Half-Life Featureful SDK

Half-Life SDK for GoldSource & Xash3D with some bugfixes and features that can be useful for mod makers.

See the feature overview on the Wiki.

Obtaining source code

Either clone the repository via git or just download ZIP via Code button on github. The first option is more preferable as it also allows you to search through the repo history, switch between branches and clone the vgui submodule.

To clone the repository with git type in Git Bash (on Windows) or in terminal (on Unix-like operating systems):

git clone --recursive https://github.com/FreeSlave/halflife-featureful

Build Instructions

Windows x86.

Prerequisites

Install and run Visual Studio Installer. The installer allows you to choose specific components. Select Desktop development with C++. You can untick everything you don't need in Installation details, but you must keep MSVC and corresponding Windows SDK (e.g. Windows 10 SDK or Windows 11 SDK) ticked. You may also keep C++ CMake tools for Windows ticked as you'll need cmake. Alternatively you can install cmake from the cmake.org and during installation tick Add to the PATH....

Opening command prompt

If cmake was installed with Visual Studio Installer, you'll need to run Developer command prompt for VS via Windows Start menu. If cmake was installed with cmake installer, you can run the regular Windows cmd.

Inside the prompt navigate to the hlsdk directory, using cd command, e.g.

cd C:\Users\username\projects\halflife-featureful

Note: if halflife-featureful is unpacked on another disk, nagivate there first:

D:
cd projects\halflife-featureful

Building

Сonfigure the project:

cmake -A Win32 -B build

Note that you must repeat the configuration step if you modify CMakeLists.txt files or want to reconfigure the project with different parameters.

The next step is to compile the libraries:

cmake --build build --config Release

hl.dll and client.dll will appear in the build/dlls/Release and build/cl_dll/Release directories.

If you have a mod and want to automatically install libraries to the mod directory, set GAMEDIR variable to the directory name and CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX to your Half-Life or Xash3D installation path:

cmake -A Win32 -B build -DGAMEDIR=mod -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX="C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Half-Life"

Then call cmake with --target install parameter:

cmake --build build --config Release --target install

Choosing Visual Studio version

You can explicitly choose a Visual Studio version on the configuration step by specifying cmake generator:

cmake -G "Visual Studio 16 2019" -A Win32 -B build

Editing code in Visual Studio

After the configuration step, HALFLIFE-FEATUREFUL.sln should appear in the build directory. You can open this solution in Visual Studio and continue developing there.

Linux x86. Portable steam-compatible build using Steam Runtime inside a container

Prerequisites

Install Podman.

sudo apt install podman

Building

# Start a shell inside a Steam Runtime SDK container.
podman run --rm -it \
    --volume "$(pwd):/data" \
    --workdir "/data" \
    "registry.gitlab.steamos.cloud/steamrt/scout/sdk" \
    /bin/bash

# Build inside the container.
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -B build -S .
cmake --build build

Linux x86. Portable steam-compatible build using Steam Runtime in chroot

Prerequisites

The official way to build Steam compatible games for Linux is through steam-runtime.

Install schroot. On Ubuntu or Debian:

sudo apt install schroot

Clone https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-runtime and follow instructions: download and setup the chroot.

sudo ./setup_chroot.sh --i386 --tarball ./com.valvesoftware.SteamRuntime.Sdk-i386-scout-sysroot.tar.gz

Building

Now you can use cmake and make prepending the commands with schroot --chroot steamrt_scout_i386 --:

schroot --chroot steamrt_scout_i386 -- cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -B build-in-steamrt -S .
schroot --chroot steamrt_scout_i386 -- cmake --build build-in-steamrt

Linux x86. Portable steam-compatible build without Steam Runtime

Prerequisites

Install C++ compilers, cmake and x86 development libraries for C, C++ and SDL2. On Ubuntu/Debian:

sudo apt install cmake build-essential gcc-multilib g++-multilib libsdl2-dev:i386

Building

cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -B build -S .
cmake --build build

Note that the libraries built this way might be not compatible with Steam Half-Life. If you have such issue you can configure it to build statically with c++ and gcc libraries:

cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS="${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS} -static-libstdc++ -static-libgcc" -B build -S .
cmake --build build

Alternatively, you can avoid libstdc++/libgcc_s linking using small libsupc++ library and optimization build flags instead(Really just set Release build type and set C compiler as C++ compiler):

cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=cc -B build -S .
cmake --build build

To ensure portability it's still better to build using Steam Runtime or another chroot of some older distro.

Linux x86. Portable steam-compatible build in your own chroot

Prerequisites

Use the most suitable way for you to create an old distro 32-bit chroot. E.g. on Ubuntu/Debian you can use debootstrap.

sudo apt install debootstrap schroot
sudo mkdir -p /var/choots
sudo debootstrap --arch=i386 jessie /var/chroots/jessie-i386 # On Ubuntu type trusty instead of jessie
sudo chroot /var/chroots/jessie-i386

# inside chroot
apt install cmake build-essential gcc-multilib g++-multilib libsdl2-dev
exit

Create and adapt the following config in /etc/schroot/chroot.d/jessie.conf (you can choose a different name):

[jessie]
type=directory
description=Debian jessie i386
directory=/var/chroots/jessie-i386/
users=yourusername
groups=adm
root-groups=root
preserve-environment=true
personality=linux32

Insert your actual user name in place of yourusername.

Building

Prepend any make or cmake call with schroot -c jessie --:

schroot --chroot jessie -- cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -B build-in-chroot -S .
schroot --chroot jessie -- cmake --build build-in-chroot

Android

1. Set up Android Studio/Android SDK.

Android Studio

Open the project located in the android folder and build.

Command-line

cd android
./gradlew assembleRelease

Customizing the build

settings.gradle:

• rootProject.name - project name displayed in Android Studio (optional).

app/build.gradle:

• android->namespace and android->defaultConfig->applicationId - set both to desired package name.
• getBuildNum function - set releaseDate variable as desired.

app/java/su/xash/hlsdk/MainActivity.java:

• .putExtra("gamedir", ...) - set desired gamedir.

src/main/AndroidManifest.xml:

• application->android:label - set desired application name.
• su.xash.engine.gamedir value - set to same as above.

Nintendo Switch

Prerequisites

1. Set up dkp-pacman.
2. Install dependency packages:

sudo dkp-pacman -S switch-dev dkp-toolchain-vars switch-mesa switch-libdrm_nouveau switch-sdl2

3. Make sure the DEVKITPRO environment variable is set to the devkitPro SDK root:

export DEVKITPRO=/opt/devkitpro

4. Install libsolder:

source $DEVKITPRO/switchvars.sh
git clone https://github.com/fgsfdsfgs/libsolder.git
make -C libsolder install

Building using CMake

mkdir build && cd build
aarch64-none-elf-cmake -G"Unix Makefiles" -DCMAKE_PROJECT_HLSDK-PORTABLE_INCLUDE="$DEVKITPRO/portlibs/switch/share/SolderShim.cmake" ..
make -j

Building using waf

./waf configure -T release --nswitch
./waf build

PlayStation Vita

Prerequisites

1. Set up VitaSDK.
2. Install vita-rtld:

   git clone https://github.com/fgsfdsfgs/vita-rtld.git && cd vita-rtld
   mkdir build && cd build
   cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ..
   make -j2 install
   

Building with waf:

./waf configure -T release --psvita
./waf build

Building with CMake:

mkdir build && cd build
cmake -G"Unix Makefiles" -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE="$VITASDK/share/vita.toolchain.cmake" -DCMAKE_PROJECT_HLSDK-PORTABLE_INCLUDE="$VITASDK/share/vrtld_shim.cmake" ..
make -j

Other platforms

Building on other architectures (e.g x86_64 or arm) and POSIX-compliant OSes (e.g. FreeBSD) is supported.

Prerequisites

Install C and C++ compilers (like gcc or clang), cmake and make.

Building

cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -B build -S .
cmake --build build

Force 64-bit build:

cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -D64BIT=1 -B build -S .
cmake --build build

Building with waf

To use waf, you need to install python (2.7 minimum)

./waf configure -T release
./waf

Force 64-bit build:

./waf configure -T release -8
./waf

Build options

Some useful build options that can be set during the cmake step.

• GOLDSOURCE_SUPPORT - allows to turn off/on the support for GoldSource input. Set to ON by default on x86 Windows and x86 Linux, OFF on other platforms.
• 64BIT - allows to turn off/on 64-bit build. Set to OFF by default on x86_64 Windows, x86_64 Linux and 32-bit platforms, ON on other 64-bit platforms.
• USE_VGUI - whether to use VGUI library. OFF by default. You need to init vgui_support submodule in order to build with VGUI.

This list is incomplete. Look at CMakeLists.txt to see all available options.

Prepend option names with -D when passing to cmake. Boolean options can take values OFF and ON. Example:

cmake .. -DUSE_VGUI=ON -DGOLDSOURCE_SUPPORT=ON