I even specifically said to make sure to not mess up any brackets when you paste it into hudlayout :<. That's almost certainly what you're doing wrong when you copy-paste. The only other possible answer is if you're on a mac, post back if you are.

Achievement tracker is what you want 100%. if it "scrambled" your hud, that just means you didn't do it right. If you follow that thread you linked to the letter, and edit your config so that hud_achievement_tracker is set to 1 for the weapon you want to have the crosshair and set to 0 when you don't want it on, it works. No other way to say it.

Something new that was just discovered by JarateKing is that one can edit the material proxies of a .vmt to make anything beneath the material translucent, or, more accurately, make it refract. One potential use of this function is to make your viewmodels transparent. This is already mentioned in his hud's thread but I know a lot of people haven't seen it.

A couple things to note:

• This method is simple hud-editing.
  
• It shouldn't ever result in a VAC ban.
  
• However: this might be considered an exploit as for some reason it affects some map textures as well, specifically spawn doors. This is disappointing as it increases the likelihood of this being patched in some way.
  
• If used in conjunction with chris' or comanglia's maxframes fps configs it will work on all maps.
  
• Right now it does not work on dx8, only dx9 (which sucks).
  
• It should work on macintosh, not sure of linux.
  
• Assuming the above conditions are met: it ~should~ work on all servers, sv_pure 2 or otherwise, at least until the workaround for custom materials is patched (if ever). Some public servers have broken all custom materials for me personally, usually ones running sourcemod to limit classes or disable capping on hightower. Someone in this thread mentioned skial badwater not working. It's possible there's some servermod that might render this ineffective, not sure.
  

To put it in layman's terms: one is putting a transparent screen underneath their health and ammo that refracts light such that everything underneath it is transparent. Since your viewmodels are technically considered a part of your hud (??) they are partially transparent. This does not affect the actual tf2 map you are playing on, just your viewmodels. (edit: apparently this does affect the map?) Here's how to add this feature into any hud:

1. Materials

First you will need to get the custom materials in question. Here is a download link, and here, for reference, is what the .vmt file actually look like:

"Refract"
{
	"%keywords" "tf"
	"$refractamount" "0.0"
	"$refracttint" "{255 255 255}"
	"$refractblur" "0.0"

	"$scale" "[1 1]"
	"$normalmap" "vgui/replay/thumbnails/REFRACTnormal_transparent"
}

Compared to what it ~normally~ looks like.

"UnlitGeneric"
{
	"$translucent"	"1"
	"$basetexture" "vgui\replay\thumbnails\seeker"
	"$vertexcolor" "1"
	"$no_fullbright" "1"
	"$ignorez" "1"
}

Once you have both the .vtf and the .vmt, put them in custom/ * any name * /materials/vgui/replay/thumbnails.

2. HudLayout

Next you will need to reference the material in HudLayout.res in your scripts folder. Copy/paste this into the file. It needs to follow the formatting used by hudlayout. Put it right where the cursor is in the below screenshot (default hud used for example):

http://i.imgur.com/xPN1OdC.png

Make sure not to delete any existing brackets while doing so. The below is what you copy-paste.

"TransparentViewmodelMask"
	{
		//alpha doesn't work for this, you need to change the texture's alpha
		"ControlName"	"ImagePanel"
		"fieldName"		"TransparentViewmodelMask"
		"xpos"			"0"
		"ypos"			"0"
		"zpos"			"-100"
		"wide"			"f0"
		"tall"			"480"
		"visible"		"1"
		"enabled"		"1"
		"image"			"replay/thumbnails/REFRACTnormal_transparent"
		"scaleImage"	"1"
	}

3. Config Settings

The final step is to edit your fps config so that certain console commands don't disable your viewmodels' transparency. Find these console commands in your config and replace them with the following:

// Prism Settings (for refract)

mat_motion_blur_enabled 1 			//afaik the only sure-fire way to keep refract masking on
mat_motion_blur_strength 0 			//effectively disables motion blur, personal choice + motion blur gets masked and looks bad with refract masking
mat_disable_bloom 1 				//disables bloom so refract masking doesn't create a dark rectangle over light materials
mat_hdr_level 0
mat_colcorrection_disableentities 1
mat_colorcorrection 0

Using these commands should make this work on all maps, with or without water. Big thanks to -Icaria- from reddit for going through chris' maxframes and commenting out each line to find these. More feedback on these being the only commands neccesary welcome.

If my explanation is too complicated or you don't get it, there's a simple version of this post that might help here.

That's it! Your viewmodels will now look like this:

shitty youtube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yqZTt0Lc78&feature=youtu.be

imgur album:
http://imgur.com/a/L0t9v

Reposting my guide on hud crosshairs from huds.tf for greater visibility. I see a ton of questions on here that can be answered by a quick look at the relevant section of the guide, so hopefully this helps.

Guide

I actually made an in-depth guide to hud crosshairs which is already on huds.tf, but it's always good to see more content! I'm worried that you couldn't seem to find it however, maybe I should make a thread here for mine too?

Here's a screenshot of netgraph while the issue is occurring, seriously doubt it's internet related though:

http://i.imgur.com/Rum9sCt.png

I also forgot to mention a couple things:

• this issue happens on local servers
  
• alt-tabbing occasionally fixes the issue completely (????) for the rest of the time i play tf2

i feel like i haven't done an adequate job of explaining exactly how the issue manifests itself so i tried recording a demo when the problem is occurring and then again when it's not. the game is much smoother in the problem demo than in reality but if you look at the rocket trails you can see how the game looks to me, every time the rockets skip my game just paused/skipped. it's similar to dropping frames except the game, players, and myself seem to be affected by it. also, towards the end of the demo you can actually see a little bit of stuttering which is pretty similar to how the game looks. the no_problem one should show a good contrast with how it normally and should be. they're both only a couple minutes long.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vcmt4ti8pjz6fyo/demos.zip?dl=0

What are you trying to do? Change how hurt you need to be for your health to change color/have the cross pop up? Change the color your health cross turns? For the first: Copy the line in bold which says "HealthDeathWarning" and then paste it in the element "HudPlayerHealth" (at the top) in resource/ui/hudplayerhealth.res. The decimal is how hurt you need to be for the health to change, 0.49 would be at 49 percent of your original health. If you want to change which color your health cross is then copy the line "HealthDeathWarningColor" into the same location. This one is a color which means the value you want looks like this: "255 0 125 255" (for example), the values are < R G B A >, red green blue alpha (alpha being how transparent) on a scale from 0 to 255. For both copy/change both.

Add me on steam if you need/would like more help.

I only ever have itunes and mumble, sometimes textedit if I'm editing something in my hud or changing autoexec. I can take a screenshot of activity monitor next time I play, think that shows memory usage...

Was intended more as a sad postscript about their recent departure than anything else.

Short version:

I'm stuck playing on a macbook pro and most of the time its performace is suprisingly good (around 100 fps, smooth, decent hit reg) but sometimes, randomly, the game gets weirdly jittery. It's normal for about two seconds at a time, then pauses for like half a second, normal for two seconds, etc. with regularity (same interval) for like a half hour at a time. Recording a demo and stopping it sometimes fixes it. Anyone know any console commands/possible causes?

Long ranty wall of text:
It's possible the problem is as simple as the laptop overheating, but I hope it's not that because then there's not much I'm willing to do. I've been playing tf2 on this macbook whenever I'm on vacation at my parents' house for years and it's been a problem since the beginning. The only thing that makes me think I can possibly fix it (and that puts a seed of doubt that it's not just some random symptom of overheating) is that sometimes tf2 randomly runs amazingly, with no issue, for hours at a time, for weeks at a time, with similar memory usage. Using no fps config has occasionally made the issue go away, but when I tried that two weeks ago it was worse than it has ever been, and installing Comanglia's config (for the first time, I previously used a heavily modified Chris' which I guess I forgot to back up when I uninstalled the game on the mac) helped marginally. I'm half convinced that there's a net setting or obscure console command that might help, and I'm turning to the nerds of tftv with low hopes.

A couple more things to note:
- I semi-regulary verify integrity of game cache/ delete custom folder to try to fix this.
- steam cloud is disabled in-game, that helped a lot actually.
- I've reinstalled both tf2 and steam several times over the years on this computer, issue has persisted semi-randomly the entire time.
- I've used this computer on probably four different ISPs (one move, one change of service provider, one at lake house), once on a good wired connection but mostly on wireless, and the issue has persisted/randomly not happened through every one.
- My ping SOMETIMES spikes up really high when this is occurring but it is usually when I'm on wireless and ping spikes seem to happen fairly often even when this particular problem isn't occurring.
- I'll try to get a net_graph screenshot up tonight but looking at net_graph 4 last night choke said 2/3 and loss said 0, I know those are important but not what they mean.

I know embarrassingly little about hardware, here is a screenshot of the specs page, let me know if more info is neccesary:

http://i.imgur.com/XHV6MhB.png

For my current net settings:
I have used Chris's good connection/ bad connection and Comanglia's good connection extensively, I tried Comanglia's bad connection last night and it made things much worse in different ways so I switched back. I have messed with cl_interp and cl_interp_ratio a lot but I don't see how that could be causing anything. I have tried setting several different values of an fps cap to reduce overheating but that made my tf2 significantly worse (in other ways unrelated to the issue)and it was visibly better when I set it back to 0. I tried changing cl_smooth and cl_smoothtime or whatever it is to default once and that didn't help either. Here's my current config, Comanglia's, which is barely edited if I remember correctly.

http://pastebin.com/qaDzYc0M

Sorry for wall of text, TL;DR post console commands / fixes that might improve performance on a mac laptop if not potential solutions to my specific problem.

I don't want to speak for any epsilon players but the i49 documentary made it seem like the true driving force behind the formation and success of their i49 roster was a desire to get revenge against NA teams at LAN. Waldo's last paragraph about ESEA being sort of a way to enable high-level competition hits the nail on the head for me. The fees ESEA players pay not only ensure a higher level of competition than UGC but also enable North America to have an event three times a year to look forward to as the pinnacle of competition. It enables street hoops esports to move up from Open to the top of invite. It enables mad men to smash IM every other season but still come back for more in invite (5th place forever rip). It enables a pug team, LiT, to, admittedly with some veteran pickups, go from a pug team with low-level invite players to an undefeated season and sponsorship. It enables mix^ to be able to stick around and continue to find renewed interest in this game (at least for a little while).

Europe is lucky that they get the LAN without league fees, but the LAN is still enabled by community money. If we ignore iM, every high level international team that has made it to the last three i-series lans made it only because of crowd-funding. There were even some high-level European teams that had fundraisers for players to help get them there. To act like etf2l would have had such high-levels competition without some form of an influx of cash seems ignorant to me; if you need any evidence of this, look at Ozfortress, Asiafortress, or LBTF2L (the brazilian/south-american league).

You've already shown your capacity to ignore logic but I'll bite. eXtv has been instrumental in the growth of competitive 6s for YEARS. Randomly pulling that support in favor of a new, untested game-mode that offers little to no tangible benefit (yet) is almost a sure fire way to further split and isolate the community. At this point in time, tf2 as an esport is on life support at the highest levels. If you lose lan, and the highest level of competition leaves the game, you're left with the 12 year old playerbase of UGC 6s, and the game will stagnate and die, at least in North America. Splitting this community is a terrible idea, especially for a gamemode such as A:R (see below).

Trying out something new != calling out 6s as stale and saying the players are unwilling to try new things in front of aforementioned 108,000 subscribers. hmm.

That aside, in regards to your "complicated" assertion:

Here is what you HAVE to explain to somebody about 6s. There is an established meta, but as far as the actual gamemode goes, the technical rules are:

• 6 players each team
  
• 1 demo/medic/sniper/engi/heavy
  
• 2 everything else
  
• certain weapons are banned

Add in to this that pubbers already play and are familiar with the gamemodes of koth and 5cp.

Here's highlander:

• 9 players each team
  
• one of each class
  
• certain (very few) weapons are banned

Add in to this that pubbers already play and are familiar with koth, 5cp, and payload. A/D (steel/gpit) probably not so much.

Then we have A:R:

• 5 players each team
  
• one of each class, except this changes every game
  
• vaccinator banned
  
• you take mini-crits while on the point*
  
• you can respawn in arena mode*
  
• the only way to respawn is capping the point, which respawns your whole team*
  
• before the round, each team needs to agree on a CLASS ban*
  
• effectively, each round you're limited to 7 classes*
  
• you can still win the round by wiping the other team.
  
• you can also win by running down the 50 seconds timer on the point.*

Add in to this that arena as a gamemode is not familiar for the majority of pubbers. Furthermore, items with an asterisk are items that would be completely unfamiliar/new to any pubber, even an expert in arena. The barrier for entry of competitive play might not be that high but I think that's more due to the fact that you can play with little to no DM and do fairly well, at this point in time.

How is it not MUCH more complicated, especially to the average pubber?

Day 1 Vods are up and linked. One of them is still processing as of the time of this post but should be up momentarily. Sorry for the delay. You can catch (partially muted) grand finals vods here for the time being.

EDIT: last video is done processing, I published before the stupid thumbnail but they should all work now. i also put the actual start times in the comment section of the youtube video if you want to skip to when it's live.

sounds like you deleted a bracket while editing it to me. if you've changed it at all roll back to a previous version/ redownload that file for the hud.

http://i.imgur.com/UsPO4J4.jpg

fixed