Home menu background | Steel Tide Modding Guide

A mod can replace the menu's live battle cuts with an ordered menuBackground.queue. Mix original IDs (flank, sea, winter, raid, landing, rockets, home, nuke) with your own, or list only custom cuts. Each cut lasts 13 seconds.

"menuBackground": {
  "cuts": [{
    "id": "my-mod-night",
    "map": "maps/city.steel-tide-map",
    "camera": { "tx": 24, "ty": 20, "zoom": 1.4 },
    "cameraEnd": { "tx": 30, "ty": 22, "zoom": 1.8 },
    "weather": "rain",
    "minutes": 18,
    "orders": [{ "owner": 0, "tx": 30, "ty": 20 }]
  }],
  "queue": ["my-mod-night", "sea"]
}

Building a scene

List the cut's map under maps as usual. Its placed units and buildings become the scene, without automatic bases or AI; each spawn is a separate side. Place generators to power them. Camera coordinates and attack-move targets are tiles inside the map. minutes holds the light at dawn (0), noon (6), dusk (12) or midnight (18). Omit cameraEnd to hold a fixed view.

Limits

Use at most 16 custom cuts, 32 queue entries, 128 × 128 tiles per map and 200 placed units/buildings. The queue starts at a random cut and repeats in order. The last enabled pack with a usable queue wins; disabling it restores the previous reel. Invalid scenes are skipped. Reduced motion keeps the still background. A background-only pack uses defs: [].

Reference

Home menu background (`menuBackground`)

field	type	required	default	meaning
cuts	cut[]			up to 16 custom live scenes
queue	cut id[]	yes		1–32 cut IDs in repeating order; original IDs: flank, sea, winter, raid, landing, rockets, home, nuke

A custom cut (`menuBackground.cuts[]`)

field	type	required	default	meaning
id	id	yes		unique cut ID beginning with the mod ID and a dash
map	string	yes		a path in this pack’s maps; at most 128 × 128 tiles and 200 placed units/buildings
camera	{ tx, ty, zoom }	yes		opening framing: { tx, ty, zoom }
cameraEnd	{ tx, ty, zoom }			end framing for a 13-second drift; omitted holds camera
weather	clear \| rain \| snow		clear	weather held throughout the cut
minutes	number 0–24		6	held day-cycle time: 0 dawn, 6 noon, 12 dusk, 18 midnight
seed	integer 0–2147483647		1	simulation seed
orders	{ owner, tx, ty }[]			opening attack-move targets for the map’s mobile units, by owner

Camera framing

field	type	required	meaning
tx	number 0–128	yes	horizontal camera centre in tiles, inside the map
ty	number 0–128	yes	vertical camera centre in tiles, inside the map
zoom	number 0.25–4	yes	camera zoom, capped by the menu on small screens

Opening order

field	type	required	meaning
owner	integer 0–7	yes	map spawn index; one opening attack-move per owner
tx	number 0–128	yes	target tile x
ty	number 0–128	yes	target tile y