Counter-Strike mod for Half-Life

You can read full article with videos and images at:
Snmetamorph.github.io

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• a1batross - initial Xash3D SDL2/Linux port author, Xash3D FWGS engine maintainer, creator of non-commercial Flying With Gauss organization
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• nekonomicon - maintainer of hlsdk-portable, mdldec, opensource-mods.md and Xash3D FWGS contributor (*BSD/clang port, PNG support, etc)
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• Velaron - maintainer of cs16-client & tf15-client and Xash3D FWGS contributor (Android port, voice chat, etc)
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• SNMetamorph - maintainer of PrimeXT & GoldSrc Monitor and Xash3D FWGS contributor (Windows port, voice chat, etc)
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GoldSrc network protocol support

by a1batross

Since this autumn, GoldSrc protocol support is in the mainline engine and available for testing for anybody. This feature is still a work-in-progress, but anyway it is good enough to be called playable. We appreciate any bug reports and contributions according to it.

For connecting to GoldSrc-based servers, you can use the console command: connect <ip> gsAlso, GoldSrc servers can be added to the favorites list - just don't forget to choose the proper protocol when adding it.

Voice chat improvements

by SNMetamorph and a1batross

Fixed an issue when voice chat sound would become completely distorted when multiple players spoke simultaneously. Also, some settings related to voice chat were added to the multiplayer settings menu. Voice chat button was added to touch configuration for Android port.

Server browser improvements

by Flying With Gauss

Added tabs with favorites and recent servers, basic server filtering was added (in the bottom).

Support for Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Opus audio formats

by SNMetamorph

We've needed some kind of MP3 alternative for a long time. Since being invented back in 1993, nowadays MP3 is far inferior to its modern alternatives in both compression efficiency and audio quality. At the same time, also the best lossy audio compression codec Opus is open-source and free, and we're already using it for voice chat - why don't use it for audio files too? Also, some of the mods using really a lot of sounds, and at some point audio compression efficiency can save several gigabytes of disk space.

What about Vorbis codec? It's still better than MP3, but from practical point of view it can be useful in terms of backward compatibility with existing content (because, obviously, if you have lossy-compressed audio - it's better to not recompress it to another format, because this will lead to "generation loss"). Ogg Vorbis is pretty wide-spread audio format, also other idTech-based game engines supports it.

The sound looping feature, which was already supported in MP3, now also supported in both these formats too.

Video playback support

by a1batross

This is from that rare kind of feature, that had already been in the engine for a long time, but could not be used for technical reasons. Originally, video playback was dependent on the platform-specific "Video For Windows" framework and the ancient Cinepak codec. For proper working, it should be installed system-wide and also it's available for use only for 32-bit processes and exclusively for Windows. Because of that, users were having a lot of troubles while trying to get things working, and with some circumstances it was not possible at all.

In engine and some of the mods, we support (and use) 64-bit builds for a long time already. Also, we do care about other platforms rather than only Windows. This is why we decided to completely get rid of VFW-related code and instead use ffmpeg for video playback. Also, we decided that video playback support should be an optional feature - ffmpeg libraries are bulky; also, most mods don't use videos anyway. So, anybody who has plans to distribute mods along with the engine, or just want to free up some disk space will be able to just remove those libraries.

Port for Sega Dreamcast (WIP)

by maximqaxd and megavolt85

This is still in progress, but it already works on actual hardware. Port can load content that was originally made for Dreamcast port, because it supports all of that platform-specific content formats such as PVR with VQ compression and ADPCM WAV sounds. Multiplayer works too.

MacOS port rehabilitated

by sofakng

Project building issues on MacOS were resolved, and automatic builds for MacOS were added to CI. But this port isn't well-tested anyway, and it is possible to catch some MacOS-specific bugs: in this case, feel free to report it on GitHub. But our capabilities with the MacOS port are limited, since nobody from the developers has any relevant hardware, and because of it we're looking for a proper maintainer.

Compatibility with GoldSrc improved further

by Flying With Gauss

There isn't much to describe here, as it involves plenty of minor changes that are hard to track down retrospectively. In some cases, incompatibility was caused by differences in console variables. Sometimes, it was caused by differences in internal logic between GoldSrc and Xash3D.

• Implemented PHS/PAS generating; this helped to fix issue #619
• Added room_off console variable; after this Sven Co-op 4.8 client started working with Xash3D FWGS
• Added gl_overbright from early GoldSrc versions, also some changes with gamma were made for better matching with GoldSrc looking
• Added gl_fog console variable for toggling OpenGL's built-in fog implementation. Some of GoldSrc servers anticheats were checking this value
• Added fps_override console variable for overriding framerate soft limit
• Reverted ancient GoldSrc shadows, this feature was reintroduced to GoldSrc at the HL25 anniversary update - as of today, we support it too. It could be enabled with r_shadows console variable
• Fixed broken physics behavior on high FPS: it was caused by rounding error in a physics code

Complete IPv6 support in multiplayer

by Flying With Gauss

As of today, engine and masterserver both support IPv6. And we have some masterservers running on the Internet through IPv6. This means anybody could set up their Xash3D FWGS server on the Internet with IPv6, and it will be presented for other clients who also have IPv6 address. Also, it is well tested, and we didn't discover any issues with it.

If you, for some reason, need to run a dedicated server exclusively on IPv6, you can use the -noip startup parameter, which completely disables IPv4 networking.

Published Docker image of up-to-date XashDS

by SNMetamorph

If you have some VDS or PC with an installed Linux distro, now it's possible to set up a Half-Life dedicated server based on the up-to-date Xash3D FWGS engine build in a couple of actions! Also, this Docker image has pre-installed Metamod, AMX Mod X, and bots using jk_botti Metamod plugin.

For now, a pre-built Docker image is only available for Half-Life, but in the future we hope to build images for other mods too (such as Counter-Strike 1.6).