What is hitboxtracker?

:::warning Deprecated

hitboxtracker is deprecated and no longer maintained. It is documented here for reference only — do not deploy it on a current server.

For working hitboxes on a modern server, use Hitbox Fixer by @Garey27, which the ReHLDS organization names as the active alternative. Note the two are not equivalent: hitboxtracker only visualized the problem, Hitbox Fixer fixes it.

:::

hitboxtracker was a development tool, not a server feature. It consisted of a Metamod plugin on the server and a companion module on the client, and it drew the true position of the hitboxes as the server calculated them on the client's screen — next to where the client thought they were.

That made a class of otherwise invisible problems visible: when the two sets of boxes don't line up, shots that look like hits register as misses. Diagnosing that without a tool like this means guessing.

Why it's deprecated

The project was archived in favor of a plugin that corrects the hitboxes outright rather than drawing them. The rendering approach also depended on specific client builds and a custom launcher, which aged badly.

How it worked

The server plugin sent the computed hitbox data to the client over the svc_director message channel — earlier versions used delta, which changed in v1.1. The client module then rendered those boxes through two extra modes added to the standard r_drawentities cvar.

See Settings for those modes, and Installation for the setup it required.