Instead of using mouse input directly from Windows (including every feature it has on the desktop such as acceleration etc), they read out the mouse movement from the hardware instead, so they can fuck around with it. This is a really bad idea because it will make every game doing the same feel differently due to different implementations. That’s stupid. The right way would be just taking the mouse input of windows and multiplying it by a sensitivity multiplication for the game (and adding a checkbox which temporarily turns off Window’s mouse acceleration for those who need it).

This brings me to Mouse Acceleration: Many gamers like to say “disable it“, where I like to have it enabled: This allows me using a small sensitivity for precise accuracy while a fast movement maneuver gives me the ability turning around by 180° without moving the mouse 5 times over the pad. Sadly some games force acceleration off with no option to turn it back on.

Here is a small list of games which do it right:

• Half-Life 2, Left 4 Dead 1/2 and every Source Engine bases game
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
• Crysis
• Killing Floor

And these are now some of the black sheep:

	Battle Field – Bad Company 2 You can at least turn on mouse acceleration and adjust the acceleration parameters. But you can neither modify the acceleration threshold nor switch back to “Windows”-like input. So any settings you do here in order to make it feel like in other games are condemned to fail or take ages until you found the one you need.
	Unreal Tournament 3 Here you even can’t enable mouse acceleration at all. You can only try messing around with a config-file but this hasn’t revealed any settings for me yet which allowes me making it feel like e.g. Half-Life 2 (which uses Windows mouse input).

Description
This addon allows you mounting any source-engine games in Garry’s Mod including default VALVE games, Steamworks content like D.I.P.R.I.P, Left 4 Dead and every installed SourceMod.

Download

The full version includes spawnicons for some models (several MB). The light version doesn’t, so it is much smaller. But you have to generate the icons yourself.

SVN-Repository (always up-to-date)

Url: http://svn.daggeringcats.com/mount2
User: anon
Password: anon

Annotations for Left 4 Dead 1/2:
Left 4 Dead maps are not compatible with Garry’s Mod. Don’t try loading them – This will only cause GMod to crash.

Why another mounting addon?
You may know the orginal mounting addon and it’s extension for sourcemods. They work well but I wasn’t really satisfied with the way they work and I disliked their messy sourcecode so I wrote up my own from scratch.
My addon directly integrates into GMod and works on dedicated servers which is not possible without many modifications of the old gm_mount addon.
It also can mount Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 which is the main purpose of this addon, which took me over 3 weeks, around 2000 lines of C++ code and much coffee to figure that out.

My intention first was making it mount games automatically if you install it serverside (the way it is in that link needs heavy modifications to make it run) and an easy integration into GMod’s default mounting-menu.

This was done really easily and I started thinking about “why can’t garry make GMod mount L4D?”. I took some more deeper research into it and found out, that L4D and L4D2 don’t use GCF-files to store their models, sounds and everything in – They use VPK files which are unsupported for mounting in the OrangeBox version of the Source-Engine where GMod runs on.

Luckily it rushed into my mind that Nemesis, the coder of GCFScape, has a library called HLLib which allows reading from VPK containers. It took me around 2 hours to figure out how HLLib works and I made my first successful attempt in reading from VPKs.

But now the torture began: How shall I tell GMod to read from VPKs? My idea was overriding default FileIO functions of Source which are stored in the interface IFileSystem and IBaseFileSystem. My idea was using MS Detours which is known to be detectable by VAC so I searched different ways for about 3 days before I got told “VAC in GMod is active but does not ban” (yet).

So the plan was clear: Detouring the methods of the interface and intercept if a file within a VPK is requested. It was all so clear and easy in my head but I got beaten down by reality really fast again. The methods of the interface I have to hook/overwrite are virtual, which makes them a pain in the ass to hook. It took me 2 days with the help of mainly Jinto before I was able to hook those. If any developer is interested in, you can find my VDETOUR script here.

Hooking now worked but I first had to figure our a fast and efficient way of tracing opened files so I can tell it’s either a file within a VPK or a “normal file”. This took me 3 more days.

Yes, I suck at ragdoll-posing - In the console you see what the filesystem has done etc and in the background you see Francis

Today I had my first successful attempt reading a file from within a VPK in GMod with GMod’s lua function file.Read but it just read about 500 letters at max – how silly.

Recapitulation: It was a pain in the ass to implement. Especially because my lack of knowledge of GMod’s internals. It could have been so much easier to implement if I’d be the mod-coder.

Update:

Today I made the successful attempt in loading a model of L4D in GMod using my module. It works flawless! No crashes etc. Now I only have to implement some minor stuff like file-searching and the lua-interface. Maybe one ore two more days and I can release it!

I’m working at my Institute where I did my Bachelor-Thesis. It’s a mini-job with max of 400 € (Just needs me to work for about 28 hours a month. This costs me about one day in the week – and I love my job!

Another thing I’m on is a Trillian plugin which allows chatting with Steam Friends (while Steam is running in the background). It uses Open Steamworks.

One more thing is a new mount-plugin for GMod which shall allow mounting third-party games easily. I know there are about 2 plugings already around, but both have messed up code (They are a sourcemod-plugin and a lua-plugin at once which is shit-code) and are not really userfriendly. My plugin is meant to work easily on clientside and is also meant to mount all available games it finds serverside if you host a dedicated server.

And of course I have to finish #45 of Stargate: The very long expected new release to my famous stargate-mod for Garry’s Mod. I can understand when/why people are unable to wait for #45 (its over one year ago I did a major stargate-release). But all other topics (University and side-projects) eat up all my time so far. I hope I can work out #45 this year and before April.

Well, she was lazy and put the dishes onto the cap, which was upside down. This resulted to the plated heating up and melting the plastic of the microwave cap. Well, this was the result.

Seriously: Why do game-developers make so shitty shit? I have my PC configured to have 3 Partitions: System (C:\), Data/Programs/Games (D:\) and Media (E:\). I do not install any app to C:\ nor do I use My Documents. I put all my data to D:\ and Media such as MP3s,eBooks and Videos to E:\. The best way for the developers putting savegames is in the game-folder directly! This will give users the chance to backup their games including all savegames at once.

Now I had to reinstall my Windows (putting back a TrueImage backup) and now my savegames are gone – Even with a full backup of my “My Documents”-Folder where you have a “RockStar/GTAIV” folder in (which I suspected to be my savegames).

I will now stop playing GTA IV. I can’t be arsed to play every fucking mission I did before again (I had about 30-40%), except someone gives me a savegame which I can use (Right after your original house got burned down my Dimitri and his guys).

Edit:

I just found a website, where you can download savegames. But sadly, GTA IV disallows loading savegames not made with your own Games for Windows – Live account. Seriously, what the fuck?

Now I will use a program called “XLiveLess” which removes the Games for Windows – Live and Rockstar Social Club bindings out of GTA IV. This is some sort of a crack. But hey: If they are so stupid disallowing adding savegames, put savegames to arbitrary folders which are getting easily lost after a Windows reinstallation and add copy-protection like SecuRom,Games for Windows – Live and Rockstar Social Club to the game – what do you expect?

Unluckily, XLiveLess disallows me using the Multiplayer mode (the coder intentionally added it to disallow cheating). But I can get around this. I simply have to remove one file out of my GTA IV folder to make it able to play online again (but which will block loading my savegames).

tl;dr Version:

Just a big fuck you at Microsoft and RockStar Games for their inability to make games easy and not full of nagging copy-protection shit which only annoys legit buyers.

This tutorial now shows you how to compile the necessary Xen-Kernels and how to set up some example VMs running Linux itself again and Windows. It also is strongly adviced not to use the Xen-Version available in the update-manager of your OS (e.g. apt-get) because it is in most cases outdated.

First of all: How is Xen managed?

• Xen runs different OS which are called Domains
• Dom0 is the Host-OS which directly runs on the hardware and manages access to the hardware for other OS
• DomU’s are virtualized OS which run upon the Dom0.
• Dom0 needs a special kernel for hypervising the hardware. The compiling-steps are showed below.
• DomU’s (if Linux) need a special kernel to run (para-virtualization). The compiling-steps are showed below.
• If the DomU is Windows, your Hardware needs to support AMD Pacifica or Intel Vanderpool. Check this with xm dmesg | egrep ‘(VMX|SVM)’

Compiling Xen Kernels

Assuming you have Debian Lenny installed, make sure you have all necessary tools for compiling and running Xen

apt-get update
apt-get install bcc bin86 gawk bridge-utils iproute libcurl3 libcurl4-openssl-dev bzip2 module-init-tools transfig tgif texinfo pciutils-dev mercurial build-essential make gcc libc6-dev zlib1g-dev python python-dev python-twisted libncurses5-dev patch libvncserver-dev libsdl-dev libjpeg62-dev linux-headers-`uname -r`

If you have a 64bit OS, also run

apt-get install gcc-multilib

Now download Xen from Xen.org and unpack it.

wget http://bits.xensource.com/oss-xen/release/3.4.2/xen-3.4.2.tar.gz
tar -xzf xen-3.4.2.tar.gz
cd xen-3.4.2

Now start compiling the Dom0 and DomU kernel. This will take several minutes. Better get a drink – or two.

make -j4 world KERNELS="linux-2.6-xen0"
make -j4 world KERNELS="linux-2.6-xenU"

Once both is done without any errors, run

make linux-2.6-xen0-config CONFIGMODE=menuconfig
make linux-2.6-xenU-config CONFIGMODE=menuconfig

You may get asked for setting options manually by a prompt for the Dom0 Kernel. I personally prefer the following options, but you have to decide what you want and what not.
show

# y: yes, n: no, M: compile as kernel-module
### Memory settings and PCI-Passthrough options.
PRECACHE: y
PRESWAP: y
X86_MCE: y
PCI_GUESTDEV: y
PCI_IOMULTI: y
PCI_RESERVE: y
PCI_IOV: y
 
### IMQ: This made Xen not boot for me, when all set to y
IP_NF_TARGET_IMQ: n
IP6_NF_TARGET_IMQ: n
IMQ: n
 
### Networkdriver support
IGB: y
E1000E: y
IXGBE: y
 
### Xen-Kernel crashed with this option enabled for me
SENSORS_CORETEMP: n
 
IPATH_CORE: n
 
RTC_DRV_CMOS: M
 
### USB Passthrough options
XEN_USB_BACKEND: M
XEN_USB_FRONTEND: M
XEN_USB_FRONTEND_HCD_STATS: y
XEN_USB_FRONTEND_HCD_PM: n

Once both is done without any errors, install the current Dom0 Kernel to your Host OS:

make dist
./install.sh

Register startscripts for the Xen-Daemon

update-rc.d xend defaults 20 21
update-rc.d xendomains defaults 21 20

Build dependencies

depmod 2.6.18.8-xen0

Update kernels and the bootmanager grub.

update-initramfs -c -k 2.6.18.8-xen0
update-grub

Now, the Xen-Dom0-Kernel is installed to your Host-OS. It will be available after a restart.
Attention: We experienced a problem, where after a restart our network devices got renamed from eth0 to eth1. This rendered our server’s network config useless and we weren’t able to connect to the server anymore. So make sure, this does not happen to you. If so, modify your network script

nano /etc/network/interfaces

and rename eth0 to eth1 to make networking run again.

If everything is prepared, restart your system with

shutdown -r now

and check, if the Xen-Kernel is loaded with

uname -r

It should return stuff similar to

2.6.18.8-xen0

Preparing Guests/DomU’s

Linux Guests
If your Guest is a Linux-System, you need to make it use Xen’s specialized DomU Kernel, which you have compiled above already. Assuming, you have created a space where your Guest-OS writes it’s data to (either to an image  – slow – or directly to a partition using e.g. LVM – fast), you can create a start-script for it in the Xen-Folder. The below example uses a partition for writing the data.

cd /etc/xen/
nano linux

Add the following lines

show

kernel = "/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18.8-xenU" #Use the DomU Kernel!
ramdisk = "/boot/initrd.img-2.6.18.8-xen0"
memory = 512
name = "linux"
cpus = ["0", "1"] # Use the CPU's Core 0 and 1
vcpus = 2 #How much "Virtual" CPUs do you want to "emulate" for that Guest?
 
#vif is the virtual network interface, which is present on the HOST (Dom0). Tell it the IP to use to connect to the internet. The mac-setting is not necessary, but keeps it constant once set here (and not randomly assigned which can cause havoc)
vif = ['ip=123.123.123.123,mac=00:16:3e:00:00:01,vifname=linux-vif']
 
#Where should be the partition mounted to (/home/xen/linux) and what is it's physical address (/dev/hda1)
#Also specifies path to the installer-CD/DVD image in order to install that OS.
disk = ['phy:/home/xen/linux,/dev/hda1,w','file:/home/linux_install_image.iso,hdc:cdrom,r']
root = "/dev/hda1"
 
extra = 'console=xvc0 xencons=tty' #allow the VM to be accessed by the Xen-Console
 
#What to do on shutdown etc
on_poweroff = 'destroy'
on_reboot = 'restart'
on_crash = 'restart'

Try starting the VM with

xm create linux

You can now install your preferred Linux OS from the ISO CD-Image. But my suggestion is (assuming you use Debian as Dom0) using debootstrap.
After the successful boot, you should be able to access the console now with

xm console linux

You can shutdown that VM using

xm shutdown linux

or kill it with

xm destroy linux

Windows Guests

Also make sure, you have a place where the files are written to (either an image  – slow – or directly to a partition using e.g. LVM – fast). The below’s example uses a partition.

Then create a start-script

cd /etc/xen/
nano windows

Here, it should look like
show

import os, re
arch = os.uname()[4]
if re.search('64', arch):
    arch_libdir = 'lib64'
else:
    arch_libdir = 'lib'
 
kernel = "/usr/lib/xen/boot/hvmloader"
builder='hvm'
memory = 512
 
cpus = ["0","1"] # Use the CPU's Core 0 and 1
vcpus = 3 #How much "Virtual" CPUs do you want to "emulate" for that Guest?
 
shadow_memory = 16 # Should be at least 2KB per MB of domain memory, plus a few MB per vcpu.
name = "windows"
vif = ['ip=123.123.123.123,mac=00:16:3e:00:02:01,vifname=win-vif']
 
acpi = 1
apic = 1 #Necessary for MULTI-CORE setup
disk = ['phy:/home/xen/win,hda,w','file:/home/windows.iso,hdc:cdrom,r'] 
 
device_model = '/usr/' + arch_libdir + '/xen/bin/qemu-dm'
 
#Boot-order. d is the cdrom (hdc)
boot="cd"
sdl=0
 
#Optimizes Xen for running Windows
guest_os_type='windows'
 
serial='pty'
usbdevice='tablet'
keymap="de"
 
#What to do on shutdown etc
on_poweroff = 'destroy'
on_reboot = 'restart'
on_crash = 'restart'
 
#VNC: Probably required for you for installation
vnc=1 #TURN THIS OFF AFTER INSTALLATION,OR FEAR SECURITY ISSUES
vncconsole=1
vncpasswd='yoursecretvncpassword'
vnclisten='0.0.0.0'

Once you started the VM for the first time, you need to connect to the machine via VNC on <Dom0.IP> :9001 in order to make the OS install. VNC is enabled in the config-file above by default.
Note: Make sure to disable VNC once the installation is done or you risk a security threat!

Making the Network work

This can be really a pain in the ass. If you run Xen at home or if you are allowed to use network-bridging, you only have to change a few things in Xen’s config.

First make sure, what your network-device name on Dom0 is (remember: for us, Xen renamed it from eth0 to eth1). Find this out with

ifconfig -a

Now edit the Xen-Config…

Dom0 Network-Bridging setup (does not work with hetzner.de)

nano /etc/xen/xend-config.sxp

and modify the network-lines by adding the netdev settings.

(network-script 'network-bridge netdev=eth1')
(vif-script     'vif-bridge netdev=eth1')

Restart the Xen-Daemon with

/etc/init.d/xend restart

Note: Our hoster (hetzner.de) does not allow the bridging. So instead we need the route-scripts which are now described below.

Dom0 Network-Routing setup (only option which works on hetzner.de servers)
Comment out

#(network-script 'network-bridge netdev=eth1')
#(vif-script     'vif-bridge netdev=eth1')

and add the lines

(network-script 'network-route netdev=eth1')
(vif-script     'vif-route netdev=eth1')

Now you also have to edit /etc/xen/scripts/vif-common.sh
Find the ip_of(){…} block and replace it by

ip_of()
{
#  ip addr show "$1" | awk "/^.*inet.*$1\$/{print \$2}" | sed -n '1 s,/.*,,p' #Old code!
  ip -4 -o addr show primary dev $1 | awk '$3 == "inet" {print $4; exit}' | sed 's!/.*!!'
}

Restart the Xen-Daemon with

/etc/init.d/xend restart

Now edit /etc/sysctl.conf and make it look like

### Hetzner Online AG installimage
# sysctl config
#Default Hetzner.cfg
##net.ipv4.ip_forward=1
#net.ipv4.conf.all.rp_filter=1
#net.ipv4.icmp_echo_ignore_broadcasts=1
 
net.ipv4.conf.all.rp_filter=1
net.ipv4.icmp_echo_ignore_broadcasts=1
 
net.ipv4.ip_forward=1
net.ipv6.conf.all.forwarding=1
#net.ipv4.conf.all.proxy_arp=1
net.ipv4.conf.default.proxy_arp=1

Make this changes available with

sysctl -p

Configure the network-settings in /etc/network/interfaces to look like

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
 
# device: eth1
auto  eth1
iface eth1 inet static
	address   111.111.111.111 #Ip of this server
	netmask   255.255.255.192
	gateway   100.100.100.100 #Ip of the gateway
	pointopoint 100.100.100.100 #This is important to make routing work (gatway IP)

Make sure, there are no additional up route lines anywhere. The above settings are totally sufficient!

That’s quite easy. Just edit /etc/network/interfaces and add

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
 
# The primary network interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
	address 122.122.122.122
	netmask 255.255.255.192 #Same as Dom0
	gateway 111.111.111.111 #Dom0 IP
	pointopoint 111.111.111.111 #Dom0 IP
	post-up /sbin/ip route add default dev eth0

DomU network setup – Windows

That’s not that easy. First of all, make sure you allow the installation of unsigned drivers if you run a x64 OS. Login to the OS (if installed) using eg VNC – look at the windows-installation-steps concerning VNC (network and therefore the remote-desktop shouldn’t work yet).
Run this in a command-prompt (if x64 only!)

bcdedit /set testsigning on
bcdedit /set loadoptions DDISABLE_INTEGRITY_CHECKS

Reboot. Now Windows should boot up with “Testmode” in the right lower corner.

Now install the GPLPV driver for Windows and reboot if asked. They allow Windows to use PCI-Passthrough and you will gain a noticeable performance boost from this.

Once rebooted one more time, you can configure the network. Set the IP of your server. The netmask has to be the one of the Dom0 and the gateway should be the IP of Dom0. As DNS, use the DNS servers of your hoster (for hetzner.de, you find the IPs here).

Now networking should work.

Note: I experience a low download-rate (around 12 kb/s) from my server while the upload to it was fast (maximum speed). This was caused by a network-driver-option of the GPLPV drivers. Go to Controlpanel/System/Hardware/Networkadapters/Xen Net Device Driver and click properties. At Extended, go to Large Send Offload and disable this option.

Anyway, it is done now. I’d also like to announce, that our Teamspeak 3 server is available now.

I started the game for the very first time and that RSC-Window popped up, nagging me to register. So did I. I logged in to my account on RSC and started the game. Everything seemed to work but then the game simply kept hanging at “Changing Language” all the time. It nearly made me rage. After about 10 restarts of the game, I googled that specific error and found out, that I have to press POS1 on my keyboard (it never told me to do that within these 10 starts) to make the GWL-popup appearing. So one more freaking service I have to register to before I can play. So I turned off GTA IV, went to the RSC-Website and logged in there. There was an option I remembered seeing before which was about “linking Rockstar Social Club to Games for Windows”. I pressed this and got referred to a website which allowed me to register. I did and activated all. Then I hoped being able to login but I wasn’t! This dumbshit RSC referred me to “Windows Live” which is not “Games for Windows – Live” – What the hell.

Anyway, after I figured that out, I wasted more than one hour making that game run. And that just because of motherfucking DRM. Seriously. I play a game which is already protected by Steam but now also needs SecurRom installed (why? I have no disc I could copy) and being registered to “Rockstar Social Club” (why? That game is already registered exclusively to my steam account) and “Games for Windows – Live” (same why question as for RSC).

This is the kind of shit, why other people actually pirated games: To get rid of these nagging shit. (The game itself is fun of course!)

Anyway, now we have a new server. It is hosted by hetzner.de. It has a Core i7-920, 12 GB RAM and 3 TB harddisk. The connection is 100 MBit/s wide. Various virtual servers run on it (for now two Linux servers and one Windows) which are virtualized by Xen (I will probably write a post about Xen in the future because installing out of source it is not really easy).

My gameservers are also back. You can see their details on the right. Have fun