Book Covers Skyrim - Lost Library

[Crimson13]

Just a possible compatibility problem, Raven Rock Expanded has a book store which includes some books from Morrowind; them being (from the mod page) "The book of dawn and dusk, Vivec and mephala, Silence, Redoran cooking secrets, Ashland Hymns, Smuggler's island, the four suitors of Benitah), and the large collectable series "36 lessons of Vivec" ".

 

It sounds like they would conflict or have something like there would be 2 copies of the same book, yours and Raven Rock Expanded's. Just figured I would give a heads up.

[phazer11]

I'd imagine any of the mods that alter locations would be incompatible if Daniel is planting books around. Hopefully the Raven Rock Expanded Author can released a version without the books as a patch.

[Ganda]

Or exchange his books for these :p

[CJ2311]

Wouldn't count on that, seeing as how he stopped modding.

But I don't really see the problem here, only books in his shop are affected, and actually, it makes sense that not all books have the same cover anyway...

[DanielCoffey]

I will be asking around nearer the time for possible conflicts. I will be avoiding inns because I know there are several mods for those and I know the small towns tend to get modded too.

[DanielCoffey]

I have got to the point of almost 90 books covered and formatted (English only, of course) and am considering making an interim release of the Lost Library with the books so far added to levelled lists and a few hand-placed skill books along with a couple of the simpler cache hunts but I am concerned about the behaviour of things like skill books and treasure maps when players upgrade to a subsequent version.

 

If those who have access to the Modders sub-forum could have a look at my questions there and perhaps give their opinions I would be grateful.

 

Oh, and if I do make an interim release, I will be making immediate Compatibility Patches for the Seaside Library by Jokerine and uglydemon's Raven Rock Expanded so they can take immediate advantage of the new covers. SkyRe will be considered too because of the Fingersmith/Wayfarer tree changes.

 

While I really want to share the work I have done so far, I am well aware that a mod only gets one chance to be "new" and that if it is released in a very limited form and then gets picked up by someone like Gopher/Brodual/Hodi and reviewed in that form, an opportunity is lost. It has to look good right out of the gate for maximum impact.

 

Edited May 3, 2014 by DanielCoffey

[DanielCoffey]

Approaching 100 books under the belt and I have created a new set of Initial Capitals to give an alternative to the Celtic Beasts that are currently in use. I trialled it in one of the Redguard books - Crendal's Drunken Song...

 

[DanielCoffey]

Over the past couple of weeks I have paused in creating the textures and switched to the Levelled Lists.

 

I have created the meshes for the large majority of the new books and this has allowed me to use TES5EDIT to set up the STATIC and the (bare) BOOK records for a total of 225 new books. There may be one or two more (such as the Fishy Stick Guide or the Blue Book of Riddles) but I am in two minds about those two since they have no real contents.

 

Once I have finished setting up the remaining few BOOK records I will be dropping the books into the appropriate Levelled Lists and adding appropriate gold values to them.

 

Next I will look at the Developer Texts and decide which of them are suitable for inclusion. There are some good stories in there but plenty come across as semi-insane ramblings.

 

After that, I need to fill the BOOK entries with the text content of the books and laboriously go through each one to check the layout and formatting - I hate orphaned words over page turns. This will involve flipping between the CK and the game, making changes and then checking the revised layout. If there is a  better way to do this, I would very much like to know it!

 

Then I have to decide which are skill books, alter the textures to add the spine indicator, add the relevant skill in the CK and then adjust the values of those books.

 

Once all that is done, the long haul of creating another 150 textures will begin. Only then will I be close to an initial release of the mod.

[DanielCoffey]

I have divided the Vendors who will be getting the new books into General Merchants (like Belethor), Jarl's Wizards (like Farengar), Specialists (like Urag, Calcelmo or Brand Shei), Orc Wise Women and the Khajit Caravans. There will be a few exceptions. I am also considering giving sublists of books to some of the more eminent Smiths, Alchemists, Weapon or Armor sellers and fences.

 

I have also decided which categories of books these people will have out of Cheap, Common, Religious, Valuable, Rare and Dwemer. Skill books will be specifically hand-placed and not appear in any levelled list.

 

Now I want to ask how many books you would expect these people to have.

 

I am proposing setting up the inventory such that a person will have a couple of rolls on a list at a low percentage rather than one guaranteed book. Say two rolls at 50% for a Cheap book rather than a guaranteed single book at 100%. That way there will be a chance of the Merchant having no new book though usually he will indeed have one book. Occasionally the player will be lucky and find that he does have more than one.

 

As we move up the rarity scale I was going to lower the percentage so that there was more chance of none. At the top end I was going to make it so there would only ever be a chance of a single book.

 

For example...

 

Cheap - 2x 50%

Common - 2x 50%

Religious - 2x 40%

Valuable - 2x 40%

Rare - 1x 60%

Dwemer - 1x 60%

 

Does that make sense?

[DanielCoffey]

A couple of updates... I have got the levelled lists working perfectly. I have applied lists to all the relevant merchants, the vendor setup script is running correctly (and Run Once too). I am now in the balancing stage to make sure too many books don't appear at once.

 

I have had to change a couple of expectations with the mod though. I will not be setting up a separate list of books to issue to Apothecaries or Blacksmiths because there are too few books of those categories to make it worthwhile. There were 5 new Apothecary books and 4 new blacksmith books but I would be pulling two of each out of that list to turn into Skill Books and those would be hand placed. Given how few books would be left in those lists, it is not worthwhile.

 

The next thing is that the mod will require Dawnguard and Dragonborn but not Hearthfire. The Merchant chests and aliases for the DLC are compiled into the script so I will have to add DG and DB to the Masters list. This does mean that there will only be one version of the mod to maintain as I start adding in the treasure hunts and quests.

 

What I thought were the Dwemer books will now not be added to any merchants at all - not even Calcelmo - as they are not all Dwemer but are the Developer Texts and will fall under a new category of Esoteric. Every one will be hand-placed and possibly involve hunts to find them. Some of these quests will be non-tracked. There will just be a note. If you don't find it or decide not to follow it through, there will be no quest cluttering your journal. It means no quest markers too (remember Morrowind?) but the books should be relatively valuable (for a book, at least).

 

Back to making cover textures.

[DanielCoffey]

Passed one hundred books done now... the Book of Circles (four volumes) was a lovely piece of Redguard fable and history and it will be interesting to find places to put a copy or two. The "Guide to ..." books knocked off another dozen but I did come across issues with Bloom since the covers were light. I aged them a bit and the issue lessened.

 

 

Since each of the Morrowind Guides had maps included but they were the wrong size, I simply scaled the old copy to the correct width then redrew the entire map by hand on a transparent background. They are black and white so are small files.

Edited June 7, 2014 by DanielCoffey

[Guest]

I just want to say I have just noticed this, and it is amazing work you are doing. You must have a lot of patience. Yeah the bloom is annoying, and usually means you have to darken it a bit, but the aging has certainly done the trick. Well done!

[keithinhanoi]

It seems you don't have much company in this thread, Daniel, which is a shame as you're asking for feedback.

 

Everything you've suggested on this page of posts seems entirely sound in its logic, though since vendor's stocks get refreshed fairly frequently, the only thing I'd suggest is considering even lower chances of the vendors having any of these books.

 

I also really like the idea of the non-tracked quest / hunts for certain books.

 

Maybe I've missed it while skimming through this thread, but what about books placed in locations which have a library of one sort or another?

[DanielCoffey]

I agree about lowering the chances of books appearing - I am balancing it at the moment and I have already about halved the chances so far as too many were appearing.

 

If there is a library which is in the vanilla game, it would make a logical place to add some extra books (such as the dungeon you get sent to by Urag to track that missing mage and his stolen books) but I will avoid the Arcanaeum as too many mods dump extra books in there already.

[keithinhanoi]

It would also be nice to have some hand placed in some homes / shops that initially can only be stolen, and are only available for the player to take freely after they've become "friendly" enough with the occupants / owners of the homes / shops.