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From HalfLife 2 Knowledge Base

• By Madball

DESCRIPTION

• The Aim to this tutorial is so that when you boot up your modification (MOD) you will no longer see the blurred background image that you see when you boot up Half-Life 2. To complete this tutorial you will be needing Photoshop or some other image creating software.

CONSTRUCTION

• Please follow the steps carefully to successfully complete this tutorial.

1) First things first, we need an image that you want to place in your background. So please load up Photoshop and create an image using this layout.

 Name:        Background01
 Width:       1024 pixels
 Height:      1024 pixels
 Resolution:  300 pixels/com
 Mode:        RGB
 Contents:    what ever colour you want

Note: If you don't want to called you image background01 then when you have finished this section of the tutorial read the Advanced Section.

2) Now create the image that you want to see using Photoshop and when your done save it as a .tga file (Best save it to your desktop as you will be needing it soon).

3) Now that you have complete yourimage.tga, close Photoshop and go to this folder.

 C:\Program Files\Valve\Steam\SteamApps\******\sourcesdk\cstrike_sample_content\materialsrc

NOTE: The ****** part in the directory is your login name for Steam.

4) Create a new folder with in the directory and rename it to what ever your want (something like image dir). Place your .tga file in this folder.

5) Now go to this directory and create the same folder, But do not place the .tga file in here.

 C:\Program Files\Valve\Steam\SteamApps\******\sourcesdk\cstrike_sample_content\materials

6) Now open a new window and browse to this directory.

 C:\Program Files\Valve\Steam\SteamApps\**********\sourcesdk\bin

You will see a tool called Vtex this is the tool that you will be using to convert your .tga file to a .vtf file.

7) Now go back to the previous window and drag and drop your .tga file ontop of the Vtex tool. You will see a DOS window appear when it says press enter, Press Enter.

You will now see a text file within the same folder as you .tga.

8) Now select both and drag and drop them on the Vtex tool. If you now go to this directory.

 C:\Program Files\Valve\Steam\SteamApps\******\sourcesdk\cstrike_sample_content\materials\YourFileName

You will now see your .vtf file.

9) Copy your .vtf file and then go to this directory

 C:\MyMod\MyModName

10) Within this directory create a new folder called materials and then with in the new materials folder create another new folder called console.

Example:

 C:\MyMod\MyModName\materials\console\

11) Now paste your .vtf file into that directory.

12) Now run your batch file and there you have it your custom image as your background.

ADVANCED SECTION

If you didn't call your image background01.tga then follow these instructions.

1) Do the same as above and then go to the directory.

 C:\MyMod\MyModName\Scripts

2) Open ChapterBackgrounds.txt and change where it says background01 to the name of your file with out the file extension. Save and run your batch file. There you have it your custom image working in your Half-Life 2 modification