MetaHookSv

This is a porting of MetaHook for SvEngine (GoldSrc engine modified by Sven Co-op Team),

Mainly to keep you a good game experience in Sven Co-op.

Most of plugins are still compatible with vanilla GoldSrc engine. please check each plugin's doc for plugin compatibility.

中文README

Compatibility (metahook loader only)

Engine
GoldSrc_blob (3248~4554)	√
GoldSrc_legacy (< 6153)	√
GoldSrc_new (8684 ~)	√
SvEngine (8832 ~)	√
GoldSrc_HL25 (>= 9884)	√

Download

GitHub Release

• MetaHookSv-windows-x86.zip for most users.

• MetaHookSv-windows-x86-blob-support.zip for legacy GoldSrc engine with buildnum < 4554.

Risk of VAC ?

There is no VAC ban reported yet.

The binaries or executables of Sven Co-op are not signed with digital signatures thus no integrity check from VAC would be applied for them.

FAQ

1. Why the game process hangs up / freeze occasionally for few seconds when playing on legacy / pirated version of GoldSrc game ?

Q: This is because Valve uses gethostbyname with an non-existing hostname to query master servers. which is known to block the whole game loop for few seconds if the hostname is not available.

You can either add -nomaster to launch paramaters to prevent engine from querying invalid hostname or add -steam launch paramaters to force engine to use a valid master server source (which probably not gonna work on pirated game).

2. Why the game process hangs up for tens of seconds on exiting / on restarting ?

Q: This is because ThreadGuard.dll is waiting for Valve's network threads or similiar things to exit before actually exiting the game. See ThreadGuard for more details.

One Click Installation

1. Download from GitHub Release, then unzip it.

2. Run scripts\install-to-SvenCoop.bat (or scripts\install-to-(WhateverGameYouWant).bat, depends on which you are going to play)

3. Launch game from either the generated shortcut MetaHook for SvenCoop.lnk (* Run MetaHook for [GameName].lnk for games other than Sven Co-op.)

• Other games follow the same instruction.

• You should have your Steam running otherwise the SteamAppsLocation will probably not going to find GameInstallDir.

Manual Installation

1. Download from GitHub Release, then unzip it.

2. All required executable and resource files are in Build folder, copy whatever you want to \SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Sven Co-op\.

3. Go to \SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Sven Co-op\svencoop\metahook\configs\, rename plugin_svencoop.lst (or plugin_goldsrc.lst) to plugin.lst (depending on the engine you are going to run)

4. Rename MetaHook.exe to (ModDirectory).exe, Let's say svencoop.exe for Sven Co-op. or cstrike.exe for Counter-Strike.

• Use MetaHook_blob.exe instead of MetaHook.exe if you are on a legacy GoldSrc engine with buildnum < 4554.

• Plugins can be disabled or enabled in \SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Sven Co-op\svencoop\metahook\configs\plugins.lst

• The SDL2.dll fixes a bug that the IME input handler from original SDL library provided by valve was causing buffer overflow and game crash when using non-english IME. you don't need to copy it if you don't have a non-english IME.

• Valve has fixed this issue in the HL25th update, you don't have to replace SDL2 if you are running HL25th engine.

Build Requirements

1. Visual Studio 2017 / 2019 / 2022, with vc141 / vc142 / vc143 toolset

2. CMake

3. Git for Windows

Build Instruction

Let's assume that you have all requirements installed correctly.

1. git clone --recursive https://github.com/hzqst/MetaHookSv to somewhere that doesn't contain space in the directory path.

2. Run scripts\build-MetaHook.bat, wait for metahook exe to generate. The generated exe should be under Build if no error(s) occurs.

3. Run scripts\build-Plugins.bat, wait for all plugins to generate. All generated dlls should be under Build\svencoop\metahook\plugins\ if no error(s) occurs.

Debugging

1. git clone --recursive https://github.com/hzqst/MetaHookSv to somewhere that doesn't contain space in the directory path.

2. Run scripts\debug-SvenCoop.bat (or scripts\debug-(WhateverGameYouWant).bat, depends on which you are going to debug with)

3. Open MetaHook.sln with Visual Studio IDE, set specified project as launch project, compile the project, then press F5 to start debugging.

• Other games follow the same instruction.

• You should restart Visual Studio IDE to apply changes to debugging profile if Visual Studio IDE was running.

MetaHook Docs

Docs 中文文档

Plugins

CaptionMod

A subtitle plugin that adds closing-captioning, HUD text translatation to game, HiDpi support and Source2007-style chat dialog to game.

DOC 中文文档

BulletPhysics

A plugin that transform player model into ragdoll when player is dead or being caught by barnacle.

DOC 中文文档

MetaRenderer

A graphic enhancement plugin that modifiy the original render engine.

You can even play with 200k epolys models and still keep a high framerate.

DOC 中文文档

StudioEvents

This plugin can block studio-event sound spamming with controllable cvars.

DOC 中文文档

SteamScreenshots (Sven Co-op only)

This plugin intercepts snapshot command and replace it with ISteamScreenshots interface which will upload the snapshot to Steam Screenshot Manager.

SCModelDownloader (Sven Co-op only)

This plugin downloads missing player models from https://wootguy.github.io/scmodels/ automatically and reload them once mdl files are ready.

Cvar : scmodel_autodownload 0 / 1 Automatically download missing model from scmodel database.

Cvar : scmodel_downloadlatest 0 / 1 Download latest version of this model if there are multiple ones with different version.

CommunicationDemo (Sven Co-op only)

This plugin exposes an interface to communicate with Sven Co-op server.

DontFlushSoundCache (Sven Co-op only) (Experimental)

• NOT READY FOR NON-DEVs

This plugin prevents client from flushing soundcache at retry (engine issues retry command everytime when HTTP download progress is finished), make it possible to preserve soundcache txt downloaded from fastdl resource server (sv_downloadurl).

The fastdl procedure only works when game server uploads current map's soundcache txt to the fastdl resource server. (I am using AliyunOSS)

The reason why I made this plugin is because transfering soundcache txt via UDP netchannel is really not a good idea as server bandwidth and file IO resource is expensive.

PrecacheManager

This plugin provides a console command fs_dump_precaches to dump precache resource list into [ModDirectory]\maps\[mapname].dump.res.

• The SoundSystem from Sven Co-op uses soundcache.txt instead of engine's precache system to precache sound files.

ThreadGuard

This plugin intercepts Valve's Win32Thread creation and wait for all threads to exit before unloading the backed module, in case Valve's thread code gets running when the backed module is unloaded.

Managed modules that may create new threads and quit without waiting for thread termination :

hw.dll, GameUI.dll, ServerBrowser.dll

ResourceReplacer

This plugin replaces in-game resources (mainly model and sound files) at runtime with customizable replace list files without actually manipulating the files, just like what Sven Co-op does with gmr and gsr files.

DOC 中文文档

SCCameraFix (Sven Co-op only)

This plugin fixes camera glitching in spectator-view for Sven Co-op.

The updated spectator-view code credits to halflife-updated

ABCEnchance (third-party) (Sven Co-op only)

ABCEnchance is a metahook plugin that provides experience improvement for Sven co-op.

1. CSGO style health and ammo HUD
2. Annular weapon menu
3. Dynamic damage indicator
4. Dynamic crosshair
5. Minimap which is rendered at real time
6. Teammate health, armor and name display with floattext.
7. Some useless blood efx

https://github.com/DrAbcrealone/ABCEnchance

HUDColor (third-party) (Sven Co-op only)

Changing HUD colors in game.

https://github.com/DrAbcrealone/HUDColor

MetaAudio (third-party) (GoldSrc only)

This is a plugin for GoldSrc that adds OpenAL support to its sound system. This fork fixes some bugs and uses Alure instead of OpenAL directly for easier source management.

Since SvEngine uses FMOD as it's sound system, you really shouldn't use this plugin in Sven Co-op.

https://github.com/LAGonauta/MetaAudio

• MetaAudio blocks goldsrc engine's sound system and replaces with it's own sound engine. You should always put MetaAudio.dll on top of any other plugins that rely on goldsrc engine's sound system (i.e CaptionMod) in the plugins.lst to prevent those plugins from being blocked by MetaAudio.

Trinity-EngineSv (third-party) (GoldSrc only)

This is a Trinity Engine porting for Counter Strike 1.6

Client-Side part of the mod it´s introduced as a metahook plugin.

Server-Side part of the mod it´s done with a modifidied reGame dll.

https://github.com/ollerjoaco/Trinity-EngineSv