MineStrike 1.6

Static analysis

Three purpose-written tools in tools/re/ parse the binaries directly. pe_exports.py reads the export directory. pe_info.py reads the section table and image base, and maps virtual addresses to file offsets. strings.py scans for printable strings with a regular-expression filter. Together they establish the exported entry points and their order, and the command names, console variables and error messages each binary contains.

Dynamic analysis

The proxy library logs every call it forwards, with arguments, which shows the calling order and the data that crosses each entry point. On the server side, mc_msgtrace intercepts the engine's user-message functions (RegUserMsg, MessageBegin, Write*). It records every message sent to a client, so a working and a failing session can be compared message by message.

Collision

Hull traces follow the engine's recursive hull check as implemented in ReHLDS, an open-source reimplementation of the engine. Hull selection follows SV_HullForBsp. Hull 0 is derived from the node tree, and hulls 1–3 come from the clipnodes. Traces from the player-movement code in both libraries pass through one shared function, so client prediction matches the server.

Excavation

The map is overlaid with a 40-unit grid. Each cell is untouched, excavated, or holds a placed block. When a trace touches excavated space, it switches to a carve-aware path. That path intersects each intact cell with the solid leaves of hull 0, which gives a set of convex pieces, then sweeps the player box against those pieces with bevel planes, as Quake III does against brushes. The switch happens only when the contact point itself lies in excavated space. An earlier rule, which switched near any excavation, caught players on hole edges.

Rendering

Textures are decoded from the WAD3 miptex data and stored in one texture array. Lightmaps are packed into a 2048 × 2048 atlas. Geometry is built in chunks of 8³ cells. Faces are clipped per cell where cells have been removed, and the exposed cross-sections are produced by clipping polygons through the BSP tree.

The survival inventory (Shift+E) implements Minecraft's click semantics. Left-click picks up, places or swaps a stack. Right-click splits a stack or places a single item. Shift-click moves a stack to its preferred destination: armor to the armor slots, hotbar to storage and back. Picked-up items fill the hotbar first, then the 27 storage slots. Partial stacks are accepted when space is short. On death, every weapon and item the player carries is dropped.

Counter-Strike's fixed health is replaced by Minecraft's food model. Movement, jumping, attacking, taking damage and healing add exhaustion. Every 4.0 points of exhaustion consumes one point of saturation, or one point of food when saturation is exhausted. With full food and saturation, the player heals every 10 ticks. At 18 food or more, the player heals every 80 ticks. At zero food, the player starves down to one health point. A golden apple grants Regeneration II for 5 s and 4 absorption points.

Hit boxes

The client draws Minecraft models in place of Counter-Strike's, but the engine went on tracing bullets against the hidden Counter-Strike model. A Minecraft head is twice as wide as that model's, a creeper's head is lower, and an enderman's head lies entirely above it, so a shot at an enderman's head was a miss. For players drawn as Minecraft models, the engine's hit boxes are now switched off for the duration of each line trace, and the trace is completed against the cubes the client draws, in the same pose: head pitch, crouch, the arm pose of the held weapon, gliding, and a creeper's swelling. The cube that is hit sets the hit group, so a head shot is a shot at the drawn head. Bots aim at the drawn head or chest.

Armor wear

Minecraft removes max(1, damage / 4) durability from each armor piece per hit, and its half-second invulnerability window limits hits to two per second. A rifle lands ten per second, and armor that removes 90% of the damage lets its wearer survive many more of them, so armor wore out several times faster than its durability figures intend. Wear is now charged once per half-second window, sized by the largest hit in it. Every bullet is still reduced by the armor.

Fire

Flint and steel lights a fire on a floor or against anything flammable. Fire is a port of FireBlock.tick with its odds. A fire block has an age from 0 to 15 and ticks every 30 to 39 game ticks. On each tick, a plank-like neighbour burns out with probability 20 in 300 from the side and 20 in 250 from above or below, and each nearby air cell that touches something flammable ignites with a probability of a few percent. A fire with nothing flammable beside it goes out. In classic mode the crates and wooden doors of de_dust2 burn like planks, and TNT is primed. A player in fire loses one Minecraft health point every half second and stays alight for 8 s after leaving it.

Block light

The classic map is lit by its baked lightmaps, which cannot respond to a fire or a torch. Block light is therefore computed separately, as Minecraft computes it: a flood fill over the 40-unit cells from each source (fire 15, torch 14, glowstone and lit lamps 15) that loses one level per cell and is stopped by opaque blocks and by cells inside the map's solid space. The levels are held in a 3D texture that both renderers sample per pixel, half a cell off the surface, through the brightness curve and warm tint of LightTexture. The result is added to the baked light and clamped, so shaded areas are lifted and daylight is unchanged. Torches stand on floors or lean from walls, and drop when their support is removed.

Three launchers in the repository root start a local, offline listen server with bots:

• PLAY_MineStrike_dust2.bat: classic mode. The original de_dust2 with standard rounds, bomb sites, buy zones and player models, and the map can be excavated.
• PLAY_Minecraft_dust2.bat: de_dust2 converted to 123 × 141 × 37 Minecraft blocks, with mobs.
• PLAY_classic_dust2_with_Minecraft_items.bat: the unmodified map with the Minecraft items and HUD only.

Setup requirements are listed in README.md. Counter-Strike's files come from the user's own installation. Minecraft assets are downloaded from Mojang's servers for the user's own account. Neither is included in this repository.

Toolchain

clang-cl and lld cross-compile 32-bit Windows libraries against the MSVC runtime and Windows SDK, obtained with xwin. No Visual Studio installation is required. CMake and Ninja drive the build.

Block-world conversion

A voxelizer samples BSP point contents at half-block resolution, keeps thin walls watertight, and maps WAD textures to blocks. It then compiles a sealed shell map with SDHLT for the engine to load. Bot navigation meshes are generated from the voxels.