Metamod

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Metamod is a plugin interface for Half-Life modifications that is located between the Half-Life game engine and a Half-Life mod, providing the dynamic loading and unloading of DLL plugins to add or remove extra functions to or from the game server.

1 How it works
2 Metamod and Source
3 List of Metamod plugins
4 External links

[edit] How it works

Half-Life mods such as Counter-Strike use a game DLL to interact with the Half-Life engine. In order to provide additional functionality, writers of plugins have traditionally made their own DLL which intercepts and modifies function calls made by the game DLL to the Half-Life engine. Unfortunately, this meant that only one plugin could be used at the same time. For example, running a bot plugin along with a server administration plugin used to be impossible.

Metamod was designed to solve the problem by allowing multiple plugins to operate at once. By providing an extra interface between the DLL and the Half-Life engine, allows Metamod to intercept and pass along function calls to the running plugins, like normal plugins did. Since its release, the vast majority of Half-Life plugins have been changed to run on Metamod.

[edit] Metamod and Source

Since the release of Half-Life 2, which runs on the Source engine, questions have arisen over the compatibility of Metamod for Source games. Metamod is incompatible with the Source engine, and consequently its plugins cannot run on Source mods.

Recently, another interface called Metamod: Source has been developed which provides similar functionality for the Source engine, causing some confusion. In fact, Metamod: Source is completely different from Metamod and is incompatible with Metamod plugins.