Custom Scoreboard and Commandmenu Appearance
— |RES|Dragline
Programs you will need:
Notepad
Files to back up before beginning:
###_textscheme.txt in your Sierra\Half-Life\tfc folder.
###_Briefing Text.tga
###_CommandMenu Text.tga
###_Primary Button Text.tga
###_Scoreboard Small Text.tga
###_Scoreboard Text.tga
###_Scoreboard Title Text.tga
###_Team Info Text.tga
###_Title Font.tga
All of the .tga files can be found in Sierra\Half-Life\valve\gfx\vgui\fonts.
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### corresponds to the resolution you play at. If you play at 800x600, copy file 800_textscheme.txt to a backup folder before starting. For the .tga files, either completely remove the files to a different directory or rename them. These are image files the game uses to create the default fonts. If they are present in the gfx\vgui\fonts folder, they will override all the editing you do in the textscheme file. Rename them or remove them.
Love it or hate it, the VGUI "commandmenu" is now an integral part of TF 1.5. The thing is, you might get
pretty sick and tired of looking at the same menus all the time. Fortunately the good folks at Valve made it
pretty easy to modify these menus. Look in your Sierra\Half-Life\tfc directory and you'll notice a bunch of
text files that begin with numbers and end with "textscheme." The numbers correspond to different resolutions,
and these files can be edited to customize your menu appearance. If you play the game at a resolution of
800x600, open up the file named 800_textscheme.txt. The following are examples of entries in the textscheme
file and what they control:
SchemeName
Example: "Primary Button Text"
The sections of the textscheme file are broken up by particular "schemes." The names are more or less self-explanatory, and not all options are available for all schemes.
FontName
Example: "Arial Black"
Any font in your Windows/fonts directory can be used
FontSize
Example: 18
Um, pointsize of the font.
FontWeight
Example: 700
Not available in all schemes. Weight of font, higher numbers more "bold."
These are best dealt with all at once. If you look at a button on the commandmenu during a game, it has some text (such as MAP 2FORT) in a small box. When you place the mouse cursor over a particular box, the colors change to let you know what you have selected, much like a link on a web page. The indicators here can be thought of as foreground ("fg"), which is the text, and background ("bg"), which is the color of the box itself. The numbers here are RGB plus transparency. The first three are RGB, last number is transparency with 255 being completely opaque (non-transparent). Completely opaque white is therefore "255 255 255 255." The color selectors differentiate between regular color (FgColor and BgColor) and mouseover or "armed" color (FgColorArmed and BgColorArmed).
So let's take an example. Say you play in 800x600. You know what the usual commandmenu looks like. Here's the text from 800_textscheme.txt that makes it appear that way:
It's the scheme we all know and love, orangey text that turns white on a mostly transparent black background. So now let's go ahead and make some changes. I'm choosing a font called Blue Highway Bold, which I downloaded somewhere. Use anything that appeals to you in Windows\fonts. I should mention here that the menus are a bit funny. The "Command Menu Text" portion font will change the commandmenu font in-game, but the button appearance is actually controlled by "Default Button Text." For the sake of simplicity I changed them both to the same thing, with slightly different font sizes:
If you have been paying attention, those numbers should shout out "white text that turns green on a gray background." Hmm, sounds sort of weird, but you go be creative on your own. When you're done with the editing, save your new ###_textscheme.txt in the Sierra\Half-Life\tfc folder. Remember that you must have removed the .tga files from Half-Life\valve\gfx\vgui\fonts if you want this to work. Crank up a game and see how you did. Here's a pic of how this one turned out:
Help! How do I get the original menus back?
Delete the ###_textscheme.txt file that you have created. Copy the original (you did back it up, right?) back into Half-Life\tfc. If you lost the original, return all the .tga files to Half-Life\valve\gfx\vgui\fonts (or rename them properly if you took that route).
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