Small, not very important detail, but I just wanted to point out that colour coding is to some extent culture based. For example, you mentioned that red was the colour of anger, but in China red is the colour of joy and good fortune. Similarly, white is the colour of mourning while in Western countries that would typically be black.

Not that it matters a great deal, but just something to consider.

In my opinion, the usability and functionality of the HUD is by far the most important. So you should focus on the in-game UI. It's important that the most crucial information is also the most visible which typically suggests that HP/ammo should be in large font and more towards the center. Not necessarily completely centered, just not tucked away in the corners. Keep in mind that it's also important to be able to see as much of the battlefield as possible. It's a balance you have to strike.

I'm gonna disagree with Flatline on a few things here, but it's all personal preference. I think having boxes behind important number fields like HP/ammo increases readability by providing a dark background for you to read them on. And while TanLight is not very pretty, it doesn't strain your eye as much as pure white would.

I also like to have some team-coloured background on the screen to remind you what team you're on in case you forget. In my HUD I have a few thin lines along the edge of the HP/ammo background but I'm seriously thinking of getting rid of those. What I'll stick with is having the team-coloured background of the playermodel in the bottom left corner. It doesn't have to be very obstructive. I just like it there to identify what team I'm on.

Also, a black background with a team-coloured stripe could make the information more consistently readable instead of alternating between red/blue backgrounds. That could make for inconsistent reading. Not that it's likely to make a huge difference, but it might be worth keeping in mind.

These are just my opinions. I'm by no means a big authority on this.

Oh yeah, fuck those default borders with the off-white edge. Screw those. Get rid of them whenever possible (if you also don't like them, it's up to you of course).

EDIT: Animations also help convey important game state info like overheal/low HP/Uber charged/hitmarker etc. Those are important (hitmarker is very much optional). Some are annoying like the spy disguise silhouette or the intelligence pickup one. You might want to get rid of those.

A lot of people have been saying that the info.vdf name and the folder has to match, but am I the only one where that doesn't matter at all? I'm pretty the game only checks if that the file is in a custom folder, not the folder and info.vdf's names match up. I've changed the info.vdf name to "fuckingwhatever.png.txt" and the HUD still loaded just fine.

I don't know if it's common knowledge, but it seems that people are pedalling the information that they have to sync up which I think is very misleading, assuming that mine is not some freak case. But my HUD on GitHub has just been using "info.vdf" as the name in the file and I haven't heard any bug reports of it not loading.

I know that changing mat_antialias can cause some weird HUD issues like the background to mouseover itempanels in the backpack going transparent, but I didn't know it did this. Is it changing it that caused your issue or just that particular setting? You could try adding +mat_antialias 1 in your launch options to enable your desired setting without having to change it in-game. I manually enable a config when I start TF2 so I have antialias in launch options, but your cfg might just save it between sessions.

Intentionally changing mat_antialias is actually useful for reloading the main menu when editing your HUD menu. I have a toggle alias like "alias ass toggle mat_antialias 0 1".

hudmatchstatus.res --> TeamStatus.

The background for the timer in MM and the lights for round wins are in hudroundcounter.res. You didn't ask that but it's useful regardless.

v. 1.73a

Re-instated my own timers instead of the stock one that was used in the new casual/comp matches.
Updated main menu to also have the Create Server button in accordance with the most recent game update.
Updated captions to avoid error messages in console.
Moved Stopwatch down slightly to avoid clipping with the match player panels.
Updated chatscheme to do .. something.. maybe.

Also, I can't login to huds.tf at the moment, so you have to download the update from GitHub.
DOWNLOAD

Next update should be redesigning the main menu to make my own design work in Meet Your Match. Might take some time.

Well, they didn't change the scoreboard in this update.. Is this an issue others are having after the update?
Make sure that "BluePlayerList" and "RedPlayerList" are set to "visible" "1" and that the "tall" and "width" values are above 0 and that "xpos" and "ypos" aren't "9999".

No, there are no dumb questions. I also replied this in my thread, by the way. I made a mistake and included the old un-updated menu. It's fixed now, and the HL2 icon is a thing everyone has now.

Is the in-game UI broken?

The icon is half-life 2 for everyone. It's not a HUD thing.

About the menu being a mess in that picture: When I pushed the first update, I made a mistake and included the old menu which is now probably not functional. I've fixed that and it now uses a design similar to the stock HUD but with a few extra buttons added. I want to make an update to the main menu so that it looks like it used to, but that is gonna take some time.

In short, the menu should look similar to the stock HUD in the latest update.

EDIT: Don't use the Main Menu customizations just yet. Just leave the menu as is until I update the other versions.

v. 1.71 Meet Your Match

I updated to the latest game update and everything should be stable and functional now.

Note that I'm currently using the stock Main Menu for stability reasons. I'll get around to updating that later, but the important thing is pushing an update to makes the HUD stable and working again.

I apologize if I missed anything that causes problems. It's been hard to test after all.

I haven't messed with this a lot, but it's in hudplayerclass.res --> classmodelpanel --> model and then mess with those xyz values. They control how the model is displayed in a 3D coordinate system. I don't remember all the stuff but I think fov essentially controls how close the camera is to the model. So you can use that to zoom out and see the entire model and not just the upper torso. z moves the model up or down. I don't get the axis naming entirely, it seems like the y axis would be up/down, but naaah.

Again, I haven't messed with this in a while, so I'm sorry if I got anything wrong.

EDIT: Also, the classes have individual posing. All I can say is experiment :)

EDIT2: This is what I used for my model in the class selection menu. Don't know if it helps.

If it's the background you don't like, then you can just go to mainmenuoverride.res, find "Background" and change "image" "../console/background_upward" to "image" "../console/title_team_tough_break". If it's also the new spacing, then that's gonna be more difficult to change.

I have made a copy of the old file and updated it to be compatible with the new version of the HUD, but there are still some changes that I couldn't undo, namely the square black backgrounds as opposed to the old rounded ones (never mind, I fixed that). But you would have to delete a list of other files, and I would have to push an official update with a new customization option which isn't difficult, it's just a bit inconvenient.

If you want to change the colour of the text on the main menu, search and replace "bWhite" with "TanLight". Or go to clientscheme.res and change the colour "bWhite" to "235 226 202 255". After that you can also go to scheme_colourscheme.res and change "bSchemePrime" to "235 226 202 255" as well.

v. 1.70 just hit!

I've been working pretty hard on this for the past 2 weeks, and it's finally in a state where it's worth pushing. The biggest visual change is probably the main menu. Improved spacing, got a swanky background.

http://i.imgur.com/UT3PSQF.jpg

Thank you very much!

Still, in mHUD there are very few background files yet it still works because of how it's applied. So in the interest of saving space, I'd still very much like to know how that works. Marblr has 2 vtfs in console (upward and upward_widescreen) and 1 vtf and 1 vmt in replay/thumbnails. Assuming they're all needed for it to work, that is still 3 files, down from 8 to cover all the background files.

Also, I forgot to ask:

1. How does mHUD get the transparent black filter over the menu background when it loads. I can't find it in mainmenuovcerride. Is it the vmt?
   
2. How do you edit this thing? The mouseoverpanel when hovering certain elements. And can you add new ones for other buttons?

   http://i.imgur.com/RM44nzn.png

edit: sorry to bother you again.

Marblr, how do you make the main menu background image not downscale (low-res) itself after the menu loads. Does it have to do the .vtf and .vmt in materials/replay/thumbnails? How does that work?

Basically, when the menu is loading the background image is full-res, then when it loads the menu, it immediately downscales. mHUD appears to not do that, but I also can't seem to figure out where you even tell the HUD what the background image is since "Background" image "" is blank.