So, I'm trying to write a simple script which will stop a certain script when the player enters combat, and have a second script running which will restart said script when the player exits combat. However, I have no idea how to use XGetCombat. I read http://wiki.theassimilationlab.com/mmw/XGetCombat on MMW, but I don't understand the examples or the description, can someone help me out with this?

setx InCombat to PCRef->xGetCombatifx ( InCombat )    ; Do something here if PC has a combat target.else    ; Do something here if PC has no combat target.endif

Since MW scripts run every frame, in this example the 'else' section will continually run until the player actually acquires a combat target, then at that point the 'ifx' section will run instead. Once said target dies or combat ends, then InCombat would once again evaluate to 0 and the 'else' code would resume. You could place StartScript/StopScript/etc in those as needed.

Edit: I should probably note that this won't actually detect if the player is in combat or not, just if the player has a combat target. If someone else is attacking the PC but he never hits back, he'll never actually have combat target.

Hmm, if that won't detect if the player is in combat, what will? My script is playing music and I want it to stop playing music if the player is in combat, and restart once combat is done. I got the idea this could only be accomplished by MWSE functions, but I've read through scripts in both MAO and BetterMusicSystem and frankly I have no idea what's going on.

I believe MAO does it by detecting when the player is attacked, not really when they're in combat. No idea about BetterMusicSystem.

Detecting attacks is done through GetSoundPlaying. Here's an example script you can try out:

begin Hit_Testshort PCHitset PCHit to 1if ( Player->GetSoundPlaying "Health Damage" )elseif ( Player->GetSoundPlaying "destruction hit" )elseif ( Player->GetSoundPlaying "frost_hit" )elseif ( Player->GetSoundPlaying "shock hit" )elseif ( Player->GetSoundPlaying "Light Armor Hit" )elseif ( Player->GetSoundPlaying "Medium Armor Hit" )elseif ( Player->GetSoundPlaying "Heavy Armor Hit" )elseif ( Player->GetSoundPlaying "Hand to Hand Hit" )elseif ( Player->GetSoundPlaying "Hand to Hand Hit 2" )else    set PCHit to 0endifif ( PCHit )    MessageBox "I'm Hit!"endifend

Thanks! That example looks promising. How would one detect when combat is finished? Would using XGetCombat to return 0 work? Stopping the music on combat is only half the battle.

From my limited experimentation, pc_ref->xGetCombat starts returning the player's combat target as soon as the first aggressive targeted action (attack, etc) is taken by the player toward another actor... but not before then even if all of Vvardenfell is attacking the player; it does not stop returning that combat target until it is killed or changed or there's enough distance between them that it is dropped by the game engine (that's something like a few cells). I presume it works the same way in reverse for actor_ref->xGetCombat. So, unfortunately, to detect "combat" this way requires checking xGetCombat for the player and every actor in the cell, but that's certainly possible with xFirstNPC/xNextRef. Sound detection could work much more simply to detect if the player is hit (as in Greatness' example above) but if you want to detect the player being targeted without being hit then I think you're stuck with the aforementioned method (although I would be very happy to be proven wrong!).

Since we're not actually detecting when combat begins, just when the player gets hit, detecting when combat ends is sort of unrelated.

Anyways, as for how to do it, there's not really any "pretty" way. You could do what sveng suggested above and check every NPC in the cell to see if they're in combat, but doing that every frame would butcher your FPS. Your also not using MWSE in any other part of the script, so you might want to stick with vanilla functions to ensure compatability. A simpler alternative way might be to just have a generic timer running. If the player hasn't been hit for several minutes it's probably safe to assume combat is over and resume your music. If he gets hit again the music would stop as usual per the script, so it shouldn't be too big of a deal even if you cut in the music too early.

Good to know. I think detecting hit sounds is a good way to handle starting combat so I'm going to do it that way. It has the added bonus of not interrupting the music if you sneak kill an enemy with a ranged weapon and adding an extra element of surprise if you aren't aware an enemy is coming after you.

As for detecting when combat ends, I made a request in Merzasphor's MWSE thread so hopefully I'll get a cleaner way of doing this soon. It should open up some neat scripting possibilities for others too. Thanks for all the help! I'm going to keep this thread open in case I have other scripting questions later.

There's a problem with that example, compiling the script returns an error "Unknown object ID 'Player' found!". I'm not sure how to fix it.

You got this in MWEdit right? Don't forget to check the morrowind ESM manually in it. Unlike CS, when you load an ESP, its masters doesn't load automatically.

It should compile fine in the normal CS, but if you're using MWEdit you may need to enable the "Extra Script Records" option.

Download https://www.dropbox.com/s/zj7a6u1byfhmujj/mweditextrafile.esp?dl=0 file then put it in your MWEdit folder and go to View->Options then check the appropriate box and fill in the path. Example: http://i.imgur.com/IARIFtH.png

"PCRef" that I gave in the original example is a variable containing a reference to the PC, you'll need to declare and assign it in your script.

begin NMMw_CombatReactivator_Dungeonlong PCReflong InCombatsetx PCRef to xGetRef "Player"setx InCombat to PCRef->xGetCombatif ( InCombat == 0 )    returnelseif ( ScriptRunning "NMMw_Music_Dungeon" == 0 )    StartScript NMMw_Music_Dungeonendif;    If ( ScriptRunning "NMMw_Music_Dungeon" == 0 );        StartScript NMMw_Music_Dungeon;    endif;endifend

I encountered the Infix to postfix error when there were too many elseifs inside an 'if'. try using ifs instead of elseifs like so:

;block is executed when the player enters the cell, or the song finishedif ( playonce == 0 )    set Rand to random 7    if ( Rand == 0 )        Streammusic "nmmw\dngn\dngn1.mp3"        set timer to 103    endif    if ( Rand == 1 )        Streammusic "nmmw\dngn\dngn2.mp3"        set timer to 250    endif    if ( Rand == 2 )        Streammusic "nmmw\dngn\dngn3.mp3"        set timer to 184    endif    if ( Rand == 3 )        Streammusic "nmmw\dngn\dngn4.mp3"        set timer to 186    endif    if ( Rand == 4 )        Streammusic "nmmw\dngn\dngn5.mp3"        set timer to 407    endif    if ( Rand == 5 )        Streammusic "nmmw\dngn\dngn6.mp3"        set timer to 267    endif    if ( Rand == 6 )        Streammusic "nmmw\dngn\dngn7.mp3"        set timer to 279    endif    if ( Rand == 7 )        Streammusic "nmmw\dngn\dngn8.mp3"        set timer to 286    endif    set playonce to 1endif

@hollaajith & Greatness7, I tried both your suggested changes, it returned the same error.

What's good to know though is I started the combat reactivator script and it didn't return any errors! It probably doesn't work flawlessly either but it'll do in a pinch.

Make sure your music paths are correct. You could try changing the "set timer to 103"(etc) parts to "set timer to 103.0" as timer is a float and 103 is an integer. I don't think that would be the issue either though.

I tested the script on my own install (replacing the startscript/musics with alternatives) and didn't have any error. Your best bet would probably be just to comment out one block at a time and retest for the error in each instance.

Ok, I fixed the script. I had to add "== 1.00" to all the instances of getsoundplaying, since the game didn't know what the script was trying to do otherwise.

Unfortunately, without a proper combat detection command, the detection of combat is wholly broken and often the dungeon music will just restart immediately after combat triggers, or just decide to start again in the middle of combat. Also, "CellChanged == 1", as noted in the scripts comment, is unreliable and often fails to stop the music.

Question, though. Would there be a way for the script to detect if the tagged activator is in the cell? If so, I could have the script be checking for the activator, and if it stopped being there the music would stop. This would work quite well for regional music, as every cell tagged in the playlist would have an activator, but as soon as you entered a cell without it, the music would change.

I'm not sure why the GetSoundPlaying functions would need a '== 1.00'. To the scripting engine "if ( x )" is basically the same thing as "if ( x != 0 )", but if changing it worked for you.

For the music stream being broken, be sure the logic of your script is correct. Make sure you understand what is happening on each step and then you should know where the problem arises. From looking at them it seems when the PC is hit it will stream "endmusic", which I assume is a 1 second silent track used to stop the current music stream. After that it doesn't actually use a StopScript command though, so it will continue on through the script and try to play the dungeon music as shown in the 'if ( playOnce == 0 )' block. That explains why the music continues to play after combat begins. You may want to change this section as so:

if ( pcHit )    set playOnce to 0    set timer to 1    StreamMusic "nmmw/endmusic.mp3"    StartScript NMMw_CombatReactivator_Dungeon    StopScript NMMw_Music_Dungeon    returnendif

The should make your music stop, but then you need to be sure that what's happening in the reactivator script makes sense as well.

if ( InCombat == 0 )    returnelseif ( ScriptRunning "NMMw_Music_Dungeon" == 0 )    StartScript NMMw_Music_Dungeonendif

This section on your second script isn't doing what I believe you want it to do. It checks if the player has a combat target and if not it does nothing, but if so it restarts your original script.

That means at the moment your scripts sort of play out like this:

1. Player gets hit
2. Music stops and 2nd script starts
3. The 2nd scripts sees the player has no combat target
4. So it (the 2nd script) restarts the first script
5. Keeps repeating from step 1 in a loop

Remember "InCombat" will always be 0 until the player actually attacks something, so it's not really a reliable way to detect when combat ends.

Here's how I would rewrite the whole thing, also combining both scripts into one as I don't really see any reason to split the job into two. It's hard for me to actually test this as I don't have all the details of your mod nor the actual music files, but I think it should work for the most part. There will still be some minor issues detecting when combat ends, but the only way I can see around that would be to store all NPC references in arrays and constantly monitor each one to see when they leave combat, which wouldn't be very FPS friendly. I included lots of comments and messageboxes to try and explain whats going on.

begin NMMw_Music_Dungeon; State Variablesfloat timershort pcHitshort pcCombatshort prevTargshort scanRefsshort randTrack; MWSE Variableslong pcReflong pcTarglong npcReflong npcTargfloat npcTemp    ; When player enters the cell, end the current music and queue the next    ; track to run after a 1 second timer.if ( CellChanged )    MessageBox "Cell Changed! Ending music and setting timer to 1s"    StreamMusic "nmmw/endmusic.mp3"    set timer to 1endif    ; Continuously detect for when player gets hit in combat.if ( pcTarg == 0 )    set pcHit to 1    if ( Player->GetSoundPlaying "Health Damage" )    elseif ( Player->GetSoundPlaying "destruction hit" )    elseif ( Player->GetSoundPlaying "frost_hit" )    elseif ( Player->GetSoundPlaying "shock hit" )    elseif ( Player->GetSoundPlaying "Light Armor Hit" )    elseif ( Player->GetSoundPlaying "Medium Armor Hit" )    elseif ( Player->GetSoundPlaying "Heavy Armor Hit" )    elseif ( Player->GetSoundPlaying "Hand to Hand Hit" )    elseif ( Player->GetSoundPlaying "Hand to Hand Hit 2" )    else        set pcHit to 0    endifendif    ; If the player does get hit whilst he wasn't already in combat, end the    ; current music and queue the next check to run after a 15s timer. If he    ; was already in combat however, we don't need to restart the battle music,    ; so in that case only restart the timer back to 15s.if ( pcHit )    if ( pcCombat )        set timer to 15    else        MessageBox "Player has been attacked from outside of combat! Ending music and setting timer."        set pcCombat to 1        StreamMusic "nmmw/endmusic.mp3"        set timer to 15    endif    returnendif    ; Continuously detect for when the player attacks someone else in combat.setx pcRef to xGetRef "Player"setx pcTarg to pcRef->xGetCombat    ; If the player attacks a target from outside of combat, end the current    ; music and prevent the rest of the script from processing so long as the    ; player still has said combat target.ifx ( pcTarg )    set prevTarg to 1    if ( pcCombat == 0 )        MessageBox "Player attacked a target from outside of combat! Ending music and setting timer."        set pcCombat to 1        StreamMusic "nmmw/endmusic.mp3"    endif    returnendif    ; If the PC previously had a target, but no longer has one, we can    ; assume he killed it. There may have been more than one NPC in combat    ; with him though, so to be sure combat is over we must scan them all.ifx ( prevTarg )    set scanRefs to 5    whilex ( scanRefs )        set scanRefs to ( scanRefs - 1 )        ifx ( npcRef )            setx npcRef to xNextRef npcRef        else            setx npcRef to xFirstNPC        endif        ifx ( npcRef )                ; If the NPC is dead then we needn't do any scan for it.            xSetRef npcRef            set npcTemp to GetHealth            if ( npcTemp <= 0 )                return            endif                ; We don't need to scan NPCs that are very far away either.            xSetRef npcRef            set npcTemp to ( GetDistance Player )            if ( npcTemp > 7000 )                return            endif                ; For everything else, find out if it's in combat or not.            setx npcTarg to npcRef->xGetCombat            if ( npcTarg )                MessageBox "Other NPCs are still in combat! Resetting timer to 15s."                set prevTarg to 0                set npcRef to 0                set timer to 15            endif            return        endif        set scanRefs to 0    endwhile    MessageBox "Player target dead and no other NPCs in combat! Stopping timer."    set prevTarg to 0    set timer to 0endif;    Don't play any new music whilst the timer is still active.if ( timer > 0 )    set timer to ( timer - GetSecondsPassed )    returnendif;    If the player doesn't have a target and hasn't been hit within the last 15;    seconds, we can assume combat has ended.set pcCombat to 0;    Once the timer has finished and combat is over, play a random music track.MessageBox "Timer Finished! Starting random dungeon track."set randTrack to Random 7if ( randTrack == 0 )    StreamMusic "nmmw/dngn/dngn1.mp3"    set timer to 103elseif ( randTrack == 1 )    StreamMusic "nmmw/dngn/dngn2.mp3"    set timer to 250elseif ( randTrack == 2 )    StreamMusic "nmmw/dngn/dngn3.mp3"    set timer to 184elseif ( randTrack == 3 )    StreamMusic "nmmw/dngn/dngn4.mp3"    set timer to 186elseif ( randTrack == 4 )    StreamMusic "nmmw/dngn/dngn5.mp3"    set timer to 407elseif ( randTrack == 5 )    StreamMusic "nmmw/dngn/dngn6.mp3"    set timer to 267elseif ( randTrack == 6 )    StreamMusic "nmmw/dngn/dngn7.mp3"    set timer to 279elseif ( randTrack == 7 )    StreamMusic "nmmw/dngn/dngn8.mp3"    set timer to 286endifend