Here is a tutorial that I wrote on how to add books to Morrowind. Hopefully I have not forgotten any steps or sub-steps. I am assuming that people reading this have zero familiarity with the Construction Set.
STEP 1
Launch the Construction Set. Load the Morrowind .esm ONLY. Do not load Tribunal, Bloodmoon, or any other .esp files. If you are not sure how to do this, see the 2 pictures below.
At the top edge of the screen, click File, then click Data Files.
Double-click on the little box next to "Morrowind.esm" to put an X in it. Don't put an X by any of the other boxes.
Then click the OK button and wait a few seconds while data for Morrowind is loaded into the Construction Set.
STEP 2
Go over to the Object Window (you may have to adjust the sizes of the windows) and click on the tab marked Book. This will bring up a list of all of the books in the game.
Right-click on any book in this list. This will bring up a sub-menu. Select the option New.
This will open a book template -- a brand-new, and therefore empty, book template. You are now ready to create your first book.
Let's take a moment to examine the parts of the book template.
(1) - This is the ID or identifier for the book, which is how the game controls the book as an object. You can put in anything you want to for the ID...so long as it's unique and different from any other book's ID.
(2) - Here is where you put the title of your book. You should capitalize the first letter of all the words, like this: A Tale of Two Cities.
(3) - This is where you attach scripts to your book. But since this tutorial is only going to cover the scope of simple book-making, we won't go into that. For a basic book, leave this blank.
(3a) - This button lets you choose scripts from among a list of scripts already written and saved into the game. Leave this alone too.
(4) - Here is where you set the weight of your book. Normally it's between 1 to 2 lbs. for a scroll, and between 2 to 5 lbs. for a book. Make a reasonable estimate based upon how much text you've got. The space will accept values of one-tenth, so you can set your weight at 4.60 pounds, for instance. The starting default value is always 1.00.
(5) - This is for setting the value of your book in gold pieces. Unlike the previous slot, no decimals are allowed here. You can leave in the default of 1 gold piece if you don't think your book should be re-sold...just don't change that to zero. That will cause some mods to crash.
(6) - You know how some books will add 1 point to your skills, the second you open them? This is where you would select what skill to boost, if someone reads your book. Again, this being a simple book tutorial, we're not going to touch that, so leave it blank.
(7) - This button is for selecting your book's mesh, aka the 3D object that represents your book in the game world. What, you thought it would look like a book automatically? Remember this button. We're going to discuss this in detail because it's a complicated process.
(8) - This button is for selecting your book's inventory image, aka the icon that represents your book when it's carried on a player's (or NPC merchant's) inventory. This one is also complicated and will also be discussed in its own step later.
(8a) - And when you finish selecting an inventory icon, this spot displays that icon for your preview.
(9) - You would only check this box if you were creating a scroll, and not a book. Since we are creating a book, this stays blank. (SEE IMAGES BELOW)
(10) - This is for setting how much magic your book can contain. The more powerful the spell, the higher this number has to be. Since we're not adding any spells (simple book, right?) you can leave this value at 100.
(11) - And here is where you would select which spell to add to your book. Leave this one blank.
(12) - Leave this box unchecked.
(13) - Leave this box unchecked.
(14) - The OK button is actually your "Save" button, to save the work you've done on your book so far. Conversely, the Cancel button will close the book template without saving any changes. You will rarely use the Cancel button, since any mistakes in modding a book can be corrected and over-written. Just fix the mistake and save it again.
(15) - Last but not least, here is where you will insert the text of the book.
What is the difference between a book and a scroll? I'm glad you asked that.
This is a book:
This is a scroll:
STEP 3
We will now begin filling out the book template. Starting with the hardest step: finding the mesh.
Insert the Construction Set CD into your disk drive. It's okay, you can do this while the Construction Set program is running. And if you have Morrowind in the drive, go ahead and remove that, it won't affect the program.
Click on the button Add Art File. This opens a new window to search for meshes. (You can verify this by checking that the bottom line says NetImmerse Models, or .nif format.)
It does not matter what pops up inside the search window. If you are not seeing the disk, then direct the window to point at the Construction Set disk. For my system, that's the D: drive, but it may be a different letter on yours.
Open (double-click on) the disk, and there should be one directory called Data Files.
Open this folder, and you should see 4 sub-folders.
Now open the folder labeled Meshes, and you should see this.
PLEASE NOTE: If you should EVER happen to see this instead
that means you are in the wrong place. You are NOT looking at the Meshes folder on the Construction Set disk; you are instead looking at the Meshes folder installed on your computer itself. There is a huge difference. Use the "up one folder" button to drill back to the root directory of your computer, then find the drive containing the disk.
We cannot pull any meshes from the inside of YOUR computer, because they might not be found on EVERY Morrowind player's computer. This is why we have to pull meshes from the Construction Set disk itself. These meshes on the disk are indeed "installed" in every computer with Morrowind, BUT THEY ARE NOT STORED IN A MODDABLE FORMAT. The Construction Set disk contains the moddable format of all the meshes.
In short, if you do not see folders named after one single letter of the alphabet, you are in the wrong place.
Now back to the regular procedure...
Now that you are in the Meshes directory on the disk, open the "m" directory to access all of the meshes for the Miscellaneous objects. (Books are considered Misc objects.)
Scroll down the list until you find the files that start with the word Text...these are the book meshes.
I recommend grabbing the first one on the list: Text_Folio_01.nif. Click on it, and the name of the file should appear as the search result.
Click the Open button to close the search window, and you should now see that the mesh file has been saved to the book template. The button formerly called Add Art File is now pointing at your chosen mesh by its name.
Note that the ID field also filled itself out automatically when you selected your mesh, using the mesh's name.
This is supposed to happen. The Construction Set program doesn't like objects that have no ID. Normally we should have chosen an ID first, but I wanted to show you that this would happen.
Go ahead and change the ID something else. Try to make it as unique as possible...some combination of numbers and letters.
Note that the mesh did not change when you changed the ID. If you decide to use a different mesh for your book later, you can repeat the process and the ID will now stay unique.
STEP 4
Now we will do the other difficult task: finding the icon.
The first few steps are actually the same as before: load the Construction Set disk, click a button, and point the search window at the disk. Except this time, the button to click is not the Add Art File button (which we completed in the last step), but the button named Inventory Image.
This time, instead of opening the directory called Meshes, we want the directory called Icons. And once again, open the sub-folder named "m" found under the Icons folder.
But what's going on here? You open the "m" directory...and it's totally empty?
Not really. See, the search window is finding nothing because it's set to search for .dds image files by default. This is a stupid default, because most icons for Morrowind were made in .tga format.
You need to tell the window to change formats. Use the drop-down key at the bottom.
And once you have selected .tga, NOW you will see the search window filling up with files.
Be warned: "tx" here does not stand for text, but texture. The first book icon is actually called Tx_folio_01.tga, and it corresponds (matches) the Text_Folio_01.nif we picked in the previous step.
Scroll down the list until you find Tx_folio_01.tga and select that by clicking on the name then clicking Open, just like you did with the mesh.
Again, the search window should close once the icon is selected, and the template should now display the name of the icon.
STEP 5
Now you are done with the hard stuff. It's time to put the text into your book.
If your story is not already typed up into a computer file, it's time to get it into one. If you haven't started typing yet, the good news is that I can tell you which program is the best one to use.
That would be Notepad. You know, the tool that comes with every edition of Windows. (Start menu -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Notepad)
Why is Notepad the best? Because it's the easiest program for importing raw text into the Construction Set. No additional formatting gets in. Text only.
To see an example of what I'm talking about, open Notepad. Then open a file in MS Word, or WordPerfect, or whatever you are using. Copy and paste the text into Notepad.
See all of that extra garbage that appeared in Notepad, in addition to your text? Clean it up. Delete it, get rid of it. You might as well do this now, if your story was written in Word or whatever, because you're going to have to clean it up in Notepad BEFORE you can import it into the Construction Set.
STEP 6
Now that you have converted all of your text into Notepad, copy and paste from Notepad into the text block of the book template. (That's item #15 here.)
Okay, you have now successfully added text to your book. But it's still going to look funny.
Proper formatting of a book's text, inside the game, is done using HTML code. If you already know HTML, you can format the book yourself and skip to the end of this step.
For those of you who don't know HTML, copy the first few lines exactly as I have written them here:
Once you reach the garbage (djfd rg uhdv gfgjn) you can stop copying. Replace the garbage with your story.
You should also replace "Cenobite's Nastiest Sex Fantasies" with the title of your book. And, of course, replace "Cenobite" with your own name.
Why is all of this code at the beginning of the book? In order to make it look like this:
Some formatting rules to remember:
- Every sentence should end with the command (BR). (Use the pointy brackets instead of parentheses to surround BR, just like in the picture above.)
- Every paragraph should have a stand-alone (BR) at the end of it, to create a line break in the text. This is because (BR) is the HTML equivalent of hitting the Return key.
- If you want to do more than one line break, just keep adding stand-alone (BR) commands. Like this:
(BR)
(BR)
(BR)
- You cannot do any of the cool stuff in MS Word, such as bold or italics or changing font size. I know, I know...it's possible to do the cool stuff in HTML. But we're not creating a web page, are we? We're writing a book in Morrowind. It's much more limited.
- If you feel that the book is getting too large, break it up into multiple books, and call each book a Volume or a Chapter.
- The last line of your story should be a stand-alone (BR).
STEP 7
Now that you are done writing and formatting your story...you are done with your book. Let's save it as a mod.
Type in the name of your book in slot #2. Change the weight at #4, and enter the gold value at #5. Check the box at #9 ONLY if you are making a scroll. Leave everything else alone.
Click the OK button. The book template will now close, and the book will appear on the list of books in the game. (They are sorted in alphabetical order by ID.)
At the top edge of the screen, click File, then click Save.
This will open a window to select the name of your mod. Go ahead and name it whatever you want...just make sure the name doesn't match any of your other mods. I find that the prefix "test-" usually works pretty well. Type the name in the blank called File Name and click Save.
And that's it! You are done. Congratulations! If you were reading this tutorial to write fiction for IR, please send me the .esp file that you have just created.
If you want to actually get into the game world and read your book from inside the game...that is a little bit beyond the scope of this tutorial. But I'll give you a brief summary: go to the Cell Window, pick an interior cell, double-click the name to display it in the Render Window, drag and drop your book ID from the book list to the Render Window, place the book carefully inside the cell, save, exit, and restart the game with a new character.
(See, that's why I left it out. Go find another tutorial about building interior cells and placing objects.)
That concludes this tutorial. For those of you who were wondering at the bother, I will end this by showing you what happens when you mod a book using any old meshes and icons found on your computer.
Some book, eh?
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind is owned and copyrighted by Bethesda Softworks.
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