Installation Instructions

Cloning the repo

Find where TF2 is installed on your machine. This should be something along the lines of .../Steam/steamapps/common/Team Fortress 2/tf. We will refer to this directory as simply tf.

Clone this repo into tf/custom. All subdirectories under tf/custom have a directory structure that mirrors tf/, e.g. official maps are stored in tf/maps, and maps you download should be stored in tf/custom/*/maps. You can have as many directories under tf/custom as you'd like, and these installation instructions will create a few of these.

From here on, we'll assume that this repo has been cloned into tf/custom/tf2config, and will abbreviate this path to tf2config.

(Optional, recommended for later) Getting mastercomfig

Mastercomfig is an "FPS" config intended to boost frame rates on machines that can't run TF2 particularly well. We're not super interested in the frame rate improvements, but TF2 loads incredibly slowly even on modern machines due to inefficiencies in the source engine, and mastercomfig includes a few things that speed this up a bit.

I don't recommend installing mastercomfig while getting set up with this repo, for the reason that it installs .vpk's, which are basically opaque packages of directories such as tf/custom/tf2config, and installing it means that you can't change a lot of settings "normally" via the in-game menus anymore (because it will override them).

If you choose not to install mastercomfig, then you need to move the scripts in tf2config/cfg/user into tf2config/cfg. The user directory exists only to appease mastercomfig. If you do choose to install it, then you need to make a symlink tf/cfg/user -> tf2config/user. Mastercomfig will apparently only look in tf/cfg/user to find the autoexec and class-specific scripts.

Note that this repo has a file tf2config/cfg/user/modules.cfg which is used to configure mastercomfig. aa_msaa=off and outlines=high are overrides that may reduce your desired graphics settings, and you may want to remove them to just let mastercomfig choose what settings to use for those.

Set launch options

Add the following to your launch options:

-novid -nojoy -nosteamcontroller -nohltv -particles 1 -precachefontchars

These have been taken straight from mastercomfig, see here for extra launch options you may want to add.

Clone FlawHud

Go here and clone this repo such that it can be found at tf/custom/flawhud. One oddity about subdirectories under tf/custom is that apparently they must not start with an uppercase letter, so tf/custom/FlawHUD apparently doesn't work.

Once you've done this, there's an optional step where there should be a patch file found at tf2config/flawhud.patch. You can simply git apply it against tf/custom/flawhud (and maybe resolve any conflicts that come up) to get a few of my custom changes.

A list of (possibly out-of-date) changes that I've made:

• Used some commented out lines (seems like this is an intended optional change maybe?) to make it so that low ammo and low HP has the text in red rather than making the background red. Also changed the red color used to be brighter (it still kind of upsets me that the red is actually less readable than the white but whatever...)
• Moved health and ammo further up and towards the centre. You may want to reverse this change if you sit sufficiently far away from your monitor, I think the optimal place for these are as far out as possible while still being readable using peripheral vision while staring at the crosshair.
• Hid the "player model" that's shown on the bottom left which shows your player model. The player model gives you the minimally useful information of which team you're on and maybe which gun you have out, but it looks very out-of-place in this "minimal" HUD. Apparently useful for playing spy due to the disguise mechanic, so you may want to reverse it.
• Centered the killfeed. The killfeed gives pretty important information, and so should be centered. It has been moved to the location it would be in as if your screen were 4:3, regardless of actual screen width.
• Killfeed shows up to 8 entries rather than 5. More information is better than less information (up to a degree, but 8 is the max and is fine).
• Moved medic HUD elements so that from the crosshair down the elements are: ubercharge percentage in a small font but bright green, primary target ID (the health of the friendly you're looking at), secondary target ID (the health and ammo of the person you're healing), and then ubercharge bar.

Make changes to autoexec.cfg and reset.cfg

The file autoexec.cfg is (as its name suggests) auto executed by the game upon launch. The file reset.cfg has otherwise no special meaning, it's just a .cfg that can be executed in the TF2 console (you can run exec reset in the in-game console and it'll execute the script, just like anything else you put in tf/cfg or tf/custom/*/cfg). It is, however, a very necessary script, because there are also a bunch of class-specific scripts, scout.cfg, medic.cfg, and pyro.cfg which are executed when you switch to said class in game. The point of reset.cfg is effectively to undo any configuration in those class-specific scripts, to get us to a blank slate. As a result, note that it is sourced and executed via exec reset at the end of autoexec.cfg, and at the start of all class-specific scripts. If you were to want to add another class-specific script, you would exec reset at the beginning. If you were to add any configuration in a class-specific script not already captured by reset.cfg, you should reset it in reset.cfg and then make your class-specific change. Specifically, I recommend the organizational scheme that any key that you want to bind in a class-specific way be bound to an alias in reset.cfg, and then to redefine the alias in class-specific scripts.

In terms of changes you should make, the very top stanza of autoexec.cfg needs to be edited to include your sensitivity (tf2 uses source engine sensitivity, you can use any sensitivity converter website to convert from other games), and a "fake zoom" sensitivity. The value that's currently there results in 19.2cm/360 with an 800 DPI mouse, for reference. The "fake zoom" sensitivity is the focal-length-scaled sensitivity from 90 FOV to 75 FOV. 90 FOV is the largest FOV TF2 will allow you to have, and 75 is the minimum. I believe focal length scaling is simply a multiplicative factor, so once you've figured out your normal sensitivity, simply scale it by the same amount as the two values already in the repo and you should have a correctly-scaled sensitivity. The fake zoom honestly doesn't matter that much anyway, 75 FOV is barely more zoomed in than 90...

Since I'm a DVORAK user, and you probably are not, you should look at any command that starts with the word bind in autoexec.cfg and reset.cfg, and rebind them. Look at the following picture for reference:

I'm using a variant of what would be equivalent to ESDF, except moving forward has been moved to the homerow and moving backwards has been pushed down a row. I also have defined multiple aliases for moving backwards which allows for changing directions between forward and back without reusing the same finger, but you don't necessarily need any of this and just use good ol' ESDF. You may even be able to use WASD, as long as you can find at least 4 buttons that you can press with your pinky. You define the buttons that you press with the pinky in autoexec.cfg. Define a0 to be the most reachable pinky key (which is almost certainly A for ESDF users and Control (I mean Capslock) for WASD users), a1 to be the next most reachable, etc. t[0-3] should be defined to be buttons that you press with your thumb. This would normally be space and alt, but may also be any of [ZXCV], especially if you shift WASD up one row so that your thumb is able to hit the bottom row of keys fairly naturally.

Note that I've only bound two actions to keys pressed by the thumb: crouch and showing the scoreboard. The fewer players there are, the more important the scoreboard is to track who's alive, which is to say that it doesn't really matter at all in 12v12. If on a normal keyboard, Spacebar should be crouch and probably Alt for scoreboard makes sense.

Below are the class-specific bindings in graphical form. Note that depending on how you defined a[0-5], or even any of the other keys, it'll probably look somewhat different to these, but you shold get the gist. There are really only two exotic binds that you can't normally do: slot[1-3]attack is a key which switches to a particular slot (primary, secondary, or melee) if you're not already on that slot, and it will also attack with said weapon. This makes it so that you don't have to care what you have equipped, since it'll always switch to the right thing (and if you're already using the right slot, it'll attack). Also slot2hold is a key which, while held, switches to your secondary, but will switch back to whatever weapon you have previously out upon release. This is useful for the "combo pyro" playstyle, which requires many switches between flamethrower and the shotgun secondary.

Scout:

The scout layout doesn't really have to compromise on anything, although a three-button mouse rather than one with a scroll wheel would probably be ideal:

• The only two actions requiring precise timing are attacking with the primary and jumping. Note that scout cannot bind jump to a scroll wheel due to the air dash mechanic.
• Secondary and melee use switch-to-and-attack binds. The pistols are continuously fired, and rared need to fire individually. Melee doesn't matter all that much.
• Being able to move backwards on a0 is useful since the majority of the time a scout is using the scattergun anyway, and movement is important for scout.
• +attack2 on middle click is sometimes needed for melee and also the soda popper. Not an ideal button to bind but rarely used anyway.

Pyro:

The pyro layout is motivated by the following:

• Pyro has two weapons that require "click-timing": airblast and shooting the secondary (whether shotgun or one of the flareguns). It might be okay to bind +attack to mouse1 and +attack2 to mouse2 and use either the pinky or the scrollwheel to switch weapons, but realistically the scrollwheel is the only option as the degreaser/panic attack/powerjack combo can require upwards of 5+ weapon switchs per second. With optimal play however, the scrollwheel needs to be dedicated to jumping, so the mouse buttons are switch-to-and-attack binds.
• Shooting flames is bound to a0, and alt-fire on a secondary which is used by the detonator is on a1.
• In order to facilitate easier powerjack jumping, switching-to-melee-and-attack is not bound to a2 as it normally would be, but t1 (the second-most accessible thumb button) instead. Note that because the state machine sanitizes all states, it's possible to exploit its behavior in certain situations such as holding the flamethrower attack button throughout while switching to melee will result in the powerjack being put away upon release of the button.

If you look in the pyro config, you will see a programmatically-generated state machine that redefines the 5 buttons for switch-to-and-attack on the fly. The state machine sanitizes input, and will basically ensure that regardless of which combination of keys is pressed at any time, the most recently-selected weapon will be drawn, and +attack and/or +attack2 will be sent as appropriate. Note in particular that buttons being released changes what the most-recently-selected weapon or attack is, and the appropriate commands will be determined and sent by the state machine.

Medic:

Some notes on the medic layout:

• Medic doesn't really need +attack2 for anything other than popping uber, so it can get away with primary+attack and secondary+attack on mouse buttons, and melee+attack on the usual a2.
• Medic doesn't have a blast jumping ability, so jumping with scroll wheel is fine.
• Movement for medic is quite important, and since both weapons are accessible via the mouse buttons, a0 is an alias for moving backwards so all four movement directions are accessible most of the time.
• The fake zoom bind may be useful for aiming long-distance crossbow shots, although using crossbow at such ranges generally requires co-operation from your team mate to actually stand still. An alternative bind for the fake zoom would be a thumb button, since it's quite unlikely that you would be airborne (either because of a jump or being blasted by projectiles) when trying to make a shot with the crossbow that would actually need zoom.
• Popping uber, and faking uber and using a random voiceline to mask uber simply fill the rest of the available keys.

Probably delete scripts/tf_weapon*.txt

I have a bunch of files in tf2config/scripts which redefine crosshairs in game. They probably only work specifically on my 3840x1600 ultrawide monitor, because I created the images myself as 512x512 pngs and converted them to .vtf (Valve texture files) and am using them unscaled. You may be able to fiddle with the cl_crosshair_scale variable to scale my crosshairs up or down to the correct size. You'll know the size is correct if you choose scout, turn fixed spread on, shoot at a wall, and the bullet hole decals line up exactly with the edges of the cross and the four dots on the diagonal.

Alternatively, just remove all of these files, and you'll go back to using default crosshairs that the game ships with.