Hi.I was wondering how do I make custom reticles/crosshairs for weapons?I founded a tutorial but I can't really understand how to do it.By the way what is the best program to make custom reticles?

you dont read what he say right?

Altheros,Read before you post.

What you need. Your favorite image editor(mine's paint.NET). gimp(i suggest gimp because it's free. you can also use photo-shop). Tool. Guerilla.

1: Open your favorite image editor.
2: Make\re-size an image to 64\64.
3: Grab paint bucket and make the whole texture black.
4: now take blue and make a 1 pixel thick line around the outside edge of your image
5: Now take white and design your reticle in the middle of the image.
6: (This is where you'll need Gimp) Open gimp, go to layers, right click on your layer and hit "create layer mask" a window should pop up. Now select "gray-scale copy of layer". Now right click again and hit "apply layer mask" and save it as my-ret.TIFF.
7: Take it and put it into "(C:\Program files\Microsoft Games\Halo Custom Edition\data\bitmaps)"
8: Open tool and type "tool bitmaps bitmaps"
9: When it finishes open Guerilla and hit file, open, go to the bitmaps folder, and select "my-ret.bitmap"
10: Scroll down to where it says "type" and change it from "2d-texture" to "sprites". Change the format to "32-bit color". Scroll down to where it says "sprites" and hit add, next change the zeros next to "right" and "bottom" to ones and change the zeros next to "registration point" to both say 0.5. Now scroll down to "bitmaps" and change it to "a8r8g8b8" and un-check the box that says "compressed" and save.
11: Repeat step 7, if you get an error(just ignore it. Lol.).
12: Now open up the "weapon_hud_interface" of the weapon you want to give it to in guerilla and scroll down to where it says crosshairs, it should say something like "ui\hud\bitmaps\combined\hud reticles" change it to say "bitmaps\my-ret".
13: Next, under crosshair overlays, check the box that says "use high res scale". A little farther down it should say "sequence index" next to it should be a zero, leave that alone because our reticle only has one sequence. If it has a different number then zero, change it to zero. Now save the weapon_hud_interface and compile your map.


If all went correctly then it should wok :)
Edited by grunt_eater on Nov 11, 2012 at 04:15 PM

Oh yeah, i forgot that part...Oops...

EDIT: fixed.
Edited by grunt_eater on Nov 11, 2012 at 04:15 PM

There is a bit too much to it to explain it all in detail in one forum post. But I will summarize.

Ideally you should use GIMP or photoshop (I use GIMP because it is free and almost just as good)

1. Make your bitmap. It must have the tiny blue outline:


2. Save it as a .tif in whatever folder you want (I like to put them in with the bitmaps of whatever weapon I am making i.e. tags/weapons/"weaponname"/bitmaps/reticle)

3. Compile the bitmaps with tool i.e. tool bitmaps weapons/"weaponname"/bitmaps

4. Open your new .bitmap tag in guerilla and open an existing cross hair bitmap i.e. tags/ui/hud/bitmaps/combined/hud_reticles.bitmap and compare your .bitmap tag to the existing one and change most of your options to match. (since I am too lazy to go over all the options)

5. save your changes to the tag and repeat step 3 before continuing

6. Insert the new .bitmap tag into your weapon hud interface here:


hope this helps (maybe between this and the tutorial you tryed it will work :D )

Set the compiled bitmap to 16 bit color, and mipmaps to 1.
Bitmaps need be no larger than 128 x 128. You don't need a blue border unless you're making multiple crosshairs into one bitmap. I personally keep my crosshairs normals separate, it saves tagspace and usually not all crosshairs are used in a single map. Specify in the weapon HUD tag whether the bitmap is a sprite or not.
Edited by Jesse on Nov 11, 2012 at 09:36 PM

Okay, now i'm having trouble too. Lol.

I made a 64\64 bitmap, put drew the reticle in the center of the image, put the blue line all the way around the outside, and compiled. Then i opened it, changed it to sprites, 32-bit color, added a sprites in the sequence index, set right and bottom to 1 and registration point to 0.5 on both. Set it to a8r8g8b8, and unchecked the "compressed" box. Recompiled, tool says can't export sprites without a valid plate. And when i try to open it in guerilla, it crashes. Any ideas?

There's your problem. The image would be seen as a 63 x 63 bitmap, not power of two. Follow my above instructions to the letter and you'll be fine (don't forget to recompile after changes.)
Edited by Jesse on Nov 12, 2012 at 01:27 AM

Does anyone know how to Zoom in the image in Adobe photoshop CS5?

ctrl and +

Also blue lines are from both sides right? doesnt that make it 62x62?
Edited by altis94 on Nov 12, 2012 at 09:26 AM

Haha,I know where you got CS5.

The same place everyone got it from?

Santa? :D

Nah, jk. But anyway. Do crosshair bitmaps need to be sprites? I mean could i make a texture, alpha included, compile it and set it to 32-bit\16-bit color and everything else and recompile. Would it be usable as a crosshair?

I have a problem here.Everytime I tried to make a reticle in Photoshop It looks not so good looking.By the way can anyone post some pictures of the steps in Photoshop?

Seriously, don't you guys read what I post :/

You can easily use the information in this video to make them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1__ULlG76Q&feature=plcp
Just use the ellipse selection tool lots.
Edited by Maniac1000 on Nov 13, 2012 at 03:21 PM

I made my bitmap 64x64, because it doesn't need to be that large, gave it the correct alpha, no blue line, compiled, opened, set it to 16-bit color, scrolled down to where it said "miscellaneous" and set mipmap count to 1, and recompiled. Now when i try compiling a map with it, tool says "crosshair item 0 for weapons\assault rifle\assault rifle reference an invalid sequence" and in-game it doesn't show. What did i do wrong now? :P Lol.

change the sequence number in hud interface tag. Make it 1 or so... i dont remember

And now debug says

11.14.12 11:16:57 tool pc 01.00.00.0609 ----------------------------------------------
11.14.12 11:16:57 reference function: _write_to_error_file
11.14.12 11:16:57 reference address: 42ca20
11.14.12 11:16:57 Couldn't read map file './toolbeta.map'
11.14.12 11:16:57 EAX: 0xE6C2054E
11.14.12 11:16:57 EBX: 0x00000001
11.14.12 11:16:57 ECX: 0x06680B6C
11.14.12 11:16:57 EDX: 0x006D3FA8
11.14.12 11:16:58 EDI: 0x00129EC8
11.14.12 11:16:58 ESI: 0x00000000
11.14.12 11:16:58 EBP: 0x00129DA0
11.14.12 11:16:58 ESP: 0x00129D90
11.14.12 11:16:58 EIP: 0x76FD7094, C3 8D A4 24 ?????
11.14.12 11:16:58 EXCEPTION halt in \halopc\haloce\source\tag_files\tag_groups.c,#3157: #1 is not a valid bitmap_group_sequence_block index in [#0,#1)

I even checked the "not a sprite" flag in the weapons_hud_interface...

then i guess leave it 0. Can you see the bitmap in guerilla?

Yes, i can see the bitmap and view its alpha channel in guerilla. When i set the sequence in the weapon_hud_interface to 0 it gives me the first error again :/

I dont know... Have you tried copying all values from other hud interface and bitmap? I didnt have this error when i made reticle for falcon.

Set the flag that asks if it is a sprite or not. If it isn't, set the sequence index to 0. Make sure there are no extra tabs under the first CROSSHAIRS tab.

Exelent :D Finally, lol. thank you very much :)
Edited by grunt_eater on Nov 14, 2012 at 10:41 PM