I'm positive what I'm asking for doesn't exist, and may not even be possible. That said...

Here's the scenario: I'm strolling through the countryside of Cyrodiil, enjoying some lovely sound effects courtesy of Cliffworms, maybe some peaceful explore music. Abruptly, my peaceful music stops, and combat music begins. Because I'm using Combat FPS Optimiser, my distant grass disappears. By the time I actually see the rat charging at me, I've already drawn my weapon and cast 3 buff spells. Additionally, if I happened to be sneaking for some reason, I'll have seen the eye turn bright.

Why should I psychically know that an attack is coming before I'm actually attacked, or before I see a threat and draw my weapon, or cast a hostile spell. Is it possible to delay the game's telling me I'm under threat until one of those three conditions are actually met?

There are a few mods that alter the sneak eye or get rid of it altogether, which is maybe fine. There's one mod that claims to delay the onset of combat music, but it's quite buggy. And I don't know if the script for Combat FPS Optimizer could be delayed. But it seems like the combat music and the fps mod key off the same flag in the game, and it would be more immersive to only have the sneak eye change under the same conditions. In other words, I won't "know" I'm detected and being attacked until "I" know I'm detected and being attacked. Is this even possible? I'm sure I'm not the only one who would want something like this.

I'm assuming it's the IsInCombat flag btw?

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=15970 is probably what you're looking for. Another option is http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=13802.

The first one, Musical Immersion, I found to be buggy as heck. I haven't seen the second one, though, but looking at the description it doesn't look like it does what I want. A 3 minute timer between music cycles, seems like it would effectively get rid of combat music altogether. I could accomplish the same thing by replacing my combat tracks with silent mp3's. :hubbahubba: J/K. What I really want is for the music to kick in once I'm actually fighting instead of beforehand.

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=23545

There's of course a much simpler solution: Turn off the music completely! It may sound radical, and it is, because instead of the music you will now start hearing all the world noises from wind, trees, birds, etc. You may even detect an enemy before he attacks you because you hear his footsteps.

This greatly enhances the immersion for me (though I see that is subjective). The music can be turned off from the Oblivion.ini, or in the ini tweaks of Wrye Bash.

I agree music off is the way to go.

Second best option is strategy masters mod.

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=26892 is what you want. The music doesn't change until you see the attacker, or you are physically engaged. No psychic foreknowledge.

Plus, a bunch of other cool music features.

The problem with Better Music I've found is that it is very heavy handed.

It uses an invisible rat that appears and attacks you - normally you don't see it - unless you use detect life then it is this constant glowing animal that follows you around. So most stealth, vampire, magic using characters are going to make you hyper-aware of the rat and therefore it is the same as if the music were playing its queues.

Then if you use mods by Duke Patrick and so on - my understanding is that his mods need to know when you are in combat, so it can mess up scripts there.

If those two factors were not factors then BM would be ideal due to it's ability to assign lists of music to areas that the game doesn't even normally handle.

Look at this: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=26892

Thanks for the replies. I will take a look at Better Music System and Immersive Combat Music.

As for turning the music off, I just can't do it. What I have is a bunch of silent tracks interspersed with the music tracks so that it's not constant. But I need music, otherwise the game just feels too much like work and not enough like a game.

I guess there's no way to delay the actual game's combat detection though? It still leaves me trying to find 3 mods to accomplish 1 task (delaying music, visual cues, and sneak eye).

EDIT: @Psymon - whoa. Thanks. Attacking Rat? Well I will try the Immersive Combat Music first anyway as it looks leaner.

It all depends on what other mods you play with really. Just consider what other mods might require combat detection to remain unmodded.

If you don't play with life detection or combat mods BMS should be fine.

I've never used combat fps optimizer preferring Oblivion Stutter Remover.

But I've tried BMS and won't go back to it. If I were to play with music it would be with Immersive and then I can just add my own tracks like you do.

But I think, unlike Morrowind, Oblivion is great without music.

The tasks are different. Not sure what you mean by visual clues, but the sneak eye isn't related to combat at all, only to whether you're seen or not (may well be a friendly actor).

For the sneak eye, I boldly recommend my HUD Status Bars mod. It has an option to completely hide the vanilla sneak icon, and has a few different, optional sneak eyes to use instead (and you can tweak it to work exactly the way you want). The one you may like, looks like the normal, but instead of brightening when you are seen, uses the brightness to display the amount of light falling on the player. So it only tells how easy it is to see you, not whether you're actually seen.

The visual cue is combat FPS optimizer reducing the grass draw distance when combat starts.

So in his game the music queues up and the grass goes away when combat starts.

Same reason I never liked streamline with it changing the render sliders.

Oooh, that sounds nice. I've looked at your mod before, you may have just convinced me.



That's the one. Streamline's handling was way overboard no matter how I tweaked the settings. But combat FPS optimizer, I've been using for a few weeks, and it works just about right. At least it puts things back when combat is over :tongue: I use it alongside OSR, and it seems to keep my FPS playable almost all the time.

I tried Immersive Combat Music. It does what it says (plays combat music when you *know* you're in combat), but it ends abruptly the second all enemies are dead. On the bright side, if there's already music playing when you go into combat, it will resume the previous track like it was on pause.

Me, I'd love to find something like Musical Immersion. I used it for ages, but it's become really buggy for some reason (possibly WB 2.94 doing it) - it keeps turning bMusicEnabled off, and after I tried clean saving, the music plays for a few seconds after entering a cell, then stops. I remember reading something about how to fix that problem, but I don't know what it was.