Slashdot Mirror
Counter-Strike Source Beta Set for Late Summer
fistfullast33l writes "Valve has announced via Steam that a Beta version will be launched for Counter-Strike: Source, the multiplayer counter-terrorism mod that will now be updated for release with the Half-Life 2 powering Source engine. It is expected to be kicked off around late summer. Apparently: 'The beta will first be open to subscribers of the Valve Cyber Café Program, and then extended to owners of Counter-Strike: Condition Zero.' Seems like a good time to find out where the nearest gaming parlor is." This move is interesting in light of allegations of Valve bullying cybercafes - we also recently covered the South Korean unveiling of Counter-Strike: Source over at Slashdot Games.
I'm sure I'm not going to be the first to mention, but I felt a sudden surge of excitment when I read 'Counter Strike Source'... bah, why must Valve name their engine after what every geek loves?
The videos ive seen look very promising. But if the beta release date is anything like HL2's release date then it will be more like late spring instead of late summer...
It's way past time to die!
BSD died nice and gracefully - why won't you go? Are you too good for your destiny?
And I just got straight A's this last quarter. Oh well, I really don't need a Master's anyway...
Blizzard licenses are the same way I thought for cybercafe's. on Blizzard site : In order to operate any of our titles for profit, you must purchase a commercial exploitation license.
I would like to get back into CounterStrike with the new engine and release. I quit playing CS a long time ago due to all the cheats (not that there won't be any with the new one).
Unfortunately, it sounds like knowing when, where and how to get it and play it is going to be too much of a hassle.
Just tell me when the game will be released and where I can buy it for how much.
Yeah, at first I was also misled by the title of the article. Either way though, I think that the steam engine is horribly flawed. I really dislike "launcher" engines for games. I really wish that they could have the old WON servers for playing, however, I suppose this is their way of battling piracy for their games. I'm not sure how much it's worth to protect from piracy when it creates problems for legitimate users, but then again, since when has any company really cared about the end user?
Does anyone have any idea what's next after FPS games? Massively multiplayer games are obviously staking their claim, and casual games that rehash offline games are bringing in big money, but when are we going to see an innovative new game format?
Any ideas? Or am I totally off in left field?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Valve wants to charge $10/month/PC for access to all of Valve's games, which right now is the original Counter-Strike. This may not seem like a lot, but multiply this charge by every major game publisher and pretty soon you've strangled the nascent cybercafe industry. Valve should be encouraging cybercafes with generous licensing terms, rather than trying to squeeze every last dime of profit. The worst part is that Valve is targeting high-profile cybercafes that are trying to act as responsible members of the community, while fly-by-night strip mall cybercafes continue to fly under the radar.
Well, my site is still suffering from a slashdotting from a few days ago, but check out CS-Nation's CS: Source info section for an FAQ and of course plenty of CS: Source media.
Shameless enough? Heh.
I tried Counter-Strike no more than three times. Each time, I started to get into the game, but the maddening immaturity of the players completely turned me off after five minutes. "EAT SHIT ASSDICK LOLOL!! PWNED" got old, and when I encountered a cheater, that was the last straw.
As a matter of fact, I haven't really been into online gaming since. Nothing intrigues me. Looking forward to single-player Doom 3 and Half-life 2, thank you very much.
Americas army also runs quite well in linux, assuming you have your vid card setup properly.
More info about Counter-Strike source:
CS Banana FAQ
CS-Nation info page
Video
HL2.net forum post about the Seoul apresentation.
Is this a sign that Hl2 will take more time by giving a taste of their "Source Engine" (confusing name) to put the final touch on HL2?
.......(impatiently waiting duke nukem forever. #%&@(*&@#%)
I wouldn't be too surprised if there's some sort of feedback tool which asks the user why a certain crash occured and send in the report to valve. Actually I'd love to see that cause that would show they are even more serious about their game which may or may not be as fun and "big" as HL1.
We shall see in time why exactly they're taking this move but I don't like the fact of having to buy CS:CZ to get a license for CS:Source since HL2 comes with CS: Source (that's what the valve guy said in the trailer of ~35mb showing de_aztec).
Anybody have thoughts similar to mine, or am I just too suspicious?
I thought we already had the source?
I forgot about America's Army. Its another nice violent linux game. :)
burnin
source engine? where did they come up with that.. That has to be the stupidest and most confusing name for an engine.. and "counter strike source to be released" but, they probably did that to get all the people looking for the source for the source engine to get suckered into looking and something called source that doesn't have the source..
Make a bad game sell(condition zero) by giving an advanced looked at a good game
It'll be interesting to see what effect this has on the average power of personal computers out there.
It's been widely acknowledged that because of Counter-Strike and The Sims, that people have been reluctant to upgrade their machines since they can still play these two games on a relatively low powered system (by today's standards anyway).
So with Counter-Strike: Source and The Sims 2 most likely requiring a lot more grunt under the hood, will we see an explosion in new home PC purchases for these two releases?
-
-
"I may have invented it, but Bill made it famous." - David Bradley, inventor of Ctrl-Alt-Del
Too bad development of it has been completely discontinued a few months ago.
Life is complete only for brief intervals in between toys or projects -- John Dalton
I think not. A regular over at TribalWar has started his own LAN center and bought copies of retail CS for each machine. After installing and running the operation as usual for quite some time he got a notice from valve saying he would have to pay a rate PER machine for ALL of valve software. This does not change that the LAN centers are still having to pay 300% more for Valve software over competing software. The rate is per machine and PER month. Where it was only a grand or two for Ut2k4 one-time fee, CS was $30k a year. If Valve wants gamers happy, they have to make LAN centers happy. Now this is ridiculous that they expect people to shell out for a beta, and at the same time pay for every other piece of yea ever written.
Okay, so admittedly I'm a cynic and I still feel someone burned from the original delay, but this sounds like an artful dodge around bad news.
Supposedly "Summer" is the release date for Half Life 2, according to Valve. My guess is that the reason why they chose Counterstrike for the beta test was as a test for the net code (and possibly the graphics engine) so that they could role-up any bugfixes into same engine that Half-Life 2 would be using. With that in mind, it seems highly unlikely that they would release Half-Life 2 before counterstrike concluded it's beta testing. So if the counterstrike beta will take place in late summer, that doesn't leave a whole lot of time to go from "Beta 1" (does that imply multiple betas then?) to "done".
Here's my take: Half-Life 2 is going to be delayed 'till fall, but the announcement of Counterstrike: Source is an attempt to stave off the lynch mob. I hope I'm wrong, but Valve doesn't have the best track record. Gabe Newell is probably is probably formulating a press release this very second blaming the delay on the Sasser worm.
honestly I like games I can't help my self. Unfortunately I'm very turned off on spending more money on any counterstrike titles after the fiasco of Counter strike: Condition zero changing hands so many time the product marketed was no longer the product delievered. There were a great deal of people who were expecting new models and weapon and when it came out they were disapointed. There weren't new models with the game originally all there were was the single player game. New models came out later with steam updates and as to my knowledge you have to use steam to get the updates and you can't do it if you just want a stand alone version for offline only. Counterstrike CZ was ment to have single player capiblities but you can only upgrade through multiplayer. In my opinion Counterstrike source will have to work much harder to get back some of its jaded audience. If the original title was not as strong as it was there would have been a greater loss, I feel.
Don't forget RtCW and Enemy Territory.
:)
Carmack is one cool guy. Every engine he's made has been cross-platform and they are continually better than the competition. He showed that OpenGL still has some kick left in it while every other major game developer switched to Direct3D. And he's a rocket scientist. That's what I call a true geek
Btw, your constant "real geeks don't touch anything that is Windows" attitude sucks. There are lots of real geeks using Windows out there, me being one of them.
Now give me Half-Life 2 or shut the fuck up.
Game... blouses.
I really don't like Valve's choice of the word "Source" for their engine. I mean, obviously it has source code, but it almost seems like it's trying to trump the definition of "source". It's even more annoying when you have a GPL'd Mod for Half-Life (and in the future for HL2). "It's open source for Source which you don't have the source for." what
Going off-topic, Valve supplied an excellent SDK for HL1 but as of Steam that community policy seems to have disintegrated. We modders have no SDK for Steam or VGUI2. The updated engine interface headers to Steam is buried in the mailing list, and it has typos. They also don't have a reputation for giving clear/good answers in response to questions about working with their new stuff (forget about actual support also).
Either Valve's really, really too busy with HL2/CS2 to interact with community coders or they're just getting arrogant. I'm that CS2/HL2 continue with Valve's original "awesome SDK"-ness, especially with the underground rumor that it will have Metamod (or multi-mod sub modding) functionality built in.
If you say "here goes my karma" I will bite you!!!
From what I've seen Counter-Strike Source is just Counter-Strike ported to the Source engine. The only improvements have been in the graphics department.
I don't know why ValvE has focused a considerable amount of effort to porting an old game to a new engine instead of just making Counter-Strike 2. I hope this game will be free just like the original Counter-Strike because I'm not going to pay for a rehash.
after a love hate relationship with unreal 2004, that I'm just starting to be able to break free of ... they come along and spring this on me!
... has been known to creap into though just, ahh, pleasuring the lady (-;
Can I handle the countless sleepless nights, can my retna's survive another epic game that takes over every waking moment of though, invades my dreams and
horra! bring it on! I'm ready (-;
CCTV Security Cameras
Gamblers Forum
I guess I should have mentioned RtCW as well. Damn, missed another. :)
btw, the Windows attitude is not constant, I just have a temporary attitude because there are some major offensives in affect from the greed mongers. I do like and use some of the stuff that comes out of Redmond but I'm not going to rally around any of their products in any public forum until they lighten up. If they had their way we wouldn't even have these great games for non-Windows platforms since they seem to believe we must be stealing something from them if we don't contribute to their bank accounts.
burnin
Damn! And just when my head was almost healed from all those AWP wounds!
I joined the CS community right around CS BETA 6 (or whatever people called it) -- when you had to buy a copy of Half-Life and install the mod and wait for the headshots. Even became part of a clan -- a local mix of teenagers and 20/30/40 somethings like myself. It was all good. We reveled in the light of several thousand servers and players.
Then, my clan went "pro" -- joined CAL and started going through the trials/tribulations of competitive gaming. "Sorry, Non-CAL Player X -- we can't 'pub' anymore because it would hurt our competitive reputation" excuses for not hanging out and just playing the game became common. But Counter-Strike seemed to remain the shiznit.
I left that clan and sought another group of people that seemed to just want to play the game, and then this new clan started losing "pubbers" to CAL and other leagues. And then it broke in half w/ the teenagers playing in the higher-end leagues and the 20/30/40 somethings getting pissed about the kids leaving them behind to play in lower-end leagues. And then the clan broke up.
This was all about the time that Steam came out of BETA and into real-world use. When I heard that CS was tied to the Steam engine, I tried it out, only to go through the initial debacle of the whole setup. And I wondered why in the world did Valve do this. I heard horror stories of LAN parties gone terribly wrong as people found they had to have the last mod version 1.5 installed + Steam in order to play at a LAN party and online. Many of the 20/30/40 somethings with whom I'd played in the clans had moved on to other games, coming back to CS when they tired of BF1942, Star Wars: Galaxies, etc.
CS: Condition Zero and Half-Life 2 kept getting pushed back. When CS: Condition Zero came out, it was...well...eh. That's it. Eh. And HL2 continues to be in the oft unforeseen future, from what I can tell.
After all this -- how can CS still be the most popular online FPS? I'm looking now at HLSW.net's search engine, and I see 24K+ Steam CS servers and 5K+ WON CS servers running. Total of about 70K players. And not a single other searchable online FPS game from this engine comes anywhere close to those numbers.
So -- I repeat the original question -- is CS still THAT popular? What keeps it going? I mean, Half-Life can be had for less than $15 now, which I would assume still earns you the license rights to download Steam and get all the games associated with Half-Life (that's how it was when I did the Steam upgrade last year).
Is it still just THAT accessible? Are the 5:00 minute team-based rounds w/ a post-mortem waiting period still the keys to the game? What keeps it alive? As great as BF1942, DesertCombat, UT2K4, and other MP FPS games have been, how has CS remained on top? Particularly with the major issue of cheating (if it's still a major issue) hovering over the game like a black cloud?
One last thought -- if CS IS still as popular as it has been in the past, do other gaming companies shudder in fear at the thought of a REVISED, REVAMPED CS game coming out with HL2? Is there concern that semi-full BF1942 or UT2K4 servers will start losing players in droves as everyone flocks to CS to see what's new?
IronChefMorimoto
P.S. - Keep in mind, I've not played the game in months, so if I've gotten something wrong here, please chime in. I'm just expressing surprise that CS is STILL getting this much attention.
Myself, I an a strategy gaming addict.
Of course, the genre hasn't had a timeless classic in a while. This year's Warlords Battlecry III will show up on All Time Best lists, but it's really just a very polished version of 2002's Warlords Battlecry II that already had a safe place on those lists.
2001's Europa Universalis II hasn't been topped by its sequels so far -- Hearts of Iron was too narrow in scope and Victoria too hyper-realistically dull. I have high expectations of Crusader Kings
2002's Kohan is very nice. The upcoming sequel sounds promising.
Majesty was neat for the time, but I suspect it won't get the follow-up it deserves.
1998's Warlords III: Dark Lords Rising is still awesome, whereas Warlords IV was botched and is generally sucky.
1997's Total Annihilation is still the best RTS game of all time.
1999's Imperialism II and 1997's Imperialism are very different from each other and hold up moderately well.
1994's Civilization II 0wnZ.
So does 1994's Transport Tycoon Deluxe.
I am not sure what year it's from, but Heroes of Might and Magic II is neat.
(I haven't tried Galactic Civilizations and Dominions II, but they are very highly thought of on Usenet.)
(Also, I don't think of any of the Age of Wonders or Disciples games as super-great, but they have followings.)
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
I think Greg Dean said it best with this strip.
Mmm...slashdot not all about everyone's 2nd-favourite operating system. Soyez silencieux s't'plait quand tu parles de ca de que tu sais rien, mon crisse.
And I'm a real geek so that means I dont rely on Wine either.
Damn straight. Real geeks smoke herb.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
right, go to the AA site and take a look at when the last release was.
Play on a well-admined server, and you'll find your CS experience much more enjoyable. I play on a server where there is NO profanity (spoken or written), no racist or pornographic nicknames, no cheating, etc... they have a ton of admins and it's rigorously enforced. What's more, if you feel you've been unfairly kicked/banned, you can lodge a protest on the group's website... bans have been overturned for unsubstantiated accusations of cheating (no demo recorded, etc).
A server run by adults, for adults, is a wonderful thing... playing with mature, responsible players... it brought enjoyment back to my CounterStrike experience.
I'd advise you to explore some more servers. Don't dismiss a great game mod because you happen to play on servers with hormonally-poisoned 13yo adolescents.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
It would be more like this, my business has a HUGE library of movies that have been paid for. I charge someone to come into my coffee shop and while they're there they can peruse my library and watch any movie they wish.
Or I have a huge CD library in my coffee shop and while you drink my coffee you may listen to any of the CDs. One could offer a convincing argument that it's not a public exhibition if only one person at a time is able to view the content.
Movie theaters have contracts that they have to abide by, one of the provisions is not letting people see the movie without a ticket.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I will not partake of that particular poison. I'll stick to iD and other games makers who give back to their fans.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
The Cybercafe's would most likely force gamers to use their own Steam logins, so if an account gets locked it's the gamers and not the cafe's that's locked. To get their own login, they must have their own cd key, so under Valve's terms you would have to buy two copies PLUS pay their $10 a month. Screw you, Valve.
I'm a geek so that means I don't run Windows. And I'm a real geek so that means I dont rely on Wine either.
:)
Geez, the option to mod down is so tempting right now... First off, geeklyness has nothing to do with the OS you run. Running Windows does not exclude you from the geekdom, and running Linux does not give you an all access pass. If you're running a fresh boot of Fedora every time you restart your computer because you can't figure out how to install RedHat, you are less of a geek than someone who runs Windows and keeps it finely tuned.
Wine sucks. Winex is better. Cedega (wine 4) is great. I really don't think you have a problem with having to "rely" on wine, you have a problem getting winex from CVS or shelling out for (or finding) cedega. Just because you are unwilling to get CS working in Wine, you shouldn't say that "real geeks" don't use it.
Oh, and real geeks never say things like "real geeks never do [whatever]."
>Oh, and real geeks never say things like "real geeks never do [whatever]." :)
;)
Then you're not a real geek either
Too bad AA runs like a slide show. Shouldn't need an X800 to run a 3rd rate FPS.
"It is expected to be kicked off around late summer."
In other words, Spring 2005.
I thought the time of screams like "OMFG LOL Headshot! frag frag frag, n00b" at lan partys where coming to an end...
and now this....
other than detail textures and 1 decent new map!
Matt
You have 1 Moderator Point! Use it or lose it! Is that a threat? -vapid
Much of the negative attitude towards Counter-Strike is due to the immaturity of the players on a particular server. I've been playing at a more mature CS server run by relics of the internet boom in the 90's. They are a bunch of tech dorks who have families and jobs and are just looking for a place to vent their anger after 8 hours coding for the MAN.
The address is http://www.beatdown12.com. Im sure youll enjoy a couple minutes reliving your doom days with people who dont take things too seriously.
The reason it needs good hardware is to identify "possible weapons" and "terrorists", such as Pentium 4 owners.
Am I the only one here that thinks that CS is utter sh*t?
You will also find, weird though it may seem, there are Apple and BSD sections of the site too. Us nerds need our relaxation as much as the next person...
Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.
-- Terry Pratchett, Hogfather
Running Windows does not exclude you from the geekdom
Uhm yes, it does. If you're not compiling your OS, you're an unsavory techno-wimp. In addition, your mom wears combat boots to bed. Feel free to place your hands over your ears and close your eyes while saying "nanananananah I can't hear you!"
It won't help.
I run Gentoo on my damn microwave, so deal!
They port the mac version but they didn't release it. Bunch of @$$ holes.
Lastly, I am really hoping that when the new game launches steam will become a way to track and serve global stats. Games like half-life and counter-strike are very lacking in this area in that every time you leave a game you take nothing away with you. For this reason while I've played my fair share of CS I've also always been drawn to games like diablo 2 because for the time you spend playing you not only improve your skill but you also have something to come back to next time you fire up the game. If something akin to a ladder and some sort of persistent achievement rating was instituted in a game like half-life 2 or counter-strike I think that it would add a whole new level of enjoyment to the game.
/begin rant/
/end rant/
You may or may not beleive this but I have to get it off my chest.
Counter strike sucks balls.
Here's why.
I've been playing FPS games since Wolf (I'm 26) - I am fairly good at them - been using the mouse since Duke 3D and normally can beat most of my friends and their friends.
If I joined a server of any FPS game released in the past 10 years I'd normally be in the top 30% of players on the server in 99% of cases.
Now, I _LOVED_ action quake 2, I adored and worshipped that game - it was brilliant.
I also love Quake 3 Urban Terror 2.
I moved from AQ2 to CS - I don't recall which Beta I did it in but there was a problem.
(I also loved Half life DM - few people did but I thought it was GREAT)
These games use "randomisation" code when it comes to shooting the weapons.
Now as most of us know, just like in real life - in AQ2 you would STOP moving, you would duck (crouch) and aim steady.
You then fire either semi-auto or 3 round burst into the enemy - and counter the recoil of the weapon, then fire again. This would VERY OFTEN increase your chances of killing the target.
The game(s) with this code punish the people who run and spray aimlessly in your general direction.
(hope you're following me so far)
Now I'm good at games that use this code, AQ2, Q3 UT2 - that one on the Unreal engine and several other "real" games using todays weapons (not lasers etc)
Why, oh why Oh WHY does this not work in CS?
Silly thing to complain about perhaps but I can honestly say I find it so frustrating I detest the game.
I've re-attempted to play the game normally for several days at a time at least once every 6 months for the past 3 or 4 years.
EACH TIME I have the EXACT same problem - I follow the simple laws of logic when it comes to aiming at my enemy - the same rules which work in other FPS games but it doesn't work - someone LITERALLY runs and sprays an auto at me while jumping and running and hits me - headshot one kill, yet my perfectly aimed shots hit but don't kill.
Interestingly I have another friend with the EXACT same problem - we're both perfectly good at other games - but when it comes to CS, we die ALWAYS so quickly so often just like we're "n00bs" despite the fact we're both FPS veterans.
Am I the only one besides he who suffers this with CS?
Truely the most frustrating game ever.
All your computers are belong to us.
American video game rental stores seem to rent only console games, not PC games. This policy is dictated by an exception in the first sale law, 17 USC 109(b)(1)(B)(ii). Do you claim that Counter-Strike for Xbox will get a "Special Edition" re-release using a port of Valve's Source engine?
I think it's a cool name. The Source engine, like it's the starting point for a lot of kick-ass content.
What else is there? The Quake engine, the CryEngine, the Unreal Warfare engine. They're all pretty silly. I actually thought Source was one of the more classy names, but what do I know.
It's 100% Free. You just download, install, and play. You don't need no steam engine, or anything else. You DON'T need to have a copy of Wolfenstein.
The graphics are a bit dated by today's standards, but they still do look amaizing in my opinion. They are deffinately leaps and bounds better then CS.
The gameplay in ET is just amaizing. With all the classes, and the large scale maps. There is so many differnt things to do, and different stratigies. I've been playing the game regularly for over half a year and I'm still learning a lot.
The game is so damn impressive, it is hard to get me to play any other game. I guess that's how people are with their counter strike.
Although, I can't wait for doom3.
-asoap
Treat me like a marketing stat, and I'll treat your movie like a series of ones and zeros
Hmm. So what about video rentals?
DVD-Video and VHS rentals are covered under the copyright laws governing audiovisual works, not the laws governing computer programs, even though DVD titles contain scripting capability.
oh, of course there were fps before 3d graphics cards. but cheap consumer 3d has gone hand in hand with mass popularity of fps games, and i stick with my feeling that fps won't ever go away. it'll become much more than point and shoot though... i felt ActionQuake2 was the start of something amazing and still play it - mods show what can be done :)
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
then extended to owners of Counter-Strike: Condition Zero
Alright, I bought CS:CZ. But explain this
What about the people that have already registered their Half Life 2 CD-Keys from the ATI graphics card bundle with steam?
Am I alone in thinking that would be the most logical people to extend it out to first?
Candle burns its brightest in the dark
Eaxctly. One of our clients is the MOVES Institute, the part of the military that developed AA. I know the (former) project manager personally. The whole budget got canned about 2 months ago. The entire development area has been stripped bare, including all their mocap gear. In fact, we're helping them develop the area that the former AA development team occupied with new VR equipment and applications. There is no further development being done and there will be none in the future.
Life is complete only for brief intervals in between toys or projects -- John Dalton
After seeing a video of the game in action, one of the things I noticed were the movable objects powered by the physics engine - on de_dust2. I wonder if that would create new, interesting strategies on old, time-tested maps - for instance, blocking the stairs on de_aztec.