In Counter-Strike: Global Offensive you can customize everything from just your crosshair to something as trivial as changing the text in the in-game menu. In this guide we will be taking a look at customizing your crosshair, in-game text, viewmodel and last but not least, the minimap. Customizing these things can help you to see things, like enemies or on-screen text, more clearly. But more importantly; it will also make Counter-Strike more of a personal experience for you.

Crosshair

The crosshair is probably the most important one on the list. You will be staring at this little thing every time you’re playing Counter-Strike. Making this comfortable for you to use is obviously very important. Like everything that we will be covering in this guide, it is totally up to you on how you want your Counter-Strike to look. Don’t let people tell you that something looks wrong. If it works for you, it’s fine. Check out this guide made by trailmix, for a really in-depth look at the different types of crosshairs. The community map called crashz' Crosshair Generator, also mentioned in the guide by trailmix, is a great tool to create your own crosshair in-game. Here you can create your own crosshair, or pick one from a list pro players.

You can also use the CS:GO Crosshair Generator using your browser, this is less precise than the community map because you’re not in the game, but it still gets the job done. To try out new crosshairs using this website I’d suggest to create a crosshair that you like, start up a game with bots and paste the commands into the console. Then try out your new crosshair. After that change what you don’t like and try playing with it again. Repeat this until you have your perfect crosshair. You can also try out all the crosshair settings using the console and these commands.

In-game and menu text

To personalize CS:GO even more you can change the game’s main font. Doing this will change the font of the main menu, the scoreboard, your inventory, the chat and the HUD. To change the font, go to font.spddl.de (a trusted fonts website for CS:GO) and pick a font that you like. Double click the image to download a font. When you have downloaded your font of choice go to the Counter-Strike directory in your program files (Program Files > Steam > Steamapps > common > Counter Strike Global Offensive > csgo > resource > flash). There you will find a file called fontmapping.cfg, it is advisable to make a backup of this file. Now open the zip file you’ve just downloaded and go to the very last page called flash. There you will find two files, one called fontmapping.cfg and one file with the font in it. Drag these two files into the flash folder, replace the existing files and you’re done. When you start up the game your new font should immediately be in the game.

Viewmodel

In CS:GO you can change the position of you gun using these commands. Changing your viewmodel can give you more vision, but it can also make Counter-Strike feel more comfortable to play for you. In my time in CS I have seen people use the craziest viewmodels. Some people have their gun all the way in the bottom right, some all the way in the middle like they’re playing Doom. Similar to changing your crosshair, there is also a community map called crashz' Viewmodel Generator to change your viewmodel. Here you can modify your viewmodel in-game using buttons in the map.

The minimap

You get a lot of information from your minimap. Having this clear and easy for you to read is obviously important. These commands are used to change the minimap to your liking. cl_radar_always_centered changes if your positions is always in the middle of the minimap. Use 1 or 0 to change this, 1 meaning it’s centered. cl_radar_scale changes how much the map is zoomed in. Having your map zoomed out is advisable since you can see the whole map as opposed to seeing just a part of the map on your minimap. The default value of cl_radar_scale is 0.7, lowering this number will show you more of the map.

cl_hud_radar_scale changes how big the map is on your screen. You don’t want your map too big so it takes up a lot of space on your screen, but also not to small so you can’t see that well. The default value is 1. Increasing this number will make your map bigger. 1.15 seems to be the sweet spot for most people. cl_radar_icon_scale_min changes the size of the icons on the minimap. Making your icons bigger is advisable since it makes it easier to read the minimap. To make your icons bigger, increase the value from 0.6 to about 1. It is recommended to keep cl_radar_rotate on 1. But you can turn off your minimap turning with you by changing it to 0.

This minimap uses cl_radar_always_centered 0, cl_radar_scale 0,45, cl_hud_radar_scale 1.3, cl_radar_icon_scale_min 0.6, cl_radar_rotate 1.

You can also change the radar image to show you the callouts on the map. This is great if you are new to Counter-Strike and don’t know the exact callouts of a map or if you just find it handy to have all the callouts on your screen. This Reddit thread explains you how to change the map files.

And that’s all you need to know about customization in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Make your Counter-Strike more personal to you and, above all, make Counter-Strike easier to play. Good luck!

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