Spent another 4 hours tweaking code to try and get those damn background movies to go away. Managed to find the .cpp file that controls them. Can change the movie that shows up by default to one that does not show the Alien Swarm logo in it. This has potential as I can then float the mod title graphic over the top of it. But at the end of the day thats not what I really want. I want to see the background map so will continue plugging on until I get it.
Got very excited when I found a .res file that has a setting to make the movie file visible or not visible, that didn't work unfortunatley. Then with help from Nightgunner I managed to uncover a value setting for movie_enabled. Set it to false. Recompiled.... didnt work...
Grrrr... once I crack this Im building in a CVAR so that mappers can swich the background movies on or off as they see fit. No one else should have to go through this pain.
I have everything else in place...
My background map movie is up and running.
It's a simple concept. A single marine model stands alone on a completely black background with a single spotlight shining down on it. The camera then moves around the model, slowley up from the feet to the head, rotates aound etc...
All this with a soundtrack playing of a bugle playing The Last Post.
Should be pretty cool...
6 comments:
Hi Aazell!
I'm working on a mod of my own and working through the menu, frustrating indeed. Could I possibly get you to post how you were able to change the background video and modify main menu options?
Thanks!
PJ
Yes.. I will create a post on how to modify the main menu. One thing I will say is that I never found out how to get rid of the .bik video. I only found out how to change it. There's a reason for that. The entire menu system is layered on top of the .bik vid in the code. If you remove the vid you lose everything from the menu system...
Quick tip to get you started on the video backgrounds.
Find the .bik videos in the .vpk files that come with Alien Swarm. There should be five or six of them. You can run each video (you may need to download a viewer) and establish which one is the main menu vid. Then, search the code files for that file name (yes it is actually hardcoded!) and then just change the vid file name to the one you want.
You can create your own .bik video's with the free tool set online if you search for .bik in google.
I'll get cracking on that post.
Thanks for the tip!
While your at it, I've been exploring the AlienSwarmSP file system. You created /resource/ui/basemodui/mainmenu_ASSP.res which (as far as I can tell) is what allowed you to disable the extra menu options (like Offline Practice). I tried creating my own mainmenu.res but can't get the game to honor it. Did you have to hard code the name of the .res file to use or is there a link in a configuration file somewhere?
PJ
Yes. Check out the post, "Things wot I have learned..." on the blog. It explains why you need to rename files for your mod and why you need to change the hard coded references to that file.
You're getting through a lot of this much quicker than I did! ;P
So I found the code to change the menu background video (nb_header_footer.cpp). Once that was taken care of, I of course wanted the loading screen to match the first frame of the video I choose. I hunt down the reference to SwarmSelectionScreen_widescreen.vtf in basemodpanel.cpp and replace it with a custom vtf I've created. Recompile and launch but the original AlienSwarm loading screen still displays for a second before changing to my loading screen and then changing to my video. So after an hour or so of trying to figure out I check your file structure and you have /scripts/chapterbackgrounds.txt which contains another reference to your custom SelectionScreen vtf. I create my own chapterbackgrounds.txt and that does the trick.
So where did you get chapterbackgrounds.txt from?
I really don't remember. Chapterbackgrounds is a standard element of all source games so it may have been a guess on my part.
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