Counter-Strike
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For other uses, see Counterstrike.
| Counter-Strike | |
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| Developer(s) | Valve Software |
| Publisher(s) | Vivendi Universal (PC) Microsoft Game Studios (Xbox) |
| Engine | GoldSrc |
| Release date(s) | June 19, 1999 (Original Half-Life MOD) November 8, 2000 (PC) March 25, 2004 (Xbox) |
| Genre(s) | First-person shooter |
| Mode(s) | Multiplayer |
| Rating(s) | ESRB: Mature 17+ (M) ELSPA: 15+ |
| Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows, Xbox |
| Media | CD or Steam download |
| System requirements | 500 MHz processor, 96 MB RAM |
| Input | Keyboard, mouse |
Counter-Strike, commonly abbreviated to CS, is a team-based, tactical first-person shooter game which originated with a total conversion mod created by Minh "gooseman" Le and Jess Cliffe, of Valve Software's first-person shooter, Half-Life. The game has been expanded into a series since its original release, which currently includes Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and Counter-Strike: Source.
Counter-Strike pits a team of counter-terrorists against a team of terrorists in rounds of competition won by completing an objective or eliminating the opposing force. The latest incarnation of the game, Counter-Strike: Source, is based on the Source engine developed for Half-Life 2. Signs of Counter-Strike's wide influence can be found in mods for games such as Quake III Arena, Unreal Tournament, and other standalone shooters such as Global Operations, Americas Army, Call of Duty and many more.
As of May 2006, Counter-Strike is still the most widely played online first-person shooter in the world. In 2002 there were over 30,000 Counter-Strike servers on the Internet (second place was Unreal Tournament with about 9,800). In 2004, GameSpy statistics showed over 85,000 players simultaneously playing Counter-Strike at any point in time, and in 2006, Steam regularly shows over 200,000 players for Counter-Strike[1] (this includes Counter-Strike: Source, Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and Counter-Strike). According to statistics gathered by Valve's content-delivery platform, Steam, these players collectively contribute to over 4.5 billion minutes of playing time each month,[1] solidifying its position as the most popular online first-person shooter in history. Counter-Strike was originally played online through the WON gaming service, which was shut down in 2004,[2] forcing players to switch to Steam (to which a section of players responded by creating their own WON network, dubbed WON2).
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[edit] Gameplay
Counter-Strike is a team-based, first-person shooter in which players join either the terrorist or counter-terrorist team, and combat the opposing team while fulfilling predetermined objectives. Server settings may automatically balance teams when one team has more players than the other. Each round starts with the two teams spawning simultaneously, as one of eight different default character models (four to choose from for each the counter-terrorist and terrorist teams. Counter-Strike: Condition Zero added two extra models, bringing the total to ten). Each player generally starts with $800, two magazines of ammunition, a knife, and a pistol: a Heckler & Koch USP .45 Tactical for counter-terrorists, and a GLOCK 18c for terrorists. Players are generally given a few seconds before the round begins (known as "freeze time") to buy equipment, during which they cannot attack or move in any direction. Players may buy equipment whenever they are in a "buy zone" for their team (some zones can be for both teams, depending on the map) provided the round has not been in session for longer than a specified time (90 seconds is default). Once the round has ended, surviving players retain their equipment for use in the next round; those who have died begin the next round with the default pistol and knife.
Standard monetary bonuses in the game are:
- a round: $3250 (awarded at the beginning of the following round)
- Lose a round: $1400 + $500 per round lost over 1 (to maximum $3400) (awarded at the beginning of the following round)
- Kill an enemy: $300 (awarded instantly)
- Instruct a hostage to follow: $150 (awarded instantly. Only works once per hostage, per round)
- Rescue a hostage: $1000 (awarded instantly)
- Plant the bomb: $800 (awarded at the beginning of the following round, but only if the round in which the bomb was planted ended with the terrorists losing the round)
The scoreboard shows team scores in addition to data for each player: name, score, deaths, and ping (in milliseconds) on the map. The scoreboard also shows whether each player is dead, carrying the bomb (in bomb defusal maps), or the VIP (in assassination maps), although to obtain this information about players on the opposing team a player must be dead during the round.
Killed players become "ghosts" for the duration of the round; they cannot change their names, text chat cannot be sent to or received from live players; and, while voice chat can still be received from live players, it cannot be sent to them (with the exception of a situation in which cvar sv_alltalk is set to 1, in which case voice chat can be freely exchanged between all players on the server at any time). Ghosts are generally able to watch the rest of the round from multiple selectable views, although some servers disable some of these views to prevent dead players from relaying information about living players to their teammates through alternative media (most notably voice in the case of Internet cafes and Voice over IP programs such as TeamSpeak. This technique, known as "ghosting," is considered cheating in many tactical shooters.
Counter-Strike is meant to be more realistic than futuristic first-person shooters such as Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament, but is also built to keep the action flowing faster than more realistic tactical shooters such as the Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon series. For example, relatively few shots will kill a player, and shots to different parts of the body inflict varying amounts of damage, but damage has no permanent bearing on ability to run or jump, allowing a player with just a few hit points remaining to keep fighting just as well as any other player. Movement, however, is restricted while taking damage from gunfire, and a player cannot run at full speed whilst taking damage.
There are several game types in Counter-Strike which define the objectives of each team in the game, and rules which determine which team wins. Each map is of a single game type.
[edit] Maps
[edit] Weapons
One of the unique features of the original incarnations of Counter-Strike was that it did not feature fictional weapons like most games, instead using only existing firearms used the world over by real terrorist groups, counter-terrorist squads, armed forces, and law enforcement officials. The weapons are, however, only semi-realistic: many of them are incorrect in small details such as the caliber of ammunition or in their naming. Others do not fire quite as their real-life counterparts do, and many of them are inaccurately 'mirrored', wherein the spent cases are ejected from the wrong side of the weapon.
When retail versions of the game were first released, most of the weapons were given fictional names, often with fictional manufacturers.
[edit] Counter-Strike: Weapons Market
On September 22, 2006, Valve announced what they are calling the Counter-Strike: Weapons Market.[3] Each week, prices for weapons will be set based on the percentage of weapons sales, much like how the demand curve in economics affects prices. This system was put into place on October 11, 2006 and only affects Counter-Strike: Source, not Counter-Strike 1.6 or Counter-Strike: Condition Zero.[4] There will also be a cvar (console variable) for servers that do not wish to use the new Dynamic Market.
[edit] Culture
Counter-Strike is famous for the culture surrounding it, which includes everything from professional gamers and leagues, to excessive cheating and disruptive behavior. Certain professional teams (such as SK, Team 3D and Team NoA) and players (Kyle Ksharp Miller and Emil HeatoN Christensen, for example) have achieved a measure of fame, and have come to earn a living out of it.
[edit] Legacy
Counter-Strike has had a colorful and dramatic history, and still remains extremely popular to this day. There are currently professional online leagues for Counter-Strike, such as Cyberathlete Amateur League (CAL), and CyberEvolution, a pay-to-play league. There are various LAN tournaments throughout the United States and Europe, the biggest being the Cyberathlete Professional League(CPL), the Electronic Sports World Cup(ESWC), the World e-Sports Games(WEG) and the World Cyber Games(WCG). These events are like major sporting events, with championship matches televised with commentary and analysis.
Half-Life and other contemporary games took full advantage of the advent of hardware graphics acceleration in the late 1990s, replacing earlier software-rendered games such as Quake. Likewise, gamers were expected to abandon the DirectX 5.0 Half-Life and its mods in favor of games utilizing the hardware T&L capabilities of DirectX 7.0 graphics cards such as the Nvidia GeForce and ATI Radeon. However, the universal shift to the DirectX 7.0 level and beyond has not happened, and the continued popularity of Counter-Strike has given older video cards such as the 3dfx Voodoo 3, ATI Rage 128, and Nvidia RIVA TNT2 continued usefulness.
But as the criticisms of Condition Zero showed, many players feel that the GoldSrc engine has reached its limits in its capacity to evolve and to stay updated. Even Counter-Strike: Source has been criticized for not progressing the gameplay enough and failing to take full advantage of the Source engine.
There have been a multitude of games claimed by their developers, reviewers and fans to be "Counter-Strike killers," but none have seriously been able to dent its overall popularity. Server statistics in 2002 showed that Counter-Strike servers outnumbered their Battlefield, Unreal Tournament 2003 or Quake III first-person shooter counterparts at least 3 to 1.
[edit] Mods and scripts
Though Counter-Strike is itself a mod, it has developed its own community of script writers and modders. Some mods add bots, while others remove features of the games which some players found annoying, while yet others create different modes of play. Some of the most popular mods give server administrators more flexible and efficient control over his or her server. "Admin plugins", as they are mostly referred as, have become very popular. See Metamod, AMX Mod and AMX Mod X for more information.
Another type of mod is the "Zombie" mod. There are 2 teams, the Humans and the Zombies. Terrorists and Counter-Terrorists work together against the Zombies. In this mod, one player is randomly "infected" and turned into a Zombie at the start of the match. The first Zombie has 5000 health while all other Zombies that the first Zombie and any subsequent Zombies infect have 2500 health, increased speed, and they can only use the knife, which turns living Humans into other Zombies. In addition, they also come equipped with night vision, a great blessing in dark Zombie maps. Humans cannot run as fast as Zombies (presumably weighed down by their equipment), but are able to purchase firearms and grenades. If at least one Human is still alive when the match time runs out, the Humans win. If all the Humans are either killed or zombified, the Zombies win.
[edit] Hacking
The game Counter-Strike has been a prime target since it came out. Hacking in the game has been widely criticized by a lot of people. To keep people safe, Valve issued anti-cheat software called VAC, or Valve Anti-Cheat. Since then it has come to version 2.0 and most servers have it enabled. A few common options included in hacks are wallhacks, which allow the player to see through walls; speedhacks, which give the player increased speed; and aimbots, which give can target a desired location on a player's body each time a shot is fired.
[edit] Notes
- ^ a b Valve Software's official Steam gaming charts. Retrieved on June 3, 2006.
- ^ WON gaming service shut down. Retrieved on June 3, 2006.
- ^ Counter-Strike: Weapons Market. Retrieved on September 25, 2006.
- ^ Counter-Strike Weapons Market. Retrieved on September 25, 2006.
[edit] See also
- Counter-Strike maps
- Counter-Strike culture
- Cheating in Counter-Strike
- Cheating in online games
- Half-Life
- Steam
- WON2
- List of Half-Life mods
- Counter-Strike: Condition Zero
- Counter-Strike: Source
- Counter-Strike Neo
- First-person shooter
[edit] External links
- Counter-Strike: Condition Zero
- Counter-Strike: Source
- Steam
- Valve
- Full Changelog - Full changelog of Counter-Strike
[edit] Third-party add-ons
- HLSS – Half-Life Sound Selector (HLSS) is a program that allows users to play .wav files over the microphone.
- AMXMODX – Counter-Strike most used addon AMXMODX official Addon site
[edit] Community sites
- CS-Nation – Counter-Strike News site
- FPSBANANA – Counter-Strike customization website.
- Counter-Strike.com – Counter-Strike server resources. Also provides community forums, strategy guides and downloads.
- CounterZone.Net – Counter-Strike
[edit] Competitive Counter-Strike
- The Cyberathlete Amateur League
- The Cyberathlete Professional League
- GotFrag? – Coverage of Counter-Strike related events in the world of electronic sports
- Whisper's Very Basic Counter-Strike War Strategy Guide
- WCG
- The EnemyDown League
