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So I'm getting a little tired of seeing my reflect multi-kills being quickly dequeued by other players' kills and even revenges/dominations I attain, like this revenge kill out of 4 kills in total:

(Yes, that's the notorious team color HUD bug. I hate it too.)

The kill feed by default only displays 4 items; although my deaths and kills stay a little longer on the feed they get pushed away pretty quickly by too many things.

Is there an add-on I can use or a CVAR I can adjust to increase how many items the kill feed displays? I have a fairly spacious display anyway, so adding a couple more won't hurt.

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  • 3
    in quake announcer voice: IMPRESSIVE!
    – Raven Dreamer
    Commented Aug 21, 2011 at 21:20
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    I'm looking at it, and it should potentially be possible to increase the kill feed number of rows, by editing the hud. I'm looking at how to do that, though... Starter guide for HUD editing here.
    – Lysarion
    Commented Aug 22, 2011 at 0:50
  • Additional information: Hudlayout.res (the file you need to edit) can be found in the /tf/scripts folder from the "team fortress 2 content.gcf" But i don't know what exact part of the file need to be edited... (I'll be looking for that point when i'll have some more free time)
    – Lysarion
    Commented Aug 22, 2011 at 1:09
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    @Lysarion: Thanks a lot! I figured it out on my own with the info you mentioned, and have posted an answer below.
    – BoltClock
    Commented Aug 24, 2011 at 3:03

1 Answer 1

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As noted by Lysarion in the comments, the file to modify is hudlayout.res. Previously, this was found in the /tf/scripts folder in the team fortress 2 content GCF archive. But now that the game has been converted to a new file system via SteamPipe, it's now in the tf2_misc VPK archive which is stored in /tf in the installation folder.

Fortunately, GCFScape can open VPK archives just as with GCF archives. Open tf2_misc_dir.vpk in GCFScape and find the file in /root/scripts.

Extract and search the file, then find the following field:

HudDeathNotice
{
    "fieldName" "HudDeathNotice"
    // ...

    "MaxDeathNotices" "4"
    "IconScale"   "0.35"
    "LineHeight"      "16"
    "LineSpacing"     "4"
    "CornerRadius"    "3"
    "RightJustify"    "1"   // If 1, draw notices from the right

    // ...
}

The HudDeathNotice field defines the appearance of the kill feed. You'll see at a glance the variable that tells the game how many items to display at most at any time:

    "MaxDeathNotices" "4"

Change that to any value you want, then save the file.

You used to be able to simply place the file in the /tf/scripts folder in the game's installation folder. Now with the new file system, custom files are handled quite differently. This Steam KB article has all the info you need, but the simplest way is to open /tf/custom, create a folder with any name you want if you don't have one already, create a scripts folder inside that folder, then place the file in there. Then launch the game and you should see the change you made in-game.

There's a little caveat: hudlayout.res is subject to changes in game patches, which won't be reflected in the custom version of the file. You may have to repeat this procedure in case of any changes to the original file outside of this modification.

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  • I'm not interested in any HUD mods right now, so since all I want is to increase the kill feed count, this will do.
    – BoltClock
    Commented Aug 24, 2011 at 2:56
  • The auto-delete happens to me too. A relatively easy workaround is to make a copy named hudlayout2.res or something, and every time the primary is deleted, re-copy it.
    – Toomai
    Commented Nov 25, 2011 at 22:05
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    @TheAnnoyingPyro thanks for updating this answer for the new file system!
    – hammythepig
    Commented Jul 17, 2013 at 12:32

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