[DFBHD] Baldo's New M60 Sight

[mg]

Crazy hobby you've got! These all look great, and even more importantly accurate and functional.

I reckon your research is valuable for game developers and modders of all scenes (and you're always a fun read!). If you ever wonder if it's OK to discuss different titles or even publish your findings and your work elsewhere, I'd bet it'd be welcomed in many places.

To test it, I'd need a target of known size at a confirmable distance, and I have yet to figure out how to do these things in CS:CZDS.

Distance units in goldsrc have definitely been researched heavily, meaning I'm sure you should be able to find some in-game tools/mods out there to help with that (or simply maps with measurement markers). Maybe check AMX Mod X for existing work or an API.

I have convinced myself that the default FOV in CS:CZDS is 90°

That's correct.

Anecdote: It's actually the maximum value allowed. The historically cited reason was to prevent competitive advantage during the widescreen transition period. Given cropping gave a disadvantage on the vertical space most players played stretched (or with black bars) instead. The lock was never lifted on 1.6 and so very many people got used to that before transitioning to CS:S and then CS:GO (and soon CS2!). Some kept on with it out of habit even as those titles allowed widescreen resolutions. Inspired by those in the pro scene who did that, you can now see kids who never even played 1.6 mimicking the old pros and touting 4:3 stretched as "superior" without a clue as to why they believe that -- a modern type of cargo cult behavior. No harm no foul of course, it's just a funny curiosity to me .

I'm also one of those dinosaurs who still plays 1.6 semi-regularly. Feel free to hit me up if you want to have a few games!

[Baldo_the_Don]

I never play online. I have made modifications on literally every game I have installed, and I'm paranoid I'll forget a modified file or two, and get myself banned.

Thanks anyway, mg.

I made a red gradient version of the mildot reticle on the AWP. I used a similar technique to attempt a smoother edge on the horseshoe-dot of the CMR2, and I wasn't going to add that screenshot, but in the process of making that screenshot, I noticed the black parts are actually very dark red, so I'm posting it before I go fix that.

[Hellfighter]

nice work done )

[Baldo_the_Don]

The raw data:

In Half-Life, the console command 'status' will display some information, including the name of the map you're currently in, and your XYZ positions in Half-Life map units. A map unit in Half-Life is 0.75" (0.01905m). 100m would be 5249.34 HLMUs.

Screenshot ofboot40005.jpg: The drill sergeant is at about 1433 on the x-axis. I'm positioned at -3816 on the x-axis. Note the width of his head and the width of the chevron.

Screenshot ofboot40004.jpg: The surface facing me of the center wall section that I'm aiming at and the edges of which I'm aligning the 10 mrad lines of the reticle on is at -3648 on the x-axis. It's 101 HLMUs wide. I'm positioned at 1601 on the x-axis. That'd be 19.2405 mrads from my POV.

Barring edits to the elevation and correction of mistakes due to sleep-deprivation, this reticle, at this magnification, at this game resolution, is as close to perfectly scaled as possible. I think.

* mic drop *

[Baldo_the_Don]

Oh, boy.

Screenshot cz_hr060006.jpg: That bit of architecture I'm aiming the Scout at is 16 Half-Life map units wide. My position is 800 HLMUs away and centered on the axis. Math says it's 20 mrads wide from that point. Having established that dimension, I redrew the entire reticle to scale to within a pixel of perfect.

Screenshot cz_hr060007.jpg: That bit next to the ladder is 8 HLMUs wide, it's 800 HLMUs away, so that's a confirmable 10 mrads. I had to fudge the dots a tiny bit, but not too much.

Screenshot cz_hr060008.jpg: The inner diameter of the Vortex reticle is 62 moa. Aiming at the 16 HLMU bit from 887 HLMUs away is the best I can math up, and it fits.

Screenshot cz_hr060009.jpg: I found a graphic saying the inner diameter of the outer ring of the reticle for the AUG is 150 mils. I took that to mean mrads, and what you see here is a 48 HLMU wide crate 320 HLMUs away. Having that dimension established, the only other thing that graphic said is the outer diameter of the inner ring (donut of death) is 12 mrads wide, so I mathed that up, and I drew the inner diameter of the inner ring that it should match the height of an average human 300m away, but there isn't a 300m sightline anywhere in any Half-Life map that I know of, so I'll settle for 'close enough' there.

I have a Schmidt & Bender P4LF on the G3SG-1 that's twice the correct scale, but I'm leaving it like that 'cause I like the detail. The CMR2 I have on the SG-550 is about three and a half times too large, but I also think it's too pretty to squish.

And that's me having a blast modding reticles in Counter-Strike: Condition Zero!

Edit: FINE! STOP YELLING AT ME! I took a crack at a correctly scaled CMR2. I don't hate it.

[Baldo_the_Don]

DFBHDTS has the problem where red reticles look suboptimal with NVGs turned on, and Condition Zero is the same, so I edited all the red reticles to be green. Also tried some new things.

Screenshot cz762ACOG.jpg: That's my interpretation of the Trijicon 3.5x35 .308 BAC Model TA11J-308 crosshair reticle in green mounted on the G3SG-1. Accurately scaled for the magnification. I did the same for the TA31-CH I had on the SG-550, but I switched it out for:

Screenshot czARCO.jpg: My interpretation of the ACOG-ish reticle of the ARCO scope from ARMA 3. I can't find real world info about this reticle, so I assume it was made up for ARMA 3. I used a screenshot of it from a Karmakut video, measured pixels and mathed them up to get dimensions I didn't just assume (the 500m hash on a BDC is 0.9651999 mrads, but its width in pixels can be accepted as 1 mrad).

Screenshot czScout.jpg: I googled up some info on the Scout and the reticle its scope should have, and there's dozens to choose from, all variations of about 1 MOA thick lines slimming down to about 0.3 MOA lines at the cross which is about 6 MOA wide and high. I did something close to that and added bright green illumination 5 mrads wide, and dim illumination 15 mrads wide ('cause in NL games, 2.5 mrads is a good lead for a target walking perpendicular to your sightline, and 7.5 mrad is good for a running target). You see how it aligns with the 16 HLMU wide air duct 1067 HLMUs away, if you want to check my math. F*** knows, I'd like a confirmation on that.

Screenshot czMildotG.jpg: 'Cause nobody cares about anything but the AWP, I guess.

I was going to do a new German #1 for the Kar-98 in Day of Defeat using the "status" command to get positional info, but "status" doesn't function that way in DoD. "status" displays the same YXZ no matter where you are in the map, and I assume that's where you spawn, or maybe where the camera is positioned in the mission opening cinematic. I dunno.

Edit: I did tweak the point of the center post to be a bit flat at the tip, which I understand is more authentic. Also just noticed I messed up my signature dust, dirt, and scratch layers. Damn.

Edit again: Compare dirt on the two German #1 reticles. I like B better.

Edit final?: Screenshot dod_zalecBino.jpg: I haven't modded the binoculars into my DoD yet, but if I ever do, this (or more likely, some version of this) is the reticle I'm putting on them.

Edit final: Screenshot dod_charlieBino.jpg: I think this one's more accurately scaled. Not confident on how much more accurately scaled it is, but it is. I'm sure the binoculars would have a different magnification than the Kar-98 I mounted this on for testing, but 'til I figure out some way of confirming an object is 100 mrads wide, it's all academic, I'd say.

Edit final, for real: Screenshot dod_charlieBino2.jpg: Wow, were my initial calculations wrong!

The "status" command does function in DoD, but only if you have the tactical map deactivated!

So you see 640 HLMUs away the nearest edge of a 64 HLMU wide tunnel entry. That's 100 mrads. The binocular reticle is as close to that as I can get it. The resolution of the sprite means it's either a bit too wide or a bit too narrow. I did my best. I don't hate it.

[Baldo_the_Don]

dod_chemilleBino.jpg: I think this is the final version for this magnification.

dod_flashBino.jpg: This was just for fun and experience. I like how I drew the 5s. That's not my fingerprint.

Edit: dod_avalancheBino.jpg: I liked how I drew the 5s, but I didn't love it. Now I love it. Also put some curves in the 2s and the hat-bill of the 1s. Thought about making the bottoms of the 3s taller than the tops, but maybe later.

[Baldo_the_Don]

dod_flugplatzFkg.jpg: I made a new FAKE-OG for DoD. To the best of my abilities, I made the horizon 110 mrads, end to end (using a 52 HLMU wide crate 473 HLMUs away), and mathed the rest of it proportionally using dimensions from the info sheet of the .308 reticle that I downloaded from the Trijicon site, 'cause they don't seem to have an ACOG for 8mm Mauser (which I searched for), so I figured I didn't need to search for 7.92×57mm Mauser, either. (And at the moment, I'm not sure they are actually different calibers.)

Also widened the scope edge a bit. I'm not sure what metric I used before (maybe 90% of the vertical screen height?), but this one is 95% of the vertical screen height. I'll be updating the other reticles soon-ish.

[Baldo_the_Don]

Screenshot cz_hr06_TA648.jpg:
What I love about this one is that the dimensions in the .pdf I found on the Trijicon site were all in mrads, so all I had to do was multiply the numbers by 4.8, round them off where necessary, and drop the pixels. I added the 1 mrad crosses every 5 mrads to match the photo on Wikipedia, and removed the 10m Z 'cause it was no help. What I don't like about this one is that the BDC chart is perfectly vertical, and apparently, it should slope down to the right a few degrees, and I could do that, but at this resolution and draw method, I cannot do it well.

This means the TA648 I made for the SFOD mod is also inauthentic. Since that slope to the right is probably to compensate for what I have to assume is an off-center mounted scope on the M240B, which is not a thing I believe that can be done in any game that I play and modify, I'm not going to lose any sleep about it, but I'm annoyed that I missed that detail in the first place.

Another detail I didn't know without the .pdf is that the top edge of the center dot is the 100m zero on this reticle, not the center of the dot.

The ladder and framing columns you see are 40 HLMUs wide, and I'm 800 HLMUs away from it, which my math and the horizon says is 50 mrads wide, viewed from that point.

Screenshot cz_hr06_Specter.jpg:
I literally just traced an image of the Elcan Specter reticle resized to fit the 256px² limit. It coincidentally ended up slightly under-scaled for the magnification. I think. Info I've found says the thick parts of the horizon should be 11.03 mrads apart, and in my sprite, they're more like 10, so...

Neither reticle is for a sniper rifle, anyway, so it's all big goofy fun, for now.

[Baldo_the_Don]

cz_hr06_1P88b.jpg:
The 1P88 reticle is fun enough. It's 200 moa wide, 150 moa tall, and has a rangefinder in the lower right. The annoying thing about drawing it to scale for a Half-Life mod is that sprites cannot be larger than 256px². Drawing the reticle for the highest magnification of the AWP, there was no way to fit the whole thing into 256px², so I decided to draw the lower right quadrant of it, mount it asymmetrically, and see what happens.

The framing column next to the ladder is 8 HLMUs wide. I've positioned myself on the same X-axis as the left edge, and I'm as close to exactly 275 HLMUs away as I could twitch to. The math says that, from that coordinate, 8 HLMUs is 100 moa. At 1280×720, with the max magnification on the AWP, the reticle looks correctly scaled.

The asymmetry is weird, but neat. It'd be cool if there was a method to mount a second sprite of the upper left quadrant of the reticle, but I don't know if the game is coded for that.

cz_hr06_1P88b2.jpg:
I'll skip the details, but that catwalk step you see in the lower right is 8 HLMUs tall, and I'm positioned about 941 HLMUs from it, which is about the same amount of arc as a 1.7m target 200m away would have.

cz_hr06_69-147.jpg:
I made this one up based mostly on the Schmidt & Bender 5-25x56 I saw in a Forgotten Weapons video, but I drew this one 100 moa wide instead of 10 mrads. It may be it was supposed to be 69 moa (20 mrads) and 147px wide, but the parameters changed, if the title didn't. I still have some tweaks I want to try out, but this is where this project is at this moment.

1P88 Fakes:
I made two sprites. One is the green cross and lower right corner of the reticle. I mounted it asymmetically and made a screenshot on a nice neutral background. The other is the green cross and the upper left corner of the reticle. I then mounted that asymmetrically and made a screenshot against the same neutral background. Then I edited the two screenshots together to show how the reticle would look if I could mount two (or more) 'zoom' sprites in the weapon_awp.txt.

It'd be fun.

[Baldo_the_Don]

cz_G36_reticle.jpg:
So just about out of nowhere, I had the idea to work up a G36 reticle for CS:CZ. As far as I can tell, it's correctly scaled for the max magnification on the Scout, the G3SG-1, and the SG-550 (insofar as the inner circumference of the ring is 4.375 mrads, or 1.75m at 400m, and the 200m stadium on the rangefinder is confirmed). I used values from an ACOG blueprint to place the 600m and 800m crosses, and I set the thick parts of the horizon 40 mrads apart even though I think they should be 50 mrads, but 40 looks a bit better within the 256 pixel limit.

I may redraw the reticle later, but I have this for now.

cz_G36i_reticle.jpg:
Okay, I'm not saying there aren't any blueprints of the G36 reticle to be found, I'm saying in all the years I've been modding games, I've never found any. I cannot be 100% certain I got the dimensions right, but 'close enough' is really close, in this case, especially with this resolution.

Find any of the 'through-optic' images of the G36 reticle, compare them to the attached screenshot by any method you care to use, I feel there'll be little to complain about. A few lines might be a pixel short or long, the rangefinger chart might be a bit squished to the right, but it's the best I could do.

No, there was never an illuminated version of this reticle ever made, far as I know. I've come to understand that not being able to engage mid- to long-range targets in low-light environments is one of the important reasons the Bundeswehr wanted funding for upgrades to this system, but I'm limited by nothing but my imagination, my skill, and my patience.

So I have a red ring version, the phosphorous green version, and a plain black version, for now.

cz_hr05_Scout_red.jpg:
At some point, I noticed that with the NVGs turned on, blood spatter is still red. The fact convinced me that immersion is not really possible beyond a certain extent in this game, and I can stop worrying about red reticles in green NVGs. A modder necessarily exerts extra effort on a moddable point than the dev, but time and effort aren't limitless, and you have to choose your battles.

A lot of my CS:CZ reticles are red, now. The Scout reticle I made is frankly brilliant, in my eyes.

According to my research results, the bold lines are about an MOA thick, the fine lines are about a third of an MOA thick, and the cross is about 6 MOA wide. I drew it close to that, then added the illumination, bright is 5 mrads wide, dim is 15 mrads, 'cause in Novalogic games, those are good leads for walking and running targets.

cz_hr06_Kashtan.jpg:
I'm leaving my Kashtan green. Attached are other 1P78 related images.

[Baldo_the_Don]

cz_hr06_MR10.jpg:
At 8:49 in this video from C_DOES:



I was, like, "Ooh, that's neat!" And I did a version. Instead of an 8×13 mrad cross, which turned out a bit small for my taste, I went with an 80×110 moa cross, which has all the detail I like and fits in the 256px² sprite. I tried some new color schemes, and this one seems to be the least worst of all methods.

cz_hr06_OKP7.jpg:
Also tried a new coloring method for this one...

cz_hr06_Steiner.jpg:
Which was inspired by this one. C_DOES did a video about it.

cz_hr06_AWP.jpg:
Yeah, this one I like 'cause the process of making it established for me much more solidly that at max magnification, the AWP's reticle sprite needs 7.2px per mrad. And I really like negative space mildots in the thick lines.

cz_hr06_MR10_scaled.jpg:
I mean, this is scaled correctly, but it's suboptimal, right?

[Baldo_the_Don]

cz_hr06_SIGCOG.jpg:
So you might remember when I said I wasn't going to try to make an ACOG reticle for the SIG-552, even though the view model literally has an ACOG mounted on it, 'cause how'm I gonna do a 3×3px chevron?

I can't believe this...

The ladder and framing columns you see in the screenshot are 40 HLMUs wide, I'm positioned 400 HLMUs from it. A verifiable 100 milliradians.

The classic military TA31 has a 110 mrad horizon in 5 mrad subtensions.

I kind of pulled it off. Play testing pending.

Edit: Yeah, just finished the mission "Rise Hard" with the SIG-552. At this resolution, it's just a mutated red dot, but it's a confirmable chevron mutation, and, man, I wasn't sure I'd get it even that close.

I think I'm gonna have a good weekend, knock on wood.

cz_hr06_ARCO_red.jpg:
Note the red lines ending flush with the edges of the duct in the background, and where the end of the BDC meets the edge of the duct in the foreground, 'cause without moving the mouse, I switch over from the SIG-550 to...

cz_hr06_SIGCO_red.jpg:
...The SIG-552, where you see those same lines meet in the same places, meaning these two versions of the ARCO reticle I ripped off from Squad (or was it ARMA3?) are the same size, but different magnifications.

I love it when I get things right.

cz_hr06_G1_red_fade.jpg:
Unusually, I optimized the scale on this one for the first magnification level, which is 2.73x, according to my notes. At low magnification, the post and bars are 5 mrads thick. The point is slightly flat, and there's a corner on each side where the point slopes down to the edges of the center post. The gap from those corners of the flat point to each bar at 9 and 3 o'clock is 4.8 mrads, which is dude-wide at 100m.

cz_hr06_G1_red_solid.jpg:
I'm not a fan of solid-colored reticles. My experience is that contrast in the reticle itself ensures visibilty against more backgrounds. This one seems to be okay, though. Red 144. I dunno, though.

[Baldo_the_Don]

cz_hr06_SIGCOGch.jpg:
Paying approximately 7.6% more attention than usual in a recent play test of CS:CZ, I noticed that the ACOG on the viewmodel of the SIG-552 has no light pipe. The infamous source of the ACOG's blindingly daylight-bright chevron. Not on this viewmodel.

I started having doubts.

Did a bit of looking around the Trijicon site, where I quickly realized a lot of the ACOGs were tritium only. Light pipe free. I also noticed that none of the models featuring back up irons like the viewmodel has were offered with the chevron reticle. They all had the red crosshair.

Welp...

Here's my crack at the ACOG 4x32 BAC Model TA31-CH Red Crosshair reticle. There's little detail in this, but it is to scale.

Also, just now ctrl+c-ing some text above from the .pdf datasheet, I've seen that all the tritium only models have amber reticles, not red.

Hm.

cz_hr06_PTR40.jpg:
Battlebit has this reticle, and I ripped it off. Had to, really. It's half-size scaled for this magnification and resolution, but I got the whole thing in a 256px² sprite, and that's what really matters. The illuminated cross is aberrant from the original, but I like being able to see my reticle in low light, y'know?

[Baldo_the_Don]

cz_hr06_TA648b.jpg:
Minor edits. Stricter adherence to the math. Smaller center and 2.5 mrad dots. I attempted the BDC slope, it did not look good, and reverted it. Then I made the numbers more subtle versions of the 3×5 pixel font.

I like it.

cz_hr06_ACOGchSIGia.jpg:
A variation of the classic ACOG crosshair reticle.

[Baldo_the_Don]

cz_hr06_G1i_AUG.jpg:
A version of the German #1 reticle with red illumination, optimized for 1.9x magnification. Post and bars are 5 mrads thick, space between point tip and bar is about 4.8 mrads, or dude-wide at 100m, and the point is about 60°. The illuminated lines on the bars is about 4.8 mrads wide.

cz_hr06_G1i_AWP.jpg:
This is the real reason I wanted to post these screenshots. I love the illumination effect and corner radii I did on this.

This is the German #1 reticle, optimized for 11.26x magnification. The main point I wanted to maintain is the 4.8 mrad space between corners of each side of the flat part of the point on the post and the bars on either side. The bars and post are 2 mrads thick, and the point is 40°.

cz_hr06_PTR40_7x5.jpg:
I made the numbers larger. Also tweaked the cross so the center pixel isn't overbright.

cz_hr06_CR1.jpg:
Ooh, this one's a new try of an old unsuccess, and look at it! My experiments lead to an edit in the horseshoe that, if you saw the .psd/.bmp/.spr, you'd say, "No, that looks bad, why's it toothy?!" But in-game, the curve is smooth and sweet.

And I'm not sure I want to admit this in public, what with my love of chevrons on my reticles, but I keep being surprised about, not so much how the melons pop when I'm sporting a horseshoe, but by how satisfying it is when they do. It just hits different, y'know? Frame their grumpy faces with the almost-ring, click, and splat! goes the terrorist.

Hm.

[Baldo_the_Don]

What happened with these reticles is I discovered a trick to sort of get around the draw method's lack of blendable alpha.

Some lines, you want them to be less than a pixel thick. With the index alpha draw method, the greyscale image of the reticle sets alpha levels for each pixel, so the brighter a pixel is, the more transparent it is in game. This is great as long as your reticle has only one color.

The alpha test draw method allows for many colors, but only one level of alpha.

However...

I discovered that, where you want a one pixel thick line to look less than a pixel thick, you set every other pixel in that line to full alpha. At least, with the way the graphics work on my computer, the game makes the reticles pretty blurry, and the line of dots kind of blends enough to seem like a transparent line.

cz_hr06_GPO.jpg:
German Precision Optics offer the GECO Black 1-8x24F1 scope with the Taci reticle.

cz_hr06_PA_Nova.jpg:
The 50m hashes on the Primary Arms Nova reticle work so well this way.

cz_hr06_SG552_ACOGch.jpg:
The ACOG crosshair for the Sig-552 is my masterpiece of this trick.

I'm in such a good mood!



cz_hr06_69-147_60moa.jpg:
Oh, the fine lines, the tiny, clear 10 and 5 moa dots, the 16.59 moa illuminated cross (okay, it's actually 16.43 moa, but you do what you can with the resolution you have, y'know?).

cz_hr06_Aurora.jpg:
The ACSS. Decently scaled and functional. I think...

[Baldo_the_Don]

cz_hr06_Aurora_2.jpg:
* sigh *

A bit more research, a few more images, and finally, aesthetics over authenticity, and I got this. 5 and 10 mph windholds, a more authentically thick horseshoe, and larger, less blobby numbers. The BDC hashes are looser than might aught to be, but with the extra room, I could trick in the 50m hashes. Or is this reticle in yards?

* shrugs *

I like the look of it, though. Play testing's been great.

cz_hr06_20-147.jpg:
So, the idea I was working under when I was naming these reticles was that 69 moa (rounded up from 68.754934) is 20 mrads translating to 147 pixels on a reticle sprite for the max magnification of the AWP.

But just now checking the .psd, a selection box drawn around the middle of the reticle, including the first pixels of the thick lines, is actually 145 px.

That'll get confusing.

[Baldo_the_Don]

Confusion. Fitting word to end my last reply.

See the "Dichotomy and Anger" attachments? Do you get it? I figured the trick out, and it makes barely any sense to me.

There's no way this should work, but it very much does, and I'm angry about it.

Dichotomy, and the anger it awakens.

Edit: Maybe also a playtest screeny.

More edit:

cz_hr06_SBP4LF_unscaled.jpg: Drawn 10px per milliradian, it's not to scale at any magnification in-game (which is Counter-Strike: Condition Zero Deleted Scenes, by the way), but it has detail.

cz_hr06_SBP4LF_7.56x.jpg: The detail on this one is mostly just suggested as aesthetic factors, but it is scaled correctishly for the higher magnification on three of the four sniper rifles. Completely useless in a game with hitscan weapons and view distances maxing out at maybe 128m, but fun for me to make. And the center cross is a bit blobby against bright backgrounds, but it pops on a darkish target in a dimmish area.

cz_hr06_NFMilR.jpg: Or how about my interpretation of the Nightforce Mil-R. It's unscaled, but detailed.

[Baldo_the_Don]

I figured out a kind of backlighting effect for reticles in Counter-Strike: Condition Zero Deleted Scenes. I like it. It works.

cz_hr06_Kern_BL.jpg: Best I could google, an optics company named Kern made a scope for the SG-550, way back in the day. The reticle kind of had this form, and it was illuminated, but I can find neither images nor descriptions about what the illumination looked like, so I made some stuff up.

This is my latest version. An amber backlighting effect around black lines. Good visibility in all lighting and backgrounds, so far. Doubtfully authentic.