Making Icons and Integrating

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How to make an Icon for your mod

If you'd rather, there's a Youtube tutorial as well. Watch it here Youtube Tutorial

There are two types of icons that this page will detail creating for your mod.

• An icon in Steam.

• The actual icon associated with the short-cut.

Both are easy enough to make.

Requirements

Adobe Photoshop or Gimp

AlphaConv or mirror

IcoFX

Source sdk + steam

Make Steam Icon first

First things first; Open steam and launch the Source SDK in the tools tab. If you haven't already, Create a Mod and navigate to your mod folder: C:\Program Files(x86)\steam\steamapps\SourceMods\mymod where "mymod" is the name of your mod. If you have, navigate to your mod folder.

Open your gameinfo.txt file in your favorite plain-text editing software. It should look akin to the following

"GameInfo"
{
	// This is what shows up in the 'Third Party Games' area of the Steam games list.
	game						"mymod"
	type 						singleplayer_only
	FileSystem
	{
	    SteamAppId	215		// GCF for Source SDK Base
	    ToolsAppId	211		// Tools will load this (ie: source SDK caches) to get things like materials\debug, materials\editor, etc.

		SearchPaths
		{
			Game				|gameinfo_path|.
			Game				sourcetest
			Game				hl2
		}
	}
}

Add the following lines under type

"developer" 		"noob industries"
"developer_url" 	"http://www.google.ie"
"icon" "resource\GameIconSteam\icon_mymod"

...So that it looks like this:

"GameInfo"
{
	// This is what shows up in the 'Third Party Games' area of the Steam games list.
	game						"mymod"
	type 						singleplayer_only
        "developer" 		"noob industries"
        "developer_url" 	"http://www.google.ie"
        "icon" "resource\GameIconSteam\icon_mymod"
	FileSystem
	{
	    SteamAppId	215		// GCF for Source SDK Base
	    ToolsAppId	211		// Tools will load this (ie: source SDK caches) to get things like materials\debug, materials\editor, etc.

		SearchPaths
		{
			Game				|gameinfo_path|.
			Game				sourcetest
			Game				hl2
		}
	}
}

Breakdown

• developer is the name of what company or who made the game. This affects the game files itself, such as seen in the your Steam games list.
• developer_url will make the developers name in steam a hyperlink to the address specified above in this case google

• icon tells steam where the icon can be found; In this case, in your mod folder: resource\GameIconSteam It should default to looking for icon_mymod.tga

Making the Steam Icon

Open your favorite graphics-design or photo-editing software, and make a blank canvas with dimensions of 16*16 pixels. Make it transparent, if you'd like. Design your icon.

Save it as a .png to your C:\Program Files(x86)\steam\steamapps\SourceMods\mymod\resource\GameIconSteam mod folder as icon_mymod.png. Don't forget to replace "mymod" with your mod name!

Now navigate to that folder. Open AlphaConv

• select Target format to be .tga
• Uncheck Convert only 32-bit images(with alpha channel)
• Drag and drop icon_mymod.png onto the program and it will convert it to the same folder
• delete the input file (icon_mymod.png)

Making the Game.exe Icon

• Download and install IcoFx

Open it and like photoshop make an Image. Click on the Windows Icon near the top middle of the program...This generates an icon.

Now save it to your C:\Program Files\steam\steamapps\SourceMods\mymod\resource folder

Note:Remember that you must call the icon game.ico or it will not work and it must be in the above folder

Conclusion

And that for the most part is how to get your game fully iconified

restart steam to get your new icons loaded If you want to see your game.exe icon on the desktop rightclick on it and make a desktop shortcut inside steam...

Note:Im pretty sure you need to restart the computer to see your new Game icon on the desktop

But if you cant wait start the game and alt+tab out of it and look down at the toolbar to see the icon on the program

I hope this helped Dont forget to check out my Video tutorial of this process here

Youtube Tutorial