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  Add New Crosshairs to Quake 2

Easiest Method

Look through the many pics here in the Quake 2 section on pages 1 thru 7 and download one of the prebuilt pak9 files containing three crosshairs. Place the pak file in your baseq2 folder.   Since Quake 2 looks for all pak files when it starts, and gives precedence to the files in the higher numbered pak, it will use your new x-hairs in the pak 9 and ignore the originals in the pak0. You can choose the new crosshairs in the regular game menu, but it will still refer to them as cross, angle, etc., or using the console (hit the tilde (~) key), choose one of them by typing crosshair 1, crosshair 2, or crosshair 3.

Harder Methods

1. Insert new crosshair files into your pak0.pak file.  See the instructions below.   2. Build your own pak file with your choice of any three crosshairs.

DEALING WITH PAK FILES

All the graphics and sound files in Quake 2 are contained in the file called pak0.pak in your baseq2 folder. .  You need a program specially designed to handle pak files to look inside or build a new pak. (With Quake 3, this pak format has changed to a traditional ZIP format.  The pk3 file extension used in Q3 is really just a ZIP in disguise).    If you don't already have a pak opening program, download Pak Explorer now while you read this.  All the descriptions and screen shots in these instructions will refer to Pak Explorer. Read the readme.txt file after unzipping.

Quake 2 allows you to access 3 crosshairs, called ch1.pcx, ch2.pcx, and ch3.pcx. These reside in a folder called PICS inside the pak0.pak file.  You can store more than 3 crosshairs with other file names in the PICS folder if you choose to, but Quake 2 will only recognize the three file names listed above.  In order to view other crosshairs  in the game,   the new crosshair files must be renamed to either ch1.pcx, ch2.pcx, or ch3.pcx.  If you choose to open your pak0.pak file
and change the existing crosshairs, be careful not to change anything other than those three files in the PICS folder, as the game may not look or run correctly if you do.  If you screw anything up while inside the pak0.pak file, the worst  that could happen is that you will have to reinstall Quake 2 from the original CD.  Follow the instructions and you'll do fine.

If you would rather not open the pak0.pak file and mess around inside
(it's really not that complicated - kind of like dealing with zipped files),
an alternative method of adding new crosshairs is to put them into a new pak file.  You'll need Pak Explorer for that also.  See the section called Create a New Pak  if you would rather try that method.

By now I'll assume that if you want to change the crosshairs inside your pak0.pak you have unzipped Pak Explorer and installed it in a folder.  The first time you double-click on the pakexpl.exe file to start the program, it should prompt you to set the Options.  Set the Shell Options as seen below.  The other options are up to you.

Once those Shell Options are set, you will be able to open a pak file by clicking on it, and you will be able to create a new pak file from the right mouse button menu, just like you create a new folder.

ADD NEW HAIRS TO THE PAK0.PAK AS PCX FILES

If you have downloaded individual crosshairs, they are in .pcx format. 
  If you downloaded the BH-Sites pack or some of the other zip files here, the files inside it are in .pcx format, and may already be named  ch1, ch2, or ch3,  so to avoid duplicating file names,  you'll have to rename or delete the original Quake 2 crosshairs before copying any new hairs into the pak0.pak file.

Quake 2 will still call the crosshairs the same names(cross, dot, angle) it used to in the Options menu.  You can view the new crosshairs from within the game by bringing down the command console with the tilde (~) key,  and typing crosshair 1, crosshair 2, etc.