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.

Comments

Steam

[feilkin]

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?

Re:Die already!

[PhrostyMcByte]

Like lots of other people, I gave up on CS long ago.

It was the first game that really gave me a sense of teamplay (not just team deathmatch with flags on the side), but then it went horribly wrong... as the mod got more and more popular, a ton of immature kids started playing it. with them came the cheaters. After years of ignoring it valve decided to implement cheat detection, but it was too little too late. Condition Zero was a half-assed attempt to revive it but nobody is going to spend another $30 just to have bots on an outdated engine.

If the Source engine is less prone to cheats, I may revise this, but for now I agree: It's time for CS to die.

Good marketing

[rawr90]

Make a bad game sell(condition zero) by giving an advanced looked at a good game

Re:The next genre

[Quirk]

FPS gaming is the gamers answer to solitare. Straight forward, simple can be played over any time frame for a self indulgent break without the need for other players. It's not so much a great gaming platform as it is a default platform.

Re:What a real geek needs

[PhrostyMcByte]

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.

Re:Sounds good.

[mog007]

Valve is really starting to piss me off. Instead of focusing on their next game, Half Life 2, over the past year and a half they've been repackaging the same old crap. They came out with a new version of Counter Strike called Condition Zero, they're spending time porting the original Half Life and Counter Strike to the new engine that Half Life 2 runs on. Why can't they stop making money off of the same material, and start releasing the new stuff already?

Is CS still THAT popular? How?

[IronChefMorimoto]

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.

Re:Is CS still THAT popular? How?

[TrancePhreak]

I've heard that the low system requirements help CS out a bit in that you don't need much to run it.

Re:Is CS still THAT popular? How?

[Mazem]

The reason so many people keep playing CS is largely because... *gasp*... at its core its a really good game.

People at any skill level can have a good time, but it takes lots of gaming hours to become really good, and the game rewards you for this progress. It's like Chess (and dare I say Starcraft, another computer game with a lot of longevity) in that you can never really master it, just be better than the next guy.

On the surface most of the game seems very simple. See the enemy, shoot. At the bombsite, plant the bomb. Stick with your team.

However, one of the things that distinguishes Counter-Strike from mediocre games is the extent to which subtlties come into play.

Let's take for a case example the effect of recoil, a simple addition that opens whole new worlds to the gameplay. A mediocre player might see the enemy and open fire full auto, Quake style. However, a more experienced player judges the distance to be medium, takes into account their weapon, and makes a very calculated "duck, click chest, click chest, wait, click head". Or perhaps any number of different firing styles depending on the situation. The tactics of simply clicking the fire button becomes a game itself.

Then there's aim. Seems simple, but is much more important given the slow nature of the gameplay.

Then there's individual tactics. Do you rush in for speed? Do slowly walk in for better aim? Do you wait for the enemy to come out? Which side of the pillar do you pop out of during a firefight, and after what wait? Do you fire at a group of unsuspecting enemies or sneak away and radio in teammates? Where does the enemy expect you to be, and how can you use that to your advantage? How can you outflank them?

Then team tactics is a whole strategy itself. The best teams know what part of a room each person is going to cover (much like a SWAT team), and systematically clear areas, use decoys, provide covering fire, etc.

The great thing through all of this is that the game is designed in such a way to promote all of these different subtlties instead of allowing a single strategy or style dominate. Getting killed after only a couple hits, or having better aim when you are stopped isn't good because its more realistic - its good because it opens up a lot of strategy that becomes obsolete in ultra-fast ultra-powerful run-n-gun games.

A lot of people who only play Counter-Strike couple times and don't get into it never see this side of the game. They only see that the graphics are dated, that the gameplay is "slow", that the weapons all look the same, that you have to wait until the end of the round once you die, and that many people cheat. Those are all surface concerns which, although significant, do not detract from the excellent core of gameplay that so many people are addicted to.

Re:Whoopie. CS... again.

[lewp]

Flamebait? I think it's a valid point. When is Valve going to stop regurgitating the same old shit and actually release a new game?

Even if Half-Life 2 actually HAS a release date now (I stopped keeping track), it wouldn't be the first time.

They've managed to make one good game. Six years ago. Since then they've taken that game and managed to run it into the fucking ground by releasing it over and over again with different, freely-available, mods on the CD.

Now they've got a new engine, which is great, and rather than showing it off by releasing it with a great new game (which HL2 should be, if we ever see it) they're showing off the same puke in a different box.

Half-Life was great. CS was great. But so was Space Invaders. That doesn't mean I'm going to buy it again just because you tacked it on to a new engine.

Even id, who managed to go from a game company to an engine company (though hopefully Doom 3 changes this image), at least has the decency to make a new game to show off their new engines.

I will be the first person in line to buy Half-Life 2 the day it is released. Until then, fuck Valve.

it's all where you play

[The Tyro]

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.

Re:it's all where you play

[Barlo_Mung_42]

I agree. For me it's the in game voice com that keeps me. It adds a level of game play that other games without it can't match. I've since tried other games without voice com and felt there was something missing. Why haven't more games added this feature?
Sure the graphics are a bit dated but the game play is what really makes a game.

Re:Counter-strike is mildly cool, its players suck

[david_costanzo]

That was my first experience, too. I got on a server where the admin was a power-hungry bigot (or at least played the role). He'd kick people off that he accused of being minorities and he'd kick people off for not being racist enough. He'd also disrupt the game by enabling God mode for himself. Like you, I just assumed that's how all servers were.

Then I found a few servers that are run by people that do not tolerate swearing or bigotry. I also found people that took to the time to teach me how to play. My teammates still curse me out when I accidently (but thoroughly) fill them with bullets. And there are still plenty of momments of immaturty, but that's part of the on-line experience, whether its on-line gaming, chat rooms, or slashdot. In a strange way, it's also part of the fun.

So, if you like the game, keep hunting for a good server. You're bound to find one.

Re:Counter-strike is mildly cool, its players suck

[Anonymous Coward]

and when was the last time you went out with your counter terrorist team and gunned down terrorists, rescued hostages and defused bombs in real life?

Re:another reason why this is crap....

[Anonymous Coward]

To help combat this problem, cafés in the program can contact Valve to correct problems with "banned" accounts."

Or for cheaters to claim that they're Cyber Cafés... or if the CC keys are more expensive then regular keys, a loophole that allows those who pay more to cheat.