Thank you so much! Everything you've said worked in my case. Your "workaround" works especially, and it's not too much of a bother. Seeing as the hud and resolution functions with that method though, I think it isn't totally a hud related problem. Maybe it's an (unfixable) bug within the game that occurs at the first map load with such resolutions.

In regards to using a height lower than 480, while the game doesn't crash like that, it feels quite weird. I could definitely get used to it however. I'll see if I can try anything tomorrow, and if nothing helps, I'll mark the issue as solved. Thanks again.

I'm not sure if you understood well my problem (my bad, probably didn't make it clear enough), but the -small launch option and therefore resolution itself works. The main menu shows and I can click whatever I want. It's only when I try to load a map, and after it finishes loading, that it crashes. I'm changing my native resolution from Windows and letting TF2 auto scale. Also, windowed borderless mode (probably) comes with an input latency problem.

I've tried both dxlevel 80 and 90, as I said, both leading to crashes. After reading your post, I tried to start up a map with only the -small (both at the start and end) and -console options, thinking -small may have a connection to the crash, but to no avail. Still a crash.

I've edited my original post to show this.

[FIXED]
The problem seems to be HUD related, and can be "fixed" with a workaround described in #6 by turbochad69. It involves joining with a normal resolution, joining a map and then changing to a lower res with mat_setvideomode. You can also use a lower aspect ratio if you have a height of 640, like in 640x450. The actual solution is probably designing a custom HUD with the conflicting element(s) removed, but that'd take a lot of trial and error and probably result in a bad hud.

----

I wanted to have a lower resolution than 640x480 because I'm horribly bottlenecked by my iGPU and to allow a higher refresh rate for my CRT. However, when I start the game with such a resolution and try to load a map, after the loading screen, it crashes after showing a frame of the 'welcome' text and the map rendered in the background. The main menu works with the intended resolution and I can click whatever I want.

I'm using the -small launch option to allow me to use lower than 640x480 resolutions and mastercomfig with the low preset. I've tried:

- Searching online for anything similar.
- Changing HUDs (flame, m0rehud, yahud, default, etc).
- Verifying the game files.
- Changing mastercomfig to the medium and very-low preset (that disables chat, killfeed, etc).
- Different resolutions (560x412, 576x436 and 624x472).
- Changing to dxlevel 90 or 80.
- Removing all launch options except the necessary ones.

Any pointers to what is going wrong would be appreciated.