About NPCs showing their health (and name if possible) Created 4 years ago2020-06-05 18:45:26 UTC by Alexis_of_Steel

Hello guys. Well I'm sorry if I sound kinda annoying, but you helped me some time ago. I'm very thankful with you. Now, I'm wondering again if you can help me one more time.
I can't figure out how to get NPCs show up their health points and name in vanilla Half-Life, just like they do in Sven Co-op. I wonder if you guys know how to do it... I think I'm gonna have to edit cl_dll, but certainly Idk.
Thanks in advance,
Alexis.

NPC health and names showing up on the HUD is not a feature in vanilla Half-Life. It was added by Sven Co-op. I definitely think it's possible to add it to Half-Life, though you are going to have to do it in code. You should set up the Half-Life SDK and study some of the other HUD code to figure out how to do it.

I just couldn't get it.

Take a look at impulse 102 -- when called, it prints some information about the entity in front of the player to the console. If you can call a modified impulse 102 function in the player's UpdateClientData function (called by the player's PreThink function), you'll be set on the server side. I threw this code together in about 5 minutes. It isn't exactly what you're looking for, but it's a good place to start off. It's just what I described: impulse 102 (alive monster entities only) called every think so you'll need to edit it for your needs.

In player.h:

class CBasePlayer : public CBaseMonster
{
public:
	CBaseEntity *pAlexisEntity;
	void AlexisEntityInfo(void);
...
}

In player.cpp:

void CBasePlayer::AlexisEntityInfo(void) {
	//Give me the classname and targetname of this entity.
	pAlexisEntity = FindEntityForward( this );
	if ( pAlexisEntity && pAlexisEntity->IsAlive() && pAlexisEntity->pev->flags & FL_MONSTER)
	{
		ALERT ( at_console, "Classname: %s", STRING( pAlexisEntity->pev->classname ) );
			
		if ( !FStringNull ( pAlexisEntity->pev->targetname ) )
		{
			ALERT ( at_console, " - Targetname: %s\n", STRING( pAlexisEntity->pev->targetname ) );
		}
		else
		{
			ALERT ( at_console, " - TargetName: No Targetname\n" );
		}

		ALERT ( at_console, "Model: %s\n", STRING( pAlexisEntity->pev->model ) );

		if ( pAlexisEntity->pev->globalname )
			ALERT ( at_console, "Globalname: %s\n", STRING( pAlexisEntity->pev->globalname ) );
	}

}

In player.cpp CBasePlayer::UpdateClientData()

void CBasePlayer :: UpdateClientData( void )
{
	AlexisEntityInfo();
...
}

From here, you'll need to pull the entity's health information and classname, then send them in messages to the client DLL. Take a look at the LinkUserMessages function in player.cpp, the player's health message variable gmsgHealth, and its associated message in the same UpdateClientData function as a guide:

MESSAGE_BEGIN( MSG_ONE, gmsgHealth, NULL, pev );
	WRITE_BYTE( iHealth );
MESSAGE_END();

EDIT: Forgot to mention, this doesn't cover getting the message on the client DLL and printing the information. I'll let someone with more experience with the client chime in.