Question Getting spectator with m_hObserverTarget

[TwoTen]

How long you been coding/hacking?

10+ years

Coding Language

C#

Hello!

I am not very familiar with the source engine, but I wrote my first external cheat and have been using it with great success for over a year now. It's written in C#. I have had no issues at all so far implementing all the features I want, except for one, which is the spectator list.

My understanding is, when a entity is dead and spectating another entity, (entityPtr + NetVars.hObserverTarget) should be a pointer to the entity being spectated. So I started a bot game with two accounts on where one is spectating the other. Below is a print of my findings:

Here, Client A is spectating BOT Shawn

ClientHandle: 696320000
EntityList: 81394644
Index: 0 Pointer: 338344400 Name: N/A Target: 2
Index: 1 Pointer: 1065779360 Name: ClientB Target: -1
Index: 2 Pointer: 1791324288 Name: ClientA Target: 10551307
Index: 3 Pointer: 1397221184 Name: Mark Target: -1
Index: 5 Pointer: 1719517520 Name: Nick Target: -1
Index: 6 Pointer: 1530143856 Name: Dean Target: -1
Index: 7 Pointer: 985699936 Name: Henry Target: -1
Index: 8 Pointer: 1512817888 Name: Doug Target: -1
Index: 9 Pointer: 1811396560 Name: Scott Target: -1
Index: 10 Pointer: 1424954528 Name: Dustin Target: -1
Index: 11 Pointer: 1805786384 Name: Shawn Target: -1

As you can see, from my understanding of the hObserverTarget, it should be set to 1805786384, but it's not. Then I switched Client A to spectating Client B. Here is the result:

ClientHandle: 696320000
EntityList: 81394644
Index: 0 Pointer: 338344400 Name: N/A Target: 2
Index: 1 Pointer: 1065779360 Name: ClientB Target: -1
Index: 2 Pointer: 1791324288 Name: ClientA Target: 50069505
Index: 3 Pointer: 1397221184 Name: Mark Target: -1
Index: 5 Pointer: 1719517520 Name: Nick Target: -1
Index: 6 Pointer: 1530143856 Name: Dean Target: -1
Index: 7 Pointer: 985699936 Name: Henry Target: -1
Index: 8 Pointer: 1512817888 Name: Doug Target: -1
Index: 9 Pointer: 1811396560 Name: Scott Target: -1
Index: 10 Pointer: 1424954528 Name: Dustin Target: -1
Index: 11 Pointer: 1805786384 Name: Shawn Target: -1

Here I am expecting the Target to be 1065779360, but it's not.

What am I doing wrong? What exactly is the hObserverTarget pointer pointing at?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Rake]

Please for the love of god display hex not decimal

I think hObserverTarget is a handle, not a pointer and you have to convert the handle to the player id/address

if you check the source code:

#define    MAX_EDICT_BITS                11  
#define NUM_ENT_ENTRY_BITS        (MAX_EDICT_BITS + 1)
#define NUM_ENT_ENTRIES            (1 << NUM_ENT_ENTRY_BITS)
#define ENT_ENTRY_MASK            (NUM_ENT_ENTRIES - 1)

// Called from Recv Proxy, mainly to reset tone map scale
void C_BasePlayer::SetObserverTarget( EHANDLE hObserverTarget )
{
    // If the observer target is changing to an entity that the client doesn't know about yet,
    // NULL to NULL.  To combat this, we need to check against GetEntryIndex() and
    // GetSerialNumber().
    if ( hObserverTarget.GetEntryIndex())
    {...}
}
      
inline int CBaseHandle::GetEntryIndex() const
{
    return m_Index & ENT_ENTRY_MASK;
}

Then once you have the index, you just to EntityArray[index] to get the player's entry I think

 

[Kekz]

The h in "hObserverTarget" means that it is a handle to an object.
You can use the IClientEntity interface to get the entity from a handle: ValveSoftware/source-sdk-2013
Usage example: Source Code - CSGO spectator cheat - show who is spectating

Edit:
Just saw that you're external. You can still get the entity from a handle, it's just a bit more ugly and prone to errors.
I don't have any source because I never did CS:GO externally, but I found this: Solved - ItemDefinitionIndex Returns 0

 

[TwoTen]

Thank you!

Don't know why I didn't notice the h prefix.

Here is the solution I went with for anyone in the future:

public int HObserverTarget => Memory.ReadInt(EntityPointer + NetVars.m_hObserverTarget);
public Entity ObserverTarget => HObserverTarget > 0 ? GetEntityAtIndex(HObserverTarget & 4095) : null;