-= Gametoast.com =-

I'm new to bf2 modding, and I'm wondering if there's an easy way to replace the default crosshair with a custom one? i want to remove the default crosshair/reticule with the cooldown bar and have a static crosshair

http://gametoast.com/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=13806 -- under the HUD / Shell section. I should warn you that it involves compiling main game files.

The stock crosshair is a 3D model that gets referenced by the HUD file. You'll need to code a new HUD and prepare new 3D model to be called by the new HUD.

If I recall correctly, HUD file and the stuff it references all go inside ingame.lvl so ingame.lvl is the file you need to produce a new version of.

God, no!!

Everything was correct until it came to the game integration.
So you have three ways to bring your crosshair ingame, once you designed the 3d model.
1) The easy, the fast way, that leads directly to the dark side: Well you recompile the stock file and replace it
2) The alliance way: You say your mod is only compatible with remaster 1.3. In that case you just munge your msh + a modified version of the stock HUD file, so that your msh is used and the headbar is removed, into a lvl file and replace the remaster's hud file.
3) The hard way: You go with the HUD tutorial, write a wrapper script to detect ingame calls and use the kill bmp, kill msh and kill tga variant to remove the things you don't like and then you load your custom hud in addition to the stock one. It may be hard to remove everything because the headbar uses white tga as far as i remember and it's used by everything. So you'd need to make a new white tga and add all things that use it to your custom hud file, but with a not killed version of white tga.