I think a big issue people have with Morrowind's combat is how it deals with misses. Your weapon just goes straight through the enemy, there are no dodging animations. Just a little vague 'you missed' sound.

So what if we replace the sound of missing someone with your attack, with a sound that implies that your swing only grazed his armor slightly, doing no damage?

The problem is that there is only one miss sound, so it would have to be generic enough to fit for 'missing' NPCs without armor, in light armor (leather), and in heavier armor (steel), and for 'missing' creatures.

And it would have to fit for all weapon types that are used to attack. And fists. Ugh...

Any thoughts?

I just had the hilarious idea of making it sound like a slap. Mainly because the generic "you got hit" sounds like someone dropping a roast two stories onto gravel. So if I'm not puncturing someone (through metal heavy armor), a graze would be like a slapstick slap, yeah?

Okay, maybe that's just me.

Anyway, that's a good idea, but I can't think of a generic enough sound. Hmm. What about the sound effect, it's like a "swishhh" sound. Like when a cartoon swordsman just grazes the enemy's hair and chops some off the top. Swishh instead of swoosh. I dunno.

For the starters I'm irritated I miss so much, so sound of it is my least concern. Wouldn't it be easier to simply be able to hit all the time?

But I like this idea as well, the sound is a bit silly, especially if I'm in 3D and am literally watching my halberd traveling trough the other guy's head, and hearing "SWOOSH" sound by it.

But then again, it's also annoying to hear a "TSH" sound when I axe a guy in full iron armor, what is there to "TSH"? I want a "CLANG" sound!

The thing is, there are actually two sounds. There's the normal woosh sounds, that you also get when you do hit, and there's this separate sound that comes afterwards for missing. It's not very loud.

I don't think the sound files are stored in the BSA file, so check out miss.wav under Data Files\Sound\Fx.

Heh, I've never noticed this before. I replaced the miss sound with something a little louder, and found out that only when I miss something that sound is played. When NPCs miss you hear the swoosh sound, but the missing sound is not played. It just plays nothing.

I'm using some Oblivion sounds for combat impact sounds, they are a lot better. It has a real CLANG for hitting heavy armor.

i have a related question.... is it possible to have unique sounds for both hitting and missing for a weapon without modifying the sounds for all weapons?

Technically, you could add a script to the weapon that runs only when it's equipped, that detects whether the attack and miss sounds are being played for the player object, and if yes it stops those sounds and plays some other custom sounds.

It's kinda messy though and you could probably hear parts of the original sounds when they start playing, especially at low FPS rates. Still, it could be worth a try.

Edit: This could make a pretty good mod idea. Just replace the original attack and miss sounds with short silent sound effects, then when they are being played, you could replace them with separate custom sounds for each weapon category (short swords, long swords, battle axes, hammers, etc). If anyone's interested in producing the sounds, I'd be thrilled to do the scripting part.

neato, i do plan on doing this for some weapons i plan on adding in my next mod (way down the road as my current one will take some time to complete)

it'll break from lore, but sticks true to different lore, and in this different lore, weapons have distinct sounds.

i'll give it a try when i get really fed up with dialog.

Shameless plug but you might want to try my http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=8355 that adds Attack bonus to all races so you don't miss as well as adding a use of Weapon Skill by reducing the damage that is done based on the specific Weapon Skill. (Adds Normal Weapon Resist to your current target based on your equipped weapon).

It does make it harder as well, since enemy NPCs hit a lot more too. Also has BTB's Character modifications integrated into it.

Theres already an advanced combat mod that ran a script to simply check when certain sounds were playing. It then stopped the sound and played different weapon hits for swords, axes etc, as well as randomising armour hit sounds. It only got to beta and seemed a little messy, sadly. I totally agree with this op, running a script to add in a weapon graze sound that made the distinction between armour types and diff kinds of creature would really help combat immersion...

I don't know where to find good sounds but that sounds like a good idea. Maybe one of those Oblivion combat sound packs...

Just did a little searching around, some of these may not be usable or good quality. I just searched for "free sound effects":
http://soundbible.com/tags-fight.html
http://www.a1freesoundeffects.com/weapons.html
http://www.freesfx.co.uk/soundeffects/swords-knives/
http://www.soundsnap.com/comic_film_fx/weapons
http://www.grsites.com/archive/sounds/category/7/?offset=0
http://www.mysoundfx.com/home/weapons.html
http://www.partnersinrhyme.com/soundfx/warsounds.shtml
Some linking sites:
http://www.stonewashed.net/sfx.html
http://www.videomaker.com/downloads/free-sound-effects/

IIRC, that was from the first page of results!

Why don't you use your own http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=6036 then? :whistling:

Here is some http://search2.yacoby.net/search?general=combat+sound+effect&game=MW&act=Search&page=1 that might be useful for this idea.

I don't recall that mod doing anything of this sort. I don't think I touched combat sounds at all. I might be wrong though, this was like 7 years ago and I've never used that mod for longer than a few hours at most.