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.

Way of the Monk: Mod Diary #3

Work has been a bit slow recently because of end-of-semester school, but I have been able to put in a fair amount of modding hours on the weekends. Last weekend I added a whole ton of new craftable weapons, as well as some enchantments.

You can take a look at the Screenshots page for pics of my progress.

Weapons:


The new weapons are from tom349's mod Fist Weapons. I was given permission from him to use his models, as well as from BloodySunday's to use his retexture of tom249's mod.

They are all lore-friendly, craftable, and enchantable. The animations and killcams on them are a bit weird, but that is not my fault. For some reason, any weapon that uses the default Hand-To-Hand attack animation neither appears on the right hand when it is equipped, or is on the body when sheathed. This is not my fault, but the Creation Kit's. The way they designed the animation, it's not built to have models that use it. I am going to try my best to find a way to get the weapons to use the default animation, but I may not be successful. If you think you can help, feel free to contact me.

Robes:


As you can probably tell from the screenshot, there will also be some new robes. There was actually an entire set of hooded and non-hooded monk robes in the Creation Kit that were never used in the game. Fortunately for me, this means that they wont conflict with current items and will be new to players. Since they were all monk robes, they will also fit well with my mod.

Perks:


There were two perks which were not working properly. One of them suddenly decided to start working, though. I could not find any reason why it was not working in the first place, and since it is working now, I won't complain. The other one is still not working, but it should be fixable with some more coding.

Nearly done!


I'm mostly done! I just need to finish adding enchantments, fix that one perk, add some new characters, and write some backstory before sending the first version off to beta testers. Compared to the total amount of work that I have done, what is left is not very much. I have yet to decide whether I will add a follower for the first version. I'm not entirely sure how to do that, so I don't want to begin working on something that will extend the release too far. It may still be a few weeks because of beta testing and my own busy life, but it the first version should be complete soon.

By the way, if you want to beta test Way of the Monk for me, contact Woverdude and you will be added to the list. I ask only that you not distribute the files before I release the mod, and that you promote the release when you get the chance.

I will post more information on the release soon, including a detailed brief of all the new features and a plan for the release and second version.

Tutorial: Leveled Lists, Part 1 - Adding Items

Object: To add objects to a leveled list

Difficulty: Easy

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.

Note: This is the first part of this tutorial and teaches you what you need to know to add an item to a leveled list. The second part will be more advanced and deal with the types of leveled lists, globals, using leveled lists with containers and NPC's, and other advanced functions.

First off, let me define the function of a leveled list. A leveled list is a list of items that randomly determines which item will be placed into the world, based upon the level of the player. For instance, in the LItemWeaponDaggerBest, you will find a list of items. There are six normal items and one other leveled list. There are also two columns titled "Level" and "Count". The number in the "Level" column determines what minimum level the player must be to get that item, and the number in the "Count" column determines how many of that item the player receives.

For a detailed description of each part of the LeveledItem window, read this wiki page.

In this tutorial, the premise will be that you are creating a new leveled list for all daggers, along with the random chance of finding an enchanted dwarven dagger.

1. Open the Creation Kit and navigate in the Object Window to the Items > LeveledItem category.

2. Create a new Leveled Item.

3. Navigate to the Items > Weapons category and drag the basic, unenchanted dagger of each type into the Leveled Item box.

4. These items have now been added to the list. Now, however, we are also going to add another leveled item to the list.
5. Find the LItemEnchDwarvenDagger and drag it to your new item.

6. The next part is to set the level requirement for each item. When you do this, you need to make sure that the levels are balanced so that the player does not receive overpowered weapons. If the level requirement of the daedric dagger was set to 1, for instance, then the player could find a daedric dagger at the beginning of the game! The best way to find out what level requirement you should give each item is to look at the default leveled items and see how they do it. For this item, we will copy the level requirements for the LItemWeaponDaggerBest leveled list. I will also set the required level for the enchanted dwarven dagger leveled item to 16 so that the player will receive it sometime between when they start finding dwarven daggers, and sometime when they start finding elven daggers.

7. Now you need to decide whether you want to modify the "Count" (the amount of the item given to the player), and if you want to add a "Chance None". Generally only arrows and other bundled items are assigned a Count higher than one. The "Chance None" determines if and how much of a chance there is that the player will not find anything at all. A 50 "Chance None" value will add a 50% that no item will be found, a 20 will add a 20% chance, and so on. Loot leveled items are the most likely to have a chance that no item will be found. I will give this leveled item a 15% chance that the player will not find anything.
8. To test your leveled item, you can use the "Preview Calculated Result" button and the "Preview Level".
9. Your items have been added to the leveled list. Enjoy the outcome. :-)

Part Two:


Part Two (coming soon) will teach you the more advanced functions of leveled lists and their various uses. It will not be written in the step-by-step manner that I have used for previous tutorials, but will be an extended explanation. Check back regularly for sequel.

WIP Screenshots!

A new Screenshots page has been added to the navbar at the top. Pre-Alpha Way of the Monk content screenshots and teasers are on it, and new pictures will be added as I complete the mod. Check out the page regularly for new screenshots of the WIP mods of our modders!