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Counter-Strike Source Beta Debuts In CyberCafes
orion024 writes "From the official Half-Life 2 website - the Half-Life: Counter-Strike Source beta '...will be playable [starting tomorrow, Wednesday] at all cyber cafes that subscribe to the Valve Cyber Cafe Program. Later this month, the beta will be extended to owners of Counter-Strike: Condition Zero; and ATI Fulfillment Coupon holders.' Hopefully, this beta, using the Source engine Half-Life 2 is built upon, will ease those HL2 jitters many fellow gamers are experiencing." We previously reported on some friction between cybercafe owners and Valve - as for CS:Source, IGN PC also has an updated preview on the title, which sports "the same specs that Doug Lombardi mentioned for Half-Life 2... minimum system requirements appear to be a 1.2 gigahertz processor with 256 megabytes of RAM and a DirectX 7 video card."
why post minimum system requirements? why not post the recommended system requirements since I wont be playing in 640x480 resolution!
Man CZ owners should have gotten it first...or at least at the same time. We payed how much for CZ and got very little change, and what changes we got are moot with the release of source... I'm not complaining, but how does this really help cybercafe owners? The installed base of CZ is not huge, but you would think you would want as many people out there playing source as soon as possible to prevent a dearth of serves...
---In a time of Chimpanzees I was a Monkey.
like things that would alter the gameplay somehow, as cs has already gotten way beyond the point of where graphics or eyecandy matter.
o wnload.php&action=open&id=445). which is quite similar to CS.
especially what have they done to enhance the playing on public servers experience(are there any real fundamental differences in the engines inner workings to remove certain types of cheating completely)?
anyhow, i've been playing some SAS lately on ut2004(http://www.sas.jolt.co.uk/index.php?page=d
oh.. and for crying out loud, doom 3 is out but hl2 is still taking it's sweet time. **"When Valve's designers were working on Half-Life 2, they wondered how easy or difficult it would be to migrate older mods into the updated engine. According to Product Manager Jess Cliffe, the designers took the 1.1 build of Counter-Strike, stripped it down to its barest essentials, and then imported elements piece by piece into the source engine. Along the way, they included features from every Counter-Strike up to the current 1.6 version and Condition Zero.
The end result are elements that were much more detailed, featuring many more polygons per model, bump mapping and other graphical enhancements to take advantage of newer video cards. "**
doesn't really promise that much besides better graphics.
when they were working on hl2 how about if instead of wondering if they could just import a type of mod that would be done in a month by amateurs maybe they could have actually gotten the thing out already and we could be playing action-hl2-mod or something.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Official Valve Cyber Cafe Directory
y
c ountry=US&state=NY
http://www.steampowered.com/?area=cafe_director
or at your place: http://www.steampowered.com/?area=cafe_directory&
You're waiting for a game that is out and under $20: Link
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
As much as I hate FPSes, I'm going to have to defend Doom here. They aren't trying to be revolutionary. They're trying to create a graphics and physics engine. Any game wrapped around the engine is just a demo for its abilities.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Let us hop up and down in joy!
I mean, seeing how they bitch with every CS update (not without reason, i might add - from 1.3 it's been downhill); this one will change the gameplay dramatically, if only because of the added freedom in maps. Imagine pushing a barrel arround for cover, and so.
;)
Also, the minimal hardware to run CS (which was pretty low spec for the original HL engine) will be kicked up a notch. Expect a whine about lost FPSs in no time.
Sorry, i can't help myself. I always get a kick when i see some of the stuff the "CS pro" comunity does
People (like my flatmate!) who where duped into buying condition zero deserve a FREE COPY when it is released, not just a beta!!
Man was that a travesty of a FPS or what?!?
Since when did Beta releases become such a big deal anyway? Aren't they just advertising? Why the hell are they restricting it????
Perhaps they are following the MS/MMOG example and consider a Beta an actual product?
Valve/Steam is really kind of an interesting thing to watch right now. My personal belief is that they are going to end up losing more than they gain in their quest to become the AOL/Time Warner of the gaming world but it is an interesting struggle. Within the community itself lies a huge percentage of people complaining about the system or lack of availability even on the HL1 platform. Now they will introduce (I'm assuming) several hundreds of thousands of new users to the system. I'm not saying it will fail or it will pass but it will be fodder for all of the game tech news sites once again and for quite a while I assume.
:-P
One day we'll look back on this and tell our grandchildren, "Oh yeah? I lived through the Half Life 2 transition. All 20 years of it."
-= Why can't I add 'Anonymous Coward' to my list of Foes? =-
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
It's kind of sad that people who bought an ATI card hoping to get HL2 and play it on (what they thought) was the best card available, now have a card that is outdated and still no HL2. ~ ATI has already released its next generation of cards (X800)
However I did buy a NVIDIA 6800 that came with Far Cry (an excellent game) for those who want to buy a video card that comes with a game and not a coupon.
http://www.kubuntu.org/