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The Rise Of Counter-Strike
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."
Um, actually as of a year or two ago Valve owns all the rights to counter-strike and are putting lots of $$ into it's continuing development. (The exact date of aquisition was just before CS hit version 1.0)
Valve knows that the only reason they are still selling half-life is CS and other such MODS. Half-Life was a great game but it says a lot about the engine if it is this flexible to still be in use for a continual mod making community.
Well, a large part of HalfLife still being a popular game today doesn't have to do solely with the game engine, but the fact that Valve released the source code and SDK. Try here
Before counterstrike, he was best known for a little quake2 mod known as ActionQuake2, a mod that makes q2 play more like an action movie. great fun if you can find some active servers. There was eventually an ActionHalfLife, but as far as i know he didnt take part in the development of it.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
There is not that much code to counterstrike. 95% of the size of the cs mod download is textures and graphics. Very little of it is code. From what I understand the new version of Counterstrike(counter-strike:condition zero) is being developed by valve in conjunction with the creator of CS.
Actually he is working (I believe exclusively at this point) on a second mod. A follow-up to Counter-Strike for Valve's next game.
He is, to my knowledge, on their payroll. As such, I'd say he's fairly unlikely to to be the subject of a lawsuit of any kind from Valve or Sierra (the game's publisher).
Game... blouses.
the follow up to counter strike is Counter-Strike: Condition Zero official site : http://www.cs-conditionzero.com/ "2002 Valve, L.L.C. All rights reserved. Valve, the Valve logo, Counter-Strike, the Counter-Strike logo and Counter-Strike: Condition Zero are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Valve, L.L.C." seems valve are pretty much the driving force for the next version of counter-strike
Really? Looks pretty alive to me...
I wouldn't say this is the case. One of the biggest reasons for Counter-Strike's success is the fact that it's based on an old game. There are a few major reasons for this:
1) Half-Life was a great game in its own right. It was also one of the best selling FPS games ever. As such, most PC gamers already owned everything they needed to start playing once CS came out. This is the power of a good mod being in the right place at the right time, and it is not to be overlooked. UT2K3 is supposed to be a dream to mod for. Much more so than Half-Life was. Be on the lookout there.
2) Many people have been playing CS for quite a long time, and as such have gotten very good at it. Most of these people hate the idea of trading in all their skills to begin again as a newbie in one of the "pretty" new games. This is a bigger sticking point than you might think. Also, ladders and leagues have fairly complex rulesets that have been tweaked to create the best possible competitive experience. Doing this with a new game is not easy and takes time.
3) Half-Life is based on Quake technology and has years of development behind it. The game is rock-solid stable. The few bugs in the engine (physics, etc) are well known and compensated for automatically by decent players. Contast this with something like Battlefield: 1942 or UT2K3. They'll get to the same level, but by then they'll be old.
4) The development tools are mature and there are plenty of map makers, coders, modelers and skinners that know how to use them. CS has some great maps, and to my knowledge pretty much every one of them has come from an unpaid third party mapper. The tools these guys use can be quite complex, and learning them for a new engine can be quite difficult. Not only that, but once you know how to use them, you need to spend a lot of additional time finding out what "works" with the gameplay. This is non-trivial and so these guys tend to stick with a game as long as they can, moving on to a new one only when they're fairly sure it's good enough to ride for a while in the future.
5) Most importantly, pretty means very little to gamers. Sure, they like to gawk at pretty pictures as much as the next guy, but they're not going to give up a great game just because something comes along that's prettier. You can still find a few raging NetQuake battles out there if you want. Why? The game rocks. Also, just because the hardcore among us (myself included) just must have the latest and greatest hardware doesn't mean all of us are that way. I constantly hear people in CS games complaining about how slow the game is on their P2-300/TNT. How do you think these people would fair trying to play RTCW? I get a little pissed at the framerates on that game myself, and I have an Athlon XP and a GeForce4.
Game... blouses.
Counter-Strike: Condition Zero is being developed by Gearbox Software (they've done various Half-Life official expansions), for the most part independent of Valve.
I believe Valve is working on another game (hopefully Team Fortress 2, yeah right) and Gooseman/Minh is working on a true CS sequel for that game.
http://www.counter-strike.net/faq.html (at the bottom) says that the actual CS team is not involved in the production of CS:CZ beyond ensuring the game stays true to the original.
Game... blouses.
CS is dying? That is totally false. What 'recent server data' are you basing this on? The online numbers of people playing CS is still hitting new peaks every week. For actual numbers and not just, "My friends and I quit CS for whatever reason, therefore I conclude that it's dying." check this page:
http://www.gamespy.com/stats/
Games like MOH:AA and RTCW have not been "up dramatically." In fact, over the past few weeks with the coming of BF1942 and UT2K3, those games have actually been the ones to experience a decrease in numbers, not CS.
PS: What is Counter-Strike: Blue Zone? Maybe you're thinking of Counter-Strike: Condition Zero?
NOLF2 and DooM III are single-player games. Counter-Strike: "Blue Zone" doesn't exist. I think you mean "Condition Zero," which is also a single-player game.
At the time of this post, CS has 85320 players (source). Medal of Honor: AA is in second place. With less than a tenth of the players that CS has.
Recent server data shows that this shift is reflected across most servers, as Counterstrike population is decreasing, RTCW is up a little, and MOH:AA is up dramatically.
You're probably not lying, you're just totally ignorant. I've been following HL for ever (see my site), and today is the first time I've seen the game break 100,000 players largely due to CS.
You can use your anecdotal evidence all you won't, but there is no "shift across most servers." You are absolutely wrong, I'm sorry.
1. STOP PLAYING PUBS!
2. Find a good server that challenges you and is well-admined (and not just that admins are on, but that they're willing to deal with cheaters). Get to know the admins and the regulars, etc. Playing the public servers all by yourself isn't fun at all, unless your planning on 'pwning some n00bs.'
3. Play with friends. Since you have a personal connection I know I can count on them to watch my back and work as a team.
I've played CS for over a year and a half on and off (Mostly on, I took a 3 month break over the summer), and it continues to be fun as long as I stick with a tried and true server and play with friends. If you're seriously sick of the gameplay, then fine, no ones forcing you to play it; but the argument that the community sucks and all the players are immature only stands up in almost every gaming community if you play random pubs.
There is a mod for Quake3 on beta stage called navy seals. It plays and feels very similar to counter strike, except the engine (Q3) is better.
And they have a Linux version.
I have played it and it is rock solid and good fun.
You can find it here:
Navy seals: covert operations
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
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
Being that the engine is mainly Quake2
After far too much digging, I finally found what I was looking for...an old mailbag on PlanetHalfLife that answers which engine HL is based on:
From: Stupid Newbie
Subject: Half-Life: Quake or Quake 2?
Uhh, something has been bugging me about HL. I see in various magazines and articles either "Half-Life is based on the Quake code", or "Half-Life is based on the Quake 2 code". Just exactly which game is it based on?
Half-Life is primarily based on the Quake engine, although Valve had access to the code for GLQuake, QuakeWorld, Quake II, etc. The game is about 70% original code, and the rest consists of a mix of id code. For example, QuakeWorld code is used in HL's net code, and I believe some elements of Quake II's rendering system is present in the game as well. But most of the id code that remains in the game is from the original Quake engine.
Well, technically Half-Life was built on the licensed Quake and Quake II engine. John Carmack gets a piece of the pie any way you slice it.
Confucious says: Man who runs behind car gets exhausted.
// jeku.com
For those that like CounterStrike, check out UrbanTerror. It's a TC built upon the Q3 engine, and it's quite nice.
I stopped playing HL because too few servers which were fast for me used anti-cheat software, and too many of the players are chumps. Tacops seems to have a better breed of player for the most part (Obviously some CS players are great people) and I just enjoy the gameplay more as well.
If you have UT, check it out.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
> CS is dying? That is totally false. What 'recent server data' are you basing this on? The online numbers of people playing CS is still hitting new peaks every week.
I don't think CS is dying at all, but it isn't reaching new peaks either. I've been tracking it's popularity for a long time, and I've been playing it since the first few betas. It's greatest peak in popularity was around Oct-Nov 2001. It consistantly had 80,000 players at a time then. After that, cheating became quite prevalent online. For most of Spring 2002, CS's popularity was down to 60,000, and was stagnant there. However, it seems to have resuccitated as of late.
Of course, CS is still more popular than all other network FPS games combined.
It's impossible to 'fix' cheating. John Carmack had a great .plan on the subject where he broke it down to a choice between how much network latency matters and how much cheating will be possible.
The only way to be completely cheat-free is to turn the client hardware into a dumb terminal. At that point the only cheats possible are things like turning the brightness up on your monitor. But this means that the entire game has to be simulated on the server, including the graphics. If you send polygons down the wire, a malicious client can analyze the polygones and provide visual cues to the user.
When Valve released the "network patch" for Counter Strike, they introduced client-side prediction like that found in QuakeWorld, and that meant that the client software got to decide whether a hit was accurate or not, and where it landed. They did this because they wanted the game to be responsive for modem users who might have latency spikes as high as 200ms. This makes the instantaneous frame-rate of the game about 5fps. Client-side prediction assumes everything carries on as it was before when the latency is too high, and then re-sync when latency returns to normal. The actual result was that proxies could manipulate the network traffic to give the user perfect aim and perfect knowledge, and sometimes the ability to shoot through obstacles.
As someone else mentioned, the solution is not technical, it's social. Have LAN parties, or use some form of distributed trust to restrict cheating at the personal level. Refuse to play with anyone who has a poor rating. This is an imperfect solution, like SlashDot moderation, but it's a lot more feasable and efficient than technical solutions.