Counter-Strike: Source

Counter-Strike: Source (CS:S)
Developer(s)	Valve Corporation Turtle Rock Studios
Publisher(s)	Valve Corporation
Engine	Source engine
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows
Release	October 7, 2004
Genre(s)	First-person shooter
Mode(s)	Multiplayer

Counter-Strike: Source (also known as CS: Source or simply CS:S) is a multiplayer, team-based tactical first-person shooter, developed by Valve and Turtle Rock Studios. It is a remake of Counter-Strike, the 1999 modification of Half-Life. Built on the Source engine, the game was released in 2004 along with Half-Life 2.

Similar to the original version, Counter-Strike: Source games involve a team of counter-terrorists facing off against a team of terrorists in a series of rounds. Each round is won by either completing a mission (such as detonating a bomb or rescuing hostages) or by eliminating all members of the opposing team.

Gameplay

Counter-Strike: Source gameplay differs from other multiplayer first person shooters (often called "deathmatches"). Most prevalently, rather than "respawning" immediately after being killed, Counter-Strike players have only one chance per round, and, if killed, must wait until the next round to continue playing.

Weapons and equipment

Whereas in other games players are able to collect a wide arsenal of weapons (such as in the Unreal Tournament series of games), CS:S players must purchase a specific set of equipment and weapons at the start of each round. Each team spawns in a "buy zone", which is the only area of the map where items and weapons can be purchased. A small amount of money is allocated to each player at the start of the game, and further funds can be accrued by completing certain tasks during the round (such as killing an enemy or being on the team who wins the round). This is totaled at the end of each round, and available at the start of the following round. Players can also lose money by killing teammates or hostages.

Furthermore, there are limits imposed as to how many items a player can hold at once. Each player may hold at most one main weapon, one sidearm, a knife, 1 high explosive grenade, 2 flashbangs, 1 smoke grenade and other equipment (such as defusal kits, body armor, or night vision goggles). Also, no player may accumulate more than $16000.

The most misnamed AWP and AWM are both incorrect it is actually named AWSM the artic wafare super magnum most people call it the awp some other people call it the AWM but the AWM take the .300 winchester magnum where as the AWSM takes the .388 luapa mangum

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Counter-Strike: Source features the same weapons as Counter-Strike:

Pistols: USP, Glock 18, Desert Eagle, P229, dual Beretta 9mm's, and the FN 5-7.

Shotguns: Benelli M3 Super 90, and XM1014.

Sub-Machine Guns: MP5, Steyr TMP, P90, MAC-10, and the UMP.

Rifles: IMI Galil, FAMAS, AK-47, SG-552, M4A1, Steyr AUG, Scout, AWP, G3-SG1, and the SG-550.

Machine Gun: M249

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Communication

In addition to providing in-game voice communication between players on a team, CS: Source also provides three sets of messages that can be broadcast to teammates, which are usable even if the player does not have a microphone. These messages allow team members to issue orders or parlay helpful information (for instance, if an enemy has been spotted). The menus are accessible through a combination of bindable keys and number keys.

Tactics

CS: Source is more of a tactical-shooter than deathmatch-style games, such as the Quake and Unreal Tournament series, but it does not put as much emphasis on tactics as other titles such as the Rainbow Six series. Players can devise their own strategies, either through the radio communication, in-game talk, or through external programs such as Teamspeak or Ventrilo, which are often used in clan matches.

Purchasable equipment such as flashbang and smoke grenades can be used to create cover or distract the enemy, and the teams can split into smaller squads and take different routes through the maps.

History

In 2004, original Counter-Strike developers Minh Le and Jess Cliffe, along with members of Valve Corporation and the Day of Defeat team, brought Counter-Strike into the Source engine as an obvious choice for the multiplayer component of Half-Life 2. The game was first rolled out to cyber-cafe owners, and then selected beta-testers a week later, before going gold on October 7, 2004, when it was officially released and available through Steam (Valve's online content delivery system).

File:CSS early screenshot.jpg

Early screenshot of CS: Source

Pre-loading of Counter-Strike: Source to cybercafe owners (as part of the Cyber Cafe program) began on 9 August 2004, being released for play two days later. Vouchers for the pre-release game were available with the purchase of ATI Radeon video cards and with Counter Strike: Condition Zero; the pre-load for these users began on 16 August 2004, with the game again becoming available two days later.

The game was also bundled along with Half-Life 2 on Steam, and was sold along with the boxed retail version of that game. It is currently available in the Source Multiplayer Pack. In the physical retail form, it is either available with Half-Life 2 or in a Counter-Strike branded box that mirrors the contents of the Source Multiplayer Pack. In essence, one can either choose between the Half-Life 2 singleplayer game or Day of Defeat: Source when purchasing the game through retail.

Only days after the initial cyber-cafe release Valve began what would become the first in their long line of updates for CS: Source. By the time of its official release almost two months later, Valve had eliminated numerous bugs and added several updates and patches.

The betas and official release versions shipped with only two player models (one per team) - the "Phoenix Connexion" terrorist (a member of the fictional Phoenix Faction) and the Seal Team 6 counter-terrorist. Being an early version, the player models were low quality and out of proportion, giving rise to being commonly described as having "peanut-heads". Valve released several successive versions of the two original characters.

File:CSS short pheonix.jpg

The "short" Phoenix Connexion model

Around Christmas 2005, an update was released for CS: Source, adding two new player models - the GIGN and Guerilla. This was followed by the addition of the Leet and SAS player models on March 1 2006, and the GSG9 and Arctic models on April 12 2006. The Midwest Militia and Spetsnaz characters from Condition Zero have not been brought into CS: Source.

Changes from Counter-Strike to CS: Source include the improvements inherent to the Source engine (such as better graphics and physics), as well as updated models, animations, maps, sounds, and some small gameplay changes.

Gameplay Changes

Along with many bug fixes and graphical tweaks to the game (HDR lighting for example), Valve has introduced several updates to the game which affect the gameplay associated with the original - the most prominent of these being Dynamic Weapon Pricing and a new radar system.

Dynamic Weapon Pricing

On November 1 2006, Valve released an automatic update which added Dynamic Weapon Pricing (DWP) to the game. On servers that enable DWP, the prices of weapons and equipment are dynamically generated based on an algorithm (updated every Monday), which calculates global demand for the items and weapons.

More popular weapons (such as the M4 carbine and Desert Eagle) are pushed up in price, while other, infrequently-purchased items (such as the night-vision goggles and MAC-10 submachine gun) decrease in price. In the case of the night-vision goggles, the price (both current and projected) has remained at $1 for several months.

Three pistols' firepower, the FN-57, Compact 228 and the dual Berettas, were increased as a result of Desert Eagle's popularity and over-inflated price on 'DWP' servers. Valve hoped this might increase these three weapons' popularity and decrease the Desert Eagles, however no such desired and noticeable effect ever occurred.

Since a June 2007 Steam update, Valve has appeared to stop supporting the Dynamic Weapon Pricing feature. Although the console variable for it still exists, it does not affect the weapon's prices anymore.

Updated Radar

File:CS radar comparison.jpg

Comparison image of the original CS radar and the Source 'Enhanced' radar.

On 24 August 2006, Valve released an update for CS: Source through Steam, introducing what they refer to as an "enhanced" radar display.

In previous versions of Counter-Strike (and in CS: Source up until this point) the radar display only showed the basic location of team-mates (shown as dark blue squares) in relation to the player and red squares if an enemy was "spotted"; any hostages on the map were shown as light blue squares. Also, players' icons of players on different elevations are shown with either a larger or a smaller icon that depends on the player's position in relation to another's.

The new radar took a different approach and overlaid a green-hued, translucent minimap on the screen, with a much more detailed location system.

Teammates are now shown as a blue or red circle for counter-terrorist and terrorists respectively, with a white triangle depicting the direction the player is facing. Bomb sites and hostage rescue zones are now outlined in a distinctive yellow color, and any enemies spotted are marked on the whole team's radar temporarily. Dropped bombs also appear on the radar, and recently deceased players appear as a blue or red cross, if they are on the counter-terrorist team or the terrorist team, respectively. A faded blue or red circle indicates that the players are on a different elevation. Also, the "X" will appear at the position of the person's death.

Updated maps

File:Cs comparison new.jpg

The Source engine's vastly improved graphics (on the right) compared to those of its predecessor, GoldSrc (on the left)

The move to the Source engine allowed map-makers much greater freedom to create more realistic environments for the players to fight in. All of the "classic" Counter-Strike maps, such as the "de_dust" maps, "cs_office", or "de_aztec", were faithfully recreated for the Source engine. Other maps, such as "cs_militia," "cs_assault," and "de_prodigy", had their locations and surroundings slightly changed. The first map available in CS: Source (in the beta version), was the reworked version of "de_dust"; since then, Valve has released the "classic" maps at irregular intervals. Many of these were created by Turtle Rock Studios, who also worked on Counter Strike: Condition Zero.

"de_nuke" (a map based on a nuclear weapons facility) was the first map to be released with HDR lighting (December 1 2005), with "cs_militia"' following on 18 January 2006. "de_dust" and "de_train" were also re-released, with HDR lighting passes, in April 2006.

Updated Crouch

On August 24, 2006, along with the new radar and the HDR version of de_train, the 'crouch' of players was changed with the update. This crouch aligned the player's sights when crouched, to the player model when crouched. Prior to the update, when the player crouched, the first-person view would drop far below the location of their head. This update affected gameplay significantly.

Competitive gaming

Competitive gaming is growing quickly especially when it comes to Counter-Strike Source. Competitive gaming includes many leagues, ladders, and tournaments. There are over 5 leagues for Counter-Strike, including a professional league called the Championship Gaming Series. The number of competitive teams for this game is in the thousands and is approaching the tens of thousands. Also, there are often tournaments that take place at lan centers or another large venue in which the top teams win money. These tournaments are very frequent and consist of a few teams to a few hundred teams.

Main articles: Clan (computer gaming) and eSports

Customization

Because of the large fan-base that Counter-Strike: Source has accumulated, there are a wide variety of different customizations and addons that can be used with the game. There is a large fanbase for the game that creates customized sounds, textures, weapon skins and player skins. However, under the rules of Valve Anti-Cheat(VAC), models for objects within maps cannot be edited, so that a player using a different model other than the standard does not have an advantage over another person.

File:CSS agtexturecity shef.jpg

Aim_ag_texturecity_advanced, an example of a fan-built custom map for CS:S. Orange "developer textures" give it a distinctive style.

Maps

Maps are frequently made by players for the game, and the easy-to-access Valve Hammer Editor allows anybody to create their own. The number and types of custom maps (and indeed, custom map categories) for the game is constantly rising, which means that most people can find something to their taste.

There are several types of maps available, such as de, cs and VIP. For further information, see the Counter-Strike article.

Other maps from the previous Counter-strike series have not been released on Counter-Strike:Source, however some of these maps were remade with Valve's Editor Tool.

Mods

Like many other modern first-person shooter games, Counter-Strike: Source has been heavily modded by its developer community. Server-side gameplay customizations are typically implemented using Valve's Source SDK for Server Plugins. Server-side mods like Mani Admin Plugin build on to the basic RCON commands as well as with the gameplay customizations.

Skins/Models

The ability to add new models and skins (thanks to the Valve SDK) to CS: Source is possibly the biggest part of the CS customization community. Skins (or textures) refers to the actual images applied to parts of the game - the player models, weapon models, and even maps themselves can be retextured by anybody. Models refers to the actual 3D-elements displayed on screen - VAC offers a server side variable to ensure only certain models and materials are used (sv_pure) intending to stop material based wallhacks etc. however, not all servers use these limitations as they are optional.

Models can be changed either by the player, by adding files to their cstrike folder, or by the server they are playing on using a server side plugin such as mani-admin-plugin. The difference is that if a player changes a model on their own machine, only that player will see the changes; However if the model is altered by a server-side plugin or tool, then the model that the player wearing is seen by everyone on that server at that time.

Tournaments

Counter Strike:Source is included in the Championship Gaming Series.

Receptions

Game Rankings currently scores it 88% after 8 reviews.

Given the large culture within the Counter-Strike series of games, a mixed reaction from the gaming community to Counter-Strike: Source has always been present since it's launch. Many original Counter-Strike players moved to the updated game, while an equally or more significant amount stayed with version 1.6 of the original, citing various deficiencies the Source update contained, compared with the original. In recent years both games have vied for use as the staple fps genre game in tournaments.