Jailbreak: Source » Programming

Steam.inf – Playing SourceSDK Base

Wills — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 16:03:46 +0000

Just a quick one today, first blog post in almost six months! We’ve been a little busy finishing Jailbreak: Source 0.6! One of bugs we had for absolutely ages was finally fixed last week after Lodle from Golden Eye: Source helped us out. So I thought I’d repost this here in case anyone else developing an Orange Box mod has the same issue.

Basically, what was happening was that instead of Steam Friends saying we were playing Jailbreak: Source 0.6, it would say we were all playing Source SDK Base. This meant that people weren’t able to join on other players, they would have to load up the game and find the server their friends were playing on. Not an ideal situation!

The fix was creating a file called Steam.inf, which you place inside the base directory of your mod. Inside this file simply put the following line.

appID=218

That’s it! Now when you start up your mod, and join a server, you’ll be playing… your mod!

Snippet: Fixing Weapon View Bob

Dogmeat — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 12:00:59 +0000

Quick one: ever notice that weapon view bob, that is the weapon moving in time with the player as they walk, doesn’t work on certain weapons?

Me either, but weapons that derive from CHL2MPMachineGun don’t exhibit this behaviour.

It turns out that this is because CHL2MPMachineGun inherits directly from CWeaponHL2MPBase, instead of CBaseHL2MPCombatWeapon like all the other weapons.

The fix is simple, in weapon_hlwmpbase_machinegun.h just replace

1	#include "weapon_hl2mpbase.h"

with

1	#include "weapon_hl2mpbasehlmpcombatweapon.h"

and then replace

1	class CHL2MPMachineGun : public CWeaponHL2MPBase

with

1	class CHL2MPMachineGun : public CBaseHL2MPCombatWeapon

And that will give you your view bob back.CBaseHL2MPCombatWeapon also inherits CWeaponHL2MPBase so adding CBahseHL2MPCombatWeapon into the inheritance hierarchy gives you back the functionality that deals with setting up the view bob.

Snippet: Getting Bound Keys

Dogmeat — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 12:00:10 +0000

Just a really quick snippet today.

Jailbreak has reworked the weapon selection HUD, and as part of this there are two special weapons that have special keys; the Grav Gun and the Medi-Gun.

As some of our testers use non-standard key configurations, they’ve been whinging at me to make sure that the key that’s overlaid on top of the weapon, to let you know what key to press, should be updated based on the current config.

After a little digging around, I found that you can get a key for a given binding quite easily:

1	const char *key = engine->Key_LookupBinding( "phys_swap" );

Just replace “phys_swap” with the command you want to know the key for and you’re done!

Keeping Players Updated With CPlayerResource

Dogmeat — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 12:00:34 +0000

One of the issues I ran accross when first implementing Jailbreak was finding that even though players had a flag in the CHL2MP_Player class to mark them as in or out of jail and it was setup as a network var, this wasn’t always being sent down to all clients.

I later discovered this was due to the PVS (Potentially Visible Set). The PVS defines what you can currently see, and in order to conserve bandwidth, only data for players within that area is transmitted to you. This means that once another player is outside your current PVS, the bulk of their data is no longer kept up to date, including items such as position, velocity and so on.

If you have some data that should always be updated to all players, such as score, health, or in our case the jailed flag, you can make use of the CPlayerResource class which is designed for this very purpose.

The rest of this post will walk you through adding a new item of data to this class.

Server

We’ll start on the server side in player_resource.h, begin by finding

1	CNetworkArray( int, m_iHealth, MAX_PLAYERS+1 );

and adding the following below it:

1	CNetworkArray( int, m_bInJail, MAX_PLAYERS+1 );

This defines our new data item. Next we need to add this to the send table so that it gets transmitted to the client, so in player_resource.cpp find:

1	SendPropArray3( SENDINFO_ARRAY3(m_iHealth), SendPropInt( SENDINFO_ARRAY(m_iHealth), 10, SPROP_UNSIGNED ) ),

and add the following below it to make sure it gets transmitted:

1	SendPropArray3( SENDINFO_ARRAY3(m_bInJail), SendPropInt( SENDINFO_ARRAY(m_bInJail), 1, SPROP_UNSIGNED ) ),

Finally for the server side we just need to update the new array so that it gets transmitted, so in the same file find the UpdatePlayerData function, and underneath where m_iHealth is set, add the following:

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//JB: set the jail state & perks
CHL2MP_Player* hl2Player = ToHL2MPPlayer(pPlayer);
if(hl2Player)
{
m_bInJail.Set(i, hl2Player->IsInJail());
}

And add an include to the top of the file for hl2mp_player.h. This simply uses a function that I already added to CHL2MP_Player to determine if the player is in jail and sets the value accordingly.

It’s arguable whether this is the best approach as it could be better to subclass CPlayerResource and add things specific to our mod there, but this will do for now.

Client

Moving on to the client, we need to set it up to receive the new data we just added, so in c_playerresource.h find:

1	int m_iHealth[MAX_PLAYERS+1];

and add below it a variable to hold our new field:

1	bool m_bInJail[MAX_PLAYERS+1];

Whilst we’re here, we can also add a declaration for an accessor to get access to the new information, so in the public section of the class add:

1	virtual bool IsInJail(int index);

Moving on to c_playerresource.cpp, first find:

1	RecvPropArray3( RECVINFO_ARRAY(m_iHealth), RecvPropInt( RECVINFO(m_iHealth[0]))),

and add:

1	RecvPropArray3( RECVINFO_ARRAY(m_bInJail), RecvPropInt( RECVINFO(m_bInJail[0]))),

and after:

1	DEFINE_PRED_ARRAY( m_iHealth, FIELD_INTEGER, MAX_PLAYERS+1, FTYPEDESC_PRIVATE ),

add:

1	DEFINE_PRED_ARRAY( m_bInJail, FIELD_BOOLEAN, MAX_PLAYERS+1, FTYPEDESC_PRIVATE ),

This sets up the receive table and prediction data to make sure the new field is kept up to date.

Now, in the constructor add the following to initialise the new field:

1	memset( m_bInJail, 0, sizeof( m_bInJail ) );

And finally add a definition for our accessor that we defined earlier to the end of the file:

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bool C_PlayerResource::IsInJail(int index)
{
return m_bInJail[index];
}

Summary

There you have it, the new field will now be kept up to date on all clients and is accesible through the player resource class:

1	g_PR->IsInJail( playerIndex )

One word of warning, as this structure is kept up to date to all clients, be sure not to add too much information to it as it could badly affect network performance.

You should carefully consider whether the data really needs to be kept up to date on every client, and if not, make use of one of the other methods of transferring data to the client.

Snippet: Stopping Sounds

Dogmeat — Sun, 31 May 2009 12:00:28 +0000

Playing sounds is great, but occasionally you may want to stop a sound that is currently being played. For example there is an execution countdown in Jailbreak that can be averted mid way through, and it was easiest to have this as a single sound that can be stopped as needed.

To do that we can add a new game event which will specify the name of a sound to stop.

The New Game Event

Firstly, in resource/modevents.res add the following new event:

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"stop_audio"
{
"sound" "string"
}

Listening for the Event

Now we just need to listen for the game event and act on it, so in clientmodeshared.cpp find:

1	else if ( Q_strcmp( "teamplay_broadcast_audio", eventname ) == 0 )

and add a new else if clause after the closing brace for that one:

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else if ( Q_strcmp( "stop_audio", eventname ) == 0 )
{
const char *pszSoundName = event->GetString("sound");
C_BasePlayer *pPlayer = C_BasePlayer::GetLocalPlayer();
if(pPlayer)
pPlayer->StopSound( pszSoundName );
}

As you can see, it’s pretty straight forward. First we get the name of the sound to stop and the local player, then if the player is valid we just call StopSound on them.

Using It

That’s all we need to do to hook up the event; now to actually use it you can simply do the following:

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IGameEvent *event = gameeventmanager->CreateEvent( "stop_audio" );
if ( event )
{
event->SetString( "sound", "Jailbreak.Countdown");
gameeventmanager->FireEvent( event );
}

Replacing ‘Jailbreak.Countdown’ with the name of the sound you wish to stop.

Update to Playing Announcement Sounds

Dogmeat — Mon, 25 May 2009 12:00:06 +0000

While doing some work on Jailbreak I’ve just noticed that my post on using SendAudio to send sounds to be played on clients is out of date.

In the orangebox sdk there is a new event named teamplay_broadcast_audio which is already set up to allow you to play announcement like sounds on the client (i.e. sounds that are heard in the players head, rather than placed in the level somewhere).

You can quite easily rip the function from the roundbased gamerules and place it in your own to make use of it:

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void CJBGameRules::BroadcastSound( int iTeam, const char *sound )
{
//send it to everyone
IGameEvent *event = gameeventmanager->CreateEvent( "teamplay_broadcast_audio" );
if ( event )
{
event->SetInt( "team", iTeam );
event->SetString( "sound", sound );
gameeventmanager->FireEvent( event );
}
}

Then just call it with the team you want and the sound name, like so:

1	BroadcastSound(TEAM_REBELS, "Jailbreak.ExecutionAverted");

This doesn’t have much over the previous way of playing sounds as it ultimately works the same way on the client, but it is slightly more concise to call, and of course involves less work to set it up in the first place, which is always a bonus.

Snippet: Add Items to Advanced Multiplayer Options

Dogmeat — Thu, 21 May 2009 12:00:44 +0000

Under the multiplayer options tab in your mod you may notice an ‘Advanced’ button which by default has nothing in it. This screen allows the user to set client side options through the use of cvars.

To add your own entries all you need to do is create a user_default.scr file in the cfg directory with the following content:

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// NOTE: THIS FILE IS AUTOMATICALLY REGENERATED,
//DO NOT EDIT THIS HEADER, YOUR COMMENTS WILL BE LOST IF YOU DO
// User options script
//
// Format:
// Version [float]
// Options description followed by
// Options defaults
//
// Option description syntax:
//
// "cvar" { "Prompt" { type [ type info ] } { default } }
//
// type =
// BOOL (a yes/no toggle)
// STRING
// NUMBER
// LIST
//
// type info:
// BOOL no type info
// NUMBER min max range, use -1 -1 for no limits
// STRING no type info
// LIST delimited list of options value pairs
//
//
// default depends on type
// BOOL is "0" or "1"
// NUMBER is "value"
// STRING is "value"
// LIST is "index", where index "0" is the first element of the list
// Half-Life User Info Configuration Layout Script (stores last settings chosen, too)
// File generated: Fri Jul 15 20:55:55 AM
//
//
// Cvar - Setting

VERSION 1.0

DESCRIPTION INFO_OPTIONS
{
"cl_showplayernames"
{
"Show Ally Names"
{ BOOL }
{ "1" }
}

"cl_autowepswitch"
{
"Switch Weapon On Pickup"
{ BOOL }
{ "0" }
}
}

Adding new items should be self explanatory.

That’s all there is to it!

Snippets: Find Nearest Ally

Dogmeat — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 12:00:48 +0000

Just some useful code I came accross; I’ve no idea if I wrote this or if I found it somewhere, so if it’s not mine, credit to whoever’s it is.

If it is mine, credit to Me

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//JB: find the nearest ally
CHL2MP_Player* CHL2MP_Player::FindNearestAlly()
{
const Vector & vAbsOrigin = GetAbsOrigin();
float closestDistSq = FLT_MAX;
CHL2MP_Player * pNearest = NULL;
float distSq;

for (int i = 1; i <= gpGlobals->maxClients; i++ )
{
CHL2MP_Player *pPlayer = ToHL2MPPlayer(UTIL_PlayerByIndex( i ));
if ( pPlayer && pPlayer != this)
{
if(pPlayer->GetTeamNumber() != this->GetTeamNumber())
continue;

distSq = ( vAbsOrigin - pPlayer->GetAbsOrigin() ).LengthSqr();

if(distSq > closestDistSq)
continue;

closestDistSq = distSq;
pNearest = pPlayer;
}
}
return pNearest;
}

This lives in CHL2MP_Player and is just a straight forward search going through each player and working out their distance from the local player, storing a pointer to the player if it’s lower than the current shortest.

It’s fairly simple to adapt this to search for the nearest player based on a criteria by altering:

1 2	if(pPlayer->GetTeamNumber() != this->GetTeamNumber()) continue;

To continue on players you don’t care about (or put the rest of the statement in an if statement…).

Fixing HL2MP_Chat_All Chat Issue

Dogmeat — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 12:00:27 +0000

In our first beta test of the Orange Box version of Jailbreak we had a problem where all chat messages where showing up as “HL2MP_Chat_All”, or “HL2MP_Chat_Team”.

Turns out this is quite simple to fix; in the resources directory you should have one or more language files named like yourmod_language.txt (e.g. jailbreak_english.txt) which simplifies making your mod work with multiple languages.

All you need to do is make sure you have the following entries in each language file:

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"HL2MP_Chat_Team_Loc" "(TEAM) %s1 @ %s3 : %s2"
"HL2MP_Chat_Team" "(TEAM) %s1 : %s2"
"HL2MP_Chat_Team_Dead" "*DEAD*(TEAM) %s1 : %s2"
"HL2MP_Chat_Spec" "(Spectator) %s1 : %s2"
"HL2MP_Chat_All" "%s1 : %s2"
"HL2MP_Chat_AllDead" "*DEAD* %s1 : %s2"
"HL2MP_Chat_AllSpec" "*SPEC* %s1 : %s2"
"HL2MP_Name_Change" "* %s1 changed name to %s2"

Note: I’ve left out some control characters that Firefox / Wordpress editor doesn’t seem to like, so ideally you should copy these lines from hl2mp_english.txt which can be found in the resources directory in the half-life 2 deathmatch.gcf file.

Dropping Just the Ammo in the Clip

Dogmeat — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 12:00:55 +0000

If you’ve followed the weapon dropping post, you may have noticed you can get yourself inifinite ammo by dropping a weapon and picking it up again – not so good!

In order to fix that we need to make it so that when a weapon is dropped, it records how much ammo it has and only gives that to the player when picked up, rather than the default amount.

So, starting in basecombatweapon_shared.h after:

1	COutputEvent m_OnCacheInteraction;

Add a new variable to track if the weapon was dropped:

1	bool m_bDropped;

Then after:

1	void Use( CBaseEntity pActivator, CBaseEntity pCaller, USE_TYPE useType, float value );

Add an accessor to that var:

1 2	//JB: dropped accessor bool WasDropped (void) { return m_bDropped; }

Now in basecombatweapon_shared.cpp in the constructor after:

1	OnBaseCombatWeaponCreated( this );

Initialise the variable:

1 2	//JB: dropped var m_bDropped = false;

And in then in CBaseCombatWeapon::Drop right after the first #if !defined( CLIENT_DLL ) set the var to true:

1 2	//JB: set the dropped vars so we dont get given ammo when picked up m_bDropped = true;

That will just make sure we know when the weapon has been dropped, as opposed to just being spawned.

Now we need to make use of this to prevent additional ammo being given, so in basecombatcharacter.cpp find:

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// If gun doesn't use clips, just give ammo
if (pWeapon->GetMaxClip1() == -1)
{
#ifdef HL2_DLL
if( FStrEq(STRING(gpGlobals->mapname), "d3_c17_09") && FClassnameIs(pWeapon, "weapon_rpg") && pWeapon->NameMatches("player_spawn_items") )
{
// !!!HACK - Don't give any ammo with the spawn equipment RPG in d3_c17_09. This is a chapter
// start and the map is way to easy if you start with 3 RPG rounds. It's fine if a player conserves
// them and uses them here, but it's not OK to start with enough ammo to bypass the snipers completely.
GiveAmmo( 0, pWeapon->m_iPrimaryAmmoType);
}
else
#endif // HL2_DLL
GiveAmmo(pWeapon->GetDefaultClip1(), pWeapon->m_iPrimaryAmmoType);
}
// If default ammo given is greater than clip
// size, fill clips and give extra ammo
else if (pWeapon->GetDefaultClip1() > pWeapon->GetMaxClip1())
{
pWeapon->m_iClip1 = pWeapon->GetMaxClip1();
GiveAmmo( (pWeapon->GetDefaultClip1() - pWeapon->GetMaxClip1()), pWeapon->m_iPrimaryAmmoType);
}

And wrap the whole thing in another if statement so it looks like follows:

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//JB: if was dropped, don't give any additional ammo
if(!pWeapon->WasDropped())
{
// If gun doesn't use clips, just give ammo
if (pWeapon->GetMaxClip1() == -1)
{
#ifdef HL2_DLL
if( FStrEq(STRING(gpGlobals->mapname), "d3_c17_09") && FClassnameIs(pWeapon, "weapon_rpg") && pWeapon->NameMatches("player_spawn_items") )
{
// !!!HACK - Don't give any ammo with the spawn equipment RPG in d3_c17_09. This is a chapter
// start and the map is way to easy if you start with 3 RPG rounds. It's fine if a player conserves
// them and uses them here, but it's not OK to start with enough ammo to bypass the snipers completely.
GiveAmmo( 0, pWeapon->m_iPrimaryAmmoType);
}
else
#endif // HL2_DLL
GiveAmmo(pWeapon->GetDefaultClip1(), pWeapon->m_iPrimaryAmmoType);
}
// If default ammo given is greater than clip
// size, fill clips and give extra ammo
else if (pWeapon->GetDefaultClip1() > pWeapon->GetMaxClip1())
{
pWeapon->m_iClip1 = pWeapon->GetMaxClip1();
GiveAmmo( (pWeapon->GetDefaultClip1() - pWeapon->GetMaxClip1()), pWeapon->m_iPrimaryAmmoType);
}
}

You may wish to do the same for the secondary ammo below:

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//JB: if was dropped, don't give any additional ammo
if(!pWeapon->WasDropped())
{
// If gun doesn't use clips, just give ammo
if (pWeapon->GetMaxClip2() == -1)
{
GiveAmmo(pWeapon->GetDefaultClip2(), pWeapon->m_iSecondaryAmmoType);
}
// If default ammo given is greater than clip
// size, fill clips and give extra ammo
else if ( pWeapon->GetDefaultClip2() > pWeapon->GetMaxClip2() )
{
pWeapon->m_iClip2 = pWeapon->GetMaxClip2();
GiveAmmo( (pWeapon->GetDefaultClip2() - pWeapon->GetMaxClip2()), pWeapon->m_iSecondaryAmmoType);
}
}

Now whenever you drop a weapon, it should just be left with what was in the clip, re-establishing a stable arms market.