Valve's Counter-Strike Condition Zero Done

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.

Comments

Bovine mixed-metaphors

[Anonymous Coward]

"Valve is milking the original Half-Life engine for all it's worth, "

Vrooom....Vrooommm...

Moo.

Re:Bovine mixed-metaphors

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds very Diablo-like...

Re:Bovine mixed-metaphors

[Goldberg's Pants]

Except Half-Life used a modified Quake 2 engine, so ultimately I would think Id are still making money off this as well. I know Valve considerably modded the engine, but it all began life as Id's baby. (The engine, not Half-Life. I just know SOMEBODY would think I meant that...)

I wanted to get CZ, but after Valve's duplicitous behaviour with the CS 1.6 beta, and sneakily removing the bots without warning, they ain't getting a dime out of me.

Re:Bovine mixed-metaphors

[Yarn]

Pedantry: Half-life is the Quake 1 engine with a few graphical tweaks and a couple of things backported from Quake2.

Re:Bovine mixed-metaphors

[Goldberg's Pants]

I went hunting for info to prove you wrong since I always believed it was the Quake 2 engine. Turns out you're absolutely right! Bugger me sideways with a blowfish!

Regardless, my point still stands.:) But thanks for being a pedant as I learned something I didn't know.

The fact it's the original Quake engine makes the longevity all the more astounding.

Re:Bovine mixed-metaphors

[dragoncortez]

wow! when did /. get so civil? :)

Re:Bovine mixed-metaphors

[Goldberg's Pants]

He obviously caught me at a good time. Sorry, I'll try again.

"No no, you're wrong. It's the Quake 2 engine. I know, because I work for blah blah blah blah..." :)

Credit where it's due. For years I believed it was the Q2 engine. Hell, magazines I read at the time said it was, but apparently it wasn't. I learnt something interesting, therefore the person deserves credit.

Hell, having someone post something that's correct on Slashdot is rare enough:)

Re:Bovine mixed-metaphors

[_Sexy_Pants_]

What's also astounding is how much they've jacked up the system requirements. Condition Zero takes a Pentium 3 500 mhz with 96 mb RAM and a 16 mb video card. Remember when at most computers were seperated by 200 mhz? People optimized games during those days

Re:Bovine mixed-metaphors

[Yarn]

You're welcome ;)

Yes, it's pretty impressive what a few tweaks can do; Romero was almost correct when he said that after the Quake engine the rest would be down to the artists.

Same for me.

[Anonymous Coward]

"When Valve was bought out by Microsoft a while back, I vowed never to buy another Valve game."

Same for me. However, previously I was getting them all for free via P2P, so the vow was kind of pointless.

Single player content

[arrow]

It's good to see more single player content for FPS games. I think too much of it was lost on the multi-player hype. For someone who honestly sucks at multiplayer games but fairs pretty well aginst computer players, I hope the recent source leak at Valve pushes them a bit more to realize that single-player content could build them a solid game of the year title even if the multiplayer aspect gets hacked to bits.

Re:Single player content

[__aafkqj3628]

It's good to see more single player content for FPS games.

Even when it's just milking the multiplayer version of it's player's cash?

I hope the recent source leak at Valve pushes them a bit more to realize that single-player content could build them a solid game of the year title

How does a source leak do that? I thought that's what game sales were for.

Re:Single player content

[arrow]

Lets assume for a second that due to source leaks and protocol compromises, a game becomes completely unplayable in the multiplayer sense.

Good quality single player content could still earn the acclaim of reviewers and players. Which in turn generates more sales, and a game of the year.

I just liked the days when you didn't need to play online to get the full enjoyment of a game.

Re:Single player content

[fireduck]

What evidence is there that HL2 would have been focused on multiplayer? None. They won't even divulge what MP modes or features they are including.

HL was all about the single player experience (at least when first released). There's a reason HL won almost every single gaming award it was nominated for: the compelling and revolutionary (!) storyline. Honestly, it wasn't Hemmingway or Faulkner, but HL propelled the character forward with a purpose no FPS had done previously. HL really crystallized the idea that story does matter.

The whole MP dominated phase of HL came a much later beginning with the release of TFC (and the SDK).

Valve has even gone so far as to propose to release multiple versions of HL2, one of which contains only the single player content (as they realize that the silent majority of players who buy the game at Walmart don't ever go online to play). So I think Valve is very much aware of what propelled HL to the top and will attempt to repeat as close as possible the conditions that lead to that.

Re:Support Microsoft?

[RQuinn]

When exactly did MS buy Valve?

Re:Support Microsoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/22/223322 7&mode=thread&tid=127

MS does not own Valve

[gumpish]

NBC Merger Leaves VU Games, Blizzard, Sierra In Cold

From the post:

...Vivendi Universal Games has still not found a buyer...

Re:MS does not own Valve

[__aafkqj3628]

And even this, I wasn't aware the Vivendi owned Valve and that Valve was just using them as a publisher for HL2.

CZ has been leaked

[__aailob1448]

The same guy who leaked HL2's source, HL2 alpha (mislabeled BETA) and custom versions of Counter-strike and Half-Life 1 running on the source engin had just leaked Condition Zero.

It is spreading wildly as I'm typing this...

www.bittorrentmovies.de

[u-238]

www.bittorrentmoves.de has a legit bit torrent tracker, fuck waiting. download the leaked alpha now.

good for valve :)

[sirmikester]

It seems as if valve finally got some news to be happy about. This title should definately sell well and make alot of money for them. The screenshot looks pretty good, considering the engine for the game is quite dated by now (regardless of updates).

Now how about that linux client?

Re:good for valve :)

[billcopc]

It's all about the texturing!

Seriously, a low-poly engine can make up for a lot of missing detail by using well designed textures and a few cheap tricks that mask the sharp edges, especially now that many 3d accelerators support pixel shaders where you can post-process the everything with a minimal performance hit. Another fine example of clever thinking beating out brute force.

Re:good for valve :)

[PainKilleR-CE]

Seriously, a low-poly engine can make up for a lot of missing detail by using well designed textures and a few cheap tricks that mask the sharp edges, especially now that many 3d accelerators support pixel shaders where you can post-process the everything with a minimal performance hit. Another fine example of clever thinking beating out brute force.

Except, of course, that the HL engine wasn't originally designed to do most of that (pixel shaders and mask sharp edges). I don't know what level of upgrading they've done on CZ, but for the most part they've simply upgraded the quality of their models, skins, and textures over the last few years in parallel with the brute force capabilities of new graphics cards (as older graphics cards can handle them). In fact, the HL engine last time I played wouldn't even display the newer textures at full resolution without a few changes to the cfg files because many older graphics cards couldn't support the full-sized textures.

As you alluded to in the first place, though, you can do a lot to make a game look detailed with good textures, and well-designed maps and models.

Valve makes games?

[Mirkon]

I thought all they did was issue press releases about, and delay, Half-Life 2. Didn't know they actually made stuff there.

Re:Support Microsoft?

[PainKilleR-CE]

Not only did that not happen, but Vivendi doesn't own Valve, either. No one but Valve owns Valve.

Ah, the *real* reason for the HL2 delay!

[Etone]

Why would Valve release HL2 anytime soon? There's still money to be made from HL1, and it wouldn't be fiscally prudent to release HL2 soon after, since who would want a HL1 add-on after HL2 is released?

All of a sudden, "Four months to rewrite the code" makes a lot more sense. Sure does shine an interesting light on the recent "code theft".

zero done?

[Kynde]

"Valve's Counter-Strike Condition Zero Done"

Was I the only one thinking that how can some one claim that CS is in zero-done condition...

how much does it cost?

[civilengineer]

Could not find price on the discussion board. Anybody?

Perhaps you are thinking of Bungie?

[EduardoTheBastard]

They were purchased by Microsoft a couple years back, and is the reason that Halo was converted from a PC title to an Xbox once.

Although rumor has it that they are now porting it back to the PC. Go figure.

Re:Perhaps you are thinking of Bungie?

[Anonymous Coward]

Idiot. Halo was by Bungie, NOT Valve. And PC Halo is already out. Christ, get your fucking head out of your ass.

Re:Perhaps you are thinking of Bungie?

[33degrees]

Actually Halo for PC has already been released

Re:Support Microsoft?

[bconway]

No one but Valve owns Valve.

Some might argue that. ;-)