Playable Instruments – Play and Bash
This mod adds playable Flute&Lute&Drum, singing ability and your custom songs to play. As you equip instruments, performance will start(equipment is the trigger, so hotkey is recommended). As you read your songbook, vocal or custom performance will start. Audiences applaud and reward you. Instruments have offensive and supportive magical effects.
—- WHAT’S NEW —-
version 0.6.1 (2012.3.12)
Minor bug fixes: busy issue of sneak singing, prolonged silence of sneak play, mutual exclusion adjustment.
Misc: translation friendly data structure.
Gameplay: Innkeeper sometimes offer you a drink.
——————–
version 0.6 (2012.3.10)
* Enhance: Custom songs support. Convert your music files to .xwm format and place them appropriately. See guidance below.
* Enhance: Teammate band support for your custom songs(only). Your teammates(followers and companions) sometimes react if you play custom songs. If you handed some instruments teammates accompany with them.
—-/WHAT’S NEW/—-
* IF YOU HAVE TROUBLE CREATING INSTRUMENTS, see Base IDs in following recipe.
* IF YOU HAVE TROUBLE PLAYING INSTRUMENTS YOU CREATED BEFORE, please try dropping and picking instruments, or re-creating instruments. Skyrim sometimes remember older scripts.
* If you stole ‘Blank Pocketbook’, the prompt will not appear. Drop it to the ground once, and try again.
This mod adds playable Flute&Lute&Drum and singing ability. Audience applaud, reward, and your skill will advance(speechcraft). Instruments have buff&debuff effect in sneak stance for combat. Your followers and companions become your band members.
1. Description
Bard title in Skyrim Vanilla is kind of crap for player life in game. This mod adds playable, equippable and bashable instruments and vocalization so that you can perform instrumental song and then bash unresponsive audiences. You can bash someone as bard warrior, or live a professional bard life.
2. How to get Instruments
All instruments can be created with forge.
Base IDs are listed in braces where xx is this mod’s load order in your environment.
Recipe:
– Battle Flute(xx000D62) — one of following combination.
* one flute, one mammoth tusk
* one firewood, one embalming Tool, and one mammoth tusk
– Battle Lute(xx006388) — one of following combination
* one lute, one void salt
* one large antler, one wooden bowl, and one void salt
– Battle Drum(xx007914) — one of following combination
* one drum, one troll fat
* one deer hide, one bucket, and one troll fat
Following items are NO-BASH version.
You cannot swing them, you will be polite a little than Battle Instruments.
Other functionality is the same.
– Fine Flute(xx00FFBB)
* one flute, one paper roll
– Fine Lute(xx00FFBD)
* one lute, one paper roll
– Fine Drum(xx00FFBE)
* one drum, one paper roll
Following items are for singing. Vocalization is still in experimental stage.
– Blank Pocketbook(xx0171B7)
* seek noble cupboards.
(all of them are available but Bard’s College has them most)
* Or, bring one paper roll to forge. It creates 3 Blank Pocketbooks.
– Songbooks of Common Songs
* Own ‘Songs of Skyrim’ and Blank Pocketbook.
One of ‘Songs of Skyrim’ can be found at Braidwood Inn in Kynesgrove.
Basically it is randomly lootable book.
* Then open your Blank Pocketbook. Prompt will appear.
* Answer it and CLOSE INVENTORY ONCE.
* Songbooks will appear in your inventory.
– Songbooks of Custom Songs – Enigmatic Songbook(xx017C95 – xx017C9E)
* Find ‘Enigmatic Songbook’ in noble chests.
Noble chest is wide and low, mesh-patterned box,
usually placed near a bed.
One is in Viarmo’s room in Bard’s College.
They have volume number(see section 3 ‘Preparing Custom Songs’).
Songbooks will be found in mostly Bard’s College.
Noble cupboards and noble chests contain these items.
If none found, unfortunately your noble cupboards have been modified somehow.
Please use Base ID.
3. Using Instruments & Singing a Song
* Instruments
As you equip instruments, performance starts in few seconds, except in following situations:
– Your weapon is unsheathed
– You have shields or torches in your left hand
– You are sitting or flying or doing something
Correct Procedure of Performance:
1. Stand still (or sneak) with your hands empty, leaving combat stance.
2. Just equip (or re-equip) your instrument, preferably with hotkeys.
It starts playing.
3. Wait until you get back to standing(or sneaking) stance.
The point is, always sheath your weapon and hands down before performance.
Draw your weapon or instruments just for bashing someone.
If you cancel performance, you can move around however music will be going on.
* Vocalization Basics
You can start singing by reading songbooks.
1. Open your songbook that you are going to sing.
2. Wait few seconds. Message appears in upper-left corner of your screen.
3. Close your inventory. The song will start.
Please do not forget — common songs except ‘Dragonborn Comes’ need playable lute.
* Preparing Custom Songs
To sing or play your custom music assets, convert your mp3 or wav files into .xwm format(I tested this with MultiXwm) and place them according to following convention.
i) In Windows or whatever, rename your music file as one of:
‘BardVoiceCustom01.xwm’
~ ‘BardVoiceCustom10.xwm’. (10 songs at maximum)
ii) Place your music file under the folder:
\Data\Sound\Fx\Mus\Bard\PlayableInstrumentsCustom\
iii) In game, get and open ‘Enigmatic Songbook’,
which has the same volume number that you gave to your file.
Your music will play as in the same manner as common songbooks, or a message tells you Dovahkiin cannot understand what was written in the book(in case the file was not recognized).
WARNING: too long music, corrupted files, files in wrong formats, all these files cause hangup or Crash To Desktop. It’s safe keeping your file size in around 1.4MB in xwm format. Wav also works (as BardVoiceCustom01.wav etc), but its behavior is completely hidden in Skyrim blackbox. Please watch it by yourself.
* Organizing Your Band for Custom Songs
Your teammates might react as your band member if the song is custom one, and if they didn’t have torches, and they didn’t sit, and they didn’t unsheath their weapons, and they didn’t do this and that.
No instruments needed for them, however, if you want them to play specific instrument part, just hand over the instrument to each member.
Anyway they do not always necessarily react. Do not depend too much on them.
If Dovahkiin’s current equipped weapon is one of playable instruments, that will be your part.
4. Effect
– Effect of Instrumental Performance
* Normal stance performance:
earns money from audiences, gets applause, and advances you to level up.
Key factor is speeechcraft and weight of audiences’ coinpurse.
In addition, if your speechcraft level is 70 or higher,
your performance changes current BGM.
Flute and lute offers tavern mood, drum offers Sovngarde mood.
* Sneak stance performance (for speechcraft 60+):
affects supportive to your teammates,
offensive to other listener(including creatures).
CAUTION: offensive effect applies to any listeners except your teammate, i.e. your followers and quest companions. Careless ‘offensive’ performance causes city massacre.
Following effects appear on ENEMIES WHO DO NOT DETECT PLAYER,
and all teammates at the end of your song.
If you move or draw weapon or get detected on halfway,
effect is canceled. Sneak, hide in the shadow, and poison enemies’ ears.
+ Flute: Calm(like) to enemies, Restore Health and Stamina to teammates.
+ Lute: Fury(like) to enemies, CallToArms(like) to teammates.
+ Drum: Fear(like) to enemies, Stoneflesh(like) to teammates.
There are 2 version of effect — weaker effect for speech level 60+,
and stronger effect for speech level 80+.
Former continues 120sec while the latter have 180sec in real.
– Effect of Bashing with Battle Instruments
Battle Flute – victim will eventually be paralyzed, but never gets hostile.
Battle Lute – victim will get shock damage (it’s an electric guitar.)
Battle Drum – victim will be absorbed health a bit.
Bashing with battle instruments is a minor crime.
– Effect of Vocalization
As the same as instrumental performance in normal stance.
No buff&debuff effect for now. Er, well… no.
Be cautious when you sing political songs near regular soldiers.
5. Special Thanks & My Excuses
– The artwork used in songbooks is derived from the score of:
Suite “de Bruxelles” BWV 995 by J. S. Bach,
picture data delivered from:
“Guitarists and Composers” Project
Thank you.
– Custom songs and Vocalization are still in experimental stage.
No magical effects, no combat availability yet.
– Starting performance immediately after equipment, unable to cancel performance,
they are inconvenient. Yes, I know. I think I need OnKey handler in skse.
Please be patient.
– Bugs — sorry. I do not made thorough test over any quest situations.
Maybe some are there.
Known one is that you can play instrumental songs during swimming.
6. Version History
2012.3.9 0.6 — Enhance: custom music assets support. Enhance: teammate band support.
2012.3.3 0.5 — Enhance: vocalization support. Bug fix: exp calculation from other bards adjusted. Modify: changed motion at finish.
2012.2.25 0.4 — Enhance: buff and debuff effect support. Modify: level advancement adjusted.
2012.2.21 0.3 — Bug fix: tfc friendliness(unlock movement during play), additional instruments(fine series), additional ‘change mood’ function
2012.2.18 0.2.2 — Stability: narrowed timing glitch down on changing weapon, Bug fix: avoided charge loss bug (in Skyrim vanilla) on changing from 1Hweapon to Battle Lute.
2012.2.16 0.2.1 — Bug fix: fixed enemy AI halt by drawing instruments in combat.
2012.2.15 0.2 — audiences applause and reward and skill advancement support, changed drum to one-handed weapon.
2012.2.14 0.1 — additional instruments(lute and drum) and additional recipes(regular and cheap)
2012.2.13 0.0 — initial.
7. Install
Copy files in archive into skyrim folder.
8. Uninstall
Remove following files:
Data/meshes/clutter/common/battleflute.nif
Data/meshes/clutter/common/fineflute.nif
Data/meshes/clutter/common/battlelute.nif
Data/meshes/clutter/common/finelute.nif
Data/meshes/clutter/common/battledrum.nif*
Data/meshes/clutter/common/1Hbattledrum.nif
Data/meshes/clutter/common/1Hfinedrum.nif
Data/scripts/source/aaabattleflute.psc*
Data/scripts/source/aaabattlelute.psc*
Data/scripts/source/aaabattledrum.psc*
Data/scripts/source/aaaStaffInstruments.psc
Data/scripts/source/aaaSongBook.psc
Data/scripts/aaabattleflute.pex*
Data/scripts/aaabattlelute.pex*
Data/scripts/aaabattledrum.pex*
Data/scripts/aaaStaffInstruments.pex
Data/scripts/aaaSongBook.pex
Data/textures/interfaces/books/PlayableInstruments/aaascore1.png
Data/textures/interfaces/books/PlayableInstruments/aaascore2.png
Data/BattleFlute.esp
* = if any
Appendix – FAQnized Design Policy
Q. Why don’t you enhance original vanilla instruments?
A. I don’t want to dig into Bard College quests and item bugs, and to avoid mod collision. Making change on original instruments causes many locations written back to vanilla state.
Q. Why these instruments are got only from forge?
A. I don’t think there is any safe chest or containers from modding in Tamriel at all. Even making new containers cannot avoid influences from great map mods. Recipe&Forge semantics seem relatively safe.
Q. What are these strange materials and alchemy ingredients?
A. Instruments should not be so expensive property in Skyrim, I think. By the way there seems to be no proper material to make even vanilla’s instruments in Skyrim. Something fierce must be performed to create Battle instruments at forge.
Q. Are you going to make any quest about getting these new instruments and song variations?
A. As for me, maybe no. I don’t like to touch original dialogues since it disturbs environments of foreign language versions. Dialog implies quests, scenes, and even barter menus. Anyway I welcome someone creating such a mod. No confirmation needed.
