In this tutorial you'll find out how to use a custom splash screen in Steam HL. Start by reading the related tutorial for WON HL if you haven't already.

Modding the Steam main menu is slightly more complicated then in WON HL, but oh so much more flexible.

Creating your mod

Do this like in the first part of the WON tutorials except that when it refers to a WON HL installation, refer to the Steam HL installation instead.

Furthermore, you'll have to create the following new folders in your mod folder if they don't already exist.

• resource
• resource/background
• gfx

Splash Screens

Splash screens are composed of image tiles in TGA format, and configured using the following files (relative to the base folder of the mod):

• resource/BackgroundLayout.txt - the static background
• resource/BackgroundLoadingLayout.txt - the loading background (before the main menu shows up)
  • Barely used since the engine loads up pretty quickly unlike Source. Usually it's the same as the static layout.

In the 25th anniversary update, there are two additional files that are used when you enable the HD background setting (via liblist.gam):

• resource/HD_BackgroundLayout.txt
• resource/HD_BackgroundLoadingLayout.txt

In all these files, the first line is in this format:

resolution <width> <height>

subsequent lines are in this format:

<path to image tile> <scaling mode> <x> <y>

where <scaling mode> can be either of the following values:

• scaled - background is stretched to fit the window/screen
• fit - background is cropped to fit the window/screen

and <x> and <y> are the offsets of where the top-left corner of the image tile would be, in the resolution specified in the first line.

To prepare the image tiles, you can follow this tutorial, or use the following tools:

• Steam Splash Creator (outdated, doesn't support HL25's HD background)
• Irfanview, following this guide
• GoldSRC Steam Background Image Converter (only outputs image tiles, you need to edit the resource text files yourself)

The Game Menu

You wanna edit the menu links, right? Copy the GameMenu.res in the resource folder from the valve folder to your mod's equivalent. Open the copy with a text editor. You'll see a bunch of segments of parameters.

"9"
{
    "label" "#GameUI_GameMenu_FindServers"
    "command" "OpenServerBrowser"
    "notsingle" "1"
}

This one, for example, is the Find Servers button.

label controls the label, shockingly enough. #GameUI_GameMenu_FindServers gets the title from the language file, but unless you're planning on multi-language support you can just change it to anything you want.

"command" controls what happens when you press the button. OpenServerBrowser is a Steam client command that opens the server browser. (Damn, it's all so self explanatory) You can change it to any other Steam command, such as OpenLoadGameDialog which would cause the button to open the load game dialog instead.

Available commands are:

• ResumeGame
• Disconnect
• OpenPlayerListDialog
• OpenNewGameDialog
• OpenLoadGameDialog
• OpenSaveGameDialog
• OpenServerBrowser
• OpenCreateMultiplayerGameDialog
• OpenLoadDemoDialog
• OpenChangeGameDialog
• OpenOptionsDialog
• Quit

I'll let you guess what they do.

You can also use engine commands.
Entering engine <console command>, would cause the button to execute the console command when pressed. Example:

"command" "engine map c1a0"

This would cause the button to start the map c1a0.

The third parameter, notsingle makes the button invisible in singleplayer mode. Other similar parameters are available: notmulti, OnlyInGame and notsteam. They can be used together, like this:

"notsingle" "1"
"OnlyInGame" "1"

This would cause the button to only be visible when in a multiplayer game.

Dialogs

That's not all you can customize, oh no. You can customize all the dialogs as well. They all have their own .res file in the resource folder.

NewGameDialog.res contains the new game dialog (Couldn't guess, could you?).

The dialogs are more complex then the menu. If you open the .res you'll see segments like these:

"Training"
{
    "ControlName"    "RadioButton"
    "fieldName"      "Training"
    "xpos"           "40"
    "ypos"           "94"
    "wide"           "220"
    "tall"           "24"
    "autoResize"     "0"
    "pinCorner"      "0"
    "visible"        "1"
    "enabled"        "1"
    "tabPosition"    "1"
    "labelText"      "#GameUI_TrainingRoom"
    "textAlignment"  "west"
    "dulltext"       "0"
    "default"        "0"
    "SubTabPosition" "1"
}

This is the "Training Room" radio button. labelText changes the label. The other stuff should be self-explanatory enough, you'll have to try and change them and see what happens. You can also change the colour of these dialogs, but I won't explain this in any detail. The colour scheme is contained in resource/TrackerScheme.res. You should be able to figure it out or find some old Steam skin creation tutorial, as the process is pretty much the same.

Steam Games icon

As you might have noticed, some games have small icons in the Steam games list. You can, too.

Create a 16x16 32bit TGA, name it icon.tga and put in your mod's folder, you might need to restart your Steam client to see the change in your Steam's library.

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Now you should be all customized up and ready. If this still isn't enough, head over to the tutorial's addendum.