Slashdot Mirror

Thanks to the L.A. Daily News for its story discussing new safety-related restrictions for cybercafes in Los Angeles, including "restricted hours for children, video surveillance and interior waiting areas." Apparently: "Council members voted 11-0 to place rules on roughly 30 cybercafes in Los Angeles that draw a primarily teenage clientele to play video games on high-speed computers linked to the Internet", following "a melee outside the NetStreet Cafe in Northridge [that] left two people injured in December 2002 [and was linked to Counter-Strike in some stories]." Councilman Greg Smith commented: "Cybercafes are not inherently bad or troublesome, it's the attractive nuisance that they provide to children... It's just the nature of the beast that they draw people late at night and provide a place to go that may attract problems." Update: 07/08 23:56 GMT by S : A commenter points to a detailed analysis of the requirements from someone involved in the negotiations, who concludes: "This is actually a victory for the nascent and struggling [cybercafe] industry."

Doley writes "Over at GotFrag, there's an article discussing the financial and evolutionary problems related to professional FPS gaming. The piece explains: 'Regardless of how many fans exist, how many people play Counter-Strike, how many tournaments take place, or how many sponsors participate, Counter-Strike will never truly be a sport. Never will the players make an excellent living playing the game. Possibly, in time, the top teams from each country will be able to make a decent living - a living that we are all capable of making by simply attending college. However, because the majority of cream of the crop players and teams cannot make Counter-Strike a true career, the purpose of the entire structure and making it to the top is destroyed. Until purpose is put back into our community, the situation will continue to worsen.'"

George Kaspiris writes "It seems the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) has announced a 2005 'CPL World Tour' with one million dollars in cash prizes, the largest cash prize ever for professional videogaming. The tour will include ten worldwide stops." There'll be more information revealed at the CPL World Championships (which includes Counter-Strike, Unreal Tournament 2004, Call Of Duty, Halo PC, and Painkiller tournaments) in Texas this July, and over at independent eSports site Gotfrag, reaction has been largely positive, with commenters arguing "competitive gaming could become kinda like the PGA Tour", although another commenter worries: "Right now, there are far too few teams and players... that have the [financial or scheduling] ability to follow this series of tournaments around."

Dillon Hamilton writes "AMD has chosen to sponsor Team NoA, a 6-member professional Counter-Strike team, with their latest hardware along with other unspecified support. NoA (Norwegians of America) is composed of three Norwegian players, two Americans, and one Canadian. All but one of the players (the newest addition and a Norwegian) currently live together in California to practice for the upcoming Cyberathlete Professional League championship tournament in Grapevine, TX, as well as the E-Sports World Cup in Toulouse, France. AMD will presumably be flying Ola Moum, the new member, from his home in Horten, Norway to the States as part of the deal. This is definitely a huge step forward for the concept of professional gaming, not only in the United States but worldwide. With teams like Team 3D and Schroet Kommando getting sponsored by bigger companies, (Subway, NVIDIA, and Shuttle in 3D's case) who knows where this might be in the next few years?"

daitengu writes "After almost a year and a half of 'It'll be out soon', Valve Software has finally released Counter-Strike: Condition Zero. It is available on Steam for the low-low price of $29.95 or, rumor has it, you'll be able to buy it in stores today or tomorrow. Counter-Strike is the world's most popular online First Person shooter, and Condition Zero brings updated maps, skins, and graphics to the game, as well as a single-player mode. It also brings what some reviews have claimed as one of the best AI they've seen." The submitter continues: "If this game was released 9 months to a year ago like Valve was promising, I may have invested the $30 or $40 to buy it. Now, however, It's just not worth it to me." Does CS:CZ pique your interest at all?

macshune writes "Lately, I've been wanting to try my hand at firearms, just to see if a youth spent playing Duck Hunt and an adolescence playing FPS games has given me a preternatural shooting ability. This got me thinking, do videogame skills, both reaction-based and of other kinds, transfer to real life? My friends that play D&D are good storytellers, but do games like Counter-Strike build teamwork skills? Inquiring minds want to know!"

Thanks to GotFrag for its article discussing whether players from different countries are good at different aspects of online FPS Counter-Strike. The writer tries to claim: "Some countries, most of which are the leading ones in Counter-Strike, have certain specialities. This often means that the players in this country will have a 'special touch' in this area." Among the supposed conclusions are that Americans excel at "shooting [and] logistics", whereas Germans are best at "thinking [and] teamwork", and the French come off best when using "reflexes". How seriously can we take such broad conclusions?

An anonymous reader writes "I have been playing videogames for years, but only recently got a DSL line in my house and so have never played any online games before now, as dial up was always too slow. Now that I have a fast connection, I want to get into online gaming, FPS gaming in particular. My problem is that Unreal Tournament, Counter-Strike, Quake and all the other popular games seem to be dominated by people using cheats, and by established clans of players who are a lot better than me. Are there any online FPS games or servers whose barriers to entry are not too high for the average player? I am looking for something that I can just connect to for a half an hour now and then when I am bored and can have fun with."

Otter writes "An Iraqi weblog has a series of pictures of the gaming cafe scene in Baghdad. Lots of Counter-Strike and Medal of Honor, apparently." The photographer also uses the comments to respond to questions about the lack of women in the pictures: "The reason you don't see women at these places is that Iraqi women (at least my age) don't have that much interest in gaming... Another thing is that I'm a bit cautious about photographing women due to cultural issues and misunderstandings they might get me wrong and think I'm using the pics for... err 'other purposes'." We previously reported on earlier comments about gaming in Iraq.

Bansuki writes "The New York Times has an article about the role of the modding communities in the games industry. It's a decent overview of the current state of modding though it focuses heavily on Epic Games and the Unreal engine. They spotlight the Unreal University program (an Unreal sponsored event giving classes to potential modders) and Red Orchestra (a highly ambitious mod of the Unreal Warfare engine). The article also mentions machinima as a type of mod with artistic potential and gives due credit to Id Software and Bioware for their work in making engines available to the community. But here's a glaring omission: Half-life and its wildly successful mods. Odd."

Bendebecker writes "We all know about the falling popularity of television this season, but Mike Malone of ABC News has a very interesting viewpoint on why this is happening. He seems to think that the growing popularity of online gaming communities (the example he gives is Counter-Strike) are causing the decline, which is particularly noticeable among the young male demographic."

Thanks to 1UP for their CGW-sourced interview with Counter-Strike: Condition Zero's newest developers, as Mike Booth of Turtle Rock Studios is quizzed about their work since they "took over development of CZ around the end of July." The recently-completed game, which Valve have used a multitude of developers on, has now added the Official Counter-Strike Bot, and bot teams "actually speak to each other using a new voice chatter system equipped with hundreds of lines of dialogue", and even think they're sitting at their own PC: "...when a bot does react to a stimulus, it must actually move a simulated mouse and with an appropriate amount of aiming error."

daitengu writes "ShackNews is reporting that PC FPS Counter-Strike: Condition Zero will be going gold this Friday. The targeted release date is then November 18 [possibly to match the Xbox Counter-Strike's street date?] The game is a single-player focused version of the insanely popular First Person Shooter, Counter-Strike. CS:CZ includes in-game bots and many updated models, textures and skins. Love it or hate it, Valve is milking the original Half-Life engine for all it's worth, and this one should sell quite nicely." If you're confused about what this title is, CS-Nation has a good webpage on CS:CZ, including information about the checkered history of the title, which has been through at least 4 developers, including Valve themselves.

daitengu writes "ShackNews is reporting that PC FPS Counter-Strike: Condition Zero will be going gold this Friday. The targeted release date is then November 18 [possibly to match the Xbox Counter-Strike's street date?] The game is a single-player focused version of the insanely popular First Person Shooter, Counter-Strike. CS:CZ includes in-game bots and many updated models, textures and skins. Love it or hate it, Valve is milking the original Half-Life engine for all it's worth, and this one should sell quite nicely." If you're confused about what this title is, CS-Nation has a good webpage on CS:CZ, including information about the checkered history of the title, which has been through at least 4 developers, including Valve themselves.

Thanks to GameSpot for their hands-on impressions of Counter-Strike for the Xbox, as Valve's massively popular multiplayer title makes the transition to console gamers and Xbox Live. The article points out: "What began as a grassroots mod, literally created in a dorm room, has become the most widely played PC action game on the Internet - in just a few short years." There's also a number of new screenshots of this console conversion, which ships in November, and also includes map enhancements/downloads: "...of the 20 maps that will initially be available, seven are Xbox-exclusive... more maps should be available, via Xbox Live updates, sometime after release."

Entropius writes "Natural Selection, a free Half-Life mod that contains elements of both traditional first-person shooters and real-time strategy games, has just gotten a complete overhaul with the release of version 2.0. In a nutshell, it combines the best elements of StarCraft and Counter-Strike. NS 2.0 adds new alien abilities, commander interface changes, changes to the resource model, four new maps, and more flexibility in alien evolutions. It's a whole new game now, and a blast to play... one of the most innovative new mods in a long time. The mirrors are straining to keep up, but here's a list of download links via readyroom.org." Update: 08/01 14:43 GMT by S : Here's a very necessary BitTorrent link, thanks to commenters.

AEton writes "PivX Solutions revealed in a press release three apparently new vulnerabilities in Half-Life and its related mods (such as Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat). Security researcher Auriemma Luigi discovered the flaws, reported them to Valve, and waited over three months for an official response before releasing an unofficial patch to correct the issues. Details on each of the vulnerabilities and sample code are linked to in the press release. (The third one looks kind of flaky, but the buffer overflows seem real.)" Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing out Valve have now released a dedicated Windows server patch and dedicated Linux server patch (links via Fileshack) which seem to fix the issues.

Thanks to several readers for pointing out that Half-Life developers Valve has launched the public Beta of Steam, their "broadband platform for the delivery and management of digital content." It currently includes free downloads of the new Counter-Strike 1.6, as well as the original Half-Life, Team Fortress Classic, Opposing Force, and more. This audacious move to build a truly popular digital delivery content system by Valve, already through an extensive closed Beta stage, also indicates Steam users should "..stay tuned for a blast of HL2 full-motion goodness."

Thanks to Shacknews for passing on the bizarre news that Valve's currently-beta Counter-Strike 1.6 release has an official knife license (PDF doc). An excerpt from the press release reads: "The new Counter-Strike knife is based on Mick Strider's award winning bowie. It is an integral design that started as a 1/2" thick slab of 6AL4V titanium. The edge is press-fit Stellite.. ..the handle is fossilized mastodon ivory." There's also a link to a an in-game screenshot of the knife, looking both sharp and shiny. We're looking forward to seeing how Valve can top this licensing masterpiece... suggestions?

Build6 writes "The UK Guardian newspaper has an article on online cheating in games, with some fairly broad-ranging observations. These include ways to cheat, players who feel cheated by it, and an interview with someone who actually codes game cheats, in this case for Counter-Strike. He secretly gathers information from his users and claims: 'Did you know most cheaters come from France?'" We covered game cheating a few weeks ago, but this article focuses more on why coders would want to create cheating devices.

VonGuard writes "Ahoy hoy! I've written a new article for the East Bay Express about the rise of the PC Baang in the Northern California Bay Area. While in Korea, Starcraft is still the most popular Baang game, here in the US, Counter-Strike reigns supreme. Are these to be the malt shops and arcades of our time?"

b0r1s writes "Business 2.0 is running a story about Minh Le, and his now famous Counter-Strike mod for Half Life. The article explains the origins and motivation for the development of the mod, as well as explains the virtues of making code freely available for those who wish to hack games."

narq writes "From the world of Counter-Strike comes an interactive 3D environment for online interactions. Users will be able to accomplish productive goals or just waste time. I can't wait for the sword fighting algorithms to start to take shape. Here is the post at Counter-Server."

narq writes "From the world of Counter-Strike comes an interactive 3D environment for online interactions. Users will be able to accomplish productive goals or just waste time. I can't wait for the sword fighting algorithms to start to take shape. Here is the post at Counter-Server."

narq writes "From the world of Counter-Strike comes an interactive 3D environment for online interactions. Users will be able to accomplish productive goals or just waste time. I can't wait for the sword fighting algorithms to start to take shape. Here is the post at Counter-Server."

ubergamer asks: "Logitech's Dual Optical boasts two 800dpi sensors taking 2000 shots a second, Microsoft's Explorer 3.0 only has a single sensor at 400dpi but takes 6000 shots a second. Then there's ofcourse the Razer Boomslang 2000 with a single 2000dpi sensor but is partially mechanical (dust argh!) So which is best for playing my favorite FPS?"

Geoffrey Huntley writes: "I was sent this URL the other day by a friend. It's a Web page detailing the efforts, Kane Bullen went through to get himself removed from a unsolicited mailing list, and ends up making a profit from it." Cute.