacker's approach.

If you are struck by an unseen opponent or while your weapons are sheathed, a startling musical "stinger" can be played before combat music begins, adding tension to the fight.

After a particularly grueling battle with many opponents, a short musical fanfare or reward track can be played to celebrate your victory against overwhelming odds. This can be customized to one of two built-in victory tracks, or a custom track of your own choosing.

All features are optional and can be controlled through SkyUI's MCM. SCM's features will not be applied to dragon fights, ensuring the music is played.

Version 1. 12

• []Restored a safety check that makes sure combat music halts when player is not in combat. This should resolve cases where the combat music became stuck on after the player was killed.

Version 1. 11

• []Fixed a bug that could cause the standard background music to continue playing underneath combat music if the player is hit by a surprise attack. Background music is now force-muted before the stinger plays. []Fixed a bug that could cause the combat music to linger for a long time after a stealth kill. []Restored the combat stats to their own page in MCM. []Fixed a bug that could cause version upgrades to shut down combat tracking.

Version 1. 10 (the "why didn't I do it this way in the first place?" release): []Complete rewrite of combat detection engine to make it more efficient, reliable and almost entirely event-driven. []Fixed a bug where after loading your game, sometimes the combat tracking script would not re-register its ModEvents (special thanks to Hyacathusarullistad for providing me some vital info about it!) []Ad