Fano's General Guide to Improving at TF2

[Soup Nazi]

Interesting. Personally I've never felt inclined to switch from stock minimal hud. But that works pretty well.

[Fano]

Interesting. Personally I've never felt inclined to switch from stock minimal hud. But that works pretty well.

There are many advantages to doing so:

-Bigger damage numbers, with lighter colors so they are easier to see.
-Ability to see the numerical health of all your teammates (and enemies if you're spying) as opposed to just a health cross which you have to visually gauge.
-Ability to install various types of HUD-based crosshairs, which are highly visible compared to the built in ones, they also include additional functionality like flashing when you're low on health.
-Stylized scoreboards, many HUDs include the option to switch between 6v6, 9v9, 12v12, and 16v16 scoreboards depending on the game you're playing.
-Important information is more efficiently highlighted, allowing your to take a quicker glance at your HUD so you can more easily focus on the fight.

Not to mention most HUDs are simply much more nice looking than the default, there's really no reason not to try them out.

[YoullNeverWalkAlone]

I second the usefulness of that HUD. As a medic it has made it much easier to see the health value of my targets and not just the cross, not to mention the shades of the colors make it simpler to see stuff as well. I like the arrangement of the information on the screen. I haven't been able to get the crosshairs to something cool, so I've stuck with the bright colored standard cross I've used

[Larry]

i made the file that you drop the stuff into, cause there wasn't one in the first place, i made sure it was the right config and stuff, i got the HUD files, dropped them into the thing.... and nothing happened, are you suppose to do something to them?

[Bronze Fox]

I third the importance of a custom HUD. I made a topic about it a long time ago,
but I use FrankenHUD and I have thoroughly enjoyed it.

Of course, now I am going to have try Fano's HUD (Garm3n)

[YoullNeverWalkAlone]

i made the file that you drop the stuff into, cause there wasn't one in the first place, i made sure it was the right config and stuff, i got the HUD files, dropped them into the thing.... and nothing happened, are you suppose to do something to them?

The directions for the HUD files are on their website, or in a readme.txt file that comes with them. They do go somewhere different from the config folder, I just don't recall where

[Fano]

i made the file that you drop the stuff into, cause there wasn't one in the first place, i made sure it was the right config and stuff, i got the HUD files, dropped them into the thing.... and nothing happened, are you suppose to do something to them?

The HUD files are completely separate, when you download a HUD you should get two folders, a resource folder, and a scripts folder, these folders both go into you tf/ directory, where you cfg folder (where you made the autoexec.cfg) is.

The autoexec does not do HUD modifications, it only executes any client side commands inside of that file when the game boots ups, it's recommended you restart TF2 after installing a new HUD, if you make changes to the HUD while your game is open (such as enabling a crosshair or use a different scoreboard) you can reload the hud by typing hud_reloadscheme in your console.

[Larry]

ohh, ill try that

[bz]

I've lost track of how many times I've thought how great it would be to have a reverse-medic call button. Great guide, well put together with a lot of good information!

[Soup Nazi]

Well, you convinced me, I'll be trying a custom HUD sometime this week (=
I must congratulate you again for a great and informational post

[Fano]

Well, you convinced me, I'll be trying a custom HUD sometime this week (=
I must congratulate you again for a great and informational post

no problem! let me know if you run into any speed bumps when trying this out, I'm always glad to help.

For the record, anyone that is trying this stuff out can also add me on steam for any questions you may have (profile by my avatar), you may get a quicker response there.

[Soup Nazi]

One question: it seems like the engy mini sentry script plays on all classes

[bluntspoon]

Great post Fano! Changed my HUD to the 4MP version and am loving it. Playing with the netgraph settings also.

[Fano]

One question: it seems like the engy mini sentry script plays on all classes

It does, if you wish to change this you can add the line unbind <key> to the top of all your class.cfg configs, which get executed each time you switch classes, this will delete the bind whenever you play something that isn't engineer, and when you switch to engineer, whatever key you have set for your mini-sentry script will get re-binded.

Alternatively, if you have multiple scripts to manage, you can create a new file and call it reset.cfg and type the line exec reset.cfg at the top of all your class configs, this way you can add all your unbinds and/or rebinds in this file and have it be called each time you switch classes with the added convenience of being able to only have to maintain one file as you add more binds that you find useful.

Great post Fano! Changed my HUD to the 4MP version and am loving it. Playing with the netgraph settings also.

Try the new 7MF version as well! The latest update added the ability to switch between scoreboards with one click in the main menu, hitmarker crosshairs have also been added, which are simply awesome.



Peahats pointed out to me earlier how I left out a lot of other useful scripts for medic, I'll be adding those in a future update, got a lot of homework to catch up on tonight though

[Soup Nazi]

Thanks!