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Counter-Strike (video game)

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For other uses, see Counterstrike.
Counter-Strike
Developer(s)Valve Software
Publisher(s)Vivendi Universal (PC)
Microsoft Game Studios (Xbox)
Series
EngineGoldSrc
Platform(s)Microsoft Windows, Xbox
ReleaseJune 19 1999 (Original Half-Life MOD)
November 8 2000 (PC)
March 25 2004 (Xbox)
Genre(s)First-person shooter
Mode(s)Multiplayer

Counter-Strike, commonly abbreviated to CS, is a team-based, tactical first-person shooter game which originated with a total conversion mod created by Minh "gooseman" Le and Jess Cliffe, of Valve Software's first-person shooter, Half-Life. The game has been expanded into a series since its original release, which currently includes Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and Counter-Strike: Source.

Counter-Strike pits a team of counter-terrorists against a team of terrorists in rounds of competition won by completing an objective or eliminating the opposing force. The latest incarnation of the game, Counter-Strike: Source, is based on the Source engine developed for Half-Life 2. Counter-Strike is widely acknowledged as the most successful and popular of the tactical shooter genre. Signs of Counter-Strike's wide influence can be found in mods for games such as Quake III Arena, Unreal Tournament, and other standalone shooters such as Global Operations, Americas Army, Call of Duty and many more.

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 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 contribute to over 4.5 billion minutes of playing time each month,[1] solidifying its position as the most popular online first-person shooter in history. Counter-Strike was originally played online through the WON gaming service, which was shut down in 2004,[2] forcing players to switch to Steam (to which a section of players responded by creating their own WON network, dubbed WON2).

Gameplay

Counter-Strike is a team-based first-person shooter in which players join either the terrorist or counter-terrorist team, and combat the opposing team while fulfilling predetermined objectives. Server settings may automatically balance teams when one team has more players than the other. Each round starts with the two teams spawning simultaneously, as one of eight different default character models (four to choose from for both the counter-terrorist and terrorist teams. Counter-Strike: Condition Zero added two extra models, bringing the total to ten). Each player generally starts with $800, two magazines of ammunition, a knife, and a pistol: a Heckler & Koch USP .45 Tactical for counter-terrorists, and a GLOCK 18c for terrorists. Players are generally given a few seconds before the round begins (known as "freeze time") to buy equipment, during which time they cannot attack or move in any direction. Players may buy equipment whenever they are in a "buy zone" for their team (some zones can be for both teams, depending on the map) provided the round has not been in session for longer than a specified time (90 seconds is default). Once the round has ended, surviving players retain their equipment for use in the next round; those who have died begin the next round with the default pistol and knife.

File:Counterstrike-comparison.jpg
Picture of a Terrorist using a Desert Eagle on the map de_dust in the original Counter-Strike (left) and Counter-Strike: Source (right).

Standard monetary bonuses in the game are:

  • Win a round: $3250 (awarded at the beginning of the following round)
  • Lose a round: $1400 + $500 per round lost over 1 (to maximum $3400) (awarded at the beginning of the following round)
  • Kill an enemy: $300 (awarded instantly)
  • Instruct a hostage to follow: $150 (awarded instantly. Only works once per hostage, per round)
  • Rescue a hostage: $1000 (awarded instantly)
  • Plant the bomb: $800 (awarded at the beginning of the following round, but only if the round in which the bomb was planted ended with the terrorists losing the round)

The scoreboard shows team scores in addition to data for each player: name, score, deaths, and ping (in milliseconds) on the map. The scoreboard also shows whether each player is dead, carrying the bomb (in bomb defusal maps), or the VIP (in assassination maps), although to obtain this information about players on the opposing team a player must be dead during the round.

Killed players become "ghosts" for the duration of the round; they cannot change their names, text chat cannot be sent to or received from live players; and, while voice chat can still be received from live players, it cannot be sent to them (with the exception of a situation in which cvar sv_alltalk is set to 1, in which case voice chat can be freely exchanged between all players on the server at any time). Ghosts are generally able to watch the rest of the round from multiple selectable views, although some servers disable some of these views to prevent dead players from relaying information about living players to their teammates through alternative media (most notably voice in the case of Internet cafes and Voice over IP programs such as Ventrilo. This technique, known as "ghosting," is considered cheating in many tactical shooters.

Counter-Strike is meant to be more realistic than futuristic first-person shooters such as Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament, but is also built to keep the action flowing faster than more realistic tactical shooters such as the Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon series. For example, relatively few shots will kill a player, and shots to different parts of the body inflict varying amounts of damage, but damage has no permanent bearing on ability to run or jump, allowing a player with just a few hit points remaining to keep fighting just as well as any other player. Movement, however, is restricted while taking damage from gunfire, and a player cannot run at full speed whilst taking damage.

There are several game types in Counter-Strike which define the objectives of each team in the game, and rules which determine which team wins. Each map is of a single game type.

Bomb Defusal

File:Cs16c4.jpg
In bomb defusal missions, a member of the terrorist team plants a bomb while counter-terrorist team members attempt to prevent its detonation.

In bomb defusal, one randomly selected member of the terrorist team begins the round carrying a bomb of Composition C-4 plastic explosive. The terrorist team's objective is to plant the bomb at a bomb site (of which there usually are two in a map, Bombsite-A and Bombsite-B, commonly referred to simply as "A" or "B"), and ensure its detonation, or eliminate all counter-terrorist forces. If the bomb has not been planted, and if all the members of one team have been eliminated, then the surviving team wins. If the bomb has been planted and proceeds to explode, the terrorist team wins, but if a counter-terrorist defuses the bomb (counter-terrorists can purchase an optional kit to decrease the time required for defusal), the counter-terrorist team wins. When the round time expires without the bomb being successfully planted, the counter-terrorist team wins. Deaths caused by the detonation of the bomb do not increment a player's death count. Maps of this type are prefixed with de_ -- as in "defusal" (e.g. "de dust" and "de inferno"). Professional tournaments are normally only played on bomb defusal maps. Despite the game default time required for the bomb to explode being 45 seconds, some tournaments decided to set it to 35, CPL in particular. As CPL was the first international event to make professional Counter-Strike tournaments, the 35 second timer soon became a standard, with most non-professional servers changing the bomb timer to 30 seconds.

Hostage Rescue

Hostage rescue maps have hostages (usually four) that are generally placed near the terrorist team's spawn point. The counter-terrorist team's objective is to escort the hostages to a "hostage rescue point" on the map. If all the members of a team have been eliminated, then the surviving team wins. If all the surviving hostages have been rescued, and that number is at least half of the initial hostage count, then the counter-terrorist team wins, and each counter-terrorist is awarded with $2400. When the round time expires, the terrorist team wins. Therefore, the game may effectively become a timed 'terrorist hunt' if enough hostages are killed; in order to help prevent this from happening, servers can be set to automatically disconnect a player after they have killed a certain amount of hostages. When a counter-terrorist instructs a hostage to follow them, the counter-terrorist is automatically awarded $150. Upon successfully escorting a hostage to a rescue point, $1000 is awarded to the rescuer, and each of the rescuer's teammates gets an additional $1000 at the start of the next round. Killing or injuring a hostage incurs a penalty of $2250 times the fraction of the hostage's health that was taken away, up to a maximum of 1. Maps of this type are prefixed with cs_ -- Counter Strike (e.g. cs_office)..

Assassination

In this mission, one counter-terrorist team member becomes a "VIP" - a player with 200 units of Kevlar and nothing more than a knife and the counter-terrorist team's standard-issue USP pistol with one extra magazine. The VIP may not pick up dropped weapons other than the VIP's own pistol. The VIP's objective is to reach an extraction zone (one, normally), in which case the counter-terrorist team wins. If the VIP dies, the terrorist team wins. As usual, if all terrorists die, the counter-terrorist team wins. When the round timer expires, terrorist team wins. The lack of ammunition for the pistol means that a VIP should not expect to escape without the team's assistance; however, the pistol in conjunction with the special armor provides adequate protection. Maps of this type are prefixed with as_ -- Assassination. Assassination maps are the least played of the three types of Counter-Strike. There are several assassination maps for Counter-Strike: Source, and a VIP mod has been produced by the community. Members of the community who dislike the scenario argue that the terrorist team would just camp at the VIP's escape destination, killing the VIP as he attempted the run to the exit. For this reason, auto-sniper rifles are often banned on VIP maps.

Escape

Discontinued in the late-beta releases of Counter-Strike, this gameplay type put the terrorist team against the counter-terrorist team in an escape-before-the-clock-expired mission. The terrorist team started in a position relatively far away from the counter-terrorist team, armed with only knives and Glocks and unable to purchase additional weaponry or equipment. Weapons, armor, and grenades were placed in hidden locations near or around the spawn point of the terrorist team; the objective was for the terrorist team to secure weapons at the hidden location and then have all living members of the team reach an escape point before the clock reach zero; eliminating all counter-terrorists would not complete the mission by itself. The counter-terrorist team's objective was to prevent the escape of the terrorist team. Escape was discontinued because such maps gave an edge towards the counter-terrorist team. Maps of this type are prefixed with es_. While not included in the current Counter-Strike distribution, this mode can still be played. The most popular maps of this type are es_jail, es_riverside, es_frantic and es_trinity. This mode is not found in Counter-Strike: Source.

History

Version history[1]

The Counter-Strike team was formed by Minh Le ("Gooseman") and Jess Cliffe ("Cliffe") in 1999. Prior to Counter-Strike, Le had gained a lot of experience with modeling and textures while working on the 1997 Quake mod Navy Seals, the earliest precursor to Counter-Strike. Navy Seals featured modern day weapons, body-armour and tactical gameplay. When Quake II was released he worked on another highly successful mod called Action Quake 2, again with modern weapons and tactical gameplay, this time set in a world of SWAT vs. gangsters. However, the time was not right for global Internet gaming just yet, as the online community was still relatively small. No cost-effective broadband yet existed and in most countries paying for access by the minute limited the audience somewhat. With the massive global success of Half-Life, the premature death of the large Quakeworld and Quakeworld Team Fortress scenes and the widespread adoption of "unmetered" Internet access, Counter-Strike's timing was perfect. Beta 1.0 was released in June 1999, followed by a relatively quick succession of the beta releases (by the end of 1999, beta 5.0 had been released). Counter-Strike gained in popularity just as rapidly.

The Counter-Strike team was acquired by Valve to turn the fan-created mod into an official mod for Half-Life. In November 2000, Counter-Strike 1.0 – the first non-beta, official retail version of the game – was released. The retail version was a standalone alternative that does not include or require Half-Life; alternatively, existing Half-Life owners can download the Counter-Strike mod free. Later, Counter-Strike was bundled with Half-Life and several other expansions in the Platinum Pack. The most recent version of Counter-Strike, labeled "Counter-Strike: Source," released in November 2004 through Valve's distribution platform, Steam. Counter Strike: Source featured enhanced graphics and a physics engine as a result of being developed using Valve's new technology, the Source engine, which had also been used to develop Half-Life 2.

Valve Software released a ported version of Counter-Strike for the Xbox game console in November 2003. It features basic single-player gameplay against bots, but it focuses on multiplayer online play like the original. However, the Xbox version of the game (playable on Microsoft's Xbox Live online game service) has proved less successful than its PC counterpart for obvious reasons; the online Counter-Strike audience for Xbox is well outnumbered by the existing Counter-Strike PC community, a subscription cost required to play online on Live (playing the PC version online is free). Valve made no attempt to have Counter-Strike ported to the PlayStation 2 or Nintendo GameCube.

Counter-Strike: Source

Main article: Counter-Strike: Source

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 for use as a multiplayer addition to Half-Life 2. Following a period when the game was available to select alpha testers, the beta version of the game was released on October 7, 2004.

Counter-Strike: Source was released to ATI Radeon Voucher holders, in Half-Life 2 bundles available on Steam, and with the boxed retail version of Half-Life 2. Changes include the improvements inherent to the Source engine (such as superior graphics) as well as updated models, animations, maps, sounds, and some small gameplay changes (including the removal of the counter-terrorist riot shield item). It is available today for download over Steam, bundled with Half-Life 2, or purchased in a stand-alone retail box along with Day of Defeat: Source, another game converted to the new graphical engine.

Counter-Strike: Source, has been updated with a beta testing out the new gun prices.

Counter-Strike: Neo

Main article: Counter-Strike_Neo

Counter-Strike: Neo is a Japanese arcade adaptation of Counter-Strike. It is published by Namco. According to an article from Gamasutra, significant changes in this version localized for the Japanese market include moving away from the traditional Terrorist versus Counter-Terrorist scenario, using more culturally-compatible player models (i.e. anime), and incorporating a "karma system" which rewards players when they confront enemies head-on and punishes players who snipe, hide, and camp - typical tactics of traditional Counter-Strike players.[3]

Maps

Main article: Counter-Strike maps

Weapons

One of the unique features of the original incarnations of Counter-Strike was that it did not feature fictional weapons like most games, instead using only existing firearms used the world over by real terrorist groups, counter-terrorist squads, armed forces, and law enforcement officials. The weapons are, however, only semi-realistic: many of them are incorrect in small details such as the caliber of ammunition or in their naming. Others do not fire quite as their real-life counterparts do, and many of them are inaccurately 'mirrored', wherein the spent cases are ejected from the wrong side of the weapon.

When retail versions of the game were first released, most of the weapons were given fictional names, often with fictional manufacturers.

Counter-Strike: Weapons Market

As of September 22, 2006, Valve has announced what they are calling the Counter-Strike: Weapons Market.[4] Each week, prices for weapons will be set based on the percentage of weapons sales, much like how the demand curve in economics affects prices. This system will be put into place on October 11, 2006 and will only affect Counter-Strike: Source, not Counter-Strike 1.6 or Counter-Strike: Condition Zero.[5] There will also be a cvar for servers that do not wish to use the new Dynamic Market.


Culture

Main article: Counter-Strike culture

Counter-Strike is famous for the culture surrounding it, which includes everything from professional gamers and leagues, to excessive cheating and disruptive behavior. Certain professional teams (such as SK, Team 3D and Team NoA) and players (Kyle Ksharp Miller and Emil HeatoN Christensen, for example) have achieved a measure of fame, and have come to earn a living out of it.

Legacy

Counter-Strike has had a colorful and dramatic history, and still remains extremely popular to this day. There are currently professional online leagues for Counter-Strike, such as Cyberathlete Amateur League (CAL), and CyberEvolution, a pay-to-play league. There are various LAN tournaments throughout the United States and Europe, the biggest being the Cyberathlete Professional League(CPL), the Electronic Sports World Cup(ESWC), the World e-Sports Games(WEG) and the World Cyber Games(WCG). These events are like major sporting events, with championship matches televised with commentary and analysis.

Half-Life and other contemporary games took full advantage of the advent of hardware graphics acceleration in the late 1990s, replacing earlier software-rendered games such as Quake. Likewise, gamers were expected to abandon the DirectX 5.0 Half-Life and its mods in favor of games utilizing the hardware T&L capabilities of DirectX 7.0 graphics cards such as the Nvidia GeForce and ATI Radeon. However, the universal shift to the DirectX 7.0 level and beyond has not happened, and the continued popularity of Counter-Strike has given older video cards such as the 3dfx Voodoo 3, ATI Rage 128, and Nvidia RIVA TNT2 continued usefulness.

But as the criticisms of Condition Zero showed, many players feel that the GoldSrc engine has reached its limits in its capacity to evolve and to stay updated. Even Counter-Strike: Source has been criticized for not progressing the gameplay enough and failing to take full advantage of the Source engine.

There have been a multitude of games claimed by their developers, reviewers and fans to be "Counter-Strike killers," but none have seriously been able to dent its overall popularity. Server statistics in 2002 showed that Counter-Strike servers outnumbered their Battlefield, Unreal Tournament 2003 or Quake III first-person shooter counterparts at least 3 to 1.

Mods and scripts

Though Counter-Strike is itself a mod, it has developed its own community of script writers and modders. Some mods add bots, while others remove features of the games which some players found annoying, while yet others create different modes of play. Some of the most popular mods give server administrators more flexible and efficient control over his or her server. "Admin plugins", as they are mostly referred as, have become very popular. See Metamod, AMX Mod and AMX Mod X for more information. The Mani admin plugin is one of the most widely used mods.

Some servers are equipped with a mod known as SuperHero Mod which allows the player to get special powers without hacking. There are a total of 100+ superheroes equipped on all the servers, and counting. Some powers include super-speed, invincibility, shields, extra health/armor, and unlimited ammo. As you play and kill other players, you get experience points for more SuperHero powers. Another type of mod is the zombie mod. There are 2 teams, the humans (Counter-Terrorists) and the zombies (Terrorists). In this mod, the zombies have 800 health and regeneration, and they can only use the knife. They have a grostesque apperance and must try to kill the humans. In addition, they also have night vision becase every map is pitch-black in the zombie mod. The humans are able to purchase guns and must survive from the zombies who are trying to eat their brains.

Hacking

Main article: Cheating in Counter-Strike

The game Counter-Strike has been a prime target since it came out. Hacking in the game has been widely criticized by a lot of people. To keep people safe, Valve issued anti-cheat software called VAC, or Valve Anti-Cheat. Since then it has come to version 2.0 and most servers have it equipped. Hacks include WallHacks, which allow the player to see through walls, SpeedHacks which give the player super speed, and AimBots which give an automatic headshot each time a shot is fired in someones vicinity.

Notes

  1. ^ a b "Valve Software's official Steam gaming charts". Retrieved June 3. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  2. ^ "WON gaming service shut down". Retrieved June 3. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  3. ^ "GDC: The Localization of Counter-Strike in Japan". Retrieved July 21. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  4. ^ "Counter-Strike: Weapons Market". Retrieved September 25. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  5. ^ "Counter-Strike Weapons Market". Retrieved September 25. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)

See also

Third-party add-ons

  • HLSS – Half-Life Sound Selector (HLSS) is a program that allows users to play .wav files over the microphone.
  • AMXMODX – Counter-Strike most used addon AMXMODX official Addon site

Community sites

  • CS-Nation – Counter-Strike News site
  • FPSBANANA – Counter-Strike customization website.
  • Counter-Strike.com – Counter-Strike server resources. Also provides community forums, strategy guides and downloads.
  • Infinites CS Mods – Counter-Strike customization website.
  • BigBudDen Clan - Counter-Strike Server, clan and community. Downloads, cs gamers, forums, CS:S server, and many many features.
  • Fragbase NON-Steam CS - Free Counter-strike , on non-steam servers. Download and play for free

Competitive Counter-Strike

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