Immersive Sounds - Weaponry
by lazygecko

NEWS

Version 1.1 is released.
-wpn_impact_generic_lofi (the impact sound that goes k-tshh!) has been removed from weapon impacts. Hitting objects and surfaces with melee weapons will now always play the appropriate surface impact sounds instead of a generic, catch-all substitute.
-Tweaked arrow impact on creatures. The sound is now sharper, and fluctuates less in volume.
-Tweaked 1-handed mace flesh impacts. Slightly louder, less mid-range frequencies.

DESCRIPTION

Immersive Sounds is my series of sound overhaul mods, split into several different modules. The Weaponry and Magic modules are currently released, with more to follow in the future.

Immersive Sounds - Weaponry is, as you might have figured out, focused on physical weapons in the game. This includes drawing/sheathing, pulling bows, swinging, weapon and projectile impacts, etc.

FEATURES

SOUND OVERHAUL - Most of the original weapon sounds have been replaced with new ones designed from scratch. They aren't necessarily better or worse than the originals, but merely different in style. Some differences include more pronounced foley sounds from armor/clothing as your arms move, and I have focused on making weapons such as axes and maces have more of a unique identity compared to eachother, as I felt they originally sounded too similar.

NO MORE "K-TSSH!" - Did it ever bother you that when you first smack that troll with your big and mighty warhammer, you get the same puny little sound effect as with any other weapon (like daggers) before hitting it again? This is due to weapon impacts having a generic, catch-all substitute sound pre-loaded into memory before it loads the appropriate impact sounds for the next attack. This was in all likelyhood put in place by Bethesda to reduce memory usage for the more RAM-starved console versions.

This mod does away with this problem by having one variant of each impact type (as opposed to all 3 or 4 variants) pre-loaded and assigned to their appropriate impact types. So now you get the audio experience worthy of the PC Gaming Master Race, with only a small increase in memory usage. I think this change alone does a lot to improve the feedback of your combat experience. It just feels much better to always have the right sound played right away when using your weapons.

MORE VARIETY - Skyrim's sound playback uses a system where it can cycle between more than 1 sound for the same action, to reduce repetition. Some sounds were less varied than others however, so I have focused on adding more variety to certain sounds. For example, drawing a dagger only used 1 sound originally, but with this mod it now uses 3 different variants. Skyrim also only used 3 sounds for firing arrows originally, which is upped to 5 in this mod. There are many more additions I can't be bothered to list here.
Swings and impacts for maces and axes now also have sounds unique to them, where they previously shared sounds from other types.

INSTALLATION

Quite straight-forward here. You can install it via Nexus Mod Manager just like most other mods, or do it the old-fashioned way and just copy the .esp along with the sound folder to your Skyrim/Data folder.

COMPATIBILITY

Regarding Audio Overhaul for Skyrim, you can simply have Immersive Sounds after AOS in your Load Order. It will overwrite the respective changes to weapon sounds in the Sound Descriptors, but they are perfectly playable together. A proper compatibility patch that merges the edits for both mods will be released later, but there's really nothing to worry about at this point other than the sound distance/attentuation changes being overwritten.

If there is another sound mod you have a particular preference for, like smoother draw/sheathe sounds, then you approach it just like when mixing texture mods and overwrite the sounds you want replaced. In some cases this mod has more sound variants than other sound mods, such as daggers which have up to 3 draw/sheathe variants. To have another sound mod always play its own sounds in such an instance, you'll need to do some light manual work by copying the other mod's sounds and giving them the same names this one uses, like wpn_blade1handsmall_draw_02, 03 and so on.
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Be sure to also check out my previous mod Immersive Sounds - Magic!
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/40190/?