Porting to Orange Box

Porting Valve Server Plugins or Metamod:Source plugins to Orange Box is not very difficult. This article explores some of the changes and how to simplify them.

Users of Metamod:Source should upgrade to Metamod:Source 1.7 and use the 1.6+ API (see MM:S API Differences).

This document will assume a single preprocessor macro, ORANGEBOX_BUILD, determines that an Orange Box build is being made.

Command Callbacks

In the original Half-Life 2 engine, all commands used IVEngineServer::Cmd_Arg* in order to receive information about the current command's tokenization. However, these functions have been completely removed, and a new re-entrant version is in place.

Each of the following callbacks:

void IServerGameClients::ClientCommand(edict_t *pEdict);
typedef void (*FnCommandCallback)(void);

Is now:

void IServerGameClients::ClientCommand(edict_t *pEdict, const CCommand &args);
typedef void (*FnCommandCallback)(const CCommand &args);

Definitions for CCommand can be found in convar.h. A simple way to work around this change is to use wrapper functions. For example:

#if defined ORANGEBOX_BUILD
SH_DECL_HOOK2_void(IServerGameClients, ClientCommand, SH_NOATTRIB, 0, edict_t *, const CCommand &);
#else
SH_DECL_HOOK1_void(IServerGameClients, ClientCommand, SH_NOATTRIB, 0, edict_t *);
#endif
 
#if !defined ORANGEBOX_BUILD
class CCommand
{
public:
	const char *ArgS()
	{
		return engine->Cmd_Args();
	}
	int ArgC()
	{
		return engine->Cmd_Argc();
	}
 
	const char *Arg(int index)
	{
		return engine->Cmd_Argv(index);
	}
};
#endif
 
#if defined ORANGEBOX_BUILD
void Hook_ClientCommand(edict_t *pEntity, const CCommand &args)
#else
void Hook_ClientCommand(edict_t *pEntity)
#endif
 
{
#if !defined ORANGEBOX_BUILD
	CCommand args;
#endif
 
	const char *cmd = args.Arg(0);
	/* ... stuff ... */
}

ConCommandBaseMgr Removed

ConCommandBaseMgr has been removed. That means the normal call, ConCommandBaseMgr::OneTimeInit(), is no longer applicable. There are two other solutions to registering your ConVars and ConCommands:

• Use ConVar_Register instead.
• Use META_REGCVAR on each pointer (it will work on any ConCommandBase *) pointer, or META_REGCMD on each individual command name.

It is highly recommended that Metamod:Source plugins go through Metamod:Source's ConCommandBase registration process. This will make your plugin more compatible across engines and other plugins. Example:

class BaseAccessor : public IConCommandBaseAccessor
{
public:
	bool RegisterConCommandBase(ConCommandBase *pVar)
	{
		return META_REGCVAR(pVar);
	}
} s_BaseAccessor;
 
void SetupEverything()
{
#if defined ORANGEBOX_BUILD
	/* NOTE! g_pCvar must be set to a valid ICvar instance first. */
	ConVar_Register(0, &s_BaseAccessor);
#else
	ConCommandBaseMgr::OneTimeInit(&s_BaseAccessor);
#endif
}

Note that Valve Server Plugins can pass NULL to use the default accessor. Metamod:Source plugins should not do this. Otherwise, Metamod:Source will not be able to keep track of the ConCommandBase allocations per-plugin.

Renamings/Removals

• VENGINE_CVAR_INTERFACE_VERSION was renamed to CVAR_INTERFACE_VERSION.
• FCVAR_PLUGIN was removed. It is probably no longer needed with the advent of ConVar_Unregister.

Sample Port

An example of a plugin that fully supports both versions is Stripper:Source (SVN here).

Note that this plugin uses the new "extended loading" API available in Metamod:Source 1.6.0. The thin-loader library runs on any Metamod:Source version, and will correctly pick one of 6 child plugins to load. This allows Stripper:Source to be distributed as one package with no configuration hassle.