EBMv2 - New books added and placed

Here is a part of the covers I made for books from the previous ES games --you may remember some. Each book features a description its content on the backcover, I thought it would be nice and helpful for the player. As you may see I also created templates to both save my time, and give the feeling that books were published by actual editors, such as the Tribunal Temple, the Imperial College, the Order of Arkay or the School of Julianos, to name but a few.

These shots are from the CK save for the last one, obviously ingame. Note that I use doccdr's Book Covers Skyrim mod, as I intend EBM.2 to work along with it. So far it seems the book covers all fit nicely together.

As you can see there are still many holes on the shelves, which shall be filled either by books I still have to bring back or by mine in some cases. The books are sorted by categories in the library (History, Geopolitics, Religious, etc) and by themes in the shelves (War of the First Council, Daedra, epics, horror/love/thieves... stories, etc). I think it is rather convenient this way. I should also be adding bibliographies listing the books and where to find them, and I plan to retexture all the bookshelves to add little signs reading their theme, with a simple color code as well.

I thought I'd add items in the shelves as well but it seems to be more complicated to achieve than I'd thought due to physics: everything collapses beyond logic and it's all a mess. The place should still be cozy, and if I can I'll try to add some nice paintings to decorate the walls.

EBMv2 - Lore books listing

For better organization I have listed (what I think are) all the titles of TES books I should be adding in EBMv2. This way we can create all the covers more efficiently. I classifed the books in categories so I could divide the whole into some handful of books and progress step by step, with a lot of testing in between to make sure all the books display nicely ingame. Also, some books should share similar templates to look like part of a same collection by a same publisher (ie: Tribunal Temple) so I sort these ones together as well.

The list of books is found here, it can be viewed by anyone but only those willing to lend a hand in creating textures will be able to edit it. If you wish to help, show me a sample of what you can do (illustration, texturing...) and provide me with a valid email so I give you editing rights =)

A tutorial about book creation can be found here as well. Though I don't require that helpers create the books from A to Z, only textures, or illustrations if they feel up to it.

EBMv2 - a new good start

These last two days I had a bit of time for me and put in practice what I had been planning while I was away from the CK. Hence I've figured out how many shelves I would need to host all the books from the TES games, and quickly built a new, smaller library with a cozy atmosphere. I'll probably work on the lighting some more later on, and the blue flame may not make it to the end... I mean, it was too tempting not to put it in the scene but I'm not sure it's necessary to have it there. I'll also try to make the ceiling look a bit better as well. Not sure how yet.

Now I'm facing the issue that I can't get this damn NVIDIA dds plugin to run and so I can't edit textures. Seeing that this library will host about 700 books it would be better if they weren't all the same or so close. So if a kind soul could give me a little help with this tricky matter I would be delighted.
Note that I can edit the diffuse maps myself if I'm provided files Photoshop can read, and send them back for compression... (it sucks, I know)
I would be very glad to also create a set of retextured quills, inkwells and signs to label the various categories of the library.
I'd like to add quests related to the mod as well but details will come in time. One thing after the other =)

EBM.2 WIP: Level Building and Voice Acting

I finished the listing and sorting of the books and so it's now time to get back in touch with level design and level building. It should be more pleasant and I hope to advance quite quickly during my available free time.
Yesterday I also did some tests to learn the basics of quest and dialogue design and managed to implement a speaking NPC ingame – see below for the details! =]


Workflow

1. Listing and sorting all the books in categories and sub-categories
   -> Done
2. Planning the spatial organization of the library
   -> WIP
3. Building and testing the library cells
   ->WIP
4. Adding, placing and compiling all the new books
5. Test, fixing, test, fixing...
6. Release

I've started to build the level, Nordic style this time. I'm already getting familiar with the nomenclature after a few hours of work. Here's a screenshot of the current status of level building. It shouldn't be expanded a lot more than this normally, I don't want the place to be too huge since there will be all the navmeshing to do...

Update: now the level building is complete. I admit I expanded a little more than I originally thought I would but whatever, at least there's place for tones of books. So I'm now in the process of placing furniture and decorations.

Actor with voice
Creating dialogs and actors with voice files turned out to be quite simple, if you wish to try I suggest you to jump to this page created by Shawn, it contains all the informations and links you will need to success in your implementation. Below is a short recording of my test. It went nicely so far though you might notice the overlay skin texture of Jobasha's head has gone missing. It's something I still have to understand and fix.
Jobasha's voice actor is Tim Morgan and I must say he did an impressive first take!

EBM WIP: plans for EBM v2

Due to real world life I was not able to post any update about EBM for months, neither could I work on the mod, not even could I play Skyrim! (how bad is that!?) But I kept on thinking and planning what should be done for the v2... Overall I plan to redo everything in way to get the mod as clean as possible. And I think the library it should feature might be nicknamed "Little Apocrypha".

What EBMv2 should contain

• More new books
• Books from the previous games, from Arena to Oblivion (yes!)
• A giant secret library to sort and store all those books in several samples
• Bibliographies listing books related to a same topic (ex: Dwemers) and where to find them in the library, and possibly compendiums with excerpts related to a given topic
• (optional) retextured assets to serve as signs to find your way in the library
• (optional) more textures for book covers (including mere color variations)

Workflow

1. Listing and sorting all the books in categories and sub-categories
2. Planning the spatial organization of the library
3. Building and testing the library cells
4. Adding, placing and compiling all the new books
5. Test, fixing, test, fixing...
6. Release

What's being done currently
[update] I finished listing and sorting the books, basing me on the Imperial Library. So far I have listed 331 titles (not books but titles of one-shots and series) and 197 of those titles are yet in Skyrim though some series (like the Wolf Queen) are incomplete. However I didn't include books we aren't supposed to find (such as the Mysterium Xarxes, diaries and other quest-related books). This makes yet around 200 books to format and implement and some include pictures.
I tag the books with keywords about their content that will help for bibliographies, and assign them to fitting categories which are divided into:

• Physics:
• History (various eras)
• Geopolitics (Nirn, Imperial Provinces, Guilds & Factions)
• Fauna & Flora (races, creatures, plants, minerals)
• Arts & Crafts (literature, smithing, cooking, etc.)

• Metaphysics:
• Monomyth
• Aedra
• Daedra (Princes, Lorkhan, Oblivion)
• Cults (Orders, consequences of their deeds on Nirn)
• Myths & Legends
• Arcane Arts (magic of all schools and kinds)
• Pain & Care (diseases, curses, etc.)

The goal of this sorting is to plan properly the level building of the library.



How to help
As you guess many books will fall into many categories but this way I hope to make the place as handy as possible for players who like to play scholars. I don't know how many there are but surely more than I think.
And of course, any help in the sorting and tagging would be very helpful, or if you've already created information compendiums or so, it would surely be very fitting.

If someone wishes to do some retexturing I'd be very interested as well. For book covers of course, something based on the Book of the Dragonborn or Spell Tomes could be nice since those book feature a different textures for back and front covers, allowing to differentiate them more. But also for some assets such as banners and rugs that would be used as signs for the different parts of the library.

If you have ideas and suggestions, they're also very welcomed of course.

EBM Update: 25 and 28-4-12

This is very good news for the next update of EBM my friends! I've managed to contact Michael Kirkbride to ask if he would authorize the implementation of the books he wrote for previous TES games in Skryim and I just got his answer! Short and straigth to the point as usual! =D

I've also sent a message to Ted Peterson, I hope he'll answer...! (I'm so happy...!)
[update] I just got his answer and these are good news again! (I am so very happy...!) It's gonna be some work to format all those books, I've already done a good 20 of them and there are many more to go. With just the Lessons of Vivec we'll be over 50 in no time. Goodness... EBM will become the must have for book collectors...! =D

Now I can say that I have plans for the future of EBM. In a first step I'll complete the library of Mzahndarhk and give access to the unaccessible areas of the ruin.
The quest related to the place will only come later, hopefully. It is a very ambitious project with complex events that would require a lot of time and skill sets... But would promise a lot of fun and epic!

So in a second step I would rather give a try to quest design with two possible mods:

• One that would alter the way you learn spells. Spell tomes wouldn't add a new spell, they would give you a new quest and it's only as you fulfill it that you can learn the spell, train at casting it and master it.
• The other would be a new faction, the School of Julianos, to serve the divine by educating the masses, retrieving books for the school and for people.

But for now I'm overbooked until June the 15th, working on a small video game due by then. I really need to focus on my energy on this project so that's why I'm much less active currently.

EBM Update: 4-4-12

EBM Update:

4-4-12

Well, well, here are few sceenshots of the current advancement of the ruin of Mzahndahrk that will host what seems to be the largest secret library of Skyrim, and few screenshots as well of the ABCs for Barbarians, now available ingame!

As you can see I'm far from being done with the lighting among other things XD There are still minor issues to be fixed soon but it takes shape! And as you can see on the down-right screenshot of the library, there are the +235 books of the games that can fit in a library, sorted by categories and series completed. Wasn't easy to find the right angle to have them all fit in one screenshot!

Still, a moral question came to my mind. It's about the completion of original TES book series such as 2920, A Dance in Fire, the Wolf Queen etc. I don't understand why all the books weren't implemented in Skyrim, is it a mere miss or is it because Bethesda didn't want to pay royalties for all the books written by a same writer they weren't hiring any longer? I have no idea but it's true most of the missing books are those of Waughin Jarth (same irl writer thus).

Hence I'm not sure it's morally acceptable to add the books in the mod. I believe that it is okay to do it for my own enjoyment as I own legal copies of Morrowind and Oblivion which feature those texts but I fear I might be infringing publication rights by putting those texts in Skyrim and sharing the mod. On an other hand those texts are found publicly on the web, both on the UESP and the Imperial Library, and those sites weren't sued by Bethesda. Still, it might also be because they represent a massive fandom's dedication and most of all, those websites are very useful to Bethesda as well, they never hide that even them use this amazing data base to shape the new games.

One possibility I think of is to still implement the book but demand that the mod is used only by players who own a legal copy either of Morrowind or Oblivion (plus this mod is more likely to interest fans who've played those games). I won't perform checks of course but it's more to prevent myself from troubles as I want to keep as clean as possible and take this issue with great serious. I know Bethesda once sued a modder for implementing lots of content made by other modders without asking them, I would not do such a stupid thing.

I had first thought of not placing the books ingame for the public release but then it's sad and the books would still be available through the console with the Help and Player.Additem commands.

I will try to contact Bethesda about this issue to know what's their point.

EBM Update: 1-4-12

EBM Update:

1-4-12

EBM will soon be available for download, currently I'm waiting for LaggyCreations on deviantART to send me the image files of her ABC for Barbarians. Thanks to her kindness EBM will bring back this awesome book and expand it! As you can see LaggyCreations designed illustrations for the whole alphabet:

Gorgeous, huh? And soon in Tamriel!

I'll make sure to place it in fitting and amusing locations, I already have ideas but I'm not telling, you'll find out on your own. Also most of the books will be found at the Arcaneum and Bards College. There are few ones that are a little more rare, like the tomes 4 and 5 of Males Witches. But you should find them in a quite obvious location it I give you this clue: they're found in the home of a VIP who's more than probably a witch, in a swampy city.

Now there are still some books that you won't be able to find in Tamriel. They are unique and will only be found in Mzahndahrk. Don't search for this Dwemer ruin on your map, it's a new one! With some chance it'll be ready for the release. Actually the level building is about done, it's now a matter of ending to place the furniture and items, and make a nice lighting and effects. I also have to finish the Navmesh (the polygonal floor that tells the AI where NPCs can walk), I'm doing it all by hand because there are quite many gateways and likes that confuse the generator. Big work but not big deal, I find this very interesting to do, paying attention to how I compose the polygons... Within one hour I got the major part of the main room done. I just wish it was possible to copy/paste Navmesh islands. If someone knows how to do this (if it appears it's doable) I'd love to know XD

I also wish I could populate the area a little. After some tests, few troubles I solved quickly *proud* I now have a test fox wandering everywhere, a pacific Sphere centurion patroling (it's adorable) and a certain Dunmer named Sothis Andas whose action so far consist into pouring himself some mead, sitting on a chair, playing the lute (it doesn't make sounds), reading a book, ...well few minor actions that loop. Easy as fun.

Next step will be giving Sothis some dialog. I'd like to see if I can give some dialog to the Sphere as well.

Today I've also proceeded to completing book series such as the 2920, Wolf Queen, Mystery of Talara, Dance in Fire, etc... that are for some unexplicable reason incomplete in Skyrim. This makes a litlle more than 20 more books. I plan to add more books from Morrowind and Oblivion.

For now I've also sorted all the books (over 235), it took me a little time as there were few ones I hadn't read already, or had read in French... but in the end they are classified by topic and will be found in dedicated shelves. Seeing the amount of book, seeing there are MANY that can be added from Morrowind and Oblivion, I can say that the hundreds of bookshelves found in the library will be well employed XD

I consider having to move the library to a seperate cell in case it's heavy perf-wise. For now it's smooth on my laptop.

EBM WIP: placed the books ingame

News Update:

3-10-12

Now there are 6 spell tomes as I did the 3 rune tomes, each featuring a picture of their respective rune staff pattern. And I also placed the various books in different places including the Arcaneum, Bards College, some castles, inns, shops and houses. I paid attention to place the right books in the right places, especially regarding the interests of court wizards and jarls. I must say that I had quite some fun with Wylandriah, the wizard of Riften who's quite a specimen in her kind already with her scatterbrain mind and silly experiments. Poor J'zargo was also a target of my amusement. I'm not saying more, you'll find out about all of this...

Some of the books though weren't placed already. They are quite unique books and will be found in one location only, a Dwemer ruin I'm building on this purpose. It's quite some fun as well and I hope I can start placing the furniture tonight. I will post some screenshots soon.

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.

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.

Unarmed Warfare:

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!

Tutorial: Writing good TES books

Object: Tips to write a book that fits in the world of Skyrim

Difficulty: Medium

Time Needed: Quite some, depending on your skills

Things you will need:

• Some skills in writing, preferably
• A little time

What is a TES book?

1. A TES book is a piece of text designed to fit in a game and this is something you must remember. What this means is that writing a TES book is not about writing a real book that can be printed, carried all around, bookmarked, anotated, etc. It is about writing a book that will be:

• Read on screen
• Has no numbered pages
• Can't be bookmarked
• In which you can't skip pages 10 by 10 but only 1 by 1

2. This means your book can't be too long or reading it won't be the smoothest experience. Among the longest books of the original TES games are those of the Real Barenziah series. Back to Morrowind I would go to Jobasha's Rare Books and read the whole series, totally hooked by the story. Back then it was a great chance pages had numbers in case I had to quit the game for a while and then try to find out where I was in the book, scrolling longly until I hit the right page. Now in Skyrim there are no more numbers on the pages... figure out the mess if you need to find back the page where you stopped in the middle of a long story without spoiling yourself. So what should you do?

• Limit your word count around 4000 words. 6000~8000 should really be a max for a stand-alone story.
• If your story is longer than this, split it into several tomes and make it a series.

Write in Tamrielic

1. A TES book should fit in the ES games not only from its design but mostly from its content of course. You don't want to hang around Solitude's Bard's College, open a book there and read a story about an Italian mushroom-eater plumber named Mario trying to find a princess in various castles. If you were to write such a story, please, make it fit in the lore or change your mind!
In exemple you can write the story of Mario, the Breton, and his misadventures in Sadrith Mora, getting totally skooma-high and starting to eat the mushroom homes of the Telvanni. As a Daedra worshiper, Mario seeks for Azura in his delirium and tries to conjure her. Unfortunately only Sheogorath answers and here comes a dark seducer... A great tale among Khajiiti slaves needing to cheer up.

2. Use Tamrielic names. Be it for your characters or for yourself as an author. Mario is a correct name for a Breton or eventually for an Imperial (though Marius would surely be more fitting) but surely not for an Orc or a Khajiit. The ten different races of Tamriel each have their own features regarding naming, try to stick to them as much as possible. Look the names of existing characters of a same race to understand how to compose new ones.
You can look the UESP's name lists or you can also generate lists easily with Tamriel Rebuilt's name generator but beware: it uses names of existing NPCs.

Here goes a little list of facts:

• Breton - Names often have a Latin origin, mostly (old) French and Italian (François Motierre, Vicente Valtieri). Sometimes it can also sound more English (Cassyr Whitley) or Latin (Socucius Ergala). Breton names feature a first and last name.
  
• Imperial - Names have a Latin origin, often ending by "us" or "o" for men (Hieronymus, Crassius, Toutius, Gergio, Falco) and by "a" for women (Camilla, Vilena, Simplicia). Family names often end the same way with "us", "a", "o" (Sextius, Curio, Cosma). Latin words are often a base for most names. Imperial names feature a first and last name.
  
• Redguard - Redguard names are a little more tricky as they look like a mix of Breton (Alonzo, Neville), Imperial (Demetrius, Varnado), sometimes almost elvish or sounding quite tribal (Phintias, Shenk, Domba, Karlirah). This reflects well the nomade aspect of Redguard as the race counts many sailors and adventurers. I suggest you to refer to name lists to check if your Redguard name would be fitting. Redguard names usually feature only a first name. In rare cases there is also a last name (Gor Felim, Jim 'gentleman' Stacey).
  
• Nord - Names have a germanic or scandinavian origine so you can refer to naming lists found on the web to help you out. Names such as Hadvar, Brindolf or Onmir car fit for men, names such as Svenja, Mathilda or Olga can fit for women. Nords often bear a nickname (Olaf One-Eye, Hjalti Early-Beard, Talos Stormcrown), that reflects who they are in some way. These nicknames may also serve as family/clan names (Battle-Born, Grey-Mane).
  
• Altmer - Names often end with "ril", "mil", "nil", "rion", "mo", etc. for men (Carelcalmo, Tusamircil, Sinderion) , and end with "inde", "wen", "we", "lin", etc. for women (Elenwen, Palonirya, Estirdalin). Altmeri names and Bosmeri names share similarities due to their common elvish origins but there are still slight differences. Don't hesitate to refer to name lists if you don't feel comfortable with name creation and combine parts of different existing names. Altmeri names usually feature only a first name. In rare cases there is also a birthplace (Lathenil of Sunhold, Ocato of Firsthold), or in very rare cases, a last name (Mankar Camoran) or eventually a nickname (Rynandor the Bold).
  
• Bosmer - Names often end with "gor". "dor", "nor", "goth", "roth", "fin", "lem", etc. for men (Fargoth, Meldor, Thrangirfin), and end with "wen", "el", "il", "iel, etc. for women (Aranwen, Aredhel, Menelin).  Altmeri names and Bosmeri names share similarities due to their common elvish origins but there are still slight differences. Don't hesitate to refer to name lists if you don't feel comfortable with name creation and combine parts of different existing names. Altmeri names feature only a first name.
  
• Dunmer - Both first and last names often contain no more than 2 or 3 syllables and are very recognizable by their redundance (Eno Hlaalu, Tholer Saryoni, Nelos Ondrano). I won't list them all here and rather advice you to refer to naming lists, pick syllables, mix them up and come up with a name you like. Male and female names sound different (Sevil, Tovas, Reler VS Dovesi, Arvena, Lathasa). Dunmer names feature a frist and last name.
  
• Dunmer (Velothi) - These names often stand out by their complexity and great ammount of syllables and consonants (Ninirrasour, Mabarrabael). Some names though are shorter but the syllables are still recognizable (Hanssour, Maley, Sakin) and some are composed (Erur-Dan, Ulath-Pal). Just as modern Dunmer names, Velothi names are composed with a set of given syllables combined together. Family names are often quite long (Sashmassamsi, Assunbahanammu) and sometimes composed (Dun-Ahhe, Timsar-Dadisun) but share a similar pattern and set of given syllables. Velothi names feature a first and last name.
  
• Orc - First names often end with "mul", "muk", "bul", "buk", "zol", "ash", "shum", "zur", etc. for men (Durbul, Morbash, Murzol) and end with "ob", "og", "a", etc. for women (Murob, Umog, Mazoga). Family names are composed with gro+name for males, and gra+name for females. "gro" means "son of" and "gra" means "daughter of", thus the name coming after is usually a first name as well. However, to help their integration in the Imperial society, modern day Orcs tend to use the name of a famous ancestor rather than the name or the genitor. Thus Nash gro-Shurakh will name his daughter Mogra gra-Shurakh in spite of Mogra gra-Nash.
  
• Argonian - Names usually either count one word (Huzei, Milos) or are hyphenated (Haj-Ei, Jeelus-Tei) or are translated in Cyrodiilic (Nine-Toes, Only-He-Stands-There) when too hard to pronounce for non-Argonians. Argonian names are usually rather short, counting 2 or 3 syllables. I suggest you to refer to naming lists for inspiration. Argonian names feature only a first name or nickname. Note that the name they use is one received during a secret ritual of passage with the Hist, different from their birthname. We don't know how Argonians out of Black Marsh get their adult name.
  
• Khajiit - Male names usually count 1 or 2 syllables and often feature a title, usually hyphenated, like (S'Rava, J'skar, Dro-Basha), etc. These titles have meanings that shouldn't be interpreted litteraly ("Dar" means "thief" but rather implies swift agility or a quick mind). Female names rarely feature a title except "S'" and count 2 or 3 syllables (Ahnassi, Ajira, Kisimba). I suggest you to refer to naming lists for inspiration. Khajiiti names feature only a first name.

3. Avoid using vocabulary unfitting to the world of Tamriel. We've never seen Vodka or Tequila in Tamriel but we've seen Shein, Mazte, Sujamma, Colovian Brandy. There is no cocaine or heroine but there's Moon Sugar. You get the idea. If you want to mention such elements, make sure they exist in the lore and find an equivalent at need.

More tips to come as this post will be updated

(don't hesitate to contribute with your own advice!)

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:

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.

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!

Tutorial: Creating a new book

Object: Create a new book and implement it ingame

Difficulty: Easy

Time Needed: Less than 5 minutes + writing the content

Things you will need:

• Creation Kit. The Creation Kit is the modding tool for Skyrim and can be downloaded for free on Steam.
• Some skills in writing, preferably =D

Creating the new book

1. Open the Creation Kit and load Skyrim.esm.
2. In the Object Window, go to Items>Book and choose a book with a look you like. You can preview the book by right-clicking on its line and clicking on preview. A window will pop up with a small viewport in which you can move the book up and down to view both sides. You could also right-click in the list>New to create a new book but is much easier to edit an already existing book.
Also do not duplicate items! This is a very messy option, just forget about it.

3. Once you've selected the book you like, just double click on it or right-click>Edit. A window will pop up in which you can control what's going to be in your book, what is its title, if it can teach spells or skills, how much it costs... This is quite easy to edit. Still the first thing you should edit is the ID of the book (in red below) to make sure you won't edit an original book by mistake.
I advice you to insert a code in the name so you can find it easily with the filter, like here "EBMTelvanniSweets" where "EBM" stands for "ExtendedBooks Mod" of course.
When you have changed the ID and click OK a window will prompt. Click OK and your new book can be found in the Object Windows.

We'll come back to text formating later, for now let's keep on going.

4. Now you can save your mod and test it. Testing is 50% of game development and you should do it often to be able to know when it started to bug in case it happens.
Don't forget to activate your mod in the Date files option before starting to play.
To access your book though it wasn't placed in the world of Skyrim you can either load any save or go to the test cell by opening the console. To open the console press the key that is just under the ESC key top left of your keyboard. For some it might be the tilde key, for other it can be the ¬ key, depends on keyboard. Just press keys until a grey layer appears down the screen, type coc QASmoke and press enter.

5. When the level is loaded open the console again and type Help "Name of your book" 4 to obtain its ID. Of course type the name of your book between the brackets.
When you have the ID, type player.additem 0200d67 1 (but replace 0200d67 by the ID you get). This will add the book to your inventory so you can read it and enjoy!

If the book appears correctly then you can place it in the world, add it to level lists etc.


Formating the text

To have your text nicely formated in your book, with the title on a first page, well centered, and the content coming on the next page, nicely as well, you have to use various tags that are quite similar to HTML formating. If you haven't any basic skills in web formating don't worry, it's really, really simple!

1. There is one first thing you should remember before starting to add any text in the input field:
Pay a great attention to apostrophs and brackets, it may sound stupid but the font used ingame is very strict on characters. Thus your apostrophs and brackets should be the default ones you get with US/UK qwerty keyboards. In fact avoid any special character in general and anything generated by alt-codes, no thin spaces or such formating.

• ['] and not [’] (the second one has a slight curve)
• [" "] and not [“ ”] (the second ones are slightly curved as well)
• [...] and not […] (the second one is only one character composed with the alt+0133 code in spite of 3 dots)

2. The following tags are the most useful ones that you likely will use in most of your books:

• [pagebreak] is obviously a page break. It should stand on an empty line, you can't put it at the end or beginning of a paragraph.
• <p align="center"> centers your text. It isn't really necessary to close the tag with a </p> but you can do it if you want. You can use other alignment values that are "left", "right" and "justify" as it seems, according to the CK wiki, that the "chaotic evil" alignment wasn't implemented.NOTE that this tag changes the paragraph! Paragraphs are seperated by the equivalent of skipping 3 lines. Just so you know.

3. The following tags will help you change the appearance of the text itself.

• <b></b> bolds the text placed between these tags.
• <i></i> italicizes the text placed between these tags.
• <font color="#FFFFFF"></color> changes the color of the font. Replace #FFFFFF by the hexadecimal value of the color of your choice. You can obtain this value on a web color index or in a CG software such as Photoshop in the color box.
• <font size="20"></font> changes the point size of the font. We haven't figured out yet if 20 is the default size but it seems credible.
• <font face='$HandwrittenFont'></font> changes the font (in handwritten font here). by default the font used is the one seen in the books so you should use this tag only if you want to switch to another font. The available fonts and their tags can be seen below.

$SkyrimBooks (or  $PrintedFont ) - $HandwrittenBold (or  $HandwrittenFont )

 $DaedricFont - $DragonFont (Upper case only)

$DwemerFont - $FalmerFont (Upper case only) 

4. The following tag allows you to insert images in your book.

• <img src='img://Textures/Interface/Books/Illuminated_Letters/A_letter.png'> inserts an illuminated letter's picture. You may need to insert size values in the tag after the path to the image. Just add  height='40' width='40' and replace the numbers by the right values. You can replace the A in A_letter.png by any other letter to get the one you want. If you insert this tag within a paragraph the text around should wrap around it. Click here more a tutorial teaching how to add your own images to a book.

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.