Need Assistance With HL2 Custom Colored HUD

[Lazarus]

Been trying to change the default colors used in HL2's HUD. Managed to change the color of the text used in the ammo, health, and suit energy counters ( found these in the clientscheme.res file ), but can't seem to find the .res file that determines the default yellow color used by the targeting reticle. Below is a link to a screenshot for reference:

http://i869.photobucket.com/albums/ab25 ... tomHUD.jpg

Anyone know which .res or .cfg files contain the color scheme for the targeting reticle? Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[SM Sith Lord]

I achieved this by over-ridding the color values in the PaintBackground method of my VGUI panels, which is a very shitty and expensive way to recolor things. I'll be following this thread also hoping for an enlightening response.

[Major Banter]

1. NO NEED TO SHOUT IN THREAD TITLE

2. I spent, what, 5 seconds looking for this? It Google is your friend, use it.

http://www.bullseyecrosshairs.com/hl2sites1.shtm

"The brackets are in a file called hl2crosshairs.ttf"

Obviously some of it will be out of date;

" For Single Player, both files are located in this resource folder:

Steam\SteamApps\youraccountname\half-life2\hl2\resource"

You'll now find this under common/half-life2 but aside from that, nothing has changed. Stroll uses it and works fine.

[Lazarus]

1. NO NEED TO SHOUT IN THREAD TITLE

2. I spent, what, 5 seconds looking for this? It Google is your friend, use it.

http://www.bullseyecrosshairs.com/hl2sites1.shtm

"The brackets are in a file called hl2crosshairs.ttf"

Obviously some of it will be out of date;

" For Single Player, both files are located in this resource folder:

Steam\SteamApps\youraccountname\half-life2\hl2\resource"

You'll now find this under common/half-life2 but aside from that, nothing has changed. Stroll uses it and works fine.

1: My apologies for utilizing all caps in the thread title. It certainly wasn't my intention to violate any forum etiquette.

2: I am well aware that "google is my friend." This just seemed like an appropriate venue to ask what I hoped would be a quick and easy question to answer. Again, if this violates some forum etiquette, I apologize.

3: Thank you for the excellent reference to "The Bullseye". It has most of the info I need.

[Lazarus]

All right, got the custom colored HUD functioning in Half-Life 2, but can't seem to get it working for Episodes 1 and 2, which keep using the default yellow color scheme. Tried the following:

1: Placed copies of my modified clientscheme.res file into Episodes 1 and 2's resource folders. There were no clientscheme.res files in these folders to begin with, so I assumed that the game was referring to the "original" clientscheme.res file in the hl2\resource folder.

2: Renamed the clientscheme.res files in each of the episodes resource folders ( e.g. ep1_clientscheme.res ) Created autoexec.cfg files with the following command lines, which were placed in each episodes cfg folders:

exec ep1_clientscheme.res ( for episode 1 )
exec ep2_clientscheme.res ( for episode 2 )

Not certain how to proceed from here. I'm also running into an issue where the game defaults to a 1280 x 1024 resolution every time I start the game, regardless of what resolution I set it to in the Options menu. My monitor and graphics card will easily support 1920 x 1440, the game just refuses to save the setting. I've tried adding the following command line in the Steam Library Launch Options window, but it had no effect:

-w 1920 -h 1440 ( also tried -width 1600 -height 1200 )

I considered adding the aforementioned to the config.cfg file, but I'm not certain what the correct syntax is ( i.e. I doubt that it's -w 1920 -h 1440 ).

[Major Banter]

1: My apologies for utilizing all caps in the thread title. It certainly wasn't my intention to violate any forum etiquette.
2: I am well aware that "google is my friend." This just seemed like an appropriate venue to ask what I hoped would be a quick and easy question to answer. Again, if this violates some forum etiquette, I apologize.
3: Thank you for the excellent reference to "The Bullseye". It has most of the info I need.

1 & 2; not to worry, you weren't to know. Thank you for your apology, nice to see someone with a mature attitude. Turns out regarding 2, I owe you an apology - something's up.

Oh and 3 - you're welcome!

Right so, I've done some digging. Before you get into complex searches for answers including some rather wacky path changes - everything uses clientscheme.res - we need to look at the basics.

Here's my modified clientscheme.res in Half Life 2; Episode 2 (path hl2/ep2/resources, as you'd expect)



Oh dear. Well that's not what I was after. Let's try it in Stroll, my mod.



Well that's interesting. It works.

My only assumption is that in steampipe's conversion from GCF to VPK, certain filetypes were prevented from being overridden. Now I haven't gone into the VPKs to check if anything has changed regarding paths but I suspect it hasn't; you probably cannot change the HUD in vanilla HL2 and Episodes any more. Feel free to check the VPKs but there isn't a magic bullet from changing file names, sorry

Mods? Work absolutely fine. So if I were you, get a mod on the go if it's important!

Not sure about the resolution thing - what have you been fiddling with? Major changes to the game files can often cause a reset to the options but not every single time you reboot the game. That's unusual. Have you changed over to a 16:9 res in-game instead of 4:3?

[Lazarus]

My only assumption is that in steampipe's conversion from GCF to VPK, certain filetypes were prevented from being overridden. Now I haven't gone into the VPKs to check if anything has changed regarding paths but I suspect it hasn't; you probably cannot change the HUD in vanilla HL2 and Episodes any more. Feel free to check the VPKs but there isn't a magic bullet from changing file names, sorry.

Actually, I didn't have much difficulty editing vanilla HL2's HUD color scheme ( once I knew which .res file to change ). Here's a screenshot:

I opened up the ep1_pak_directory.vpk file with GCFScape, and found a resource folder with the clientscheme.res file that ep1 uses. Near as I can determine, it's identical to the one that the vanilla HL2 uses. Just for the hell of it, I extracted the .res file, made the same modifications I did to HL2's clientscheme.res and dropped it in ep1's resource folder. Naturally, it didn't work

What's odd is that ep1 is using the same custom crosshair I downloaded from "The Bullseye". That custom True Type font file is installed in the hl2\resource folder, not ep1's resource folder, so why does ep1 refer to that custom .ttf file and not the clientscheme.res file I modified?

Not sure about the resolution thing - what have you been fiddling with? Major changes to the game files can often cause a reset to the options but not every single time you reboot the game. That's unusual. Have you changed over to a 16:9 res in-game instead of 4:3?

The only files I've been fiddling with are the clientscheme.res ( edited color schemes ) the halflife2.ttf file ( replaced by custom crosshair ), and one change to the config.cfg to disable the brackets that surround the crosshair ( hud_quickinfo "0" ). I'm using an old CRT monitor, so my aspect ratio is set to 4:3 by default.