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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."
This article basically explains what a mod is, briefly touching on counter strikes conception but most of it is jut bragging about it's success.
Not sure this was really worth posting on slashdot.
"But his main goal has been accomplished. In the two and half years since he left college, he hasn't set foot in a cubicle."
BUT, he still lives in his parents basement. That Valve buyout must not have been anywhere near the $5,000,000 figure.
The majority of players are annoying 12 year olds. At least, that's how they behave. And of course there's always the everpresent cheat/aimbot/wallhack (l)users. Online games are fun for the first month or so after release. Then when the hackers get up to speed or the kiddies find out about the latest game, it all goes to hell.
This is pretty much stating what we already know. What it does not touch upon however is that Valve seems unwilling to leave CS (or HL alone). Now, do not get me wrong, Valve has been a great developer, especially when it comes to mod makers; very few companies have done what they have done with their mod community. Nonetheless, its growing irritating to constantly hear about all this updates and new versions of CS when the company's original new flagship product has seemed to dissappear. The product I speak of is Team Fortress 2, which was supposed to come out a while back, but has all but dissappeared off the planet. Everyonce in a while you might hear a slight peep from Valve with the letters TF2 in them, but its next to nothing ('We are working on it'). CS is good, I still play it, but it is definitely time for something new. They should continue supporting HL, but in a much more limited way, and start moving towards a point release patch. Riding on the success of the last game you made 4 years ago gets a little old after a while. I do not mean this literally, but its annoying that they talked about TF2 like it was going to revolutionize (yea, its hype, but hey, it looked cool) multiplayer FPS games, but now all they're giving us is addons to Half-Life, which as I said is 4 years old, going on 5. This is all pretty much hopeless since CS still kills all other multiplayer fps games in terms of pure amounts of players & servers; where there is a demand, the publishers will go. I hope this isn't the result of Sierra's pressure, but from the attitudes of the Valve dev team that does not seem to be so.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
wow, you're really out of the loop when it comes to games
mods are THE reason that games have any longevity at all. for instance; the original Quake was a great game and all, but it shipped with support only for deathmatch (aka Kill-Em-All!), only because of modders like those that developed Team Fortress and the other popular mods did the game last as long as it did
right now my friends and I play a smorgasborg of mods on quake 3: Weapons Factory Arena, Instagib, Freeze Tag, Rocket Arena 3, QPong, and others.
Any smart game developer realizes that whatever they can create in their production timeline pales usually in comparison to what some clever fans can make in their spare time. That's why places like id and Valve release their SDKs freely and the tools to build maps/models/ annd other stuff for free:
it keeps their games selling
Id has done this with every game since Quake. So the mere fact that they've released modable source can't be the sole factor.
So, don't look for much more success stories like Counterstrike, because the technological fickleness of gamers will cause mods based on old engines to become unpopular quickly.
On the contrary; as engines become more advanced, their lifespan will increase. And with more and more games supporting mods, chances are we'll see more and more user-created games like Counter-Strike (or Team Fortress, etc.).
One of the problems with this is that game developers prefer to release games that are complete crap "out of the box", hoping that someone will make a "killer mod" for free, and that they (the game's authors / publishers) will profit from it.
By contrast, HL is probably the most polished action game I've ever seen. Very few games released since then come even close to its balanced and addictive single-player gameplay. I hope Valve are dedicating the same amount of time to TF2's playtesting and refinement.
RMN
~~~
Now personally, I don't like CS and never have. The realism is cool but the gameplay lacks the hyper adrenaline rush one gets from deathmatch games (of course, these are also boring after seven years of online play). Furthermore, the engine is pretty unimpressive technically. The best parts were in the single-player game with its scripted events and lifelike characters. When I first played Half-Life multiplayer, I thought the engine was laughably bad. My point isn't to troll - I just think the longevity of Half-Life has less to do with the engine and more to do with market forces and the exceptional design of Mr. Lee.
Another example of crappy talk-show sensationalism.
Talk shows like Oprah tell the audience what they _want_ to hear.
A guy from MIT (I think it was MIT) who went on the new Donahue show to deliver his findings that violent games had little/no effect on most children was ridiculed on air by the audience. People in the audience yelled at him saying stuff like, "YOU try to raise kids then!" They said this crap not knowing that the guy from MIT DOES have kids.
Since they don't even know much about the sniper, on what basis was this "expert" making this claim?
There is none. He is just telling the audience what they want to hear. The audience wants a simple solution why the sniper is doing what he's doing, how he learned to evade police, and they also want a scapegoat.
The expert says, "It was because of CounterStrike."
Completely baseless, completely stupid, but it provides the audience with what they want.
In the audience's eyes:
CounterStrike makes the guy want to kill people.
CounterStrike provided the training necessary to handle a real-life sniper rifle properly, and also
gave him the tactical ability to evade police.
CounterStrike and other violent video games are
to blame entirely for these murders.
In reality:
The sniper is probably killing for an extremely complex reason, and probably justifies what he does in his own mind as being right through some warped logic. He probably has some severe mental problems, no matter the reason.
The sniper could have gotten gun training and so
forth from a multitude of places. He might have trained in a militia. He might be an ex-member of
the military. He might have trained with a terrorist group. He might just have a natural talent.
There is nobody to blame for this but the sniper himself. CounterStrike didn't "make him do it."
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
Wow. I knew most PC gamers were shallow enough not to care about anything but graphics, but all you care about is lack of copy protection?
How in the world did you come up with that? Copy protection ala 'horked up CD-ROM in the drive to play' is merely an aggravation. For me, the aggravation is high enough that I'll wander out to gamecopyworld.com and get the no-cd patch for something I play often. Don't get me wrong, I like the people vs. people aspect, and team play really sucked me in and keeps me coming back. I have high hopes for B1942 when they get the next patch out.
When I picked up a copy of Opposing Forces the day it showed up at the store, I found out the copy protection 'was not compatible' with my SCSI CDRW or DVD. I waded through customer support and they were no help. I ended up getting the no-cd crack to play the game and a few service packs later and/or bios updated to my burner it worked. Most folks would probably try to return it - find out they can't - and avoid that production house in the future.
I'm cool with them authenticating my CD key over the net each time I connect to play on the net. I'm not promoting key generators either... but the CD check is just a headache.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Right on the Money.
I realize it's a small thing, but it's a hassle to dig through the mountains of stuff on my desk, find the CD, and then play. I'm much happier just clicking the icon, and off I go.
Wu-Tang Name: Half-Cut Skeleton Get your own Wu-Na
From how far has this Beltway Shooter been shooting? Even an armchair shooter like myself knows that 5.56mm is not at all suitable for real sniping. I'd think the effective range is something like 4-500 meters. Given the accuracy of this murderer, he perhaps has been shooting from something like 200m at best. That's not sniping at all, I think. I have been being puzzled by the use of this type of weapon by this criminal from the beginning. And the news reports I can find seldom mention how far he was when he fired.
To be on topic, I don't think you can't get anything close to real sniping in CS. The maps are too small. It's more like shooting someone close from vicinity using extremely high powered rifle.
Going back to off topic, I don't think someone who just has talent can become a good marksman instantly. In other words, however you may have potential of being a good shooter, without training, it is impossible to become one. One could tell someone is talented only after some training. I consider someone talented if he can collect all of his shots in 150mm circle from 300m from prone position. I think this is what an Olympic athlete can achieve more or less.
I don't give a shit how good their games are...when they start to sue legit open source projects I refuse to do business with them or play their products anymore.
This is one reason why I will never enjoy on-line games as much as LAN games. If someone on-line is cheating, I have to wait for the admin to become convinced and boot him. If I'm at a LAN, I get vengeance by installing Sub Seven on his machine when he makes a bathroom run.
On-line games require that a player communicates with the admins. I'm an admin for the flagen.com server. When people come to us saying 'ban this person he cheats' then we usually ask the regulars before taking action. When a regular accuses someone of cheating, their opinion is held higher and their evidence is taken more into consideration than people who we've never heard of.