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.

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).


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)


Sprite Coordinates: 64,0
Sprite Size: 32x32

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


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.


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).

Sprite Coordinates: 64, 64
Sprite Size: 64x64

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


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.

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.


Frames: 11
Description: Open plus with a dot.


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


Frames: 1
Description: Closed circle.


Frames: 1
Description: Thin X.


Frames: 1
Description: Thick dot.


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).


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


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

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

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.

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

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

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".

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

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

Open Circle
Dot with Brackets
Open Circle

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

The Flying Guillotine: Open Circle
Mad Milk: Open Circle

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Crusader's Crossbow: Dot with Brackets

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

Jarate: Open Circle

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

† - The Ambassador resizes your current crosshair size dynamically

CLANG-CLANG: Writer

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

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

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

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

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

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

https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=161652635

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

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.

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

These are the .vtf files (images used)

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

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

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

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)

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

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!

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).