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.

1.5 Changelog

1.5 Changelog

Here (finally) is the changelog for the 1.5 update for the Skyrim mod "Way of the Monk":

+ Improved appearance of the Pillars locations
+ Fixed the requirements for Irons Fists 3
+ Fixed issue for some NPCs where they would appear naked
+ Replaced Cultist Follower with a voiced follower
+ Added a quest to find all of the Pillars, with a reward for finding all of them. Start the quest by reading the book, "The Pillars".
+ Fist weapons are now affected by OneHanded Perks. The Claws, Talons, Punch Daggers, and Katar are affected by the sword perks; the Ulaks are affected by the War Axe perks; and the perferators and Burning Fists are affected by the Mace perks
+ Increased base damage of Steel Punch Daggers by 1
+ Created more Cultist NPCs
+ The new follower now levels with you up to level 60
+ Unarmored now does not level when you are a werewolf
+ Fixed issue where the OneHanded Unarmed Weapon was doing more damage and affected by more perks than it was supposed to.
+ The Deadly Blows perks no longer stack
+ Fixed menu issues with the Silent Movement and Padded Movement perks
+ Corrected information in the menu for the Wielder Pillar
+ Added visual effect to Whirlwind Attacks from the Wielder Pillar
+ Fixed the menu issues with acquiring the Vitality perks
+ Fixed the conditions for the Vitality perks

I apologize for the delay. I've been pretty busy and tired recently because of the new school semester. I will start work on version 1.6 soon.

Way of the Monk can be downloaded at the following locations:

Skyrim Nexus

Steam Workshop

Need Voice Actors For Your Mod?

Are you creating a quest or follower mod? Do you need voice actors? This post gives a number of tips and links to help you find voice acting talent.

Doing it yourself:
First off, you may simply be able to do it yourself. Now, there's the possibility that your voice may have a different sound or be a different gender than your mod's characters. However, if you voice does fit a character, here are some tips to recording:

1. Turn off all fans, air conditioners, and cell phones. Get rid of or turn off anything that could add background noise.
2. Place your microphone at the very least an inch (I suggest 2-3 inches) from your mouth. That is to eliminate the small staticky sounds that may come from a dry mouth or from the mic rubbing against your skin.
3. Keep a glass of water nearby to make sure that your mouth does not become dry. A dry mouth will make your produce a static-like sound in your recording.
4. Sit up or stand up. Breathe with deeply, with your stomach expanding rather than your chest. This will provide a good airflow through your vocal chords, and provide your brain with the oxygen it needs.
5. Sing for a while before recording. It doesn't matter if your singing voice is awful enough to kill cats, sing for a bit.  Doing so will loosen your vocal chords and get your lungs moving right for recording.
6. Download Audacity. It is a free audio editing and recording program that is powerful enough to be used in professional settings. If you want to you can even learn how to add effects to your voices, but that won't be neccesary for simple voice acting.
7. Along with the recordings for your lines, record a 5-6 seconds long file that is nothing but silence. Make sure that you do this with the same mic and in the same setting that you used for your line recording. This silence sample will be used later with Audacity to remove background static and noise from your audio files.
8. Record your lines in the .WAV format. This can be done with Audacity. There are only two audio formats that the Creation Kit (for Skyrim) uses, and those are the .WAV and the .XWM formats. If you have the time, I would suggest converting your files to .XWM. They are not as large as .WAV files, but they will work fine. The decreased file space means that you will be more likely to pack your mod into the 100 mb limit of the Steam Workshop. Use this guide to convert the files. As far as I know, this is the only guide in existence that teaches you how to convert .WAV files to .XWM.

Recruiting others:

1. The Voice Actors' Guild - The VA Guild is a part of the broader Engineering Guild, which is a modding community createed by the modder Giskard, who is well known for his Skyrim, Fallout 3, and Oblivion mods. I have used them before and they are a great group. Very friendly, quick, and professional. While you're there, you can also download some of the fantastic mods that they have produced.
2. Post a thread in the Skyrim Nexus, Bethesda, or Steam forums asking for a voice actor. You are less likely to get someone with voice acting experience, but they are likely to be more eager to help.
3. Take a look at the list of voice actors that helped with the Interesting NPCs mod for Skyrim. The mod author supplied links to their Nexus Pages, so you can contact them if you like their voice or are looking for any voice actor. With this specific group, I would suggest going into Skyrim and listening to their voices. That way you can choose the actor you want based upon their voice. Keep in mind, though, that they do not have to work with you if they do not want to. The likely get plenty of requests and do not have time to help everyone.

Once you have the lines:

Even once you have gone through the work to find voice actors, you will need to add them to the game. Below are a number of tutorials for adding voice files to characters in Skyrim.

1. Deck16 - Adding a Voice Follower
2. Creation Kit Wiki - Bethesda Tutorial Dialgoue
3. Voice Acting: A Complete Guide
4. Creation Kit Tutorial: Quest Dialogue [1/4]