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Counter-Strike: Source

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Counter-Strike: Source (CS:S)
Developer(s)Valve Corporation
Turtle Rock Studios
Publisher(s)Valve Corporation
EngineSource engine
Platform(s)Microsoft Windows
ReleaseOctober 7, 2004
Genre(s)First-person shooter
Mode(s)Multiplayer

Counter-Strike: Source (also known as CS: Source or simply CS:S) is a multiplayer, team-based tactical first-person shooter, developed by Valve and Turtle Rock Studios. It is a remake of Counter-Strike, the 1999 modification of Half-Life. Built on the Source engine, the game was released in 2004 along with Half-Life 2.

Similar to the original version, Counter-Strike: Source games involve a team of counter-terrorists facing off against a team of terrorists in a series of rounds. Each round is won by either completing a mission (such as detonating a bomb or rescuing hostages) or by eliminating all members of the opposing team.

Popularity

As of May 2006, Counter-Strike is still the most widely played online first-person shooter in the world. In 2002 there were over 30,000 populated Counter-Strike servers on the Internet (second place was Unreal Tournament with about 9,800). In 2004, GameSpy statistics showed over 85,000 players simultaneously playing Counter-Strike at any point in time, and in 2006, Steam regularly shows over 200,000 players for Counter-Strike[1] (this includes Counter-Strike: Source, Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and Counter-Strike). According to statistics gathered by Valve's content-delivery platform, Steam, these players collectively contribute to over 6.177 billion minutes of playing time each month, as of February 5, 2007[1], solidifying its position as the most popular online first-person shooter.

Gameplay

Counter-Strike: Source gameplay differs to other multiplayer first person shooters (often called "deathmatches"). Most prevalently, rather than "respawning" immediately after being killed, Counter-Strike players have only one chance per round, and, if killed, must wait until the next round to continue playing.

Weapons and equipment

Whereas in other games players are able to collect a wide arsenal of weapons (such as in the Unreal Tournament series of games), CS:S players must purchase a specific set of equipment and weapons at the start of each round. Each team spawns in a "buy zone", which is the only area of the map where items and weapons can be purchased. A small amount of money is allocated to each player at the start of the game, and further funds can be accrued by completing certain tasks during the round (such as killing an enemy or being on the team who wins the round). This is totaled at the end of each round, and available at the start of the following round. Players can also lose money by killing teammates or hostages.

Furthermore, there are limits imposed as to how many items a player can hold at once. Each player may hold at most one main weapon and one sidearm, plus a small number of grenades and other equipment (such as defusal kits, body armor, or night vision goggles). Also, no player may accrue more than $16000.

Counter-Strike: Source features the same weapons as Counter-Strike:

Pistols: USP, Glock, Desert Eagle, P228, dual Beretta .40s, and the FN 5-7.

Shotguns: Benelli M3 Super 90, and XM1014.

Sub-Machine Guns: MP5 navy, Steyr TMP, P90, MAC-10, and the UMP.

Rifles: Galil, FAMAS, AK-47, SG-552, M4A1, Steyr AUG, Scout, AWP, G3-SG1, and the SG-550.

Machine Gun: SAW

Communication

In addition to providing in-game voice communication between players on a team, CS: Source also provides three sets of messages that can be broadcast to teammates, which are usable even if the player does not have a microphone. These messages allow team members to issue orders or parlay helpful information (for instance, if an enemy has been spotted). The menus are accessible through a combination of bindable keys and number keys.

Tactics

CS: Source is more of a tactical-shooter than deathmatch-style games, such as the Quake and Unreal Tournament series, but it does not put as much emphasis on tactics as other titles such as the Rainbow Six series. Players can devise their own strategies, either through the radio communication, in-game talk, or through external programs such as Teamspeak or Ventrilo, which are often used in clan matches.

Purchasable equipment such as flashbang and smoke grenades can be used to create cover or distract the enemy, and the teams can split into smaller squads and take different routes through the maps.

Criticism

There is Rampant cheating in this games online play. There is an anti-cheat system “VAC” however this system does not stop all abuse. Common cheats that bypass "VAC" include; "aim boting" provides the ability to shoot enemies without user intervention and a radar mod that allows the user to view all players positions in the game.

History

In 2004, original Counter-Strike developers Minh Le and Jess Cliffe, along with members of Valve and the Day of Defeat team, brought Counter-Strike into the Source engine as an obvious choice for the multiplayer component of Half-Life 2. The game was first rolled out to cyber-cafe owners, and then selected beta-testers a week later, before going gold on October 7, 2004, when it was officially released[2] and available through Steam (Valve's online content delivery system).

File:CSS early screenshot.jpg
Early screenshot of CS: Source

Pre-loading of Counter-Strike: Source to cybercafe owners (as part of the Cyber Cafe program) began on 9 August 2004, being released for play two days later. Vouchers for the pre-release game were available with the purchase of ATI Radeon video cards and with Counter Strike: Condition Zero; the pre-load for these users began on 16 August 2004, with the game again becoming available two days later.[3]

The game was also bundled along with Half-Life 2 on Steam, and was sold along with the boxed retail version of that game. It is currently available in the Source Multiplayer Pack. In the physical retail form, it is either available with Half-Life 2 or in a Counter-Strike branded box that mirrors the contents of the Source Multiplayer Pack. In essence, one can either choose between the Half-Life 2 story game or Day of Defeat: Source when purchasing the game through retail.

Only days after the initial cyber-cafe release Valve began what would become the first in their long line of updates for CS: Source.[4] By the time of its official release almost two months later, Valve had eliminated numerous bugs and added several updates and patches.

The betas and official release versions shipped with only two player models (one per team) - the "Phoenix Connexion" terrorist (a member of the fictional Phoenix Faction) and the Seal Team 6 counter-terrorist. Being an early version, the player models were low quality and out of proportion, giving rise to being commonly described as having "peanut-heads". Valve released several successive versions of the two original characters.

File:CSS short pheonix.jpg
The "short" Phoenix Connexion model

Around Christmas 2005, an update was released for CS: Source, adding two new player models - the GIGN and Guerilla[5]. This was followed by the addition of the Leet and SAS player models on March 1 2006, and the GSG9 and Arctic models on April 12 2006. The Midwest Militia and Spetsnaz characters from Condition Zero have not been brought into CS: Source.

Changes from Counter-Strike to CS: Source include the improvements inherent to the Source engine (such as better graphics and physics), as well as updated models, animations, maps, sounds, and some small gameplay changes.

Gameplay Changes

Along with many bug fixes and graphical tweaks to the game (HDR lighting for example), Valve has introduced several updates to the game which affect the gameplay associated with the original - the most prominent of these being Dynamic Weapon Pricing and a new radar system.

Dynamic Weapon Pricing

On November 1 2006, Valve released an automatic update[6] which added Dynamic Weapon Pricing (DWP) to the game. On servers that enable DWP, the prices of weapons and equipment are dynamically generated based on an algorithm (updated every Monday), which calculates global demand for the items and weapons.

More popular weapons (such as the M4 carbine and Desert Eagle) are pushed up in price, while other, infrequently-purchased items (such as the night-vision goggles and MAC-10 submachine gun) decrease in price. In the case of the night-vision goggles, the price (both current and projected) has remained at $1[7] for several months.

Updated Radar

File:CS radar comparison.jpg
Comparison image of the original CS radar and the Source 'Enhanced' radar.

On 24 August 2006, Valve released an update for CS: Source[8] through Steam, introducing what they refer to as an "enhanced" radar display.

In previous versions of Counter-Strike (and in CS: Source up until this point) the radar display only showed the basic location of team-mates (shown as dark blue squares) in relation to the player and red squares if an enemy was "spotted"; any hostages on the map were shown as light blue squares. Also, players' icons of players on different elevations are shown with either a larger or a smaller icon that depends on the player's position in relation to another's.

The new radar took a different approach and overlaid a green-hued, translucent minimap on the screen, with a much more detailed location system.

Teammates are now shown as a blue or red circle for counter-terrorist and terrorists respectively, with a white triangle depicting the direction the player is facing. Bomb sites and hostage rescue zones are now outlined in a distinctive yellow color, and any enemies spotted are marked on the whole team's radar temporarily. Dropped bombs also appear on the radar, and recently deceased players appear as a blue or red cross, if they are on the counter-terrorist team or the terrorist team, respectively.

Updated maps

File:Cs comparison new.jpg
The Source engine's vastly improved graphics (on the right) compared to those of its predecessor, GoldSrc (on the left)

The move to the Source engine allowed map-makers much greater freedom to create more realistic environments for the players to fight in. All of the "classic" Counter-Strike maps, such as the "de_dust" maps, "cs_office", or "de_aztec", were faithfully recreated for the Source engine. Other maps, such as "cs_militia," "cs_assault," and "de_prodigy", had their locations and surroundings slightly changed. The first map available in CS: Source (in the beta version), was the reworked version of "de_dust"; since then, Valve has released the "classic" maps at irregular intervals. Many of these were created by Turtle Rock Studios, who also worked on Counter Strike: Condition Zero.

"de_nuke" (a map based on a nuclear weapons facility) was the first map to be released with HDR lighting (December 1 2005), with "cs_militia"' following on 18 January 2006. "de_dust" and "de_train" were also re-released, with HDR lighting passes, in April 2006.

Competitive gaming

Customization

Because of the large fan-base that Counter-Strike: Source has accumulated, there are a wide variety of different customizations and addons that can be used with the game. There is a large fanbase for the game that creates customized sounds, textures, weapon skins and player skins. However, under the rules of Valve Anti-Cheat(VAC), models for objects within maps cannot be edited, so that a player using a different model other than the standard does not have an advantage over another person.

File:CSS agtexturecity shef.jpg
Aim_ag_texturecity_advanced, an example of a fan-built custom map for CS:S. Orange "developer textures" give it a distinctive style.

Maps

Maps are frequently made by players for the game, and the easy-to-access Valve Hammer Editor allows virtually anybody to create their own. The number and types of custom maps (and indeed, custom map categories) for the game is constantly rising[9], which means that most people can find something to their taste.

There are several types of maps available, such as de, cs and VIP. For further information, see the Counter-Strike article.

Mods

Like many other modern first-person shooter games, Counter-Strike: Source has been heavily modded by its developer community. Server-side gameplay customizations are typically implemented using Valve's Source SDK for Server Plugins. Server-side mods like Mani Admin Plugin build on to the basic RCON commands as well as with the gameplay customizations.

Along with the categories of game maps - which use the basic Counter-Strike: Source engine but have different rules (for example awp_ maps limit the use of weapons to the knife and the AWP) - there are several mods for the game which introduce new gameplay, and along with it, custom maps. The most popular of these are the GunGame, Zombie, Warcraft:Source, Assassination/VIP, and Surf modes.

Skins/Models

The ability to add new models and skins (thanks to the Valve SDK) to CS: Source is possibly the biggest part of the CS customization community. Skins (or textures) refers to the actual images applied to parts of the game - the player models, weapon models, and even maps themselves can be retextured by anybody. Models refers to the actual 3D-elements displayed on screen - although due to VAC limitations, only custom weapon models can be used in online games.

Models can be changed either by the player, by adding files to their cstrike folder, or by the server they are playing on using a server side plugin such as mani-admin-plugin. The difference is that if a player changes a model on their own machine, only that player will see the changes; However if the model is altered by a server-side plugin or tool, then the model that the player wearing is seen by everyone on that server at that time.

References

  1. ^ a b "Steam Player Number Statistics". Valve. Retrieved January 11. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  2. ^ "Counter-Strike: Source Update History". steampowered.com.
  3. ^ "When will CS: Source be released?". CS-Nation.
  4. ^ "Counter-Strike: Source Beta Update released". steampowered.com.
  5. ^ ""New models for CS: Source". CS-Nation.
  6. ^ "CS: Source Update released". steampowered.com. Retrieved 2007-05-11.
  7. ^ "CS DWP Marketplace". steampowered.com. Retrieved 2007-05-11.
  8. ^ "Counter-Strike: Source Update Released". steampowered.com.
  9. ^ "FPSBanana CS:S Maps archive". fpsbanana.com.