How to Change Font Types and Sizes for Console and Menus - Source Games

This guide explains the exact steps to modify the console font type and size for Left 4 Dead 2, but probably works for any Source game with a similar file structure.
This guide also shows how to edit other fonts as well.

The Guide

Intro

So you want to change your console font?
Welcome to the club.

For some reason, this wasn't very easy to find a clear guide for, I hope this guide will solve that.

Here's how I've got mine set up after following these steps:

That's with Console Output Text set to Arial, size 20, and I'm on 1080p resolution.

Prerequisites:
- Notepad++

How To:

1 - Navigate to …steamapps/common/Left 4 Dead 2/Left 4 Dead 2.

2 - Open “pak01_dir.vpk” with Notepad++.
(I tried Visual Studio Code first, it broke the file, but Notepad++ doesn’t)
Note: If you mess up the file and the game fails to launch, you can fix this by Verifying the Integrity of your game files.
This is done by right clicking your game in the library - properties - files - verify. (or something like that)

3 - CTRL+F to search for “sourcescheme” and find it.

4 - Changing the Console Output Text.

Scroll down from "sourcescheme" until you find the “ConsoleText” section.

Here you can modify the attributes of the in-game console output text, but with some conditions.

*IMPORTANT* The length of the line you edit must be the same as before, otherwise the game will not start.

E.g. you cannot change the font name from “Lucida Console” (16 characters, quotation marks included) to “Arial” (7 characters, quotation marks included), since they are different lengths.

That said, you can change the name to something like “Arial”xxxxxxxxx (16 characters) or "Segoe UI"xxxxxx(16 characters), and this will actually change the font to what is in the quotations.

It seems like the lines must be equal because the game expects a certain amount of bytes on each line from this vpk, and changing the length means changing the byte count.

4.1 - Change the value of “Tall” to whatever you want, although it doesn’t seem to go larger that somewhere between 20-30.

The default console font size is 10.

4.2 - You can also change the font weight value to your preference.

The default console font weight is 500.

Higher weight = thicker characters.

Here's how it should look (or something similar, idk if our files would be the same, but they probably will be):

5. Additional fonts you may want to edit:

5.1 - Console input text & Server Browser column names.

Section = “DefaultSmall”

Change the values just as you did with the Console Output Text.

5.2 - Server Browser Results Text.

You have to change the name of, or delete, a file called “stubble-bold.vfont” which is located in …steamapps/common/Left 4 Dead 2/Left 4 Dead 2/resource.

Once you have either changed its name or deleted it, you can see changes to the Server Brower results text.

I don’t actually know which section maintains this one, so you might have to try using ‘Replace All' and pray you hit it.

Note that this one will affect your main menu text, as well as text in other areas of the game which used that stubble-bold.vfont file.

Again, if you want to revert back to how it was before, just verify the integrity of your game files.

Good Luck

[Stalker]

actually useful guide, nice :)