So, can I add Reverie by Debussey et. al. and hear it play while exploring? Or is it only for Skyrim music?
KUDOS to you for actually including a readme.txt with the mod!! That is VERY rare that modders do that anymore. Back in tesnexus days they did include readmes.
You can integrate any music into the mod you can think of, be it rock, pop, classic,... You only need to make sure that the songs have been converted to the right format (.wav or .xwm) and have been renamed (Track001.wav, Track002.wav, ... or Track001.xwm, Track002.xwm, ...) when you them put them into the corresponding folders.
Regarding readme files, yes, I noticed, too, that not many mod authors include readme files in their mods. That's why I decided to save the mod descriptions as a PDF (e.g. the Opera browser has an built-in option to save websites as PDF) if I need them later.
Increasing the limit is only possible by editing the plugin itself and adjusting the scripts so they take the new limit into account. This could be a feature of a new version of the mod. Regarding hotkeying playlists, what do you mean exactly? When a hotkey is pressed, the assigned playlist will be opened? If you mean this, I haven't looked into scripting hotkey events yet.
I can't say when I release a new version of the mod because I put all mod projects (and possible mod updates) on hold due to Starfield. It's my curse: I can either make mods for a game or play a game. I rarely manage to do both.
I spent the whole weekend playtesting the mod extensively and found a couple of new bugs while doing this which I also managed to solve. Furthermore, I finished the documentation of the recent changes (aka changelog) and the instructions for updating. The updated version for classic Skyrim is finished as well. Then I took the time to fix a few bugs of my Samuel follower mod (I playtested with multiple followers and of one of them was Samuel). I plan to release the new versions of the mods I mentioned very soon - so keep an eye out :-)
Edit: Version 1.6 of Spectral Music Player is released.
I managed to get rid of the bugs which were reported recently. The new version 1.6 will be released in next couple of days.
Edit:
After I wrote this, I noticed a bug regarding friendly fire. If you have other followers besides the drum, it can sometimes happen that the other followers turn hostile towards the drum due to friendly fire in combat. I reduced this risk by making the drum ignore friendly hits and turning it into a combat teammate with SetPlayerTeammate.
I've tried the "remove default music" option and the music I implemented into this mod still gets interrupted anytime an enemy is pursuing me. This wouldn't be as annoying if the song didn't change every time that happened and sadly, I run into enemies so much I practically cannot finish one song unless I am standing still or in a town (away from enemies) lol. Would it be possible for the music to never be interrupted?
Thanks for the suggestion. I've just tested a couple of things to make this possible. If I set the priority of the custom Music Type to 1 in the Creation Kit, the custom music won't get interrupted by combat music in the game. I will implement another combat music setting, the "No Combat Music" setting. Now I need to adjust the scripts and the settings menu accordingly.
Awesome! I just happened to be in a dungeon when I noticed this update and it works. Thank you again for this amazing mod.
Edit: I am having a new issue with this update. Sorry if this sounds confusing but I'll try to explain the best I can. I am currently in the dungeon where you find Serana, and when you enter the room where she is, this default Skyrim music you hear when you enter that room starts to play (I think it's music that plays by default when you enter the main area of a dungeon) and at the same time it lowers the music from the drum while it plays this short default music. The problem is after that short Skyrim music finishes, a new song from the drum starts to play while the other one that was lowered is still playing lol so now two songs are playing simultaneously from the drum. I told the drum to stop and I made it vanish, but the first song that was playing before I entered that room is the only song that stops, and the 2nd song that started playing after the Skyrim music, remains and I can't make it stop playing.
The temporary solution is: When the issue happens, hit the stop button twice before you leave the menu of the current playlist.
I guess you loaded a savegame where the playback of the music player is active. There's a bug in Skyrim that music that is added with the add() function can be baked into the savegame. When a savegame is reloaded the music type will play regardless of it's priority. That's why I implemented a cleanup script that removes any traces of custom music that is probably stuck and restarts the playback function.
It seems that I need to call the remove() function twice instead of once in the cleanup script to truly remove the custom music that is probably stuck after reloading the savegame. It also helps when I give the game more time to execute the music removal function, so I increased the timer to 5 seconds instead of 3 seconds.
Edit: I've found another issue which happens after finishing combat when the combat music setting it set to "No Combat Music". I forgot to prevent the execution of the last part of the combat checker script that is responsible for switching to the next non-combat song of the playlist as soon as the combat is finished. After I put "if MusicVariables.NoCombatMusic == False" before this part of the script, I could mitigate the issue.
If I cleaned my save wouldn't that make the playback inactive? I don't fully understand how resaver works, I just know the basics of cleaning a save. Anyways, thanks for the quick replies.
I sent you a personal message with a link to a test version of the upcoming version 1.6 (with the title "New version of Spectral Music Player"... the more I think about it, the more I realize the title is a bit misleading. I should have named the message "Testing the new version of Spectral Music Player" instead). Can you test this test version and let me know if it fixes the issue for you, please?
If I cleaned my save wouldn't that make the playback inactive? I don't fully understand how resaver works, I just know the basics of cleaning a save. Anyways, thanks for the quick replies.
Savegame cleaning resets the mod completely making the game think that you have activated the mod the first time. This is necessary because a lot of data of a mod is baked into your savegame. If an update is released, it's sometimes necessary to get rid of outdated data so that new changes can take effect (without savegame cleaning certain new changes only take effect when starting a new game).
I explained every step that is needed in the mod description under "Updating from previous versions to version 1.5" (this section can be found below the embedded video, "Buffs" and "Recommendations" sections). The guide also mentions how to add the drum summoning spell back to you. As soon as you get the spell back, you can use all features of the mod again.
I quoted the guide for convenience ;)
Updating from previous versions to version 1.5
Replace the old .bsa and .esp files with the new ones.
Start the game and load your current savegame. Stop the current playback of the playlists. Dismiss the drum by commanding it to vanish. Save your game in a new savegame slot. Exit the game. Make a back-up of this savegame in case something goes wrong.
In the next step, we need to delete all traces of the plugin from your savegame with ReSaver (part of FallrimTools) - this process is called savegame cleaning. It makes sure that the bug fixes for the Anniversary Edition (since version 1.4) take effect and the new combat music setting "No Combat Music" (since version 1.5) is available in your savegame (see changelog). Download and install FallrimTools: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/5031 Start ReSaver. Open the savegame that you created before in ReSaver. Expand "Plugins (ESP & ESM)". Right-click on the entry "Spectral Music Player.esp" and choose "Delete plugin changeforms". Right-click on this entry again and choose "Delete plugin script instances" this time. Save the savegame under a new name so you can find the edited savegame faster when you want to load your savegame in the game.
The final step is about adding the drum summoning spell back to your character because the game sees the plugin as a newly added mod after the savegame cleaning. Start the game and load the edited savegame. Open the console and type in this command: startquest BB03AddTomeDrum Confirm with Return or Enter key. The console command starts a quest which adds the spell tome to your inventory without a notification. Open your inventory and use the tome "Spell Tome: Bardic Knowledge - Advanced Music" which adds the summoning spell to your character. Stop the quest using this console command: stopquest BB03AddTomeDrum Save your game.
Edit:
I edited the table of contents at the beginning of the mod description to highlight the important note about updating.
I understand how to clean my save, my mistake if I made it seem like I didn't lol. As I said, I only know the basics because I've only ever used Resaver to clean a save. The way you explained is a bit different than the way I usually clean a save but it worked out the same way in the end. I will edit this post once I've tested the update, thank you.
Edit: It seems you have fixed the issue of two songs playing at the same time but a new issue has appeared. When I started testing the mod you sent me, I started with the dungeon playlist. After going through 2-3 dungeons I switched my playlist to another and maybe after a song or two, I commanded the drum to stop playing music. Once the music stopped, the game started playing music from the first playlist I started the testing with (dungeon playlist) instead of going back to the vanilla music. It's stuck playing music again and I know you told me before to command the drum to stop twice but you cannot do that because after you tell it to stop once, you can't go back into the "current playlist" option until you select another playlist to play music from.
Hey! I am using the Personalized Music SSE mod, which allowed me to drag and drop a bunch of music into the Skyrim music folder already from other music overhaul mods, so would I still need to drag and drop music in the mod's playlist, like the description says, or if they're already categorized, could I use your mod without dragging and dropping?
Each of the mods won't recognize the tracks of the other mod because their folders have different names. If you want to add the music from Personalized Music to the playlists of Spectral Music Player, you need to copy the tracks to the categorized folders of Spectral Music Player and rename the tracks accordingly: Track001.xwm … Track050.xwm or Track001.wav … Track050.wav
David Fesliyan music has open permission for not commercial use, ONLY if his name is mentioned in the credits. If any of his tracks is modified in any way, you need to get personal permission from him in order to be able to use it. You may want to take care of this.
Awesome! Is there an option to not have the drum follow you and still play music? It'll be like having dovabuds (earbuds).I don't really want to have a drum following me everywhere...
I could add an optional "continue playback" option to the Vanish command. Another idea: adding a "remote control" which also works when the drum is not there.
Edit: Both ideas are now implemented in version 1.1.
38 comments
KUDOS to you for actually including a readme.txt with the mod!! That is VERY rare that modders do that anymore. Back in tesnexus days they did include readmes.
Regarding readme files, yes, I noticed, too, that not many mod authors include readme files in their mods. That's why I decided to save the mod descriptions as a PDF (e.g. the Opera browser has an built-in option to save websites as PDF) if I need them later.
I can't say when I release a new version of the mod because I put all mod projects (and possible mod updates) on hold due to Starfield. It's my curse: I can either make mods for a game or play a game. I rarely manage to do both.
Edit: Version 1.6 of Spectral Music Player is released.
Edit:
After I wrote this, I noticed a bug regarding friendly fire. If you have other followers besides the drum, it can sometimes happen that the other followers turn hostile towards the drum due to friendly fire in combat. I reduced this risk by making the drum ignore friendly hits and turning it into a combat teammate with SetPlayerTeammate.
Please follow the instructions for updating to the new version because this setting is only available after cleaning the savegame with ReSaver.
After that you can find the setting in the menu of the Spectral Music Player under Settings > Combat Music.
Edit: I am having a new issue with this update. Sorry if this sounds confusing but I'll try to explain the best I can. I am currently in the dungeon where you find Serana, and when you enter the room where she is, this default Skyrim music you hear when you enter that room starts to play (I think it's music that plays by default when you enter the main area of a dungeon) and at the same time it lowers the music from the drum while it plays this short default music. The problem is after that short Skyrim music finishes, a new song from the drum starts to play while the other one that was lowered is still playing lol so now two songs are playing simultaneously from the drum. I told the drum to stop and I made it vanish, but the first song that was playing before I entered that room is the only song that stops, and the 2nd song that started playing after the Skyrim music, remains and I can't make it stop playing.
I guess you loaded a savegame where the playback of the music player is active. There's a bug in Skyrim that music that is added with the add() function can be baked into the savegame. When a savegame is reloaded the music type will play regardless of it's priority. That's why I implemented a cleanup script that removes any traces of custom music that is probably stuck and restarts the playback function.
It seems that I need to call the remove() function twice instead of once in the cleanup script to truly remove the custom music that is probably stuck after reloading the savegame. It also helps when I give the game more time to execute the music removal function, so I increased the timer to 5 seconds instead of 3 seconds.
Edit:
I've found another issue which happens after finishing combat when the combat music setting it set to "No Combat Music". I forgot to prevent the execution of the last part of the combat checker script that is responsible for switching to the next non-combat song of the playlist as soon as the combat is finished. After I put "if MusicVariables.NoCombatMusic == False" before this part of the script, I could mitigate the issue.
I will upload the new version soon.
Savegame cleaning resets the mod completely making the game think that you have activated the mod the first time. This is necessary because a lot of data of a mod is baked into your savegame. If an update is released, it's sometimes necessary to get rid of outdated data so that new changes can take effect (without savegame cleaning certain new changes only take effect when starting a new game).
I explained every step that is needed in the mod description under "Updating from previous versions to version 1.5" (this section can be found below the embedded video, "Buffs" and "Recommendations" sections). The guide also mentions how to add the drum summoning spell back to you. As soon as you get the spell back, you can use all features of the mod again.
I quoted the guide for convenience ;)
Edit:
I edited the table of contents at the beginning of the mod description to highlight the important note about updating.
Edit: It seems you have fixed the issue of two songs playing at the same time but a new issue has appeared. When I started testing the mod you sent me, I started with the dungeon playlist. After going through 2-3 dungeons I switched my playlist to another and maybe after a song or two, I commanded the drum to stop playing music. Once the music stopped, the game started playing music from the first playlist I started the testing with (dungeon playlist) instead of going back to the vanilla music. It's stuck playing music again and I know you told me before to command the drum to stop twice but you cannot do that because after you tell it to stop once, you can't go back into the "current playlist" option until you select another playlist to play music from.
I will look into the new issue as soon as I get home from work.
Thanks!
Track001.xwm
…
Track050.xwm
or
Track001.wav
…
Track050.wav
If any of his tracks is modified in any way, you need to get personal permission from him in order to be able to use it.
You may want to take care of this.
Edit: Both ideas are now implemented in version 1.1.
Thank you for your suggestion, NyteBlyade