A Comprehensive HUD Tweaking Guide

The heads up display (HUD) encompasses all the elements you see clustered around your screen: the minimap, chat, the crosshair, and even the gun. All these elements can be controlled through the console (default key: ~ ), using what are known as “cvars,” or console variables. These control every possible setting you can configure in Urban Terror. You simply type in the cvar (with a preceding slash), followed by a space, and then the value you wish to set it to. Although many settings can be changed in the Options menu, some can only be changed through the console. Anyway, I will be breaking down every cvar which concerns the HUD, and explaining what it does, as well as recommending a value (though I actually recommend that you try to find a good value on your own).Some of them are rather trivial, but hey, that’s what happens when a game offers so much customizability.

Summary

• The Minimap
• The Team Overlay
• The Top Right
• Gun and Crosshair Stuff
• Chat Settings
• Miscellaneus Stuff

The Minimap

Your minimap is extremely important in team games, as it lets you know the position of your teammates, as well as the map objectives (flags and bomb sites). Furthermore, it gives you a perfect overhead view of the map, which aids in navigation. Therefore, tweaking your minimap is vital to playing well.

cg_mappos
Range: 0-11 (0 disables display of the map)
Default: 1

This cvar controls the position of the map on your screen. There are 11 positions (0 disables the map) to choose from. The following link shows you an image of the 11 positions highlighted.

Some of these will overlap with other objects on the HUD. Position 3 overlaps with chat. Position 1 overlaps with hit and kill messages. Position 6 overlaps with the team overlay. Position 11 overlaps with the crosshair and your central view.

I do not recommend position 11, as it obscures your view, and there is no need to have the map so visible. Position 5 is good, as it obscures nothing useful, and in fact blocks less of your view than the other 10 positions. Keep in mind that the minimap will appear behind all text elements on the HUD. Therefore, in position 1, 3, and 6, the hit messages, chat messages, and team overlay, respectively, appear on top of the map. However, it does impair the readability of those elements, and thus may be distracting. The map will also be harder to interpret with text on top of it. Regardless, I also recommend position 1, as it has served me well. The map is not usually set large enough to interfere with the hit messages (the important bits of those messages are at the end). If you want to use the team overlay (which will be discussed soon), position 7 and 8 may be good, as all the team information will be on the right of the screen. You can use any position you want; these are merely my recommendations. Use what allows you to easily read the map with minimal impairment of your in game view.

cg_mapsize
Range: 0-512 (0 disables display of the map)
Default: 150

This cvar scales the size of the map. Practical range is about 70-200. A small map takes up less screen space, but it becomes harder to tell where a teammate is, as the arrow size becomes disproportionate. It is possible to change the arrow size, but there is a practical limit to how small you can get the arrows. I recommend using the default value. I personally use 125, which is a bit smaller than the default of 150. There’s no particular reason for this, it’s just something I’ve used for a long time.

cg_mapalpha
Range: 0-1 (incremental values)
Default: 0.7

This cvar controls the transparency of the map. 1 is opaque, 0 is transparent. 0 will remove the map completely, but leave arrows and flags visible. I recommend the default value, as it is a good mix between being able to see the details of the map, while also not making the map difficult to see through. If you have your map in a position where visibility is either a concern or not an issue (such as position 5), you may want to adjust transparency accordingly. A higher map size may be accompanied by a lower alpha value. See the following link for a comparison between 0, 0.7, and 1.

cg_arrowscale
Range: 0.1-???
Default: 3

This cvar controls how large the arrows are in relation to the map. The arrow size will scale with the map, and remain in proportion. However, with a larger map, the arrows may seem too large. There does not seem to be a limit on this value, and indeed you can have the arrows fill the entire screen. Practical range is about 1-3. I’ve always used 2, because I find 3 is too big. Your own arrow will be larger than your teammates’ arrows, which is where this complaint stems from. At arrowscale 3, your arrow can obscure teammates’ arrows. However, it’s all preference, and if you want to find your position quickly on the map, a larger arrow size can be helpful. The flags and the medic icons do not change when you alter arrowscale, so even if you have very small arrows, you can still see medics and flags easily. On some maps, such as Eagle, the map scale is extremely distorted, and arrows will be much, much smaller than on normal maps. Some maps have the opposite problem. Therefore, you may find yourself change your arrowscale value occasionally.

cg_maptoggle
Range: 0/1
Default: 1

Simply enables or disables the map. As stated above, disabling the map can be accomplished with other cvars, but this is the official way. Advanced players can incorporate this value into scripts or binds to create a “hold to view” map, similar to the Battlefield series of games. However, I strongly recommend always having the map on, as it is one of your best tools for team games.

The Team Overlay

The team overlay displays team mates, enemies, scores, armband colors, and numbers alive. It is essentially the score tab condensed into an ever-present widget in the bottom right corner of your screen. As with the minimap, what it displays is controlled with several cvars. Unsurprisingly, the team overlay doesn’t function in FFA.:)

cg_drawteamoverlay
Range: 0-3
Default: 1

0 is off.
1 displays the full rosters of each time.
2 displays only your team’s roster and a simple counter for how many enemies are alive.
3 displays a player counter for BOTH teams, and only your name is shown for your team’s roster.

If you want to use the overlay, I recommend using either 2 or 3. 3 is the best, as it is the smallest and easiest to read (especially for large pubs). 2, however, can be useful in matches as you may want to know which of your teammates are alive. Personally I do not use the overlay, and prefer to take a glance at the score page whenever I am curious as to how many enemies and teammates are alive. I find the overlay distracting and not overly beneficial to my style of play. However, many other players DO find the team overlay useful, one of the reasons being it removes the need for a key bound to displaying the score page.

cg_drawteamoverlayscores
Range: 0/1
Default: 1

This toggles the display of scores next to names in the team overlay. I advise turning this off as knowing scores is useless in game. Furthermore, some players may find seeing their score constantly is detrimental to their gameplay, as they focus on their score too much. Finally, having scores off shrinks the size of the overlay a tiny bit. Put simply, there is no gameplay-related reason to have scores displayed on the overlay.

The Top Right

The top right of the screen is home to several items: FPS/ping, team scores, the timer, and the wave respawn delay.

cg_drawteamscores
Range: 0/1
Default: 1

Controls the display of the team scores. Quite honestly, there’s no reason to turn this off. It’s always important to know the score of the teams, as tactics will alter depending on how many rounds there are to “play” with, and how many rounds are left to be played. In CTF, the bars flash when a team’s flag is not safe in its base.

cg_drawfps
Range: 0-2
Default: 1

This setting toggles the display of the FPS and ping meter. 0 will disable both the FPS display and the ping display. Setting this to 1 causes the framerate counter to be updated once every second or so. Setting it to 2 will update the counter much more quickly. The ping display updates at the same rate regardless of the setting. I recommend setting this to 1. I like knowing what ping I’m getting in a server, and if it’s steady or not. This influences my decision on whether to stay in the server or not. I also like to know my FPS, because if I’m getting lower than normal FPS, I know to reboot my machine. However, in some situations, it may be detrimental to your gameplay to have this item enabled. For example, in a match, if you’re getting a lousy ping or are playing on a map which is difficult for your system to render in a timely manner, there’s nothing you can do about that! Focusing on the bad stats displayed here will only hurt your ability to play.

cg_drawtimer
Range: 0/1
Default: 1

This toggles the display of the in game clock. As with the team scores, there’s no reason to have this off. It’s always good to know how much time is left in the game, as well as in the round (if you’re playing a round-based gametype). This cvar also controls the display of wave respawn delays. Most European CTF servers run with wave respawn on, while North American servers tend to not use wave respawns. But it’s not like this matters, since you’re leaving the timer on…right?!

cg_lagometer
Range: 0/1
Default: 1

The lagometer, or net graph, is a complex subject which would take pages to explain. Suffice to say, it is a graphical representation of your connection quality. It can be useful for diagnostic purposes, but as with the ping/FPS display, it can play a negative effect on your psychological game. Furthermore, it’s just plain distracting! Unless you are troubleshooting your connection, keep this off.

Gun and Crosshair Stuff

Of course there are going to be plenty of cvars dealing with your gun and crosshair!

cg_drawhands
Range: 0/1
Default: 1

Despite its name, this cvar controls the display of your gun. The obvious advantage to not drawing your gun on screen is that you gain a lot of your field of view back. The disadvantage, however, is you don’t know what gun you have without paying close attention to cycling your weapons or reading the text in the bottom right. Many players, including myself, also feel weird playing without the gun. I feel the advantage of not drawing the gun is too minor, as most maps are designed so that as long as you keep your gun pointed at head level, you won’t be obscuring any area an enemy could potentially be hiding. Furthermore, it’s not like an enemy will just pop into a blindspot; you will have sufficient warning to adjust your aim accordingly to see your target. There are two more advantages, however! The first is no muzzle flash. The muzzle flash can be potentially crippling in close combat, as your view of the enemy will be obscured by large flashes of light. These situations are quite rare, and can be solved by a silencer, but it is one of the primary reasons cited by players for choosing to not draw the gun. The other advantage is a very small boost in framerate on older hardware, as the gun is fairly complex to render. Again, though, I think there are better ways around this problem than disabling the gun from being displayed. Dropping the resolution down a notch or lowering the detail level will have a much bigger affect on FPS than the gun. For most players, I recommend keeping this cvar at the default value of 1, though I do suggest everyone try playing without the gun for a few maps just to see if it improves/worsens gameplay.

cg_gunsize
Range: 0/1
Default: 0

Despite what I said above, I think the default gun size is much too large. Luckily there’s a cvar to change that! Setting cg_gunsize to 1 will make the gun smaller by a noticeable amount, which gives back some of the visual field. There’s really no reason to use 0, unless you really like the gun models!

cg_hudweaponinfo
Range: 0-2
Default: 0

This cvar controls the ammo information in the bottom right. 0 displays the bullets left in your current magazine, an icon of a magazine, and how many magazines you have left. 1 displays your weapon’s name but removes the icon. 2 adds the icon back and keeps the weapon name. I recommend using 0, as it’s not really important to know what your gun’s name is (you’ll learn them by sight quickly!), unless you are playing without the gun displayed. In that case I recommend using 2, as the removal of the magazine icon just looks weird.:P

cg_drawcrosshair
Range: 0-13
Default: 11

What crosshair do you want to use? First off, 0 disables the display of your crosshair. I’m not going to go over every single crosshair and list its pros and cons, since that is beyond the scope of this guide. I will, however, recommend a few.

7 is the one I use. It’s a cross shape with a dot in the middle. The arms of the cross move outward when firing the gun to indicate spread. Its size makes it easy to find compared to the oft-recommended dots, but the dot in the middle still allows for pinpoint shooting. The spread indicator, meanwhile, keeps your spamming in check.

11 is a large cross with a dot in the middle. The arms are much longer than with 7. It’s perhaps a good beginner’s crosshair as it shows spread and is easy to see. 10 is identical except it has no dot. 9 is identical to 10 except its reaction to spread is much smaller in magnitude. 12 is identical to 11 but has no top arm.

13 is the recommended dot crosshair. It does not show spread and is 2×2 pixels in size regardless of the value of cg_crosshairsize. Very small but this is claimed by many to make aiming easier. I don’t recommend it for a newcomer, as you should learn about spread first. For advanced players, however, it may be beneficial. I personally tried the dot for several weeks and initially thought it helped my aim, but upon switching back to 7, I found out this was probably just a random effect I observed the first day I tried it. I believe most other players in top clans use the dot, however.

cg_crosshairsize
Range: 10 – ???
Default: 20

Controls the size of your crosshair. Does not apply to crosshair 13. I like the default of 20. The scalar (meaning they have only one size at which they are displayed without inter/extrapolation) crosshairs will scale in both dimensions, which results in some pretty messed up looking crosshairs at higher values. Vector crosshairs (which can be reproduced at any size without distortion and inter/extrapolation) are limited in how big they can get, but will only expand in the intended dimensions. Crosshair 10, for example, is a vector crosshair and only the arms change in length. 7 is a scalar crosshair, and the arms and dot will expand vertically and horizontally. This isn’t really important, because you really shouldn’t use a bigger crosshair size. If you want a big crosshair, use 10 or 11. If you want a small crosshair, use the dot. If you want a medium crosshair, use 7. If you’re on a really big monitor you might want to increase the value slightly, but otherwise, I don’t see any benefit to changing this value.

cg_drawcrosshairnames
Range: 0/1
Default: 1

Draws your teammate’s name and health next to the crosshair when you aim at them. Very useful! Do not turn off!

cg_crosshairnamestype
Range: 0-3
Default: 3

This cvar controls where the above information appears relative to the crosshair or player model. 0 disables the display of said information. 1 draws it above the player’s head in a fixed location. 2 draws it below the crosshair in a fixed location. 3 draws it above the crosshair in a fixed location. 4 draws it in the bottom left of the screen, in small text, in a fixed location. The health bar is replaced with text.

cg_crosshairnamessize
Range: 0-1
Default: 0.3

This controls the size of the teammate information. 0 is off, 0.1 is very small, 0.3 is default, and above that it starts to get very large. I like the default value of 0.3 and see no reason to change it. This does not affect the size of the text with cg_crosshairnamestype 4.

cg_crosshairrgb
Range: <0-1> <0-1> <0-1> <0-1>
Default: “1 1 1 1”

This controls the color of the crosshair. There are 4 values. The first 3 are RGB (red green blue), and the last is the transparency. There are 16777216 possible colors. This is known as 8 bit color. We will ignore transparenc, since it’s not important for the crosshair (you want a solid crosshair). So keep the 4^th value at 1. Remember to use quotes, as we are dealing with spaces in the value!

“ 1 1 1 1” is white. “1 0 0 1” is red. “0 1 0 1” is green. “1 0 1 1” is purple. See how it works yet? 0 is no color, and 1 is full color. “0 0 0 1” is black, and “1 1 1 1” is white. You are mixing 3 colors to produce one final color. It gets a bit trickier when you want to go beyond 1’s and 0’s. There are 256 increments for each value, so we’re going to be dealing with decimals. If you have an 8 bit color number (for example 124 189 72, which is an olive-y color), you have to change it into a decimal value. What you do is divide each number by 256. That’s it! Now you’ve got your color for the crosshair. Our example color would become 0.48 0.74 0.28 if we round it to 2 decimal places. Enter cg_crosshairrgb “0.48 0.74 0.28 1” and you get an olivey color crosshair.

Here is a color chart if you’re like me and learned about colors by mixing paint. Red + green = yellow wtf? Well red and green LIGHT make yellow, and that’s what game programmers consider.

http://www.web-source.net/216_color_chart.htm

cg_crosshairfriendrgb
Range: <0-1> <0-1> <0-1> <0-1>
Default: “1 0 0 1”

Same as above, except it controls the crosshair color when you aim at teammates.

cg_scopergb
Range: <0-1> <0-1> <0-1> <0-1>
Default: “0 0 0 1”

Same rules as above, again. Scope color when not aimed at teammates.

Cg_scopefriendrgb
Range: <0-1> <0-1> <0-1> <0-1>
Default: “1 0 0 1”

Same as above. Scope color when you aim at teammates.

cg_scopering
Range: 0/1
Default: 1

Draws a ring around the center of your scope which indicates how much movement penalty you have with the SR8. When you are not perfectly still, your shots will be inaccurate. Quite inaccurate if you’re moving a lot or jumping. When you’re jumping, there is a double ring to indicate your shot will be way off. I don’t see much use for this, since I know not to move a lot when I’m sniping. It’s not a difficult concept to train yourself in. There’s no advantage to knowing how inaccurate your shot will be, because it will be quite inaccurate if you’re moving for more than a few milliseconds, and extremely inaccurate if you’re jumping. However, a beginning sniper might want this so they can see instantly how inaccurate their shot will be.

cg_scopesr8
Range: 0-3
Default: 0

Similar to cg_drawcrosshair, except for your SR8. 0 is a small colored cross in the middle, with the arms being solid black. 1 is the same as 0, except the arms are slightly shorter but also colored. 2 is like 1 without a top arm, and the remaining 3 arms do not meet in the center. The center of the crosshair is blank. 3 is a simple colored dot. I use 1, but 3 is also good. 2 is quite difficult to use in my opinion, but is similar to many other games’ sniper scopes. 0 and 1 are essentially interchangeable, as the only difference is purely cosmetic.

cg_scopeg36
Range: 0-3
Default: 0

Same as above, but for G36.

cg_scopepsg
Range: 0-3
Default: 0

Same as above, but for PSG1.

Chat Settings

Distraction or entertainment? Whatever it is, there are enough bloody settings!

cg_chatheight
Range: 0-28
Default: 4

Controls how many lines of chat will be displayed at once. I believe it’s based on resolution, but 28 seems to be the maximum for the few resolutions I tried. Practical range is about 2-7 anyway. Higher values cause the top of the chat area to be raised, because chat is not allowed to run into the health meter. It will, however, overlap with the weapon messages if you have the value too high. 0 disables the display of messages, but not the message beep. I like the default value of 4.

cg_chattime
Range: 0-???
Default: 4000

How long, in milliseconds, each message remains in the chat area. 0 disables the display of messages, but not the beep. I recommend keeping this at the default value, because you can always read old messages in the console.

cg_msgheight
Range: 0-8
Default: 4

Same as the chat height, but this is for the hit/kill/death messages in the top left. Setting this to 0 disables the display of messages. For some reason setting this to 0 and then to another value, leaves the messages disabled (so don’t experiment around with this!) until you reload the map. Not sure why. Not that you should set this to 0, because it’s very important! I like the default value once again.

cg_msgtime
Range: 0-???
Default: 4000

Same as the chat time, but for the hit/kill/death messages. Suffers from the same bug as cg_msgheight, so don’t set it to 0. 4000 is a good value for this.

cg_teamchatsonly
Range: 0/1
Default: 0

Disables “mm1” (or global chat), and only allows “mm2” (team chat) to be displayed. This also affects the console, so you will not see ANY global chat. This is useful for pubs where there are a bunch of people spamming retarded crap. Also good in matches if you can’t control yourself from responding to the other team’s trash talking. Does not prevent the sending of global chat, however. If you want to disable chat while also disabling the chat beep, set this to 1 and then set cg_chatheight to 0.

cg_novoicechats
Range: 0/1
Default: 0

Controls whether or not you hear the sounds when someone uses a radio message. Setting it to 1 is good if there are radio spammers on your team and you’re sick of hearing “GET OUR FLAG BACK.” For some reason “cg_novoicetext” is non-functional.

cg_standardchat
Range: 0/1
Default: 0

Standard chat is what Quake III Arena uses. Chat messages are combined with the kill/death/hit messages in the top left. Everything is printed in white and in a different font. It’s a style choice, but this is pretty ugly, not to mention clustered. Although you gain a bit of visual field back by combining the two message areas into one, chat messages become lost very easily in the sea of hit messages. O f course the chat is not exactly useful in a pub (stupid spam) or a match (VOIP is used instead), but then you could just turn off the chat area with cg_chatheight 0. So this really comes down to whether you prefer the bland styling of cg_standardchat 1 over the colorful cg_standardchat 0. Obviously I don’t.;)

cg_showbullethits
Range: 0-2
Default: 2

Controls the display of hits in the top left message area. 0 disables hits being shown (you only see kill and death messages). 1 displays hits. 2 displays hits and how much damage each hit caused. I can spout off how much each weapon does to each body part, but I still play with this set to 2. If you use the SPAS, you definitely need this at 2, because that way you can laugh at how random the damage is. 4%…68%…4%… Setting this to 0 isn’t necessarily bad, since it doesn’t really matter where you hit someone; you have to shoot them again if they’re not dead! Getting feedback on where you’re shooting at is a good way of improving your aim, though.

Miscellaneous Stuff

This stuff doesn’t really belong to a specific category.

cg_speedo
Range: 0/1
Default: 0

Shows your speed in the bottom right corner. The speed is measured in Quake Units per second. A player model is 72 Quake Units high. The default “running” speed is 220 qu/s. Sprinting is 340 qu/s. 700-1000 qu/s is a reasonable speed when circle jumping. There are 4 numbers on the speedometer: instantaneous XY, XY max, instantaneous XYZ, XYZ max. XY is your on the horizontal plane, with XYZ also includes the vertical plane (jumping/falling). The number on the left is your instantaneous speed (current speed), while the number in parentheses is your maximum attained speed during the session. The session is reset when the map changes or when you toggle the speedometer off and then on again. The session begins when you enable the speedometer. The speedo is important in jump maps, because some jumps are only possible with a minimum XY speed. I don’t use the speedo in regular games or matches, but if I happened to be working on my jumping technique, I certainly would.;)

cg_fov
Range: 90-110
Default: 90

Perhaps the most controversial cvar discussed here. You’ll hear many differing opinions on this, but here’s how I see it. 90 is best for seeing targets easily. 110 is best for increasing your visual field. Values above 90 will “pack” more of the game onto your screen. Higher values make everything besides your static HUD elements smaller, including your gun. The crosshair doesn’t change size. Player models, map models, buildings, structures, etc. become smaller with the tradeoff being you can see more at once. 110 gives you the best visual field, but again, things are quite a bit smaller. You are trading aiming ability for visual awareness. I personally use 100, because I don’t feel I play as well as 110. 90 is just too big for me and limits my visual field too much for my taste. I recommend playing around with this value until you find a value that allows you to aim well but also gives you good vision. There’s nothing wrong with dropping to 90 when you’re playing a limited position (such as defending the pillars on Turnpike) in order to benefit from easier to aim at players. There’s no right or wrong value, but I don’t recommend sticking it on 110 without ever trying a lower value like105 or 100. For the record, 100 doesn’t feel like it’s limiting my ability to spot enemies.

For reference purposes, here is my HUD in game:

(Obviously I just jumped in the server for a second; I certainly would not allow a 1:24 score!)

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