Loading Screen Generator

The Loading Screen Generator builds the page players see while they join your RedM server, and wraps it in a resource you can drop into resources. You set the text, the background and the music, watch it in a live preview, and download a zip. The files you pick never leave your browser: they are packed into the zip on your machine.

What it is for

A loading screen is a small web page inside a resource, plus a few manifest lines that tell RedM to show it. Most people grab a template and spend an hour on the HTML. Here the page is written for you, the progress bar is wired to the real loading events instead of a timer, and the manifest is already right for RedM.

Quick start

1. Under Text, set the Title, the Subtitle and the Tips (one per line).
2. Under Background, pick Plain colour, Image or Video. For an image or video press Pick image or Pick video.
3. Optional: turn on Play music and Pick music.
4. Check the preview on the right. The bar and the log line move on their own there.
5. Set the Resource name and press Download resource.
6. Unzip into resources, add ensure <resource name> to server.cfg and restart the server.

Options

Text

Reset in the Text panel puts every setting back to the defaults.

Background

Music

Loading and resource

Your settings are saved in your browser. The picked image, video and music files are not, so pick them again after a reload.

What is in the zip

my_loadscreen/
  fxmanifest.lua
  client.lua            (only with Close it on spawn)
  html/
    index.html
    <your background>   (if you picked one)
    <your music>        (if you picked one)

Media file names are cleaned up on the way in: anything that is not a letter, digit, _ or - becomes _, and the name is cut to 40 characters before the extension. The chips above the code show fxmanifest.lua, html/index.html and client.lua as they will be written.

With the default settings the manifest is:

fx_version 'cerulean'
game 'rdr3'
rdr3_warning 'I acknowledge that this is a prerelease build of RedM, and I am aware my resources *will* become incompatible once RedM ships.'

name 'my_loadscreen'
description 'Loading screen made with fivemad.com/redm/tools/loading-screen'

loadscreen 'html/index.html'
loadscreen_cursor 'yes'
loadscreen_manual_shutdown 'yes'

client_script 'client.lua'

files {
    'html/index.html',
}

A picked background or music file is added to files as html/<name>.

Closing the screen

With Close it on spawn on, the resource keeps the screen up until the player has spawned, then closes it:

-- Generated with fivemad.com/redm/tools/loading-screen
-- loadscreen_manual_shutdown is on, so this resource ends the loading screen itself once the
-- player has spawned (spawnmanager fires playerSpawned).
AddEventHandler('playerSpawned', function()
    ShutdownLoadingScreen()
    ShutdownLoadingScreenNui()
end)

playerSpawned comes from spawnmanager, which the default RedM recipe starts. If your framework spawns the player after a character select instead, change the event in client.lua to the one your framework fires at that point.

With it off, there is no client.lua and no manual shutdown line in the manifest, so the resource does not close the screen itself.

The preview

The preview on the right is the real index.html, with your files loaded from your machine. Because nothing is loading in a browser, the preview adds a fake progress stream and a placeholder log line so you can see the bar move. That extra script is not in the downloaded file; in game RedM sends the real events.

Size

Every file in the resource is downloaded by every player before the screen can show, so a big video means a long black screen first. The page warns you when the background is over 40 MB or the music is over 15 MB. A single image, or a short compressed WebM, is the safe choice.

Tips

• Keep tips short. The tip line wraps at about 60 characters, so a long tip turns into a paragraph.
• Use Darken rather than editing your picture when the text is hard to read.
• Leave Show the cursor on if you keep the mute button, or players cannot click it.

Common mistakes

• The old loading screen still shows. Another resource with a loadscreen line is running. Remove it from server.cfg.
• The screen never closes. Close it on spawn is on but nothing fires playerSpawned (for example spawnmanager is not started). Start it, or change the event in client.lua.
• Only the plain colour shows. You switched the background type after picking a file, or reloaded the page, and the file was dropped. The warning panel under the preview says “Pick a background image or switch to a plain colour” when that happens. Pick the file again before you download.

Limitations

• The page starts the music itself and tries again on the first click if it was blocked. Whether a given client plays it before any click is up to RedM, not the page.
• The text styling is fixed: a serif font, the layout above, your colours. For anything else, edit html/index.html after you download.
• The page cannot run RDR2, so the in-game result is not something it can show you exactly.

Related tools

• server.cfg Generator
• Resource Conflict Checker
• Photo Mode Converter