Ok, lets make a simple crosshair pack with Paint Shop Pro 6.x , and export it to HalfLife.
Firstly, start PSP 5, or 6, whatever you use.
Select: File > New > Width 24, Height 24. 256 Colors 8 Bit.
Second you'll need an easy to use palette:
You can extract one from the image to the right --> |
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Open it in PSP and Select: Colors > Save palette.
You can save it as "Hl-crosshairs-palette.pal" or something in that
direction.
Now open your new image, and select: Colors > Load palette. (So far, so good eh?)
Now you should have an empty 24x24 sized image with a pretty cool palette,
and probably a black background like i have right now.
Lets flood-fill the image with color: 77,77,77. which is the grey color
in the bottom right corner.
When that is done put a blue spot, or red or green, at position 11,11
on the image.
You should have something like this:
on your screen now. |
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Now to keep this tutorial simple we shall make a big + for a crosshair.
Act with me,
Make a line from: | 11,9 to 11,1 | ![]() |
a line from: | 9,11 to 1,11 | ![]() |
from: | 11,13 to 11,21 | ![]() |
and finally: | 13,11 to 21,11 | ![]() |
There you have it,, a basic crosshair. It doesn't get any easyer.
Notice that the un-used strokes at the bottom and right side of the
image are slightly larger than the
top and left. This is simply because these 2 small strokes are NOT
used, so don't put anyhing in there ok?
Now i suppose you'll want to see how it'll look in HalfLife right?
To reduce the time of making a full crosshair palette, we'll just grap
the standard ones,
and replace the pistol crosshair.
Grab this one
the same way you did earlyer: |
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And now carefully place
your blue one over the pistol crosshair, like so: |
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Now save the image as "Windows or os/2 Bitmap *.BMP".
Download this: Sprite Generator.
Which is about 44K, so don't worry about download time.
Unpack the generator and Place the crosshairs.bmp in the same directory
as it.
Run: "sprgen95.bat" and select to Compile the crosshairs.
Note that this info is inside the crosshairs.qc
|
Now place the crosshairs.spr in the: \halflife\valve\sprites\
directory, and run HL... your pistol should now have your very own
crosshair on it.
What if your crosshair doesn't show up?
1: If no crosshair is shown "At All" when you have selected the pistol.
Make sure you allow the crosshairs to be shown. Activate it
with: crosshair "1"
2: If you see your old crosshair, not the new one: backtrack the following:
-Did you indeed save the new Crosshair pack?
-Did the compiler, Compile the "new" Crosshair pack?
-Was the file you placed in: \halflife\valve\sprites\
. called: crosshairs.spr ?
3: If it still doesn't work just recompile it, and overwrite the crosshairs.spr
Now you should have gained a bit of usefull info, im sure you'd like
to modify the other crosshairs now.
In this:
Image, (standard crosshairs) the following locations represent these weapons. |
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(From left to right)
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Unknown, Pistol, Magnum, sniper, Magnum-Zoomed | |
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Shotgun, Hornet-gun | ||||
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Mk-5, Rpg, Gauss, Gluon(O2) | ||
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A-Pistol, A-Magnum, A-Mk-5, A-Shotgun. | ||
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A-Sniper, Sniper-Zoomed | ||||
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A-Sniper-Zoomed. |
Note that all crosshairs are: 24x24 in size.
exept for the Zoomed Snipers, which are: 104 wide, and 16 high.
Well, i guess that should get you going, you know where to find good
crosshairs to copy & paste into
your own customized crosshair pack.
You can change the palette to any colors you like, be creative.
If by chance you ever get bored with making crosshairs, why stop?
there are plenty of other halflife sprites you can easily edit.
Try using <PakExplorer 1.12>
to extract them from the halflife\valve\pak0.pak
and <Sprview> to make a
BMP and QC from them.
If you make anything worthwhile, just let me know.
Enjoy.