Making Icons and Integrating

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How to make an Icon for your mod

Dont like reading? Watch it here Youtube Tutorial

Ok there are two types of Icon i will show you how to get working with your mod

• Icon in Steam.

• 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

Ok so first of all open steam and launch Source SDK in the tools tab, Now some of you may have this done already but to recap click on create a mod (note engine doesn't matter in this tut) Ok once Source SDK finishes close it now navigate to your C:\Program Files\steam\steamapps\SourceMods\mymod where "mymod" is the name of your mod.

First of all open your gameinfo.txt file in notepad. It will look something like 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 applys to the game in the steam list
• developer_url will make the developers name in steam a hyper link to the address specified above in this case google

• icon this tells steam where the icon can be found in this case in your mod folders resource\GameIconSteam folder and it will look for icon_mymod.tga

Now lets make the Steam Icon

Open Gimp or photo shop and make a blank canvas with dimensions 16*16 pixels make it transparent if you like make your icon for arguments sake just draw a face. :)

save it as a .png to your C:\Program Files\steam\steamapps\SourceMods\mymod\resource\GameIconSteam folder as icon_mymod.png

now navigate to that folder in windows 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)

Lets make the Game.exe Icon

• Download and install IcoFx

Open it and like photoshop make an Image and 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