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The UI doesn't scale based on resolution and HUD is relatively diminished especially in 4K, the crosshair in particular is difficult to see with weapons using a more complex pattern.

screen1

screen2

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Having a non-transparent HUD would help playing at high resolutions. How can I disable HUD transparency?

user598527
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  • The crosshair is pointed at the top of the ladder (use the rocket launcher's laser pointer as a reference). Gamma seems affected when capturing fullscreen applications, the image is brighter in-game. I had to scale the images to 1920x1080 since all were over the stack.imgur.com 2MB limit at 4K; the transparency may be more difficult to spot due the host's JPG compression. – user598527 May 21 '22 at 11:47
  • A better solution would likely be simply increasing the UI scale, any transparency would be much less of an issue (and the original HUD appearance may be preferred by many). – user598527 May 21 '22 at 11:57
  • As mentioned in the answer comments, the crosshair seemingly has no transparency after all (I ran the game at 640 x 480 and compared with the other HUD elements). – user598527 May 21 '22 at 12:25

1 Answers1

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I've tried changing some parameters in the console, but none of the known commands improved the HUD visibility. With hud_draw 1 the HUD is in all probability at maximum opacity.
This leads me to to believe the transparency of the entire HUD - including the in-game text messages - is hard-coded. To change it, you would have to recompile the applicable scripts.

What you can do for increased effectiveness, is change the sprites that are used.
These can be found in the 'half-life/valve/sprites' folder, and the file with the crosshairs is appropriately named crosshairs.spr. You can use a number of small programs to open these files, and convert them to workable file formats. I've used Sprite Explorer.

Naturally, there are edited versions available already, and these ones, made by w00tguy123 on the SvenCoop forum, might help you out.

Joachim
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    @user598527 This is likely not a concern anymore, but have you tried this? – Joachim May 05 '19 at 17:00
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    Sorry for not responding initially. I somehow managed not to test your solutions, the Sven co-op forum appears not to be online anymore and https://archive.org/web/ doesn't have the page archived. I'll see if converting the sprites is viable on Linux (I haven't had Windows installed in a while). – user598527 May 21 '22 at 11:55
  • The crosshair seemingly has no transparency after all — I ran the game at 640 x 480 and compared with the other HUD elements. – user598527 May 21 '22 at 12:24