TF2 Default Crosshair Info

Some useful and interesting things about how TF2's crosshairs are assigned and used.

This will likely be good information to know if you're modding your HUD.

Purpose

I wanted to customise my TF2 crosshairs, but I wanted to make the design language consistent to how the vanilla game uses them.

I couldn't find much info about how TF2's vanilla crosshairs are assigned, so I thought it'd be useful to someone out there looking for this kind of information.

Standard Crosshairs Information

Default crosshairs

Team Fortress 2's default crosshairs are all part of a single image (sprite sheet), "sprites/crosshairs.vmf", and have their co-ordinates and sized referenced in each weapons' script file.



This was likely done as an optimisation trick at the time, but this means that the crosshairs are fixed, and they scale badly at higher resolutions.

Their co-ordinates are referenced below, for historical sake (note: I'm using the "crosshair" field from the weapon scripts for these values over "autoaim", as I believe those are for the console version of the game).

There are five main crosshairs used throughout TF2 (six if you count no crosshair).

Open Circle, Normal

Sprite Coordinates: 32,32
Sprite Size: 32x32

Description: A large circle with gaps inbetween quadraunts. This conveys that the current weapon's attacks can exceed beyond the crosshair (Rocket Launcher, Minigun, Melee)

Wide Cross

Sprite Coordinates: 64,0
Sprite Size: 32x32

Description: The large, stretched cross conveys precision (Sniper Rifles, Knives).

Dot With Brackets

Sprite Coordinates: 0,0
Sprite Size: 32x32

Description: A dot closed with brackets. This conveys bullet spread (Shotgun, Pistols). It should be noted that this is also TF2's default crosshair, albeit stretched.

Square Bracket

Sprite Coordinates: 0,48
Sprite Size: 24x24

Description: An incomplete rectangle with it's open side facing downwards. This conveys that the weapon held is not for direct combat use, and has a special function (Heavy Food, Spy Sappers).

Open Circle, Large

Sprite Coordinates: 64, 64
Sprite Size: 64x64

Description: A larger variant of the open circle that's only used for Heavy Miniguns.

Large Empty Plus

Sprite Coordinates: 0,64
Sprite Size: 32x32

Description: This crosshair is only used on all of Medic's Medi Guns; it's unwieldiness when aiming hints that it's not for combat use, and it's general shape is associated with medicine.

Alternate Crosshairs Information

Included with the vanilla game are 8 alternate crosshairs that are more for general purpose. They can either be selected in the standard Source Engine options menu, or with a console command (cl_crosshair_file).



I believe all, but one of these alternate crosshairs came from Day of Defeat: Source, but I remain unsure.

Extra info: Unlike the default TF2 crosshairs, each one of these alternate crosshairs are packaged by themselves, instead of being on a single sprite sheet.

Also, some of them also have additional frames for weapon recoil, although I don't believe they're used in TF2. I've listed it anyway, just in case.

crosshair1

Frames: 11
Description: Open plus with a dot.

crosshair2

Frames: 11
Description: Open plus (T) with a dot.

crosshair3

Frames: 1
Description: Closed circle.

crosshair4

Frames: 1
Description: Thin X.

crosshair5

Frames: 1
Description: Thick dot.

crosshair6

Frames: 11
Description: Plus without a dot. It's a copy of crosshair1, but loses it's dot in the alpha channel (likely due to being set to use Eight Bit Color and an extra "Unused" flags in it's VMT).

crosshair7

Frames: 1
Description: Plus without gap, similar to a common Quake Live crosshair.

default

Frames: 1
Description: Dot with Brackets; this is a TF2 stock crosshair scaled larger, but with stretching issues.

Crosshair Colours and Customisation

Most of the information here is taken from /r/TF2ScriptHelp's wiki: https://www.reddit.com/r/tf2scripthelp/wiki/crosshairs

cl_crosshair_file

This is your crosshair's basic appearence. Two quotation marks "" is TF2's default, per-weapon, crosshairs; naming it anything else (e.g. crosshair7) will change it to that. Note that for some bizarre reason, there is a crosshair called default, so using it won't reset this setting to it's unmodified action.

Crosshair colours

These commands control what colour your crosshair is, using RGB values (0-255).

"200" is default for all these fields:

• Red: cl_crosshair_red
  
• Green: cl_crosshair_green
  
• Blue: cl_crosshair_blue

cl_crosshair_alpha

This handles transparency; lower values are more see-through (0-255). Default is "200".

cl_crosshair_scale

The size of your crosshair. Note that unless the crosshair you're using is a font (not a default setting), your crosshair will rescale itself stretched. Default size is "32".

Example CFG

This is what TF2's default settings look like, if you wish to modify it in a config file's script.

// Crosshair Settings

// Crosshair Style
// If not blank, the selected crosshair is used universally 

cl_crosshair_file "" 			// TF2's default per-weapon crosshair mode (not to be confused with the HL2-like one called "default") Def. "" (empty quotes)
cl_crosshair_scale "32.0" 		// Crosshair Size Def. 32.0

// Crosshair Colour
// Works for both default and custom font crosshairs; RGB values, 0-255
cl_crosshair_red 	"200" 		// Red 				Def. 200
cl_crosshair_blue 	"200" 		// Blue 			Def. 200
cl_crosshair_green 	"200"	 	// Green 			Def. 200
cl_crosshairalpha 	"200"		// Transparency 	Def. 200		[Doesn't work on my end; possibly a CS:S only command?]

TL;DR Standard Crosshair By Type

Unless specifically mentioned, the weapon crosshair is likely going to be one of these types:

Explosives

Open Circle

Hitscan

Dot with Brackets

Melee

Open Circle

Scout Crosshairs

Scatterguns: Dot With Brackets
Pistols: Dot With Brackets
Drinks (Crit-a-Cola, Bonk): Square Bracket
Melee: Open Circle

Special Cases

The Flying Guillotine: Open Circle
Mad Milk: Open Circle

Soldier Crosshairs

Rocket Launchers: Open Circle
Shotguns: Dot With Brackets
Melee: Open Circle

Special Weapons

Soldier Banners: Open Circle
The Righteous Bison: Dot With Brackets

The banners defies the convention of using the sideways bracket, as they feature special functions.

Pyro Crosshairs

Flame Throwers: Open Circle
Flare Guns: Dot with Brackets
Melee: Wide Cross

Special Cases

The Gas Passer: Open Circle
The Thermal Thruster: Wide Cross
The Hot Hand: Open Circle

The Hot Hand is an exception to Pyro's melee crosshairs, as it behaves wildly different compared to it's Fire Axes.

Demoman Crosshairs

Grenade Launchers: Open Circle
Stickybomb Launchers: Open Circle
Melee: Open Circle

Heavy Crosshairs

Miniguns: Open Circle
Shotguns: Dot with Brackets
Heavy's Food (Sandvich): Square Bracket
Melee: Open Circle

Special Cases

Heavy Melee Default Reskins: Wide Cross

Alternative reskins to the Heavy's Fists, such as the Ham Shank and Frying Pan, use a different weapon crosshair over the default weapon. This is likely an oversight.

Engineer Crosshairs

Shotguns: Dot with Brackets
Pistols: Dot with Brackets
Melee: Open Circle

Special Cases

The Rescue Ranger: Open Circle
The Pomson 6000: Dot with Brackets

The Wrangler: Wide Cross
The Short Circuit: Wide Cross

Build & Destroy Menus: No Crosshair
Building Placement: Square Bracket

Medic Crosshairs

Syringe Guns: Dot with Brackets
Medi Guns: Empty Plus
Melee: Wide Cross

Special Cases

Crusader's Crossbow: Dot with Brackets

Sniper Crosshairs

Sniper Rifles: Wide Cross
Bows: Dot with Brackets
SMGs: Dot with Brackets
Melee: Open Circle

Special Cases

Jarate: Open Circle

Spy Crosshairs

Revolvers: Wide Cross†
Sappers: Square Bracket
Knives: Wide Cross
Disguise Kit: No Crosshair

† - The Ambassador resizes your current crosshair size dynamically

Credits

CLANG-CLANG: Writer

Related Stuff

/r/tf2scripthelp wiki

Reddit wiki article about crosshair console variables. https://www.reddit.com/r/tf2scripthelp/wiki/crosshairs

TF2 HUD Crosshairs GitHub

Features multiple popular HUD crosshairs as one font file.
https://github.com/Hypnootize/TF2-Hud-Crosshairs

CFG.TF Weapon-specific crosshairs

Allows relatively easy crosshair customisation on a weapon-by-weapon type basis.
https://cfg.tf/tools/crosshairs/

TF2 HUD Editor

Allows tweaking of, and automatic updates to common HUDs using a GUI.
https://www.editor.criticalflaw.ca/

Youtube - TF2 - Extract Weapon Script files in 2 minutes

Shows how to extract and convert CTX weapon files to TXT for editing crosshairs, by Fakeman.

Note: The tool only works in Command Prompt. If you're using PowerShell, you'll need to type in cmd first in order to get these commands working.
https://youtu.be/4LYMrFEQ8Fw

HUD Development In HL2:DM Steam Guide

Although aimed at Half-Life 2: Deathmatch, this Steam guide gives a good outline of HUD modding for all Source Engine games.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=161652635

Extra: Modding Info

This section is sporadic, as this is info I've mostly gathered online at random.

Extracting Vanilla Crosshairs

If you wish to view the stock crosshairs from the game files, you'll need:

• GCFScape: .vpk viewer and extractor
  
• VTFEdit: .vtf tool

Default crosshairs are stored as texture files. TF2 stores the crosshair textures (VTF) and their Engine faterial files (VMT) are stored into two separate VPK archives.

Directories

If you want to extract the default files, you'll need to take them out of the following paths:

tf2_textures_dir.vpk

These are the .vtf files (images used)

materials\sprites\crosshairs.vtf - Default crosshairs
materials\vgui\crosshairs\*.vtf - Alternate crosshairs

tf2_misc_dir.vpk

These are for the .vmt files (material settings).

materials\sprites\crosshairs.vmt - Default crosshairs
materials\vgui\crosshairs\*.vmt - Alternate crosshairs

Crosshair Scaling

It should be noted as that the vanilla crosshairs are not vector graphics (not font files, in the case of Source 1 HUDs), they scale poorly when stretched. This can be caused by high screen resolutions, or the Ambassador's spread.

While replacing the vanilla crosshairs are possible, sv_pure settings can cause direct crosshair file replacements to not be applied. It's easier (and more compatible) to have new crosshairs in files not used by the vanilla game.

The workaround to this is one of two methods:

1. Use a font character as a crosshair (requires font file).
   
2. Use the HUD to always render the crosshair (see TF2HudEditor for this solution)

Add Hitmarkers

The easiest way to add hitmarkers to TF2 is to use the TF2 HUD Editor to generate a HUD with these enabled (linked above).

Instructions

1. Open the HUD you want to modify.
   
2. Under Crosshair, tick both Enable Crosshair and Toggle Hitmarker.
   
3. Click on the Crosshair colour selector, and make it transparent by setting the Alpha (A) to 0 (see screenshot if you're unsure).
   
4. Click on the Hitmarker colour selector, and choose your preferred colour (I suggest fully red). I highly recommend you make it fully opaque (set Alpha (A) to 255).
   
5. Click Apply Changes, and you're done!

Weapon Scripts Sorted By Default Crosshair Type

These were taken from the unmodified game files, located inside tf2_misc_dir.vpk (in the scripts folder, they're all named as tf_weapon_*.ctx; you'l need to decrypt them to make it human readable & editable as a *.txt).

If a weapon isn't listed here, it's because it's based on another weapon (e.g. The Vaccinator is based on tf_weapon_medigun.txt).

Open Circle

tf_weapon_bat.txt
tf_weapon_bat_fish.txt
tf_weapon_bat_giftwrap.txt
tf_weapon_bat_wood.txt
tf_weapon_bottle.txt
tf_weapon_buff_item.txt
tf_weapon_cannon.txt
tf_weapon_cleaver.txt
tf_weapon_club.txt
tf_weapon_fists.txt
tf_weapon_flamethrower.txt
tf_weapon_grenadelauncher.txt
tf_weapon_jar.txt
tf_weapon_jar_gas.txt
tf_weapon_jar_milk.txt
tf_weapon_katana.txt
tf_weapon_parachute.txt
tf_weapon_parachute_primary.txt
tf_weapon_parachute_secondary.txt
tf_weapon_particle_cannon.txt
tf_weapon_passtime_gun.txt
tf_weapon_pipebomblauncher.txt
tf_weapon_robot_arm.txt
tf_weapon_rocketlauncher.txt
tf_weapon_rocketlauncher_airstrike.txt
tf_weapon_rocketlauncher_directhit.txt
tf_weapon_rocketlauncher_fireball.txt
tf_weapon_shotgun_building_rescue.txt
tf_weapon_shovel.txt
tf_weapon_slap.txt
tf_weapon_spellbook.txt
tf_weapon_stickbomb.txt
tf_weapon_sword.txt
tf_weapon_wrench.txt

Wide Cross

tf_weapon_bonesaw.txt
tf_weapon_breakable_sign.txt
tf_weapon_fireaxe.txt
tf_weapon_knife.txt
tf_weapon_laser_pointer.txt
tf_weapon_revolver.txt
tf_weapon_rocketpack.txt
tf_weapon_sniperrifle.txt
tf_weapon_sniperrifle_classic.txt
tf_weapon_sniperrifle_decap.txt

Dot With Brackets

tf_weapon_charged_smg.txt
tf_weapon_compound_bow.txt
tf_weapon_crossbow.txt
tf_weapon_drg_pomson.txt
tf_weapon_flaregun.txt
tf_weapon_flaregun_revenge.txt
tf_weapon_grapplinghook.txt
tf_weapon_handgun_scout_primary.txt
tf_weapon_handgun_scout_secondary.txt
tf_weapon_mechanical_arm.txt
tf_weapon_pep_brawler_blaster.txt
tf_weapon_pistol.txt
tf_weapon_pistol_scout.txt
tf_weapon_raygun.txt
tf_weapon_scattergun.txt
tf_weapon_sentry_revenge.txt
tf_weapon_shotgun_hwg.txt
tf_weapon_shotgun_primary.txt
tf_weapon_shotgun_pyro.txt
tf_weapon_shotgun_soldier.txt
tf_weapon_smg.txt
tf_weapon_soda_popper.txt
tf_weapon_syringegun_medic.txt

Square Bracket

tf_weapon_builder.txt
tf_weapon_invis.txt
tf_weapon_lunchbox.txt
tf_weapon_lunchbox_drink.txt
tf_weapon_objectselection.txt
tf_weapon_pda_engineer_build.txt
tf_weapon_pda_engineer_destroy.txt
tf_weapon_pda_spy.txt
tf_weapon_sapper.txt

Open Circle, Large

tf_weapon_minigun.txt

Large Empty Plus

tf_weapon_medigun.txt

[idiot 3 alt (7)]

https://youtu.be/DdmNYNkcwKE

[Unseentask]

yeah cl_crosshair_alpha doesn't work because you can adjust the RGB to make it transparent. But in CS2 you choose the colour with some command like crosshair_color 1 and you can change alpha after. valve games are weird sometimes.

[CLANG-CLANG]

@Tizzer I don't believe there's a working console command that disables that behaviour, so the next best thing would be to either add a HUD panel that permanently has a fixed crosshair displaying on your HUD (i.e. not removed via death); or to use an overlay program to display a crosshair over the game window, while disabling the in-game crosshair using "crosshair 0".

I haven't played or modded TF2 for a while, so there's a chance I'm either wrong or forgetting something here.

[Tizzer ☭]

Can i remove the 'recoil expansion' of the crosshair?

[CLANG-CLANG]

No problem!

[Sparktite]

@CLANG OMG WHAT! Yo you just changed my life almost. Think of all the time imma save. Also feels like itll be way more accurate than my raw eyeballs ive gotta assume.
Thank you!

[CLANG-CLANG]

@Spartite On the topic of colour picking, I've found that the "Color Picker" included inside Windows Powertoys to be rather excellent for extracting colours without using an image editor. It not only can give RGB and Hex (web) colour values, it can also quickly generate shades of the same picked colour as well! https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/color-picker

[Sparktite]

Just strolling through and noticed @Lusien talking about orange crosshairs?
Considering theyre probably somewhat transparent this may not be the best method, but it could be tweaked to be almost indistinguishable.

Basically whenever im trying to find a brands color that they dont have in their media documentation or any kind of press kit, ill try to grab a bunch of examples to suck into MS Paint and extract the color from with the eyedropper tool.

Obviously, something like photoshop/gimp would be better, but if all you need is the base color code you can take the RGB values and or hue/sat/lum and throw in any online app like i think adobe color is a free one where you can throw in some numbers and then furter adjust/tweak your color to get it where you want.
Sites like that will then usually provide you with various color codes or methods of storing the color essentially.

Hope this helps since no one seems to have the actual info you need as you mentioned.

[CLANG-CLANG]

No problem :)

[Lusién]

Thank you! I'll look into it.