Creating a custom Main Menu Background

In this tutorial you can learn how to create your own Amnesia Main Menu Background, that means the little map (YES, it's a map!) you see when you are in Amnesia's Main Menu!

Step 1 - the Map

Full Conversions

If you are making a map for your Full Conversion, just make a new map and place it in your mod's files. You can place it wherever you want and call it as you wish.

Idea: If you have a "misc" folder, place the map there to declutter your main mod folder - a "main_menu" folder would only contain this map and its cache.

Make sure the map has a PlayerStartArea - that is the Area where the camera will be placed.

Tip: Use light fading and animated StaticObjects to make the menu more lively.

Editing the original map

Start the Level Editor. The map that makes up Amnesia's default background is located in

Amnesia/redist/main_menu/main/Main_menu.map

It'll be different for Mac / Linux users or owners of the Steam version, but I assume you know where your redist-folder is.

Now that you have it opened, you can either do little modifications or a complete new map! Just be sure to not delete the PlayerStartArea! It is your camera view, so if you want to see anything, do not delete it. You can of course adjust it to the place where you want your camera to be, then load up the Main Menu after you've edited the .cfg and see how it looks!

Step 2 - Configuration

To make Amnesia load your map if you've changed its name for example, you need to edit the right config file. It's located here:

Amnesia - The Dark Descent\redist\config\menu.cfg

Use the menu.cfg of your FC mod if you are making one.

Open the config file with your preferred text editor (I recommend Notepad++) and search (Ctrl+f) for "BGScene" - you should see this: BGScene = "menu_bg.map". Paste the name of your new background map into the quotes. You don't need to write the file path, the game will find it automatically. The BGCamera settings are for further adjusting your camera view.

If you want to change the menu music, search for this line: Music = "game_menu.ogg". The text in quotes is the sound file for the background music. You can replace it with any file you want, but it has to be an .ogg!

You can edit other settings for the main menu in the file, such as the font. You can see the descriptions for all parameters here.