Kills, Deaths and Caps

Details: Written by: INsane; Category: Day of Defeat Source HUDs; Published: 15 October 2011; Hits: 13871

Sections

The Kills and Death area	The main adjustments in the HUD HudLayout.res.
The Kills and Death font	The fonts and a where they are.
The Kills and Death background	Some easy adjustments to the backgrounds.
The Kills and Death icons	Where the icons come from.
The Kills and Death CVAR's (commands)	Adjust the Killfeed without edits.
The 19th Feb 2025 adjustment issues	Things changed, here are the issues.
The Minimap move to the left side	Make more room for the Killfeed, move the minimap

Updated 20 March 2025.

The Kills and Death area:

The starting point for understanding how this area displays is the hudlayout.res. After you get the file and place it in the custom folder open the scripts\hudlayout.res and look at the "HudDeathNotice" section...

}

   HudDeathNotice
   {
       "fieldName"               "HudDeathNotice"
       "visible"               "1"
       "enabled"               "1"
       "xpos"                   "r640"
       "wide"                   "640"
       "tall"                   "480"

       "MaxDeathNotices"       "4"    // "4" Def
       "LineHeight"              "19"   // "11" - "19" to reduce the Background height
       "RightJustify"            "1"   // If 1, draw notices from the right

       "TextFont"               "Default" // used to be "ChatFont" now "Default" post Feb 2025
       "CTTextColor"           "CT_Blue" // Supposed to be the text color - not working
       "TerroristTextColor"      "T_Red"   // Supposed to be the text color - not working

       "BackgroundColor"       "HudBackground"              // Background Others K/D
       "ActiveBackgroundColor"   "HudBackgroundActiveSolid"   // Background Your K/D
}

The section can control most of the adjustments for the kills and deaths or "killfeed" (K/D).

Positioning is tricky, first thing to note is the "xpos" value "r640" the "r" in front means this is "drawing" or displaying the panel and all the contents from right to left. Normally all panels in the VGUI will start to display from left - top left corner, this "r" changes that from left to right.

You can see by the wide and tall setting it is taking up the whole screen, there is no "ypos" setting because of this, it just displays from the very top by default.

"MaxDeathNotices" "4" is a setting for the maximum amount of notices you can have, you can have 1 - 17 if you like, 1 gives one notice and around 17 they are just about off the bottom of the screen. You can fool with this via setting a console CVAR hud_deathnotice_time to "60" so they display for 60 seconds, default is 6 (seconds). See the image on the right.

"LineHeight" "19" is the spacing between the notices based on the background height, but don't reduce these too far or you will get overlapping icons, "11" - "12" is really about the minimum, you will get some overlap but it looks OK. See the image on the right.

You might think "0" would be the ultimate setting but you will soon see why that isn't great, the background has no padding now and also when someone defends a flag or capture point the defended message is overwritten by the next kills and deaths entry.

Other steam Source games don't have this issue, it's because DoD;S uses objective icons and fonts as well in the fill feed and even though there is a command to reduce icon size it only really works on the weapon images, not the dominated images, flag images or the fonts.

"RightJustify" is supposed to control left or right control of drawing the notice, like a few items in the VGUI it seems to be a left over setting, or because the way the background works you don't notice a change anyway. Whatever, leave it alone as normally it has no effect.

Why no "ypos" ? You may have noted there is no adjustment for the vertical positioning for this area, that is normal in all Source game like dod:s.

The Kills and Death font:

The font is referenced in the section... "TextFont" "Default" ("ChatFont" was the font at first but that changed in a update) you can change that if you wish, in my custom HUD's I place a new font in the clientscheme.res and change the font name in this file to set a new font.

You would think you could change the font color too in the next two lines... "CTTextColor" and "TerroristTextColor" . Well you would be wrong. They are locked in the client.dll and you can't change them.

However you can affect the font with some font effects, "dropshadow", "outline" surround the text with black and "additive" adds a "white-wash" effect making the font a more pastel, brighter font color.

What you can do is set different backgrounds, (see next section) or place a setting in a custom font like "additive" "1" ...

Code:

      }
        "KDFontLIGHT" // New font for kills and Deaths one size smaller than chat
        {
            "1"
            {
                "name"        "Microsoft Sans Serif" //"Verdana"
                "tall"        "11" //"12" = Standard "11" = Small 
                "weight"    "600" //"200"
                "range"        "0x0000 0x017F"
                "yres"    "480 599"
                "additive"        "1"                
            }

...that gives the font color a washed out whiter look.

Sucks that we cannot change the team colors, affects colorblind persons quite a lot.

Safest font background for color bind issues is whitewash font on dark background (like black or greys) if you are colorblind for reds, greens and blues.

The Kills and Death background:

There are two methods you can use here.

Edit the scripts\hudlayout.res file
Edit the clientscheme.res file and the hudlayout.res file is more complicated but makes it easy to change for multiple colors if making HUD's in a package with more than one color option.

Method 1

by editing the hudlayout.res is simple and the quickest, just place a RGB color in the last two lines of the HudDeathNotice section...

"BackgroundColor" .... is the background of OTHER players notices.

"ActiveBackgroundColor" .... is the background of YOUR players notices.

So if you wanted a clear background for others and a nice black for your kills...

Code:

     "BackgroundColor"              "0 0 0 0"     //others kills   Blank no color
     "ActiveBackgroundColor"    "0 0 0 190"   //your kills     A transparent black

Method 2

You should consider if you are making a HUD download that has more than one color option, setting up the files this way means you will only need to change the clientscheme.res.

1. Open the clientscheme.res and find this...

Code:

 "HudBackground"                  "123 110 59 184"
 "HudBackgroundActive"         "240 207 78 117"
 "HudBackgroundUnusable"     "192 28 0 140"
 "HudBackgroundActiveSolid"  "240 207 78 180"

2. Change.. "HudBackgroundActiveSolid" "0 0 0 0"

3. Next add two new colors in the "Colors" section...

Code:

     //Kills and Deaths background        
        "HudKillsDeathsOthers"        "0 0 0 0"       // Background of Kills/Deaths- Other players.
        "HudKillsDeathsYou"            "0 0 0 210"       // Background of Kills/Deaths- YOU!

4. Next add the new colors to the hudlayout.res....

Code:

         "BackgroundColor"            "HudKillsDeathsOthers" //others kills
        "ActiveBackgroundColor"    "HudKillsDeathsYou"     //your kills

Now you only need to change the two new colors in clientscheme.res to make all the HUD colors change, "HudKillsDeathsOthers" and "HudKillsDeathsYou" no need to change the hudlayout.res.

In my opinion the code should have been set up like this as standard, the clientscheme.res is where the color and fonts should be... not other files! Very messy to edit.

The Kills and Death icons:

There are not many adjustments you can do here via HUD file edits, some are kept locked up in the client.dll and the mod_textures.txt. The method of displaying these on the screen is the same as the "current weapon" images, it is one large image with lots of tiny images and the mod_textures.txt file sets the height, width and sets the "xpos" and "ypos" coordinates.

The image is in dod_pak_dir.vpk ... root\materials\sprites\hud\death_icons.vtf

The settings are in the top the scripts\mod_textures.txt, to display the allied Thompson it looks like this...

Code:

"sprites/640_hud"
{
    TextureData
    {
        "d_thompson"
        {
            "file"        "sprites/hud/death_icons"
            "x"        "337"
            "y"        "0"
            "width"        "175"
            "height"    "61"
        }

Along with the images in death_icons.vtf there are also some other images and a font, the death skull is "character" "S" in resource\dodlogo.ttf, the bomb target is sprites\hud\explosion.vtf, defended icon is sprites\hud\shield_deathmessages.

Also the objective icons, nemesis and domination mode icons also display there... no wonder it is so crowded!

To change the death skull font height, go to clientscheme.res and look for "ClientTitleFontPlayerIcons" change the "tall" setting from "20" to "18" but be warned it can also change others too, stamina_icon, mgheat_mg42, mgheat_30cal, fireselect_bullet, weapon_bar_fireselect, weapon_mp44_fireselect .

defended icon is sprites\hud\shield_deathmessages. Changing the size of this VTF or editing the display size doesn't reduce the display on the HUD... it just shows more of them in the allowed space....

Change the size of the defended shield (and edit the scripts\mod_textures.txt) doesn't work

Perhaps changing the defended shield in mod_textures.txt and changing to a font in resource\dodlogo.ttf or other symbol font may help, I have not tried that to see if you get multiple images in that allowed area for the Death Shield.

But be warned, changing this is of no real advantage, there are CVAR's to change the icons why not do it that way!

See the next section.

The Kills and Death CVAR's (commands):

These are not widely used by the community, I would say very few players actually know they are there.

I use these in my Teammenu buttons and below are the settings I use, they are a good guide to the ranges possible.

The items that adjust are Kills and Deaths display time, adjust background transparency and Icon size.

hud_deathnotice_time - Turn off, or reduce the time the Kills and Deaths display.

Off... hud_deathnotice_time 0

0.5s... hud_deathnotice_time 0.5

4sec... hud_deathnotice_time 4

DEF... hud_deathnotice_time 6 (default and displays for 6 seconds)

cl_deathicon_bg_alpha - Turn off, or reduce the Kills and Deaths background transparency.

Off... cl_deathicon_bg_alpha 0 (no background will show)

20%... cl_deathicon_bg_alpha 0.2

60%... cl_deathicon_bg_alpha 0.6

DEF... cl_deathicon_bg_alpha 1 (default and is a solid background or the HUD default)

cl_deathicon_height AND cl_deathicon_width - Turn off, or reduce the Kills and Deaths Icon size.

Off... cl_deathicon_height 0; cl_deathicon_width 0

20%... cl_deathicon_height 9; cl_deathicon_width 25

60%... cl_deathicon_height 12; cl_deathicon_width 38

DEF... cl_deathicon_height 18; cl_deathicon_width 57 (default and is large note was "16" height and "54" width before 18th Feb 2025 update)

The 19th Feb 2025 adjustment issues

The first complaint is the background and text for the allied team.

That Green on the default background for the "others killfeed" is horrid.
The Font is "Default" it doesn't have "dropshadow" and clearly that change was clumsy and no one checked it after the change.

This is sloppy work from Valve... this proves Day of Defeat Source is just a throwaway game to them... change it, break it and then igrnore it for another decade?

Not only near invisible for severely colorblind or colorblind affected but for us "normal" folks it is really...really bad.

The Allied Green - Default font (no dropshadow) and is shocking on that "Others" background

To fix this we can...

Edit the scripts\hudlayout.res file "HudDeathNotice" section and change "TextFont" "Default" to "ChatFont".
That font is not used, it was for the chat font as the name implies but that was changed in 2013 and the chat font is handled by "chatfont.res" file now (a scheme file just for the chat area) That's great as it makes our job easy.
ChatFont is natively a drop shadow font effect so it instantly improves. From what I know ChatFont isn't used at all in other areas so this can be a dedicated killfeed font.

Now that is a instant improvement...

The Allied Green - Chatfont change font (With dropshadow) and is better on that "Others" background

It still isn't great on that background but improved. The spacing isn't great either.

You can improve that a bit more editing the scripts\hudlayout.res file "HudDeathNotice" section again.

Here is my recommended edits to the Background colors (Others killfeed only) The "Lineheight" minimum "11" and the ChatFont change...

Code:

 
	}
	HudDeathNotice
	{
		"fieldName"		"HudDeathNotice"
		"visible"		"1"
		"enabled"		"1"
		"xpos"			"r640"
		"wide"			"640"
		"tall"			"480"

		"MaxDeathNotices"	"4"  // "4"(DEF) increase for more but it gets crowded
		"LineHeight"		"11" // "19" (DEF) decreased for testing use with cl_deathicon_height 9; cl_deathicon_width 25
		"RightJustify"		"1"  // If 1, draw notices from the right
						
		
		"TextFont"		"ChatFont"  // "Default" Change to "ChatFont" if you want a "dropshadow" font
		"CTTextColor"		"CT_Blue"
		"TerroristTextColor"	"T_Red"	
		
		"BackgroundColor"	"240 207 78 50"  // "HudBackground"   // Others kills and deaths
		"ActiveBackgroundColor"	"HudBackgroundActiveSolid" // Your kills and deaths
	}

I also edited the "ChatFont" section in clientscheme.res and changed the font boldness from "700" to "200"... "weight" "200" // "700"

That gives you this...

All edits to improve the standard killfeed in the 2025 hudlayout.res "HudDeathNotice" section.

Those edits result in a slightly reduced gap without much issues, a more readable "others" font and background change.

However your 2K or 4K monitor may alter the fonts size...or you want it smaller or larger, even put "additive" "1" in the font (set "dropshadow" "1" if you do that)

See this guide to grab the file clientscheme.res (and learn more about other issues).
Go to the resource\clientscheme.res file, find "ChatFont" around line 870 adjust the font size or font effect to suit.

The Minimap move to the left side

You can move the Minimap around with the Objective icons that results in a Minimap on the left side, Objective icons in the middle.

I do offer that in my Version 11 HUD, you can grab the Version 11 manual files here.

Go to the "A8_Left Side Mini Map options" folder and look at the files used to make that change.

Basically, its just edits to the Mini Map animation files when you press key "M" the animation of no minimap, or other modes change the position and size of the minimap and the Objective iocns.