Team Fortress 2 Strategy

What is a HUD?

A HUD, also known as a Heads Up Display, is everything that is contained on your screen when you play, including the health counter, ammo counter, ‘charge’ bars, and the cap counter.

But why should I use a different HUD?

The default game’s HUD is very basic and excludes many useful features, such as the ability to see the exact health of other people, and this means that you are going to have to use a custom HUD in order to see this. This is especially useful as a medic as it allows you to see when the players that you are healing are fully overhealed. It also removes the useless clutter like the small picture of the class you are playing – I doubt that you’d forget which class you were playing halfway through a life.

So what should I use?

At the moment I can think of 5 custom HUDs that you should consider.

The first is M0res HUD. This is a standard HUD, which is an old favourite – it was one of the first around.

(picture)

The second HUD is the Oxide HUD.This is a relatively new one, and is striking because it is so minimalistic – it is useful for those who just want to concentrate on what is happening, and don’t like cluttered up HUDs.

The last 3 HUDs are very similar. There is Flames’s HUD, which was the one that I used to use.

As well as this there is Povohat’s HUD. This is easy to use as it comes with an installer which also automatically updates your HUD meaning that once this is used, you don’t have to search for the latest version after a big update which breaks it.

The HUD that I currently use is the Community HUD. This is a joint HUD made by Flame and Povohat, but other parts from other HUDs are in there too. It has two different ‘versions’ which can be swapped in game, one of which is like Povohat’s HUD, the other of which is more like Flame’s.

What are all these files, which do I use and where do I put them?

- Use 4×3 for resolutions of 800×600, 1024×768, 1152×864, 1280×960 and 1600×1200.
- Use 5×4 for resolutions of 1280×1024.
- Use 16×9 for resolutions of 1280×720, 1360×768, 1600×900 and 1920×1080.
   – Use 16×10 for resolutions of 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050 and 1920×1200.

Copy and paste the ‘script’ and ‘resource’ folders into your hard drive/program files/steam/steamapps/*accountname*/team fortress 2/tf folder, and click ‘yes’ to merge them.

HELP! Everything isn’t where it should be!

Chances are a new update has been released which has broken it. Go onto the HUD’s website, and download the newest version – remember it might take a day or two for the HUD makers to update it.

But what if I want to make my own?

Flame has a guide to making your own HUD however it is quite complicated and time consuming, so this is suggested only for players who perhaps want to edit a current HUD or feel that non of the custom HUDs are right for them.