Counter-Strike: Source

Counter Strike: Source (CS:S)
Developer(s)	Valve Corporation Turtle Rock Studios
Publisher(s)	Valve Corporation
Distributor(s)	Valve Corporation Unalis (Taiwan)
Engine	Source engine
Released	October 7, 2004
Genre	First-person Shooter
Mode(s)	Multiplayer
Ratings	ESRB: "M" 17+ PEGI: 16+ OFLC: MA15+ USK: 16+
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows
Media	CD (4) or Steam download
System requirements	Windows Windows 98/ME/2000/XP/Vista 1.2 GHz CPU (2.4 GHz CPU recommended) 256 MB RAM (512 MB RAM recommended) DirectX 7 graphics card (DirectX 9 graphics card recommended) Internet connection (broadband or better recommended)
Input methods	Keyboard, Mouse, Joystick

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. As in the original version, Counter-Strike: Source games pit a team of counter-terrorists 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.

Contents 1 History 2 Gameplay Changes 2.1 Dynamic Weapon Pricing 2.2 Updated Radar 2.3 Updated maps 2.4 Updated Crouch 3 Professional Competitive Gaming 4 Customization 4.1 Maps 4.2 Mods 4.3 Skins/Models 5 Map types 6 References

History

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 the gold release, on October 7th, 2004, when it was officially launched and available through Steam (Valve's online content delivery system). 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.^[1] The game can be bought individually on retail boxes or in "game packs" which Counter-Strike: Source come bundled within, with prices varying from US$ 19.95 to US$ 99.95 (digital download in Steam software). ^[2] Only 1 day 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. 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 1st, 2006, and the GSG 9 and Arctic models on April 12th, 2006.^[3] Changes from Counter-Strike to CS: Source include the improvements inherent to the Source engine (such as better graphics and modified 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^[4] which added Dynamic Weapon Pricing (DWP) to the game. On servers that enabled DWP, the prices of weapons and equipment were dynamically generated based on an algorithm (which was updated every Monday), that was calculated on the global demand for the items and weapons. More popular weapons (such as the M4 carbine and Desert Eagle) were pushed up in price, while other, infrequently-purchased items (such as the night-vision goggles and MAC-10 submachine gun) decreased in price. In the case of the night-vision goggles, the price was at a threshold of $1^[5] for several months. Three ingame pistols' firepower, the FN-57, SIG P228 and the "dual" 92FS Berettas, were increased as a result of Desert Eagle's popularity and over-inflated price on 'DWP' servers.^[6] This system has since been stopped.

Updated Radar

On 24 August 2006, Valve released an update for CS: Source^[7] 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 higher elevation; while a demagnified blue or red circle indicates that the players are on a lower elevation.

Updated maps

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 power 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. ^[8] 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 which significantly affected gameplay.

Professional Competitive Gaming

Main articles: Clan (computer gaming) and eSports

Competitive gaming for Counter-Strike: Source includes many leagues, ladders, and tournaments. There are many amateur leagues for the game, including the Cyberathlete Amateur League, Electronic Sports League, ClanBase, Enemydown, theSGL, the TeamWarfare League, and the Online Gaming League, as well as the professional league, the Championship Gaming Series. The Championship Gaming Series has announced that they will give away $1,000,000 USD to the team who wins the World Finals in November of 2007. The total number of competitive teams for this game is in the thousands and is approaching the tens of thousands. Also, there are often tournaments at Local Area Network centers or other large venues in which the top teams win prizes. These tournaments are very frequent and consist of a few teams to a few hundred teams. ^[9]

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.

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^[10], which means that most people can find something to their taste. There are several types of maps available, such as DE (Defuse), CS (hostage rescue) and AS (assassination). 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 Sourcemod build on to the basic RCON commands as well as with the gameplay customizations. The Quake Sound Pack, the popular game sounds available with Sourcemod is actually a misleading title. The sounds, which include: "First blood", "Godlike", "headshot", "dominating", "ultra-kill", "monster-kill", "holy shit!", "multi-kill", "unstoppable", "team killer", "rampage", "ludicrous kill", "killing spree", and "wicked sick" are all from Unreal Tournament 2003. The only sounds from Quake 3 are "Prepare to Fight!" and "Humiliation", which occurs when a player kills another player with the Gauntlet weapon.

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 sourcemod. 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 but the player can also edit those models too.

Map types

There are many different map types in Counter-Strike: Source. Most of them are just created by clans and have their tag in front (ex. clanname_mapname) There are many fewer recognized in the gaming world by players of the game. The types of maps recognized by FPSbanana.com CS:S maps archive are as follows in order of category with most map to least maps: FY - Fight Yard
AIM - Combat/Skill/Aim at the enemy from long distance
DE - Bomb/Defuse
SURF¹ - Surf Style
CS - Hostage Rescue
AWP - Sniper War
FUN - Fun Type
KA - Knife Arena
DM - Death Match
ZM - Zombie Mod
GG - Gun Game
SCOUT - Scout Sniper War
GLASS - Glass Fun
BA - Battle Arena
HE - Grenade War
CL/XC - Climb
PB - Paintball
AS - Assassination
HC - Happy Camper
PA - Prepared Assault
SG - Shotguns Only
JK - Pistols Only

¹ = Surf Style are maps where there are ramps that usually are some form of ramps that you slide on (hence surf). You 'surf' by holding the key you would use to go left or right. Using the forward key makes you fall off. Since most players use W, A, S, and D to move, to show how to surf, they usually use this diagram: d/\a

References

•  • e Topics related to the Half-Life series
Main series	Half-Life (Source) • Half-Life 2 (Episode One • Episode Two • Episode Three)
Ancillary games	Half-Life: (Blue Shift • Decay • Opposing Force) • Portal
Multiplayer games	Deathmatch (Classic • Half-Life 2) • Ricochet
Other games	Half-Life: Uplink • Half-Life 2: Lost Coast • Half-Life 2: Survivor
Playable characters	Dr. Gordon Freeman • Adrian Shephard • Barney Calhoun • Dr. Gina Cross • Dr. Colette Green • Chell
Major characters	Alyx Vance • Dr. Arne Magnusson • Dog • Dr. Eli Vance • GLaDOS • The G-Man • Dr. Isaac Kleiner • Dr. Judith Mossman • Dr. Wallace Breen
Minor characters	Father Grigori • Lamarr • Nihilanth • Odessa Cubbage • The Resistance • Dr. Richard Keller • Dr. Rosenberg • The Vortigaunts • Uriah
Enemies	Alien Controller • Alien Grunt • Antlion • Barnacle • Black Ops • Bullsquid • Carnivorous Leech • Chumtoad • The Combine (Soldiers and synths • Non-combat tech) • Gargantua • Gonarch • Hazardous Environment Combat Unit • Headcrab • Houndeye • Ichthyosaur • Nihilanth • Race X • Tentacle • The Vortigaunts
Locations	Aperture Science Laboratories • Black Mesa East • Black Mesa Research Facility • The Citadel • City 17 • The Coast • Nova Prospekt • White Forest Rocket Facility • Ravenholm • Xen
See also	The Orange Box • Seven Hour War • Black Mesa incident

•  • e Video games developed by Valve Software
Half-Life series	Half-Life (Opposing Force · Blue Shift · Decay) · Uplink · Half-Life: Source · Half-Life 2 (Episode One · Episode Two · Episode Three) · Deathmatch · Lost Coast · Survivor Portal
Counter-Strike series	Counter-Strike · Condition Zero · Counter-Strike: Source · Counter-Strike Neo · Counter-Strike Online
Day of Defeat series	Day of Defeat · Day of Defeat: Source
Team Fortress series	Team Fortress  · Team Fortress Classic · Team Fortress 2
Other games	Deathmatch Classic · Gunman Chronicles · Left 4 Dead · Ricochet · The Orange Box
Soundtracks	Valve Soundtracks Tracklist