This article reveals the images that are in two special wad files for Half-Life.

Cached.wad
The cached.wad just has two images for the loading screen and the console. They're both 320x200 but it's possible to change their size to 320x240 or 640x480 and it will still work.

loading 320x200

conback 320x200

To compile the cached.wad, follow these steps:
Create your own bitmaps and name them loading.bmp and conback.bmp. Download the Texture Wad SDK and unzip it to a new folder such as "c:\half-life\gfx\cached". Put your images in the samples folder that is created by the SDK and create a new text file in Notepad called cached.ls and type this in it:

If you change the image size, then change the 320 200 numbers to reflect that. Now also make a text file in Notepad called cached.bat and type in it: qlumpy cached.ls
Run cached.bat, and when it's finished compiling, put the cached.wad in your mod’s root folder.


Gfx.wad
The gfx.wad has five images and two fonts. None of these images can be larger than 256x256 pixels. Previously there was no way to edit this wad. Wavelength's Gfx.wad Compiler now makes it possible to compile these images and edit the fonts. It also includes information about setting up the fonts.

backtile 64x64

conchars 256x128

creditsfont 256x64

lambda 128x128

lambda32 32x32

lambda64 64x64

paused 64x64

To compile the gfx.wad, follow these steps:
Download Wavelength's Gfx.wad Compiler and unzip it to a new folder such as "c:\half-life\gfx\gfx". Edit the enclosed images. Keep in mind that the last color in the palette is where you put the transparency color. Run GfxWad.exe and browse to the folder that has the images. It will create a gfx.wad for you.

If you want to drastically alter the fonts, you may need to edit the font script files. Below is an excerpt from conchars.txt, the script file for conchars.bmp. It sets the font height to 12, sets the number of rows of fonts to 6, then gives the coordinates where each font is.

The format for the font data is:
font - name of font, including blank spaces
x and y - how many pixels to the top, left corner of the font.
width - the width of the font in pixels

The image below shows a cyan box around the # font to help you visualize the area of the image that's being scanned to get the font. In the script, the coordinates are 12, 0 and it's 7 pixels wide, so I've shown the dimensions of the box and it's x coordinate (y is zero).

After you edit the .bmp and edit the .txt files, then run GfxWad.exe and compile it. It will create a gfx.wad that you put in your mod’s root folder.