What does the icon next to your squad leader's name mean?

Question

Most of the times (always?) there is an icon next to the squad leader's name (see picture below). I'm not talking about the class icon which is visible for all squad members, but rather the icon between the class icon and the name. Sometimes this is a star but I've also seen it be what looks like an ammo clip as well as a bomb blast or something.

It seems to indicate some sort of upgrade the user has attached but I'm not sure I'm correct. An also, what is the reasoning behind:

• What upgrade is shown - you typically have multiple upgrade/perks available at any given time
• Why only for the squad leader? Isn't it just as interesting to see this information for all members of the squad?

(note: I found this image online, it looks slightly different on my ps3)

Answer

If it is a star, then it means that they are the squad leader. If it is an ammo clip or something like that, then that means that this person has a squad perk equipped.

So, in order on the above picture, we have:

• Squad Sprint
• Squad Flak
• Squad Explosives
• Squad Cover
• Squad Suppression
• Squad Frags
• Squad Ammo

Check more discussion of this question.

Is there a way to only display markers for the current mission?

Question

I've just got out into the city, and already I have two main missions, and 4 side missions, one of which has 3 different locations which I need to go to.

This adds quite a lot of clutter to the screen, is there any way of cutting it down?

Answer

You can choose to disable individual missions. This will remove the mission marker from your HUD, but the mission can still be completed.

Bring up your menu, then go to the missions tab (or just press U). Each mission should have an "INACTIVE" button that appears when you put your mouse over it — clicking that will hide its mission marker. To undo, simply click the button again.

The indicator is in the upper left, the toggle in the lower right corner.

Check more discussion of this question.

Is there a way to increase the number of items displayed in the kill feed?

Question

So I'm getting a little tired of seeing my reflect multi-kills being quickly pushed away by other players' kills and even revenges/dominations I attain, like this revenge kill:

^{(Yes, that's the notorious team color HUD bug. I hate it too.)}

The kill feed by default only displays 4 items; although my deaths and kills stay a little longer on the feed they get pushed away pretty quickly by too many things.

Is there an add-on I can use or a CVAR I can adjust to increase how many items the kill feed displays? I have a fairly spacious display anyway, so adding a couple more won't hurt.

Answer

As noted by Lysarion in the comments, the file to modify is hudlayout.res, which is found in the /tf/scripts folder in the team fortress 2 content.gcf archive.

Extracting and searching the file, I find the following field:

HudDeathNotice
{
    "fieldName" "HudDeathNotice"
    // ...    "MaxDeathNotices" "4"
    "IconScale"   "0.35"
    "LineHeight"      "16"
    "LineSpacing"     "4"
    "CornerRadius"    "3"
    "RightJustify"    "1"   // If 1, draw notices from the right    // ...
}

The HudDeathNotice field defines the appearance of the kill feed. You'll see at a glance the variable that tells the game how many items to display:

    "MaxDeathNotices" "4"

So all I do is change its value to "6", save the modified hudlayout.res in the /tf/scripts folder in my steamapps user folder, and I'll see a maximum of 6 items in the kill feed.

Check more discussion of this question.

Am I missing the display of health?

Question

In some almost-dead situations, I am missing a display of what my actual health level is. It's hart to tell when I need to swallow some painkillers.

Do I miss something? Is there something more "numeric" than the bloody screen?

Answer

No, there isn't ... the only way to tell you are about to die is the screen turning 'red-ier'.

Check more discussion of this question.

Would I be at a disadvantage if I played Quake Live with an HUD that displayed damage to death "instead of" health and armour numbers?

Question

There are many custom huds available for Quake Live; most make all numbers larger because, hey, everything is important right?

Obviously, this can't be the case. Something has to give.

I believe that damage to death is more important information than health and armor counts. Maybe the health and armour count would be handy to have around to know what item should pick up first, but I believe a far more common scenario is questions like "can I be oneshotted by a railgun this very moment"?

All of the points made in this quickly closed question do not apply to Quake 3 -- damage is distributed between armor and health indipendently from the source¹; there are no side effects to having low health.

In my opinion, this would also help understand what these numbers really mean. Say for example you have 25 health and 0 armour, then picked a red armour. Now you have 25 health and 100 armour. Quick: will a railgun (110 damage) oneshot you?

[Answer: yes. Indeed, 75 damage are enough to kill you (-25 to health, -50 to armour). Good luck calculating that during the game...]

The only real downside would be not knowing what I should be looking for: health or armor. However, I believe this is a question separate armour and health bars would answer more than adequately. (more on this below)

Is there something I'm missing from the big picture? Why is there no mod that tries to do this? Is keeping different counters this important in Quake Live?

_{¹The only difference would be for the lightning gun, which due to rounding deals 5 armor damage and only 2 health damage.}

---

EDIT:

To make myself crystal clear here, I'll post a picture of what I had in mind:

Separate bars would answer the "what I should be looking for: health or armor" question, but the actual numbers (the "count") wouldn't be displayed. Why would you want it? This is my whole question.

Hope this helps.

Answer

This is something of an expanded comment, more than an answer in itself.

There are two effects that your choice of compound HUD has in comparison to a default display of two numbers.

• Instead of displaying the numbers of each value, you have a bar displayed. The effect is advantageous to those who work better on visual differences and relative changes, but disadvantageous to those who rely on values and absolute changes.
• There is a compound display for the post-calculated "damage limit". This is advantageous to those who cannot do a quick calculation immediately, and disadvantageous to anyone who relies on seeing the separate counts.

This is a matter of information substitution, not addition or subtraction. You are given exactly the same information as everyone else, the only difference is how it is rendered, and how well you interpret that information. The HUD itself provides no advantage or disadvantage.

Check more discussion of this question.