This tutorial needs work but hopefully this should get people started...
OK I've had this requested several times so here's how to modify the main menu, well at least the way I did it.
First you need to understand the concept in this post:
http://alienswarmsp.blogspot.com/2011/03/things-wot-i-have-learned.html?showComment=1317251578720#c5582811687366040367
Got it?
Good!
The blurred loading image:
Go open up the AS:SP download file and open up the Materials/Console/ folder.
You'll see a bunch of image files and a few .vtf and .vmt files.
If you don't know what .vtf file and .vmt files are then go to the valve wiki and look them up, then come back here and carry on reading this.
You will need to modify the code to make the game search for a different background image.
Search all .CPP files and look for the strings
selectionscreen.vtf
Selectionscreen.vmt
selectionscreen_widescreen.vtf
selectionscreen_widescreen.vmt
Alter each file reference name to the name of the files you will create to replace these.
I added ASSP to the beginning of each file of mine as you can see from my download.
To create my image I took a screenshot of a single frame of the background video I had selected to run (see below for how to change it). I then used Paint.net to add gauzien blur to blur the image and resize it.
Once you have your image, use Paint.net and the .vtf plugin from "nems tools" to convert your image into a vtf file and create your .vmt file. For the VMT file content just copy the content from my ASSP version.
The replicate and create the widescreen version of this, copying the dimensions of it's equivenlant you find in the .vpk.
Basically you just looking to replicate what's in the VPK file but with different file names and you're own images.
Does that make sense? I may re-write this later...
The Background Video
Alien Swarm uses a .bik format video file as the base layer to it's menu system. This .bik video can be changed but is not easily removed completely. The name of this file is set in the file "nb_header_footer.cpp".
The video panel basically forms the base layer of the entire menu system in the code. You can punch through the menu system to the game port screen below by removing the video reference completely from the nb_header_footer.cpp file but that also removes all the menu elements completely. Not very helpful at all.
If you are attempting to create a background map for your menu then I would recommend you record your background map in game, convert it to a .bik video file and then use it as your backgroup for your menu.
Changing The Menu Options
First off you need to understand that in order for the game to support multiple languages, a menu option and the text label that shows up on the menu are two seperate things.
For example. The function of Option 1 is to start a new game. However the text that appears in the menu will depend on your game language selection and each set of potential language values is defined in a different file.
There is a file for English, A file for Spanish, A file for German and so on.
So if we want to modify the options for the main menu then we need to make changes at several levels.
Mainmenu.res
This file can be found in the \resource\ui\basemodui directory in the VPK files.
When you open it you'll see a bunch of sets of script that look like this:
"BtnSingleplayer"
{
"ControlName" "BaseModHybridButton"
"fieldName" "BtnSingleplayer"
"xpos" "100"
"ypos" "280"
"wide" "210"
"tall" "13"
"autoResize" "1"
"pinCorner" "0"
"visible" "0"
"enabled" "1"
"tabPosition" "0"
"navUp" "PnlQuickJoin"
"navDown" "BtnMultiplayer"
"labelText" "#L4D360UI_MainMenu_PlaySolo"
"tooltiptext" "#L4D360UI_MainMenu_PlaySolo_Tip"
"style" "AlienSwarmMenuButtonSmall"
"command" "SoloPlay"
"ActivationType" "1"
}
Each line here is a parameter that defines where on the screen this option will appear and what it will do when you click on it.
In the case of the set above, It's the button that activates single player mode (offline practice mode) in Alien Swarm.
You can see the system command is "Soloplay".
The "Visible" option here is very helpful. It will allow you to make an option visible or not (obviously). So by switching certain options on and off you can modify your main menu.
Check out this Valve wiki page for more info on the main menu set up.
The most important bit of info defined here though is the "labeltext". This is what links this menu item to the lanugage files we'll look at next.
basemodui_english.txt
basemodui_english.txt is the file that defines all the english text in the game. It can be found in the Resource folder at the top level and the good news is, it's not in the VPK file so you don't need to change any code this time.
Open the file and search for the "labeltext" we used above but before you do, remove teh # symbol.
So it should look like "L4D360UI_MainMenu_PlaySolo"
Should look like this:
"L4D360UI_MainMenu_PlaySolo" "PLAY AS:SP"
on the right next to this reference you'll see the UK language text that will appear in your menu.
For my mod I just changed the text from "Offline Practice" to "Play AS:SP".
Hope this is helpful. Lemme know if you want to know anything else....
