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You and your 100 friends want a different game, I have no idea why you're playing WoW in the first place. I suggest you go thataway ------------> http://www.counter-strike.net/

Since the Reuters article doesn't talk about the relation of this software to the Counter-Strike, and was confused myself by an article by the german magazine Der Spiegel, which states that there is no connection. However, having searched Google News and some other search engines, it seems that this Iranian software is in fact a map or mod to Counter-Strike (the Half-Life mod). The best evidence for this I could find was an article supposedly quoting Ahmadreza Nouri, who is apparently one of the designers. I also found some other pages supporting this view.

This is not new. Nor is it more invasive than other methods. If you swear off ever playing a game that uses anti-cheat software, you will find you have very few games left to play. And the ones you do play, you will have to deal with jerks ruining the game for everyone else.

Don't know why it's in the developers section... Here's my list, don't know why TFA didn't list these, so I came up with 10 for you guys.

steampowered.com
Wikipedia.org/CounterStrike
CSS Fraggers Forum
Filefront?
GameFaqs (never link directly to a faq, kids)
CSBanana
Counter-Strike.net
Planet Half-Life
Sierra: Half-Life
CS Nation - The future of CSS

You should try Counterstrike.

CS as in Counter Strike?

...we still can't use blazars to speed up laggy players in Counter-Strike.

The machine that hosts it was compromised a few weeks ago. Its back up now but variables pased through URL addresses seem to have been disabled and I can't contact GameSpy to correct it. Lestat is working on my behalf at the moment but I have no idea when everything will be sorted.

The files are still all there though:

It will be half life 2, which mod makers will embrace. UT2k3 is great, the dev tools they offer are completely up to par. Developers are doing crazy things with the unreal engine, and I give them full credit for their endeavors.

However.. there is a certain modification for HL1 which was so good, it was the first game mod to garner extreme commercial success. I have yet to see a mod for a game which has had the attention & the impact that CS did.

Gooseman & the CS dev team did this without the incentive of a million dollars, too. It was out of sheer enjoyment of one of the best PC games, in my opinion, that has ever been created. Perhaps Valve will learn from Epic, and decide to offer some cash prizes to mod developers. This would, in my mind, push the community even farther than it's already gone.

I don't know who the first was but notably Valve is doing this with their software through Steam. Once you register your CD key with Steam you get access to that game and mods for that game. Patches, when released, are automatically pushed to your computer (unless you specify otherwise). There are no updates to download; for example, if you go to the Counter-Strike web site and click on "downloads" you'll be directed to the Steam website.

I've read there are no keygens for Steam accounts, though I guess you could share a key if you don't play online (and limit yourself to a LAN, e.g.)

Nobody's ever done that before! How original! It's creativity like this that fuels the gaming industry.

This is about how Valve's Steam system works with VAC (Valve Anti Cheat).

VAC doesn't get updated REALLY fast, and it doesn't catch every cheat. Those who use the latest "cutting edge" cheats can still cheat. HOWEVER, here's the big difference: if it catches you, you're screwed - banned for 5 years from ALL Valve game servers running cheat detection. Currently this is about 85% of all servers running Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, etc.

So the basic model for VAC is to have not the best cheat detection, but by BY FAR the strongest penalty for being caught.

So if you're a cheater, Valve's being like old Dirty Harry. "Was it 5 bullets, or 6? Feeling lucky, punk?"

Non commercial just means it's not for sale.

Look Valve Software's at Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat games. They are "non commercial" and have been since the start of their creation. But they also are commercial.

1) Set up a private Counter Strike Server somewhere on the school LAN.

2) Get a laptop (with an 802.11g card in it, of course) and backpack for each crewmember.

3) Every crew member joins the game on their laptop, sets the laptop to never suspend, throws it in their backpack, and uses headsets to communicate with their team members!

Other than the sound of an explosion every three minutes or so, and the occasional "Terrorists Win!" all your communications problems are solved!

All joking aside, If we are talking Internet art (sites/computer/etc)

Couple sites I think have artistic value.

1. 3d modeling should count, and I really like skinshack the 3dmodels people design for counterstrike. It is art after all, but its the downloads not the site. I liked weapon-hacks, the 3d work was amazing, but with CS sites going down, its not up anymore.

2. As a site that looks like art, Go-l.com Looks kinda like apple.com, but the site is pure eye-candy, which is art in my eyes. (And the specs for the machines are eye-candy as well, geek think...)

Counterstrike regularly boasts more than 100,000 players at peak times. Live stats can be found here.

It would also be interesting to see simultaneous online numbers from these games: Sony's Everquest having more than half a million players; Lineage has over two million players in South Korea.

However, good for Microsoft. Xbox Live has some really good games on it at the moment, most notably Crimson Skies.

For example, you can make small talk about what happened on 24 this week, or you can even join various mailing lists/message boards to discuss the same. You can't really do that with Counterstrike.

I should remind you that Counterstrike started out as a free mod done by hobbyists for the fun of it. Sure, there's plenty of crap mods out there, but don't discount the free work of the mod community.

One of the things that kept Counterstrike fun was replacing the skin models with higher resolution skins. Real nice deagle, and CT/T skins. With valve enforcing the butt ugly generic, 7 year old skins, i really will just start playing HL2 mods, or even work on a CS clone for HL2. (CS2 is using an 4 year old engine, ick...)

I wonder whats going to happen to sites with valve killing special addons, and replacement skins. Favorite places like CSNation, CSCentral, Games Fusion, Skinshack...

I've had to burn all add'ons/modifications to cds, as sites go up and down. Now theres no reason to keep them up with Valve killing over half of the modification market. Wondering what the people over at Fusion are going to do, as they make money off selling complete conversion kits, rather nice ones too.

The steam interface is better, just evil about the way they kill off so many sites that supported valve/sierra. Use to be one of the most mod friendly bunch around...

One of the things that kept Counterstrike fun was replacing the skin models with higher resolution skins. Real nice deagle, and CT/T skins. With valve enforcing the butt ugly generic, 7 year old skins, i really will just start playing HL2 mods, or even work on a CS clone for HL2. (CS2 is using an 4 year old engine, ick...)

I wonder whats going to happen to sites with valve killing special addons, and replacement skins. Favorite places like CSNation, CSCentral, Games Fusion, Skinshack...

I've had to burn all add'ons/modifications to cds, as sites go up and down. Now theres no reason to keep them up with Valve killing over half of the modification market. Wondering what the people over at Fusion are going to do, as they make money off selling complete conversion kits, rather nice ones too.

The steam interface is better, just evil about the way they kill off so many sites that supported valve/sierra. Use to be one of the most mod friendly bunch around...

Day of Defeat has all hand done animation. It is published by Activision and is from Valve .

I also believe Counter Strike has all hand done animations as well.

One has to ask, is there a definitive answer from the CS team as to them porting that mod to the new HL2 engine?

It's interesting to see the changing styles of game companies as they begin to view their community as a resource for continuing the viability of their games. Can you imagine a company creating a computer language and then making themselves the only source of applications written in this language? Possible, but pretty foolish in this day and age.

Valve Software started it early on with Half-Life, creating and releasing editing tools, an SDK, and more importantly a real community for the development of mods and conversions to their game Half-Life. Valve's been by far the most successfull company at leveraging this to their advantage. I dare say they would not be the same company at all if it were not for the popularity of Half-Life mods such as Counter Strike, Team Fortress Classic and Day of Defeat.

It's great to see other companies getting on the ball to continue this trend.

this handheld only allows for first person shooter games.

I recognize an attempt at a joke, but...

PSP is a firearm and it's also a vaporware handheld game console. Mac 10 is a firearm and it's also an operating system. Just because something's named after a gun doesn't mean that consumers will confuse it with a gun.

"Most beat 'em ups were fairly straightforward, you were a guy and your goal was to beat up other guys until they disappeared into thin air."

I always thought of Coutner-Strike as a beat 'em up game ... that is untill the next version came out and bodies didnt disappear into thin air.

Although ot out yet for windows, there is a screenshot of the early version here.

<sarcasm>
Note in the bottom right corner? atiTray. Yeah. Real geeks don't go with nVidia in mission critical assignments. Even if that mission is taking out the terrorists.
</sarcasm>

GODGames ran out of money three times, then got borged by Take 2 Interactive. (Gamespot did that story, which at the time I excerpted here.

I think you've got the right idea, but your facts are lacking.

Some things were not available in 1996

Who cares about Organizing Sim Protests????? Ohh scary protesters are not going into my FAKE IMAGINARY MC Donalds! Who the Hell cares.
Games are for DOING stuff that you CAN'T Do. Not for stuff that you are TOO LAZY to do!

Go buy a real game like Counter Strike
If your life is that boring that you spend your time protesting at least put your efforts into something useful. Go protest sim Microsoft!

I used to be big into CS, very much so. I actually wrote one of the first CS Strategy guides (since modified), worked briefly for CSN, and was on of the founders of Clans United. Anyways, CS was good. That is, back in the olden days of the first betas it was. For all the complaints of CTs and Tangos looking the same in the first beta, that was actually somewhat fun.

When CS really went bad though is when Goose stopped writing and coporate did. CS, to an old-schooler like me, was a victim of its own success. When too many people got interested in it, the pro-shops started monkeying with the code. Did you ever hear of a cheat in the first few betas? (Any yes, I know that Valve changed the netcode in Half-Life, and that THAT opened up many of the security holes.) So, yes, cheating was a major issue, but that wasn't the root of the problem.

Not to mention back in the early betas everyone was basically at the same skill level. You didn't have people playing for years yet. Instead, everyone was still learning the game.

Personally, I stopped playing CS when it got "polished." I don't exactly have the fastest machine, and run on a shared modem, so the new netcode, models, and all the other tweaks made to CS over the years made it unplayable for me. Even if that wasn't the case, all that made it just plain not fun, to me.

So, I may be the one of the few who thinks that CS isn't all that its cracked up to be, but I do.

I used to be big into CS, very much so. I actually wrote one of the first CS Strategy guides (since modified), worked briefly for CSN, and was on of the founders of Clans United. Anyways, CS was good. That is, back in the olden days of the first betas it was. For all the complaints of CTs and Tangos looking the same in the first beta, that was actually somewhat fun.

When CS really went bad though is when Goose stopped writing and coporate did. CS, to an old-schooler like me, was a victim of its own success. When too many people got interested in it, the pro-shops started monkeying with the code. Did you ever hear of a cheat in the first few betas? (Any yes, I know that Valve changed the netcode in Half-Life, and that THAT opened up many of the security holes.) So, yes, cheating was a major issue, but that wasn't the root of the problem.

Not to mention back in the early betas everyone was basically at the same skill level. You didn't have people playing for years yet. Instead, everyone was still learning the game.

Personally, I stopped playing CS when it got "polished." I don't exactly have the fastest machine, and run on a shared modem, so the new netcode, models, and all the other tweaks made to CS over the years made it unplayable for me. Even if that wasn't the case, all that made it just plain not fun, to me.

So, I may be the one of the few who thinks that CS isn't all that its cracked up to be, but I do.

have a nice day.

Anyone who thinks CS is dying obviously hasn't seen the upcoming 1.6. Among the new features : 2 new guns (they both look sweet!), a counter-terrorist bodyshield, instant messaging system, demo viewer, auto-update, bugfixes, and more! Click Here To See 1.6

Quake is responsible for all the slow-down on the Internet?!? For some reason, i thought that Counter Strike was more popular...

Do Counter-Strike or Day of Defeat mods count? Personally I think both are better than Half-Life because they have real-people and I've been addicted to them for the last 8 months.

Jeff

The moral of the story? Cheating not only hurts the newbies who want to get into some online games, but also hurts those of us who play often and occasionally show a glimmer of skill.

There have been many attempts to do things about this. Plenty of bot detectors for the fps's. Between diablo 1 and 2 there were many changes made for anti-cheating concerns. If you look at the top of the changelog here. You'll see that anti-cheat protection is right on top. I believe its goin to be the same battle as OS security, and game console copy protection. There is always going to be something that somebody can do to cheat the system, and there will always be somebody willing to do it just to make themselves feel a little more powerfull.

edge

"It's all fun and games untill somebody looses a harddrive."

For a while a friend and I ran a consulting company. On Friday evenings we'd let a few high schoolers we know bring some of their friends use the LAN for Counter-Strike matches on Friday evenings. I think everyone involved had a blast, even the adults, although sometimes the kids would get schooled and we'd have to play some less strategic game where reflexes mattered more. And lemme tell you, nothing spells satisfaction like typing "I 0wn3d j00 w/my @w350m3 5|<!11z" at a 15 year old.

I like to be as self-sufficient a Libertarian as the next geek, but I've found real joy in setting up ways like that to give a little to the communities in which I live and work. Sure, for political reasons the schools in most districts can't do this, but that's just even more reason that if you can scare up the resources to put such a thing on yourself, you should try it.

Making links in random words in your post does not help readers find information any quicker when there's no discernable pattern in what they're for

Where is the largest repository of music, movies, warez, and porn? University networks!
Same with CS servers etc. (I get a "local" ping time to many sitting on .edu networks).
We see the majority of security attacks originate from college campuses. Melissa/ILOVEYOU originated from a college (albeit overseas), and nimda hit college campuses heavily because the largest and least secured netbios networks can be found on college campuses too. At the same time we also dealt with distributed fserv trojans that prefer university networks due to the high bandwidth allocations that we typically own. The minimum pipe spec'd for I2 is 155mbps, and usually you get the connection from your upstream ISP cooperating with the local I2 consortium. Same set of lines; the routing changes at the ATM or peering point. It is typically 10ms out to that, and then you either route through I1 or I2.

A good half of the hosts on p2p networks are college student dorm room machines. Any packets between .edus will preferentially route through I2, so there is actually going to be a substantial number of "those napster type progies". Hence, we have traffic shaping applied to restrict p2p traffic during day down to 1k/s. :) We use Packeteer technology to achieve this across our whole wan.

That, IMHO, CounterStrike is STILL selling copies of Half-Life, while the game itself is getting pretty old. This is a proven case where a mod was more popular than the origional game.

The even made a box edition because it was selling so well.

Next, remove the goddamn video resolution lock on the consumer hardware. I've got an iMac here stuck sending 1024x768@75 video out the VGA port. The video hardware can do much better, but there's no way of saying "turn off the builtin display". iBooks are similarly crippled; PC laptops aren't.

Think very hard about adding a second trackpad button on the laptops. I can easily replace the USB mouse on a desktop box to get a second button, but there's no way to upgrade the trackpad without a bandsaw. Support for context menus in OS X is soooo nice; why make it harder for laptop users to take advantage of it on the go? (Yes, I know you can use modifier keys to get the same effect, but it's not the same.)

Make a really fast web browser. This Celeron 450 seems much faster than the iMac 450 for browsing; similarly with 800MHz machines at work.

Give me the source to Mail.app, so I can add support for certificates. It's not like your competition is going to steal anything useful out of that excellent, Cocoa-centric app.

Pay Valve Software to port the Half-Life engine to OS X. Geez, if the Mac doesn't run Counter-Strike, how are we going to AWP all the Windows weenies?

Mandrake has a Gaming Edition for about 70$ + S&H that comes with the sims and a 90 day subscribtion to Transgaming I'd buy it but I'm waiting on 8.2. There is also a version of Counter Strike ported to linux.

Valve is responsible for Half-Life, yes, but Counterstrike started as a mod, with all content created for fun by some random guys.

Counter-Strike (www.counter-strike.net) has used more hours of my life than any other game. It's about three years old, and is regularly updated. There isn't a game around I've played for three year's time. It's free (as in beer) and only requires that you own a copy of Half-Life (www.half-life.sierra.com) wich currently runs about $30. Running a Counter-Strike Guild (www.dohguild.com) doesn't help much either!

> IM - is a world of divided standards, so you can only talk to AOL users if you're an AOL user, MSN if your an MSN user, etc

Goodness forbid we get a little competition in the IM 'biz'. Look ma, no ICQ number! Anyway, there are multi-network clients out there.

> email - is a world where you need to sift through 20 spam messages to find your one message. Also the monoculture of email clients created a nightmare reality of viruses.

Don't know about you, but my spam filter catches virtually all of the crap; but maybe I'm just lucky. Can't do anything about Outlook usage, though.

> nntp - spam is certainly a problem, as is the bulk of news services no longer carrying binaries.

There are more efficient ways to distribute files nowadays. I hope I'll never have to uuencode anything ever again.

> Search - pay per search, or commercially-supported search (ie - paid-for results placement).

Only an issue when the engine doesn't tell you it's a paid link. Don't know about others, since I mainly use Google.

> Stock Trading - find me a stock worth investing in today

I forget, were hugely inflated IPOs part of the original Internet spec?

> WEB - commercial consolidation funnels most people to portals.

I've yet to see statistics showing how many people use these portals, instead of switching to something else instantly. I know my 12 year old sister doesn't use her default portal.

> Nobody can afford to host anymore

Has it really gotten more expensive? I thought prices were going down, if anything.

> 70% of the URLs were dead

Creating and hosting a web page costs time and money. Did it used to be different?

> Free Music - the age of napster is finished.

Darn, why am I the last to know these things? I'd better disconnect from Morpheous then. Thanks for the heads up.

> Free Software - I'm not talking about Free Software, I'm talking about that which the BSA is making extinct. Warez.

Hasn't the BSA been making Warez extinct for about 10 years now? (Since the BBS days?)

> Marketing - ah yes. If you're an advertiser, the internet is your friend

Last I heard advertisers were leaving the Internet in droves. Of course, marketers are idiots who aren't used to getting any feedback on the "success" of any of their drivel^H^H^H^H^H^H ads.

> there's nothing out there for them but advertising and crap

I notice you're still here.

There seems to be a backlash against the Internet since the dot-com stock crash. People have gone from proclaiming it as the best thing since sliced bread to saying it's the worst thing since New Coke. I'm one of the unreasonable heathens who thinks it was something in between. I also think the average user does like having broadband. Web pages are getting bulkier (and flash-ier) all the time, music is still popular online, and nevermind all those online games.

Hate to burst your bubble, but I think this inter-net thingy might be around for a while.

Heh, did anyone else see "CS Cheaters" and automatically think "Counter-Strike cheaters?" Maybe a sign I've been out of school for a while...or maybe there are some of you currently in school who thought the same thing. ;-)

For those of you who may not have heard of it, PunkBuster is one of the leaders in trying to stop online cheating. It first gained popularity for Counter-Strike use, but it seems that id is going to work with the guys for Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Interview here

Punkbuster

Paladin

I may have forgotten some, but these are the main ones.

What ? Offtopic ? Surely sire you jest !

Punkbuster

Paladin

I may have forgotten some, but these are the main ones.

What ? Offtopic ? Surely sire you jest !

Alright, for all of you who seem pretty uneducated about the Cyberathletes Professional League [thecpl.com] I'll try to fill you in. The CPL was formed several years ago (right around when StarCraft was the hottest game on everybody's list).

Generally there are several tournament's a year (one in the winter, one in the summer). This past event is held in Texas where some other tournaments are held as well (QuakeCon for one). Each CPL tournament has a featured game. This tournament's game was Counter-Strike.

The event hosts a Bring Your Own Computer Area, (for those who want to frag all through the night) as well as workshops, (HardOCP had one this year on overclocking) prize raffles/giveaways, and of course the tournaments.

This year there was also an Alien vs. Predator 2 Deathmatch tourney going on too. (Fatality of Quake3Arena fame wiped the floor with everyone and won a Ford Focus with a custom AVP2 paintjob) See Adrenaline Vault and TheCPL for photos.

The CStrike tourney was a 5 on 5 clan competition and players from all over the world come to compete in it. The prize money for the tournament totals to some $150,000 dollars and comes almost entirely from Sponsors. The fees that they charge for admission into the tournament go mostly to cover the expenses of the hotel, setup, etc. And while a $50,000 US purse may sound like a lot, after it gets divided 5 ways to $10,000 minus the cost of Food and Board and Airfare (When applicable) you might be a little bit surprised when you don't have as much money as you thought you had. And that really only applies to the winner! There are tons of people who come a long way and don't even make it into the top 100. But if the money were all the tournament was about then I think a lot of people wouldn't even bother going to one of these events. The tournament is mostly about having fun and working on becoming better at Video Games (LAN differs quite a bit from Online play).

One of the most amazing things about this tournament was the ability for Counter-Strike enthusiasts to be able to watch the Tournament on the internet with Half-Life. By joining a specially designed server, up to 80,000 people could have watched the final round (there were only 40 of 128 slots filled on the server I was on)
here's some info:

Speakeasy.net, Valve Software Launch 11 City Half-Life TV Network First-ever PC Game Broadcast Network built to support 80,000 Simultaneous Viewers Seattle - Broadband ISP Speakeasy.net and Kirkland based game developer Valve Software announced today the first ever launch of a fully national broadcast network of live video game coverage. The inaugural use of this network will give tens of thousands of viewers from around the world the best-possible spectator experience for the $150,000 Counter-Strike World Championships this week in Dallas, TX. The World Championships represent the largest of such competitions ever and is produced by the Dallas-based Cyberathlete Professional League. Speakeasy has partnered with Valve Software to support the largest broadcast installation ever using Valve's Half-Life TV server software. The software allows for anyone with a broadband connection and PC to connect to a live game and watch their favorite teams play as if they were playing along side them. Teams from Seattle to Sweden are flying in to compete in the four-day event; thousands more will stay home and watch the competition unfold live on the Speakeasy Network.

"Broadcasting the CPL finals to 80,000 viewers is an incredible achievement and a huge advance in our efforts to bring competitive gaming, and gaming in general, further into the mainstream," said Doug Lombardi, director of marketing at Valve. Spectators will be able to tune in to a live broadcast of the match simply by using their PC and installation of Half-Life, and will have the option of 11 different locations to choose from to guarantee the best experience.

"We have customers that are running cable from their PC to a large screen TV just to watch this," said Edward Bender, Director of Online Gaming for Speakeasy.net. "I think this event will definitely get more people to recognize competitive gaming as a spectator sport." Counter-Strike, the number one online action game in the world, is a team-based multiplayer game built atop Valve's award-winning game engine. Valve released the multicast spectator technology (aka Half-Life TV) as a free update earlier this year.

Read about how to use HLTV @- http://www.cs-extreme.net/guides/HLTV/HLTV.asp

I think we're not at the stage yet where this should be considered Professional Gaming. I don't think anyone can make a true living off of winnings from the CPL. Maybe someday it will reach that point, and this is a great step to getting there. Sorry for the long post! Hope it helped some of you learn about professional gaming.