Counter-Strike: Source

By Holliday

As some of you may be aware valve released a beta of the up and coming Counter-Strike visual facelift named “Counter-Strike:Source”. Using the same engine as Half-Life 2 CS:Source aims to give the old, and ridiculously popular, mod-turned-retail-game a long lasting future into the next generation of computer visuals. I got my hands on a copy of the beta so I will give you guys a rather long (and screenshot heavy) walk through my expectations, dissapointments, surprises and barrel shooting sprees.

First things first you might want to know my overall opinion on Counter-Strike itself. It is a drug I left in my past some time ago. Most everyone who calls themself a “gamer” has at one time experienced a bit of the Counter-Strike addiction. I got in early when it was first released and I stopped playing around beta 5, I played sporadically from then up until it went retail, then I dropped it completely. Back in High School I remember I used to do my math homework while I was dead every night of the week, it was like an unbroken ritual that lasted more than a year I bet; unfortunately as I got better at the game my homework was less complete.

The gameplay itself… well I can say I don’t have the undieing passion to hate it as some do now. Most people turned sour on Counter-Strike when it went retail because a surge of “less than pleasent” people came into the community. The Counter-Strike community is now pretty much the joke of the internet; it is viewed as being full of half-wit, pre-pubescent, quick to anger devil children. Also, loads and loads of cheaters. That I fear, hasn’t changed, more on that later.

Keep in mind that CS:Source does not try to innovate or push the game ahead in any ways except presentation. It is purely a visual upgrade (which has a few very subtle innovations which I will point out) the gameplay is pretty close to the same experience. I actually played a bit of the newest version of Counter-Strike after playing CS:Source a little to see if Counter-Strike had changed at all since my absence. A few new guns and maps but nothing drastic.

Anyway here we go. The Source engine (que dramatic music). Here is the CS:Source main screen, you load it through steam which (having never used it much) I must say is a great program. I had little trouble getting all my shit together to play this and it auto-updates itself very nicely. I know it had a rocky start but valve seems to finally be pulling off something notable with it. You’ll notice somewhere down the choices there is the “Video Stress Test”. This runs your PC through a portion of that infamous video they showed at e3 a year ago. The following are captures from the test. (This is run at 1600×1200 with 4x anti-aliasing and 16x anioscopic filtering)

Launching the test
Diving down the cave (water is amazing to see in action)
Panes showing various material/texture effects
Flowing water
Ripples, colored liquid
All hail Gordon (seeing this rotate is also very impressive)

I ran the Stress Test at a variety of settings and with options on and off. Overall the engine performs as expected and is extremely scalable. I didn’t notice many differences between the “high” and “medium” texture settings but, like doom 3, it may take side by side screenshot analysis to see. Its nice to see the Anti-Aliasing and Filtering options built into the game rather than having to turn them on through display options before running the game.

Onto terrorism and the striking of it.

There is only one map currently available in the beta, and its de_dust. The map so famous that “24/7 de_dust” servers still exist for standard CS today. Its a map I know better than the layout of my own house. The map itself is solid. Ingeniously simple in design but it always offers balanced play. You can check out the old de_dust a little ways down this site on CS banana.

CS:Source - Putting the dust in de_dust

The first thing you will notice between the maps is a definite touching base with reality. The backdrop is expanded beyond just a simple skybox and many touches are added to make the map look like a real world place; this fits the counter-strike universe rather well since it is supposed to be representing real world places. I checked out the map’s build (you can actually fly outside of the map while dead) and it is rather cleverly done, the skybox itself is no longer just fancy textures that give the illusion of a far away sky. It is a fleshed out city backdrop with real structures (even the dome you see ahead of you is actually in the skybox). This keeps the actual play area of the map less expansive even though it looks huge and open.

Throughout the rest of the screenshots you will be able to see ‘dust’ clouds in the map. Effects like these really add to the atmosphere of the place. The dust is no longer just simple sprites either. This screen shows the inside of the main hallway in the map. The dome you see outside has its interior with fancy windows. The sun beams through the windows (notice only 1/2 of them to show the suns position in sky) and you can see dust particles reflecting off the rays. If this kind of expansion is to be expected on most CS maps it will be very welcome.

Shoot Barrels Not Terrorists

Here comes the part where the Source engine shines like a messiah. Physics. The physics are from the Havok physics engine and definitly the coolest upgrade to CS. While they are mostly cosmetic they do have their uses in strategy or just plain fun. I didn’t think valve would go as “all out” as they have with them. Instead I expected a barrel or two and maybe a box to kick around. The pleasent surprise was physically active objects litter the map in all places. The “garbage” on the streets is not just a texture on the ground or simplistic objects. It is all fully movable and reacting pieces of trash. Crates, milk cartons, soda jugs, buckets and various other things lay in piles throughout the map begging for a grenade to be tossed at them so they can show their stuff (don’t worry i have pleanty of shots of that).

The garbage, tires or car parts (full axels and even an engine) don’t really affect the player in terms of gameplay. They mostly come into play once the bullets start flying. A stray shot hits a soda bottle and sends it ricocheting off a wall. Or a grenade gets tossed into a pile of trash and sends it shooting in every direction. Stuff like this makes watching gameplay a very “wow” experience. When you are approaching a tunnel entrance and you hear a grenade detonate and see chunks of glass, bottles, and trash come flying out (as well as bodies) its really evident how much physics rock.

Bodies have ‘ragdoll’ physics but much less goofy like the karma physics used in UT2004 and Raven Shield. Rarely do you see bodies bent in impossible positions. They lay right and fall correctly, limbs hang off edges and bodies slump against walls.

Here is the first little “slide show” of a grenade explosion. If you are using Mozilla Firefox (and win at life) you can open these shots all at once in tabs then x through each tab for a flip book effect.

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Not only does the trash fly realistically but you can see the shadows match up with each object even when it is air born. Here is another set.

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And a barrel rolling down a hill.

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Physics are great. Do they change the way the game is played? Only a little. The barrel placement in the map is smart. They put them in places where people will use them for cover, but it is not solid cover. They are easily blown away by a few shots, but a few shots is often the difference between life and death. Unloading some rounds at someone behind a group of barrels is definitly a very cool looking kill. They provide a sense of ‘temporary’ safety. I’ve actually seen a few people shoot them down that hill and use them for cover at the bottom. And I myself found you can you can push a few barrels in place over a planted C4 to give a few extra seconds before a CT can get to it.

Smokin’ in the Boys Room, Getting Flashed by the Teachers

The smoke and flash grenades are the most gameplay impactful things revamped for CS:Source. Not only are both now worth a damn but they change the way a map is played. The smoke grenade acts like fog in that the further away from it you are the thicker it seems but when you are inside it you can see out (although not super clearly). Most smoke grenades in games hinder the site of the person in the cloud more than those outside. Thus rendering them pretty useless. Now that it provides some ‘cover in a can’ smoke can be used for spots on the map that used to be death traps. Esspecially good for area that snipers keep an eye on. The smoke comes out quicker and forms a nice cloud that lasts for under a minute. It also looks fantastic.

The flashbang grenade now does both flashing and banging (woo woo). If the nade is within your view you get a heavy dose of blinding white light followed by some image over laying (like in Raven Shield). It also dulls your sound in a high pitched ‘beeeeeeee’. What is nice is that if your back is turned to it you get a very brief version of this effect (full version of the ‘bang’ though). This makes the grenades a lot more useful and i have more than once by killed blind, and killed blind people.

Go! Go! Go!…. Negative

As you can see from the shots the game does look nice. Although it doesn’t look Doom 3 incredible it is a worthy face lift. The textures provided look a little low res when viewed up close and I am assuming that won’t be the case for Half-Life 2 itself. The prime draw to Counter-Strike is that it runs on anything. Valve may have tried to keep some of the extremely high end Source engine things out of it to keep its player base. The models and guns look nice although the models could use more detail. After watching the Video Stress Test, CS:Source just doesn’t seem like it is using the full potential of the Source engine.

I feel the map choice was rather poor. de_dust is pretty much entirely in 100% even sunlight. This leaves little room for those dramatic lighting effects that really show off bump mapping and pixel shaders. The inside of the hallway has a very nice tile texture on the floor that plays with the sunlight from the windows rather well but anything outside is just another yellowish brick texture.A map that features more of the power of the engine would be nice. The community is dieing for the map cs_aztec since it has water and and weather. Rumors of it being released for the beta have been circulating but I never trust this community.

The game itself ships as Half-Life 2’s multiplayer component I believe. And with the variety of bugs in it so far it makes me wonder about half-life 2’s release date. Although CS is known for its unending stream of beta releases I hope it doesn’t keep us back from getting HL2 sometime before the year is out. To get your hands on the beta you either have to go to a Steam Cyber Cafe or have an ATI HL2 voucher or own Counter-Strike: Condition Zero. Is it worth running out and buying Condition Zero just for the beta? Hell no, the content is so very small and the game so very similiar to the already free Counter-Strike that its not worth the price of a game just to play one map. The video stress test is nice to see how you can expect HL2 to run on your machine but I am sure valve will release something like that free on the internet eventually.

CS:Source - Improving everything but those who play the game

The biggest downfall of CS:Source is not anything in the game itself, but rather the community. The stereotypical CS player inhabits most servers and ruins a lot of play experiences. Whether it is being called a various amount of insults and racial slurs on the voice chat. Or the constant accusing of “hacking” and cheating. Or just the unfriendly attitudes and responses. I usually say “Hello” or something of that degree when I enter a server and Counter-Strike is the only game where I get responses like “Shut the fuck up” or “Die n00b”.

Once I found I could disable the voice chat entirely the game improved drastically. Most of the irritating players have now switched over to using voice as their weapon instead of text so it is a bit of a relief. Gone are the days when I could have a decent conversation with players while I was dead though. Most people talk about how that last death was “impossible” or “bullshit”. Others boast their skills or degrade others, its a pretty sad sight. Every once in a while I will hit a server where someone actually says “nice shot” or “good job team” and I am floored. I can’t discuss the Source engine with anyone because as soon as I say anything remotely unpositive I get hounded with “Fuck you n00b this engine rawkx”. Oh well, I usually play my games within a community of gamers I know, so once HL2 does get release I hope I will have a better time.

The directory for the screenshots is: http://www.ourtruckingclan.com/holliday/CSS There is a few in there I didn’t post in my article.