Making Your Mods Sexy

Make your mod installs beautiful with custom artwork, icons, and shortcuts.

Free Artwork and Icons!

Provided with this guide are example icons, logos, backgrounds, and cover art created for Thrawn's Revenge and Fall of the Republic, two of the best Empire at War mods currently available. You can use them for your installs, or as a template to create assets for other mods!

Click here to download.[drive.google.com]

If you want to make your own cover art and icons, click here for a free browser-based alternative to Photoshop[pixlr.com]. It's not as powerful as GIMP, but you can access it anywhere with no setup, and it gets the job done. Very useful.

Getting Mods in Your Steam Library

Adding a mod to your library:

• Click 'Games' at the top of your Steam window
  
• Click 'Add a Non-Steam Game to my Library'
  
• Click 'Browse'
  
• Navigate to your Forces of Corruption .exe and select it*
  
• Find the new entry in your Library and right click it
  
• Select 'Properties'
  
• Change the title and add STEAMMOD=<insert your mod's ID number here> to the target**

*The game's .exe is located in your steam install at steamapps\common\Star Wars Empire at War\corruption\StarWarsG.exe - if you do not know where your steam library is, just right click on the game in your steam library, select 'Properties', then select 'Local Files', and finally click 'Browse'.

**To find a mod's ID number, find the mod on the Steam Workshop website and look at the URL. The number at the end is the ID number. For example, click here to view the Fall of the Republic url. Its ID number is '1976399102'.

Adding Custom Art

First, you'll want a 600x900 .png image for cover art, and any widescreen image for a background. Examples are provided in the first section's download link.

Adding cover art:

• Open your library's home screen
  
• Find your mod with no artwork and right click on it
  
• Hover over 'Manage'
  
• Click 'Set Custom Artwork'
  
• Navigate to your image and select it

Adding a background:

• Select your mod in the Steam Library
  
• Right click on the blank area above the mod's title
  
• Select 'Set Custom Background'*
  
• Navigate to your background image and select it

*Note that you can select 'Set Custom Logo' too to add a logo to replace the standard text.

Creating Desktop Shortcuts

To Add a Shortcut From Your Steam Library:

• Right click on your mod's entry in the Steam Library
  
• Hover over 'Manage'
  
• Click 'Add Desktop Shortcut'
  
• Find the new shortcut and re-name it
  
• Right click the shortcut and select 'Properties'
  
• Under the 'Web Document' tab click on 'Change Icon'
  
• Navigate to the .ico file you want to use and select it*

To Add a Shortcut From Your Game Files:

• Navigate to your game's install**
  
• Right click on StarWarsG.exe and hover over 'Send To'
  
• Click on 'Desktop (Create Shortcut)'
  
• Find the new desktop icon and right click on it
  
• Select 'Properties'
  
• Under the 'Shortcut' tab, add " STEAMMOD=<insert ID number here>" at the end of the target**
  
• Under the same tab, select 'Change Icon'
  
• Navigate to the .ico file you want to use and select it*

*To create a custom .ico file, first create a transparent 256x256 .png of the icon, then go to https://www.icoconverter.com to get it converted.

**Reference the footnotes for the second section if you need to know how to find your mod's ID number.

Access Your Mods Through Rainmeter

An excellent way to set up desktop shortcuts that don't look terrible is with Rainmeter. I personally use the Honeycomb skin for all my app shortcuts. Provided below is a download link for all of my Honeycomb icons, which includes amber and green icons for Fall of the Republic and Thrawn's Revenge.

Click here to download.[drive.google.com]

To create a new Honeycomb shortcut, open its folder within the Rainmeter/Skins folder (in My Documents by default). Add the icon image you want to @Resources/Images. Copy and paste one of the folders within the Honeycomb folder and rename it. Then open the folder and edit the config file to change the title, the target for it to launch, and the image for it to use. Here's an example of what it should look like:


Then to enable it you'll want to refresh or restart Rainmeter and then find it in your drop down menu as such:



























Once enabled, it should be on your desktop where you can freely drag it into place.

You can get Rainmeter here...[www.rainmeter.net] ...and you can get Honeycomb here.[visualskins.com]

Thank you for reading!

[Deckardus]

Is there any chance you will make artwork for the Revan's Revenge mod?

[Blacksmith]

Going to have to be more specific than that

[Springtrapstarwars]

cannot open

[BlastoTheFirstHanarSpectre]

---------------------------
Forces of Corruption
---------------------------
Unable to locate the installation path of Star Wars: Empire At War. Cannot launch the Force of Corruption Expansion!
---------------------------
OK
---------------------------
pops up when I try to launch the added thing through Steam this way. Note I have Proton activated on it because am on Linux, if that affects anything

[Darkder]

thanks

[Luigi from LsM]

Ur a god

[× Shawolf]

Thank you, I thought that just changed the shortcut lol. Now I finally have sexy mods .

[Blacksmith]

Yes, right click a custom game in your steam library, select properties, and then click the icon next to the shortcut to change it

[× Shawolf]

Is it possible to change the little icon from Steam?

[TruMediaMix1]

This is encouraging me to revive my personal passion project! <3

I wanted to make a submod of EaWX that's centered around my original space fantasy - Fantaji - but it didn't get too far in terms of progress, sadly. Doesn't help that it all got erased when I had to factory reset my PC recently.