Alright, let’s talk about G1 crosshairs. So, I was messing around with game development stuff, right? And I thought, “Hey, a cool crosshair would be awesome.” Not just your plain old plus sign, but something with a bit more flair, you know? Like from the good old days of the first person shooters.
First things first, I hopped online and started digging around for some inspiration. I wanted that classic, chunky, pixelated look. I found a bunch of images of old-school crosshairs, the kind you’d see in Doom or Quake. That’s the vibe I was going for. Then I fired up Aseprite because that’s my go-to tool for pixel art, even though I’m still learning.
Next, I started sketching. Just roughing out the basic shapes, trying to get that right balance of form and function. I wanted it to be cool looking but also not block the player’s view. It took a few tries, a lot of erasing and redrawing, before I landed on something I was happy with. I went with a simple design that flares out from the center. Each line has 3 little lines extending perpendicular, one short, one medium, and one long.
Then came the fun part: adding the details. I messed around with the colors, trying to find something that would stand out against different backgrounds. I went with a bright green, because I could easily switch it to another color in the game’s code. Once I had the crosshair looking the way I wanted, I saved it as a PNG file. I made it 32×32 pixels. Nothing too crazy.
After that, it was time to get the crosshair into my game. I’m using Unity, so I created a new UI Image object in my Canvas. Then, I dragged the PNG file into the Source Image slot. It was looking good, but it was way too small. So, I adjusted the size and position of the Image object until the crosshair was right in the center of the screen and the perfect size for my game.
But there was one more problem. The crosshair was always visible, even when I didn’t want it to be. So, I wrote a little script to control the crosshair’s visibility. The script checked to see if the player was aiming a weapon, and if they were, it enabled the crosshair. If they weren’t, it disabled the crosshair. Simple as that.
Finally, I tested everything out. I ran the game, picked up a weapon, and aimed it at a target. And there it was, my custom crosshair, right where it was supposed to be. It felt pretty good. It wasn’t perfect, of course. There’s always room for improvement. But it was a step up from the default crosshair, and it gave my game a little bit more personality.
And that’s how I made my own G1-inspired crosshair. It wasn’t the hardest thing in the world, but it was a fun little project, and it taught me a lot about UI design and scripting in Unity. I think it ended up looking pretty cool, even if I say so myself.
