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Use this page to post any information from [[Valve]] developers made on mailing lists, forums, or emails.  This information should also be sorted into specific pages.
==Using external libraries with source==
<dl>
<dt>Q: Mailing List</dt>
<dd>In order to do certain things in my mod I need to use some third-party libraries which need to do some initialization/termination work.  Is there a certain place where I can call these functions as the mod is loaded?</dd>
<dt>A: [mailto:yahn@valvesoftware.com Yahn Bernier]</dt>
<dd>Anyway, you are free to add a DllMain to the server or client .dlls.  In addition, you might look at dlls/GameInterface.cpp at DllInit(...) and put your init code in there.  I believe there is a corresponding shutdown section.

The other possibility is to create a new CAutoGameSystem and implement
the Init/Shutdown methods (see IGameSystem.h and numerous examples in
the game and client .dlls).</dd></dl>

==Finding Entities On The Client==
From steven_m64

This is a nice little function that will search the current clientside entities for the specified class name.

 C_BaseEntity *GetEntFromClassname( const char *searchent )
 {
   C_BaseEntityIterator iterator;
   C_BaseEntity *pEnt = iterator.Next();
   while ( pEnt != NULL )
   {
      if ( FStrEq( searchent, pEnt->GetClassname() ) )
      {
         return pEnt;
      }
      else
      {
            iterator.Next();
      }
   }
   return pEnt;
 }
==Vector To Screen Space==
While trying to "put" a graphic on the screen while only having the entities vectors available I needed a function to convert vector space to screen space. I got a bunch of great answers but this is from Robin Walker.

If you have a clientside entity that you'd like to position a hud
element around, use these utility functions in cdll_util.cpp:
       bool GetTargetInScreenSpace( C_BaseEntity *pTargetEntity, int& iX, int& iY, Vector *vecOffset );
And
       bool GetVectorInScreenSpace( Vector pos, int& iX, int& iY,Vector *vecOffset );
They'll return true if the target/vector is onscreen, and fill out the
iX, iY with the screen X/Y position.

==KeyValues writing==
If you want to create a new key you need to use this gem from ts2do:

 KeyValue->FindKey("WhatYouWant",true)->SetInt("stats",25);

If the keyvalues can not find the key name "WhatYouWant," it will create a new key with an integer subkey with the name of stats and a value of 25

==Useful Forum Threads==
* [http://www.chatbear.com/board.plm?a=viewthread&b=4991&t=898,1122330204,23151&s=20&id=897291#27 Chatbear: Crashing when spawning a client]

[[Category:Valve]]