Showing posts with label Spell Tomes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spell Tomes. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Skyrim Books Update



There a number of important updates regarding the progress of Skyrim Books.

The first is that one of our team member has disappeared and we have not heard from him for weeks. Since he was the one that was building the bookstore, we are going to have to figure something else out. nox.fox has offered to build a level, and I have an old level that we could use. Whichever possibility we decide on, the project will inevitably be delayed.

Because of the loss of our team member, we have also lost a number of stories and authors which we had decided would be added to the mod. He had gathered a list of stories from authors that he contacted and was going to send them to us. If you are an author that had their work accepted by John, please shoot us an e-mail and we will include your story in the mod.

We aren't sure what happened to him. If you do know, we'd appreciate it if you could let us know. And if you're reading this John, please let us know what's going on, buddy.

Friday, March 23, 2012

EBM WIP: 23 books + 4 spell tomes

News Update:
3-10-12


Despite being quite overbooked I found time to keep on writing for EBM. So far 23 books are written for the mod and 4 spell tomes have been completed as well.

EBM categories
The books can be sorted in several categories:
  • General lore - more casual books expanding the lore slightly
  • Scholarship - books with a scholar's point of view over a topic (magic most of the time)
  • Religious - books with a faithful's point of view over religion
  • Comical lore - more funny or entertaining books

General lore
  • A Dish Better Served Cold
  • Children of Shame
  • Sakin the Smith (5-tome series)
  • Telvanni Sweets
  • The male witches (5-tome series)

Scholarship
  • Anatomy of the Dremora
  • Another Book of Daedra
  • Beyond your dreams
  • Interview with the Dremora
  • Wild but not savage elves

Religious
  • The Book of Q'amsha

Comical lore
  • Dunmer tactics of guerilla
  • Giant Mudcrab
  • Khajiit's fleas
  • Red Riding Hood

Spell tomes
For now there are 4 of them, all in the school of Destruction:
  • Flames
  • Sparks
  • Frostbite
  • Fire Rune



The Frost and Lightning Runes should come quickly as most of the text is shared. They should also feature their respective Rune staves, like the Fire staff above, as illustrations -- as the staff is also explained. Since the Daedric letters really made no sense at all I went for a slightly humorous explanation.
Also note that the Mysticism spelled that were dispatched to the other schools will be explained as Mysticism spells with an addendum saying the spell now belongs to another school. Otherwise, how could I explain that Detect Life is an Alteration spell though it has no effect on the material world, doesn't alter it in any way? Et caetera, et caetera.
The list of spell books is long and it will take time to write them all but I hope they can be appreciated XD.
[up: a few screenshots of the readable Fire Rune spell tome!]



In conclusion
So this is what you can expect for the first release of EBM. The spell tomes will require the additional Readable Spell Tomes esp to be read so you can choose to activate it or not, or activate it and deactivate it, as you wish!
You can also expect illustrations for the diaries of Sakin. Other books may get more illustrations as time comes. I also wish to try a little trick to reduce the weight of png images while preserving a nice transparency (if the compression is too high the transparent element get an ugly white outline). I'll just downscale the images and set a higher resolution in the code (while preserving a same ratio) and see if how much the distortion shows up.



Saturday, March 10, 2012

News Update: 3-10-12

News Update:
3-10-12

Skyrim Books:

New team member:

We are lucky to have been joined by John Allan, a writer and level-builder. He is building the bookstore for us, along with a printing press that will allow you to make copies of books if you have the proper materials. His contact info will be added to the Contact soon. Welcome to the team, John! :-)

New authors/books:

Due to a few threads that John posted around the Elder scrolls forums, we have gathered quite a number of new stories and authors. They are quality stories that will fit into the Skyrim world well, and will excite you as you explore the wonderful world that Bethesda has created. Once we receive as many as we want for the first edition of Skyrim Publishing, then we will publish a list of the stories for your perusal.

SP Bookstore:

The development of the Skyrim Publishing bookstore is in progress. The structure has been made, and the printing press designed. Screenshots will be posted soon.

Voice Acting:

I am in the process of writing the lines for the bookstore owner. With the help of Giskard and the Engineering Guild, I hope to find a good Voice Actor for the character.

Timeline:

In order to aid you by letting you know our plans and when they should be completed, a timeline has been created. The ultimate goal of this schedule is to finish the entirety of the first edition by the end of the month. I expect that we will actually finish quite a bit before then, but since we are real people with busy lives, stuff occasionally gets in the way. This schedule is subject to change.

  1. March 17th: All books for 1st edition will be written, gathered, and added to the game.
  2. March 24th: Voice acting is totally complete and added to the game.
  3. March 31st: Bookstore, NPC's, will be complete, and the first edition of Skyrim Books will be released.

While I have not actually completed any more development, I have finally found a way to create an Unarmed skill! It will not show up in the image of the 'heavens' along with the other skills, but will rather be upgraded through a system of 'milestones'. These milestones could be in the form of quests, achievements, reading books, or more. This would allow me to totally get rid of the 'Unarmed Weapon', and not have to make any edits to the perk trees at all. I'm looking forward to making the next version!

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

News Update: 2-28-12

News Update:
2-28-12



Skyrim Books: The project has been planned and organized. There will be two main parts of the mod called Extended Book Mod and Skyrim Publishing, as well as two optional sub-parts. EBM will primarily be managed by nox.fox, while Skyrim Publishing will primarily be managed by Woverdude.
  • The Extended Books Mod will extend the amount of stories, poems, background data, and lore within the game by adding original books. 
  1. Readable Spell tomes is an optional add-on to EBM that will make Spell Tomes readable and add actual information to them
  • Skyrim Publishing will function as a magazine, accepting fanfic submissions to be added to the game on a regular basis. 
  1. Skyrim Publishing Bookstore will add a bookstore to the game world that will contain the latest and previous issues of Skyrim Publishing. It will also feature a unique character with an interesting background and (hopefully) original voice acting.
Better Books will also be available for download, but as a separate mod. It will add new and improved textures to books within the game.

Progress:

  • The Readable Spell Tomes script has been made and is available for download at the Nexus as a modder's resource. As a part of Skyrim Books, information will be added to the Spell Tomes that players can read ingame when they learn the spell.
  • A number of original books have been collected for EBM, and several submissions for SP have been received.
  • Woverdude has begun building the level for the Skyrim Publishing Bookstore.

Unarmed Warfare IS still in progress, but is a bit delayed. I reached the end of my familiarity with the Elder Scrolls system during my work on Unarmed Warfare, and even delved far deeper into the code of the construction set than I ever have before. Even then, though, there were so many features that an unarmed mod needs that are either impossible to do, I do not know how to do, or the CK is too buggy to do. I will pick the work back up at some point, but it will probably be a while. I am also much busier now than I was when I began Unarmed Warfare. The work on Skyrim Books meets my time constraints and experience far more than my coding and modding for UW.

When I DO manage to pick it back up, however, expect some brand-new features, such as new fist weapons, along with original models.

Saturday, February 25, 2012

Skyrim Books


What is Skryim Books?
Skryim Books will be a compilation of the different mod-related books we're working on. We intend to create several mods that work together perfectly but can be used as stand alone as well. This will let you more freedom in the way you mod your game as you can choose which features you want to instal in case you're not interested in all of them.

What's inside?
First of all, the two major mods we are working on will be included in the bundle: Extended Books Mod and Skryim Publishing.
Secondly, we'll also add Readable Spell Tomes, Skyrim Publishing Bookshop and Better Books.
More information about these mods will come in a near future so keep tuned!

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Tutorial: Readable Spell Tomes

Object: To make spell tomes readable, instead of losing them when the spell is learned.

Difficulty: Easy-Moderate (involves script editing)
[edit] It appears that modifying the spell tomes causes conflicts with the vendors lists with Crash To Desktop whenever the spell tomes are hovered in the lists. Hence another solution will have to be figured out but the tutorial is still interesting to approach the functions of spell tomes and scripting.

Time Needed: Less than 5 minutes

Things you will need:

  • Creation Kit. The Creation Kit is the modding tool for Skyrim and can be downloaded for free on Steam.
  • Some previous experience with item-editing, and (preferably) script editing
Note: The scripting part of this tutorial is a one-time ordeal. After the script has been made, you will simply need to add it to each book that you want to apply it to, rather than creating a new script for each item. For users of the Readable Spell Tomes mod on the Nexus and the Workshop, you can skip to step 8.

Download: To download the Readable Spell Tomes mod, visit the:
Steam Workshop at:  http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=13474
Nexus at: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=10954

1. Open the Creation Kit and load the appropriate Data Files.
2. Open the 'Gameplay' Menu and click 'Papyrus Script Manager.'

3. Right-click in the Script Manager, and click 'New.' This allows you to create a new script.
4. Name your new script "SpellTomeReadScript". This is not a required name, but it is simple and easy to find when you search for it later. Also, type "ObjectReference" into the Extends text box. It MUST be "ObjectReference" and NOTHING else.

5. Click OK, and type/copy the following into the editor that pops up:


Scriptname SpellTomeReadScript extends ObjectReference  
{Adds spell to player on equip}

Event OnEquipped(Actor reader)
if (Game.GetPlayer().HasSpell(SpellLearned))
Debug.Notification("You already know this spell.")
endIf
Game.GetPlayer().AddSpell(SpellLearned)
EndEvent

Note that the first time you open a script you may need to tell Windows which program it should use to open the script file. If so, choose a program like Notepad (or Notepad++ if you have it) in the list Windows proposes.

6. Don't worry about the last line that you see in the image above. That is added in automatically by the CK when you add the script to an item later in the tutorial. (nox.fox: personnaly I had to add this last line to compile the script successfully)
7. Save the script. Right click on the script in the Script Manager, and click 'Compile'. Click on your script in the box that pops up. If the box disappears, then the script was compiled successfully and no errors were found. If it says that there was an error, then something in the script was typed incorrectly.
8. In the Object Window, navigate to the Items > Books category, and find the Spell Tome that you want to modify.
9. Double-click on the book to edit it. The first thing you must do is to deactivate the standard option of teaching a spell. On the left side of the Book window, there should be a 'Teaches' section, and then two options. For a spell-tome, the 'Spell' option should be filled, and the appropriate spell should already be selected in the drop-down menu. Open the drop-done menu, scroll to the top, and click NONE. This deactivates the spell-teaching, so that we can use the SpellTomeReadScript instead.
10. Now click 'Add' in the Scripts section of the Book window. A window should pop up that lists all of the scripts. Find the 'SpellTomeReadScript' and click OK.

11. In the Scripts section of the Book Window, select the 'SpellTomeReadScript' and click 'Properties.'
12. Click Add Property in the window that pops up.
13. Select SPELL from the drop-down menu in the new window, and type "SpellLearned" in the 'Name' text box.
14. Click OK. Select your new property, and click 'Edit Value'.
15. Select the spell that you want to add to the player from the drop-down menu, and click 'OK.
16. The script should be added correctly to the item. Save the mod, and test the spell tome ingame.
17. To make other spell tomes readable, repeat steps 9-15 for the spell tome or book that you want to modify.

Notes/Possible Bugs:

1. Note: This process can be used on any book to have it teach a spell without being destroyed.
2. If you have tested your book out, and it is not working, then go back over the tutorial carefully and make sure that everything was typed in correctly and that you disabled the standard method of making books teach a spell.


Feedback:

If you have any comments/questions, or would like to request a tutorial, then please feel free to leave a comment. I will answer your question as quick as I can. If you request a tutorial, I'll let you know when/if you should expect your request to be fulfilled.