Getting PAKs to work, crosshairs, etc.

[erik]

Long story short, I am new to the game from a seven year hiatus, and I'm playing on a Mac.  I can't run any PAKs with .pcx extensions, but I would like to make some visual changes, maybe brighter weapons, players, and definitely a better crosshair, either white or green like I've seen in some of the screenshots in the Q2 appearance thread.  I'm stuck using the small white crosshair.

I have played around with the gl_modulate/intensity commands, but my crosshair disappears on some of the brighter maps.

I downloaded Goatkillas PAK but it wouldn't work because of the .pcx files...I also downloaded a bright skins pak, but I am not sure how to get them to work.  Do I need to re-number them from PAK 9 to PAK 2?  Anything in the config files?  Create an autoexec.cfg file?

Thanks in advance for your help!!


- Erik

[VaeVictis]

running a better client is usually the easiest way to get most stuff to work... pcx files are the DEFAULT texture files i believe, so if you are able to see things like normal skins and everything than pcx is not your problem... its most likely something like png textures that arent able to render due to using a mac compiled version of the stock 3.20 or 3.21 client

im pretty uneducated as far as mac's go, but if you can get a version of something like aprq2 to work then that would be your best bet

[erik]

What about adding crosshairs? 

[VaeVictis]

What about adding crosshairs? 

its pretty simple, they work just like normal textures with certain names, they have to be in a certain folder is all i believe... some one who knows a bit more off the top of their heads should be able to tell ya exactly how to get a different crosshair of your choosing working dont really feel like digging into my pak file to figure out where the crosshairs are located lol but if i get a second i will if no one replies first

[VaeVictis]

ok i just looked, should be able to just get some from a quick google search there is a few sites with loads of them but i cant remember it off the top of my head...

you SHOULD be able to just make a folder named "pics" in your baseq2 folder which will hold crosshairs with names like ch11.tga and the numbers can go as high as you want as long as they follow that format, dont use the first few numbers though because those will over write the stock crosshairs, just start out in double digits if you want to play it safe

the command should be "crosshair" so you can put in your autoexec "set crosshair 11" or type in console "crosshair 11" and that will reference the ch11.tga file in /baseq2/pics you can also put them into a pak file the same way if you understand how pak files work they are basically just a compressed directory so inside a pak file located in baseq2 if you open it up with a program such as pakscape you can put the file into a folder "pics" inside the pak and it will work the same...

however i do not know if they HAVE to be tga or if they can be pcx or png or gif... no clue :/ trial and error if you cant find .tga for the crosshair ya want i guess

also with naming paks, the default ones are 0-2 i believe, so dont do anything with those, the stock quake2 client supports up to pak9.pak, and the way it works is it will reference the highest number pak first and go down, everything is located in lower paks so if you want a different texture such as brightskins for grunt and athena you just have to put a file with the same name in the same folder in a higher number pak... so say there is a /pics/ch11.tga file in pak0, if pak9 also contains a /pics/ch11.tga it will reference the one in pak9 and thats how you see people with different sounds and textures than the stock game... i believe clients aside from the stock 3.20 or 3.21 client such as r1q2 or aprq2 arent limited by 0-9 and can reference paks named anything as long as they are within the baseq2 folder, either that or they will reference up to pak99 or something like that dunno for sure

[yahoo]

you can also take a pen and draw a crosshair in ur screen. 

[VaeVictis]

you can also take a pen and draw a crosshair in ur screen. 

not advisable unless you have a crt

[erik]

Got it to work, thanks for your help!

[VaeVictis]

no problem... but as said if you ever get tired of all that... just hook up a CRT instead of an LCD monitor and draw your own crosshair with a sharpy lol