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 will need to upgrade to Metamod:Source 1.6.0. To do so, see Upgrading Plugins to Metamod:Source 1.6.0.

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 That means the normal call, ConCommandBaseMgr::OneTimeInit(), is no longer applicable.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 META_REG_ALL_CONS() which will register all cvars and concommands in your plugin.
• 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 cvar registration process. This will make your plugin more compatible across engines and other plugins.

However, you can also simply go through ICvar or ConVar_Register. Doing so is not recommended for Metamod:Source plugins.