Making a custom crosshair

Overview

Shows you how to create a crosshair to replace the default ones100% customizable to your own liking!

Intro

The crosshair in Black Mesa is god awful. I couldn’t bare playing the game with it.
So I spent about 12 hours experimenting options until I came to the best option, to my knowledge.

Things you will need

Custom Desktop Logo
MS Paint
Online image transparency tool
Patience to make a crosshair
Sacrifice some FPS

Alternative – Change only crosshair color

I found this thread about changing color while doing my research. Maybe you will find this to be enough? Give it a try: Click me![forums.blackmesasource.com]

How to

Installing Custom Desktop Logo

Visit the website here: Click me![customdesktoplogo.wikidot.com]
Download, unzip and open CustomDesktopLogo.exe
No installation required! Runs standalone

Making your crosshair

First, google for it. If you can find one in a white or transparent background, done.
If not, make one yourself with the steps below:

Open MS Paint
Make a square, 100×100 px should be enough, full white
Use zoom and design, in a corner, the crosshair you want
Measure it’s dimensions as it was a square (eg 30×30 px)
Calculate the distance from top and left to center it (eg: 100-30 = 70/2 = 30 px)
MS Paint is tricky, so carefully select your crosshair and move with arrows to the center
Save the image as PNG or TIFF

REMEMBER: The crosshair should be EXACTLY on the middle, else you will have to manually adjust with Custom Desktop and that’s boring to do. Also, anything that is not the crosshair should be 100% white. To test this, simply use the fill tool and a solid color, click on white and check if all is painted. If yes, revert and save, if not, fix it.

Online image transparency

I use this website: Click me![onlinepngtools.com]
Upload your image and tinker with settings until you see your crosshair on the right
Save the output crosshair to a empty (of images) folder (Program folder is recommended)

Setting your crosshair on the program

Open the program, go to icons tray, right click it » Settings
Choose the folder that holds your crosshair and refresh
On “Location” tab, set it to Topmost, Centre, All Same* and Offset to 0 and 0
On “Size” tab, slide until you find the perfect size for you
On “Animation/Graphics”, set the opacity of the crosshair (255 is what you want, probably)
MINIMIZE the window. Pressing the close button will shut down the program.

* This settings is dependent of your setup really. Default is All Same.

Setting up Black Mesa

Go to game path: …SteamsteamappscommonBlack Mesa
Right click “bms.exe”, “Compatibility” tab and select both desktop composition and themes options
On steam, right click the game » Properties » Set launch options » Write: -insecure
Run Black Mesa, go to video and set it as windowed borderless
Open a game, check if crosshair is centered. If not, fix it on crosshair program
If it’s centered, open console and write: hud_crosshair_enable 0

Enjoy your own crosshair!

NOTE: It appears the program only works AFTER Black Mesa is running, so after doing this whole guide to setup, to have your crosshair, boot the game, then boot the program.

Questions and answers

My FPS went down like crazy!

Yes, nothing can be done. I have 300 FPS all max settings, opening the crosshair program tanks it to only 110 FPS in the same exact area. You have to consider what you prefer, FPS or a good crosshair. There are no good alternatives.

Huge stutter!

If you disabled the windows settings, close the Custom Desktop Logo and check in-game if you still have stutter. If yes, try disabling Freesync/G-Sync and limiting on Black Mesa console the fps with fps_max 143 (Assuming your monitor is 144Hz. If 60Hz, write 59). If stutter is still present, I don’t know what to do beyond that.
If your stutter disappears after closing Custom Desktop Logo, it’s not stutter. It’s the lack of FPS. With a high speed camera I could see that there was no stutter, just lack of frames (From 300 to 100 that is)…

Are there no alternatives to this?!

Yes, but unless you pay, you will hate it… probably. Hudsight is a program that also allows full customization of crosshair, and you can use it on fullscreen AND you keep your FPS. Bad part is that it adds a square the size of a full-size pickup truck saying “YO THIS IS DEMO PLZ PAY US” to your game. Not good…

What about other programs such as X?

NVidia settings: IDK, I got AMD
AMD settings: No options yet
Monitor settings: Depends on brand and model…
Playclaw: Same as Hudsight
Github collection of options: Click me![github.com]
ExternalCrosshairOverlay – Doesn’t work in fullscreen, less FPS than Desktop Logo
Crossover – Doesn’t work in fullscreen, crosshairs locked to options of program.
Center-dor – Doesn’t work at all?
All others – Didn’t work, couldn’t test, not touching that, etc

Try them for yourself however, they may work better for you than for me.

Why the -insecure command?

I don’t know for sure how anti-cheat works for Black Mesa. I always take all precautions I can against being wrongfully banned over something as pitty as a crosshair on a single player game. That command is optional and I don’t even know if it works in Black Mesa, but it’s for my own peace of mind.

This customization method sucks!

Well not my fault. Crowbar collective removed all Source related crosshair commands and obscured crosshair replacement so much that you can’t find anything online. I’m not a programmer or modder to try and do my own thing. Blame the devs! At least with this crappy guide you can see a crosshair while playing! And I do say in advance everything that will happen, namely the FPS drops and other options I tried but didn’t like. You do what you prefer, these are the options I know of.

My crosshair

If you like it, take it. You may have to make it transparent again though.

Hope this guide was useful

Hit the like and favorite button if you found this guide helpful – It helps everyone!

Black Mesa Guide