SourceMod: A Look Under the Hood

Now that SourceMod, a new and improved administration mod and scripting back end for all Source games, is about to be released, we will take you through a tour of some of the features this new administration and scripting engine has to offer.

Background of SourceMod
Let me get into a bit of the background of SourceMod first. SourceMod was started in October 7th, 2004 as a replacement for AMX Mod X with the “goal” of:

  • Use of multiple (pluggable) scripting languages
  • JavaScript support
  • Unloadability
  • An object-oriented module API

This did not work as it was to hard to use multiple scripting language and the project development became stagnate around the same time that the Source SDK was released to the public, almost killing the project. In May 2005 the project was completely abandoned and no one was working on it. At this same time the “Core Code” for this design was quickly deleted. In March 2006 there was evidence that their was still interest for SourceMod and public support was for it, so the project was restarted in secret. This allowed the public relations mistakes from the first try not happen again. This allowed the core development team improve the “base code” layout and structure of SourceMod.

During that time SourceMod’s “language”, SourcePawn, was created which would serve as the standard for coding plugins and extensions alike. By January 2007, SourceMod was really moving along using SourcePawn as it’s main tool. March 2007 was the first month that SourceMod was released to the pubic. And today after nearly 1,300 builds, SourceMod is very close to 1.0.0.

Development Team
The development team is a lot of old faces from AMX Mod X, but here is the core team as it is of this writing.

  • David “BAILOPAN” Anderson – Project Manager, Lead Developer
  • Borja “faluco” Ferrer – Senior Developer
  • Scott “Damaged Soul” Ehlert – Senior Developer
  • Michael “ferret” McKoy – Plugin Developer
  • Phong “teame06” Dang – General Developer