Skyrim books mod needs writers

[MoonSweets]

Hello everyone,

 

I've just been linked to this forum and I wish I found it earlier! In last September I started a thread on the Nexus to propose to make a Skyrim mod to add more books in the game and so it would require writers to gather up to make more books at once. These books of course would require to fit in the lore etc and be written like they were written by someone on Tamriel (just like all other books in the game).

The topic wasn't much much seen, writers were busy... I was starting to feel a bit despaired.

 

Then I've met Woverdude who told me of his recent new thread for a new idea of a publishing mod that would evolve over the time with the publication of stand-alone short stories and series, somewhat like a magazine but ingame.

 

At the moment I've added 15 of my books ingame without any trouble (except for adding illustrations as it's a little bit trickier). It isn't hard to do but it would surely be great to gather up so if you're interested, just take a look over those threads and raise your hand!

 

Stories, poems, riddles, songs... everything is welcome as long as it fits in the game!

Stories just shouldn't be too long or divided into several tomes.

[Maharg67]

Sounds like a very good idea; will strongly consider contributing.

[SoulofChrysamere]

I have a few stories of my own saved up. I may submit them!

[Dragonspyre]

You have answered my prayers. I can't directly mod in anything, but I have around 17 books to donate.

[MoonSweets]

Alright, alright! It's good to see people interested!

 

So, in way to contribute I will be asking you, dear writer fellows, to follow just few guidelines to ease my work and make sure your book looks good ingame.

 

• You should provide me a file containing the full text of your book. Preferably an .rtf file.
   
  
• The text should be formated very simply. First the title and name of the author (you don't have to center it), then the story/poem/whatever. Skip a line or two between the paragraphs so I can differenciate them easily.
   
  
• Sign the book not by your name, but sign by the name of your Tamrielian alter ego who "wrote" it. You don't have to stick only to one character for all your books of course. The list of the who's who will be provided in the mod's description. The goal is to avoid breaking the immersion with an alien name such as MoonSweets or nox.fox. "Sothis Andas" sounds more like a Dunmer of Tamriel.
   
  
• 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)
  

 

If you feel okay with it you can do some basic script fomating as well, it's not much difficult actually if you follow the exemple below:

 

[pagebreak]


<p align="center">
Another Book of Daedra
or "Through the Eyes of Oblivion"

by Sothis Andas
<p align="left">
[pagebreak]
You probably already know the wondrous Book of Daedra describing the spheres of the Daedra princes and maybe you think this present book is a rip off.
Not exactly I would say. This book is also about the Daedra princes and their spheres but the focus is more on the "why" than on the "who and what".
<p align="left">
As a Dunmer grown up in Vvardenfell the Daedra were always part of my life. I grew a fascination for them quickly, with a special appreciation for clannfears in my
very childhood. At that time I would spend a lot of time day-dreaming about the Daedra, letting my mind wander in Oblivion and conjuring lesser creatures before I knew it.
[...]
<img src='img://Textures/Interface/Books/Illuminated_Letters/A_letter.png'>zura,
the prince of dusk and dawn.
<p align="left">
Azura is often considered as a rather good Daedra, or not completely evil Daedra, by many even out of Dunmer people and people easily believe she is actually good.
Of course that is wrong, Daedra have no interest in mortals, only in themselves, they only have interest in how mortals can serve their survival. But Azura is quite special.
She may come to really appreciate mortals but then becomes very possessive and the loss of a mortal may lead to dread consequences. Like when Nerevar died and she
cursed the whole Chimer people who became the Dunmer.

 

 

[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. the "left" version aligns it on the left. As you see it isn't necessary to close the tag with a </p> but you can do it if you want.

NOTE that it changes the paragraph! Paragraphs are seperated by the equivalent of skipping 3 lines. Just so you know.

<img src='img://Textures/Interface/Books/Illuminated_Letters/A_letter.png'>

inserts an illuminated letter's picture. You can replace the A in A_letter.png by any other letter to get the one you want.

<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 on the wiki (plus they've just added pictures of what the fonts look like and all the available characters).

more tags can be found here, on the CK wiki.

 

 

Don't worry if you don't feel at ease with the script formating, I can do it! Just make sure your text is proof read with correct orthograph and grammar and that the punctuation is done with the right characters and there should be no trouble. You can also add comments for me in your file maybe in a different color like green or so. Just make sure I know it's a comment and make it stand out so I don't miss it!

 

For the moment I haven't succeeded to add new images in the archive so if you have illustrations, you will have to replace them with a description for the moment. I hope to find a way soon to solve this big issue.

Edited February 20, 2012 by MoonSweets

[garlyto]

Seems like a lot of fun. I'll contribute. My ego will be pleased to see his' scribbles ackowledged as masterpieces in the game.

 

Expect a PM in the near future :thumbsup: Awesome idea, and feel free to ignore whatever I sent you.

 

 

Oh and where is the preview post button?

[Dragonspyre]

I will get to this as soon as my brain can coerce me to not be too lazy.

[MoonSweets]

Oh and where is the preview post button?

 

You need to use the full editor to preview^^

 

And as I think about it, btw....

It will probably take me a little time to read the texts you'll send me but I'll do my best to do this asap and give you feedback to say if everything's ok or if I think the text could be improved a bit or if there are some details that seem to mismatch the lore in any way =) I'm not a meanie and I always try to make constructive criticism so don't be afraid!

 

And if you know anyone who knows how to add new pictures and textures to the bsa, I'm very very interested to know! I'd like to redo some book covers to make the mod more attractive with an enchanced graphics value...

Edited February 20, 2012 by MoonSweets

[garlyto]

Ooh, thanks. I'll try my best to get stuff going as soon as possible, so you can get started.

 

I'm a complete modding newbie, so I have no clue about the pictures, sorry :confused:

[Woverdude]

Thank you, MoonSweets for this thread. :-)

 

Pretty soon, ya'll, I am going to post an official Submissions Guidelines for Skyrim Publishing. I'll post it up here for you to read and consider when submitting your work.

 

Btw, MoonSweets, would you mind if I downloaded one of your pieces of art off of your DA account and tried to put it into a book? I won't upload it as a mod, but just see if I can experiment and find a way to add it to the game.

Edited February 20, 2012 by Woverdude