Book Covers Skyrim - Lost Library

[redirishlord]

Calixto's Curiousities in Windhelm for the rare &/or odd. Mage's of the Jarl's courts have personal/semi-public libraires (Whiterun is definitely on the beaten path, also Riften & Windhelm if memory serves, Markarth has a dwemer museum which would be natural for books on that subject). You might hand place alchemical tomes in the various alchemy shops (active experimentation occurs in Markath & Riften shops). Halted Stream camp's dungeon has bookshelves (contains the Transmute Ore spellbook and other vannilla books). IIRC the denizen of the barrow near Ivarstead has a small collection. 

 

Your work looks excellent and I am very excited about this mod, keep up the good work this will be very popular indeed.

[DanielCoffey]

It is nice to get these suggestions for opportunities to place the more common books that would fit as "clutter". There were some outdoor locations I spotted too but I am not sure if they are notable because of the outdoor mods used in SR:LE so I will be bookmarking locations then checking them in Vanilla.

 

I will be avoiding taverns and town exteriors as these tend to be heavily modded already but I can see opportunities to place certain books in dwellings.

 

Once the texture work is largely complete, I will be deciding which books are to be skill books and pulling them from the levelled lists for hand-placing. Two or three copies of each around the world should do it.

[DanielCoffey]

I need some opinions on my treatment of the Consolations of Prayer book from Morrowind.

 

In the original there were some tiny 128x256px images that were very dark and indistinct - one for each of the God-Kings and one for each Saint. I have upsampled them, looked at the colour channels and found the one with the highest contrast, masked the original, added an emboss effect  and then masked the result in a rounded rectangle to remove the harsh corners.

 

Personally I think the effect is great but I wanted to showcase selected pages of the book to make sure you are reasonably happy with the result. I had to move sections of the text around to get it all to fit logically but the book still reads the same as a whole entity.

 

  

 

  

[redirishlord]

Love your treatment, honors the Morrowind nicely. Easy to read and pleasing to the eye.

[kryptopyr]

I agree.  It looks very nice.

[EssArrBee]

Man, why couldn't Beth keep the lore going from game to game? Your making me remember all these cool things from the old days.

[kryptopyr]

Nightcaller Temple would be another good location to place some new books.  While it's only accessible if you do the Vaermina quest, it contains one of the largest libraries in Skyrim so it would be a great place to add some interesting books.

[Kelmych]

The Bards are particularly interested in books. The library in the Bards College and some of the Bards-related quest locations might be a good place for some books about TES Lore as well as older books, especially since the Bards college storyline is a little thin and incomplete.

[DanielCoffey]

Thanks for the tips... I can see a copy of the Balladeer's Fakebook appearing in the Bard's College certainly.

[DanielCoffey]

I have decided to not implement the "star on the spine" indicator that Doccdr used when I create skill books in the Lost Library.

 

As far as I can tell, its only use is to give a visual indication of skill books before you pick them up to allow you to avoid getting skill ups for skills you do not use. You would have to scrutinise every book in the game world before touching it, perhaps trying to turn it round to see the spine without picking the book up. In my opinion, this is not really effective.

 

There are now more useful mods such as MoreHUD and Non Automatic Skill Books (which could have a compatibility patch) which do the job much better so I have taken the decision to omit the stars from the spine. Do you feel this would cause any issues that I have not considered?

 

Without exception, I shall be hand-placing the skill books from the Lost Library mod and am also thinking of only placing a single copy of each skill book too.

 

A quick progress report - I have now reached the half-way point for cover creation and text formatting as far as the standard non-Developer books are concerned. One hundred and twenty books done and formatted. All the levelled lists are done for vanilla merchants at least but I am still tweaking the drop rate - shaving the odd 5% off the lists so the books are special but not too common.

Edited June 25, 2014 by DanielCoffey

[DanielCoffey]

There are some good covers in the Book Jackets Oblivion mod that will be coming to light soon. Take a look at these two books from the Shivering Isles... The Liturgy of Affliction and The Shivering Apothecary.

 

 

[redirishlord]

Wow, those covers. Losing star on spine doesn't seem a problem, you're right better ways to accomplish same. Very excited to have your work in my game, glad it's proceeding well.

[Shamaniacal]

Hey I just wanted to stop by to say the work you're doing looks awesome! I'm especially liking how you are placing little hints lead the player on miniature quests to find various books. Would make for an awesome scholar playthrough.

[DanielCoffey]

One hundred and fifty books down. We are amazed by the intimate details of the mating habits of Kagouti, baffled by the Kendhall Book of Riddles and titillated by the exploits of Kieran the Bard...

 

"Oh, the maidens of Trowbridge are passing fair..."

[GamerPoets]

Always love your books my friend. Happy to have this coming down the pipeline. Will allow me to extend my book reading video series as well. If there is anything I can do to team up or help out let me know.