Rudyard on 17/6/2004 at 02:40
I thought a neat touch to add to my FM-in-creation (I hope to maybe, possibly…potentially…finish it successfully one day and submit it to the community…) would be a custom-made main menu screen like those that have been seen in certain notable FMs over the years.
After over an hour of “photoshopping”, and file-altering, I created what I wanted, and, as an experiment, stuck the new menu’s PCX file into the Thief Directory. Indeed, the new menu showed up when I started Thief (I’m using Thief II).
However, it was a huge struggle to get the thing to work properly, and there were, perhaps, a dozen times when I entered the game only to stare at the spinning, whirring mechanical contraption that is the game’s main menu.
So, although I did, in the end, get my menu to appear, it occurs to me that there must be a much simpler way to make a custom menu that actually works.
Please, could a DromEder (Or Taffer, Photoshopper, etc.) with knowledge in this field explain to me how one can, without driving oneself mad, create a custom main menu screen?
Alexius on 17/6/2004 at 05:42
It's a complicated task.
If you want to replace the front thief 2 menu with a single non moving image, then you must save your image as Main.PCX.
It MUST be exactly 640x480
It MUST have 256 colors,
avoid the absolute black. Just brighten it a bit to exclude the absolute black.
(absolute black will create transparency issues)
Shove it into folder thief2/intrface/
You will need a MAINM.str file.
You can use "Thief media Edit" to extract this file.
Extract it, write this text inside:
// string file for anims.
// Format is list of anims
// then x,y fps (r|l)
// where 'r' means reverse, and 'l' means loop normally
// list: "main"
// maina: "19,89 12.1 l"
// mainb: "52,319 12.1 l"
// mainc: "502,179 11.0 l"
// main: "172,26 8.0 l"
Save it to thief2/intrface/
Make sure the name stays as
MAINM.STRThis will make your new menu work as a single image, and will take away all those spinning animated gears.
If you want to replace NEW game screen.
The one that says "difficulty" and "mission name",
Save your new picture as Newgame.pcx and shove in thief2/intrface/
-Alexius-
___________________________________________________
(http://imperium.webz.cz/) The Hammerite Imperium Lead
-(
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=71559) Dromed Architecture Tutorial Supreme
Yandros on 17/6/2004 at 12:04
I did this exact thing (just as Alexius described) for the main menu in my C5 mission The Summit. Feel free to look at it if you want.
Rudyard on 17/6/2004 at 15:23
Alexius: I’ve made notes of your suggestions and am keeping them for future reference.
Yandros: Actually, as the first step in creating my test menu, I thought back to The Summit and jumped online to download it. It was through looking at how you’d made your menu that I was able to create my own!
Both of you who’ve answered thus far: Thank you for your help!
Yandros on 17/6/2004 at 16:50
I learned how from Polygon. He did it beautifully in Cold Reception (an unreleased Beta that I'm working to complete as Death's Cold Embrace).
Sacrond on 5/11/2013 at 11:34
Hello, does anybody know how to change the button places, the color and the font while making custom menu?
kdau on 5/11/2013 at 19:03
Welcome, Sacrond! Those changes can all be made in dark.cfg. (That is the one .cfg file that is acceptable to distribute with a mission.) I couldn't find a proper tutorial anywhere, but here are the basics.
For the font, there is a different config variable for each menu screen: sim_font_normal, gamesav_font_normal, etc. The value of each of these should be the name of a font file in the intrface directory, without its .fon extension. Look for Telliamed's Thief Font Converter (included in the DromEd Toolkit) if you want to make custom fonts.
For the color, there is one set of variables that define the colors for most of the screens. These are listed under the ; default text colors comment, and primarily include the panel_color_* series. The value of each of these should be a comma-separated RGB color triplet with each value ranging from 0 to 255, such as 255,0,255 for bright purple.
For the button order, each menu screen has a rect_* variable such as rect_debrief or rect_newgame. The value is a comma-separated list of numbers (starting from zero), where each number corresponds to one of the button actions/labels and each position in the list corresponds to one of the button bounding rectangles on screen. Reordering the numbers changes the order of the buttons. Some trial and error is usually required, especially if you are using custom *r.bin files to change the bounding rectangles.
Sacrond on 7/11/2013 at 12:09
Thank you!
