Nov 3, 2012

Counter-Strike 2 - Chet

<img src='http://media.steampowered.com/steam/news/9250/csgohead.jpg?t=1351972376' align=center>
As the ESWC finals continue and the Free Weekend kicks into full gear, there is more to see than just the game itself. Counter-strike has always been about a large vibrant community and CS:GO is no different.

If you are not up to the level of competing as a pro, you can always join one of leagues. Two of the most popular are <a href='http://play.esea.net/'>ESEA</a> and <A href='http://www.esl.eu/eu/csgo/'>ESL</a>. Don’t worry, you can compete at all skill levels in these leagues.

While we have been posting a Pro Tip series, the community has also been making their own videos. WarOwl from the forums even made a video to help you if you are <a href='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPXcGC__uKg'>new to the game</a>. You can also checkout <a href='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONKYeVhEoEA&feature=rellist&playnext=1&list=PLE474667004EC6067'>these weapon guides</a>, um.. uh.. <a href='http://youtu.be/Ida4D2J_riM'>this</a>, or you can check out a ton more on the <a href='http://steamcommunity.com/app/730/videos'>Game Hub video page</a>.

Current players, don’t forget to attach your Steam account to your YouTube account so you can post your videos to the CS:GO game hub.

You should also make sure to post your favorite screen shots and death cams to the CS:GO Game Hubs. While you are there check out what other people are posting. See something you like – up vote it. Curious about something - ask a question. Join the community.

Nov 3, 2012

Community Day

Counter-Strike 2 - Chet

As the ESWC finals continue and the Free Weekend kicks into full gear, there is more to see than just the game itself. Counter-strike has always been about a large vibrant community and CS:GO is no different.

If you are not up to the level of competing as a pro, you can always join one of leagues. Two of the most popular are ESEA and ESL. Don’t worry, you can compete at all skill levels in these leagues.

While we have been posting a Pro Tip series, the community has also been making their own videos. WarOwl from the forums even made a video to help you if you are new to the game. You can also checkout these weapon guides, um.. uh.. this, or you can check out a ton more on the Game Hub video page.

Current players, don’t forget to attach your Steam account to your YouTube account so you can post your videos to the CS:GO game hub.

You should also make sure to post your favorite screen shots and death cams to the CS:GO Game Hubs. While you are there check out what other people are posting. See something you like – up vote it. Curious about something - ask a question. Join the community.

Nov 2, 2012

The Free Weekend has Landed!

Counter-Strike 2 - Chet

Starting yesterday at 10am until Sunday at 1pm PST – Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is free. You can <a href='steam://install/730'>click this link</a>, <a href='http://store.steampowered.com/app/730/'>visit this page</a>, or launch steam and start downloading the game now. All weekend you can play the complete game.

CS:GO is more than just the best looking CS. We have expanded the game with new characters, new weapons, new maps, and new game modes. So you don’t get overwhelmed, let’s break down the game modes and give you a suggestion on where to start based on your skill level.

For everyone, a good first stop is the Weapon Course where you will get some quick tips and training on new mechanics.

If you have never played a first person shooter – first, what’s wrong with you? You have been missing out. A good intro that isn’t about map strategy, team goals, etc – is Arms Race. It’s pretty simple. Kill the guys who don’t look like you. Every time you kill one, you get a new weapon. There are some things that happen at the end with a knife if you are the top player in kills, but do you really think that is going to happen? Okay, let’s pretend it does. You get a golden knife – then what? Stab a guy and win the game. If you do that, you better take a screen shot and <a href='http://steamcommunity.com/app/730/screenshots'>post it on the CS:GO Game Hub</a> – otherwise no one will believe you.

If you do actually play first person shooters but maybe haven’t played much Counter-Strike or it has been a bit – try Demolition Mode. These are small intense maps that remove the buy round at the start and throw players right into the action. Plant the bomb, defuse the bomb, kill a guy – it all helps.

Has it been a while since you last played CS? The franchise has existed for 12 years, so at this point you could have last played in 6th grade and since graduated college, gotten married, and had your first kid by now – so we’ll excuse your rusty skills if you are bouncing the new kid on your lap as you play. A word of warning on that - don’t play Competitive Mode if you think you need to drop out mid-game or just want to drop in and out of games, instead play Casual Mode. It is classic Counter-Strike with some relaxed rules on purchasing weapons and we leave all talk on so players can chat while playing.

Are you a CS player? Think you have what it takes to win but have been scared to try CS:GO? If you think you are up for it – jump into Competitive Mode. This is where it is all about skill, win 10 matches and you will get put into a <a href="http://blog.counter-strike.net/index.php/2012/10/5565/">Skill Group</a>, keep winning and you’ll be placed into a higher Skill Group, lose and you might get placed lower. Match making will make sure you keep playing in games at your skill level. Leaving a match will put you into a timeout period for Competitive match making. We even have <a href="http://blog.counter-strike.net/index.php/page/2/#FAQ">a FAQ here</a> for you if you want more information.

Nov 2, 2012

The Free Weekend has Landed!

Counter-Strike 2 - Chet

Starting yesterday at 10am until Sunday at 1pm PST – Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is free. You can click this link, visit this page, or launch steam and start downloading the game now. All weekend you can play the complete game.

CS:GO is more than just the best looking CS. We have expanded the game with new characters, new weapons, new maps, and new game modes. So you don’t get overwhelmed, let’s break down the game modes and give you a suggestion on where to start based on your skill level.

For everyone, a good first stop is the Weapon Course where you will get some quick tips and training on new mechanics.

If you have never played a first person shooter – first, what’s wrong with you? You have been missing out. A good intro that isn’t about map strategy, team goals, etc – is Arms Race. It’s pretty simple. Kill the guys who don’t look like you. Every time you kill one, you get a new weapon. There are some things that happen at the end with a knife if you are the top player in kills, but do you really think that is going to happen? Okay, let’s pretend it does. You get a golden knife – then what? Stab a guy and win the game. If you do that, you better take a screen shot and post it on the CS:GO Game Hub – otherwise no one will believe you.

If you do actually play first person shooters but maybe haven’t played much Counter-Strike or it has been a bit – try Demolition Mode. These are small intense maps that remove the buy round at the start and throw players right into the action. Plant the bomb, defuse the bomb, kill a guy – it all helps.

Has it been a while since you last played CS? The franchise has existed for 12 years, so at this point you could have last played in 6th grade and since graduated college, gotten married, and had your first kid by now – so we’ll excuse your rusty skills if you are bouncing the new kid on your lap as you play. A word of warning on that - don’t play Competitive Mode if you think you need to drop out mid-game or just want to drop in and out of games, instead play Casual Mode. It is classic Counter-Strike with some relaxed rules on purchasing weapons and we leave all talk on so players can chat while playing.

Are you a CS player? Think you have what it takes to win but have been scared to try CS:GO? If you think you are up for it – jump into Competitive Mode. This is where it is all about skill, win 10 matches and you will get put into a Skill Group, keep winning and you’ll be placed into a higher Skill Group, lose and you might get placed lower. Match making will make sure you keep playing in games at your skill level. Leaving a match will put you into a timeout period for Competitive match making. We even have a FAQ here for you if you want more information.

Nov 2, 2012

Freedom Is Free: CSGO Goes F2P For The Weekend

Counter-Strike 2 - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Nathan Grayson)

Evidently, this counter-terrorist is battling against a squad of Storm Troopers.

Given that you’ve paddled your browser over to this isle of the vast Internet ocean, I feel fairly safe in assuming that you’re a PC gamer. Therefore, you have – presumably, in some form or another – played Counter-Strike at some point in your life. But maybe that was back in ye olde futureyear of 2000, or perhaps you gave Source a go around the time Half-Life 2 came out. So along comes this newfangled “Global Offensive” thingamawhatsit, and naturally, you’re suspicious. I mean, what if they replaced all the guns with bottles of Mountain Dew? Or maybe Valve turned the series into a piece of postmodernist art, with us taking the role of a deeply contemplative bomb forced to witness the futile conflicts of man. These are very legitimate concerns, but this weekend, you can find out whether or not they hold any water. For free!

(more…)

Oct 31, 2012

Discouraging mod development “doesn’t make sense” says Black Mesa dev

Counter-Strike

Nailing down the range of possibilities afforded by modding's creativity yawns past the comprehension of us mere mortals. Yet, for a platform housing exploding horses, rug-cutting Combine, and the nesting-doll appeal of Minecraft's game-in-a-game sandbox, the PC keeps its lot of closed environments precipitated by developers and publishers as a means for balanced gameplay or brand protection. In an interview with True PC Gaming, Black Mesa Project Lead Carlos Montero flatly stated such a hindrance for mod growth "doesn't make sense."

"When you think about it, modders are like the ultimate fans," Montero explained. "They love this game so much, they're doing real, difficult, skilled work that you usually pay people for. Not only that, but they can add so much value to your game for the rest of your audience. Yet you still see companies look at this as competition. They sue and shut down these projects and ignore or drop support for people to mod their games. It doesn't make any sense. In my opinion, it’s the product of businesses (or lawyers) looking at this too analytically and short-term without understanding the long-term value it can create for their games."

Although Black Mesa earned the silent blessing of Valve during its lengthy session in the testing chamber, other ambitious projects met a not-so-friendly response from license holders legally stifling efforts. Montero's thoughts—the rest of which you can read in the interview—reflect a sentiment by modder-turned-developer Tripwire Interactive expressing confusion over why companies would stop mods on their games.

Oct 30, 2012

Valve firing process echoes studio’s peer-driven structure

Counter-Strike

For Valve's employees, working at one of the most secretive development studios around constitutes a once-in-a-respawn experience. The leakage of Valve's employee handbook earlier this year colorfully outlined a flat management structure culturing a counterintuitive emphasis on peer-driven independence. Speaking to Seattle Interactive Conference attendees yesterday (as reported by GeekWire), Valve Product Designer Greg Coomer said the same free-form philosophy governing the company's work ethic also factors into firing someone.

"I wish that we had covered firing in the employee handbook," Coomer said. "It was one of the things that we left out. We tried writing it, but we didn't feel like we were capturing how Valve thinks about (firing) in a well enough way. It was almost a wording problem. We couldn't get it done in the time that we wouldn't to finish the handbook. The short answer of how we handle terminations, really, is the same as we approach all other decisions at the company: It's a peer-driven process.

"If it turns out that we made a bad hiring decision, or that somebody is just not working out, there’s a method we use to get the people who are involved in the same room and to walk through the decision about what should really happen as a result of this person not functioning very well. Some of the details are kind of boring, but the main answer is that it's peer-driven, just like we evaluate each other as peers.”

I wonder what a caricaturized "Termination and You" chapter in the handbook would look like—probably the Pyro immolating an office chair or something. Still, Coomer attributed Valve's higher rate of self-fulfillment to the significant flexibility it bestows upon its workers, saying, “There are attributes that other companies have quoted about themselves that they allow their (employees) to spend some fraction of their time actually deciding on their own what to work on, but at Valve that percentage of your time is 100 percent. Every single person is responsible for deciding what they do every day."

Oct 25, 2012

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Update Released

Counter-Strike 2 - Valve

Release Notes for 10/25/2012

[ SPECTATING ]
- Resurrected SourceTV as 'GOTV.'
- Added a map overview that displays players, events, grenade detonations, etc. Can be drawn on in a select-able colored pen when spectating or if the "sv_competitive_official_5v5" convar is set to 1 on the server or if the client convar "mapoverview_allow_client_draw" is set on the client (drawings are not currently networked to other players).
- Added free camera to spectator modes cycle.
clamped hud_scaling to 0.95.
- Added convar 'cl_spec_show_bindings' that toggles the visibility of the spectator key bindings.
- Added spectator ability to toggle competitive scoreboard player data using the 'drop' command.
- Extended team clan name support to the Team Select Screen. To use team clan name, all humans should match their Team name in Games->Settings, or the server admin can use the 'mp_teamname_1' and 'mp_teamname_2 convars.'
- After halftime, teams no longer switch sides visually on the spectator screen, they now stay where they are and the team colors switch instead.
- Created a server convar that lets you swap the default player side position manually (CTs on right and T's on left) called mp_spec_swapplayersides.
- Made the hotkey that's assigned to jump to a player not change after half-time.
- You can now display a country flag next to your custom team name on the spectator scoreboard by setting "mp_teamflag_1/2" to ISO Alpha-2 country code of the country you want to display.

[ CLASSIC COMPETITIVE ]
- Introduced "Skill Groups", the new Skill Group emblems are now visible in the main menu and at the end of a competitive match. A players' Skill Group will be displayed after they achieve at least 10 competitive match wins.
- Reworked conditions of valid match leaving: A vote to concede becomes available to the team that lost a player. Otherwise the match continues.
- Number of players searching for a competitive match will display number of players compatible with the game type selected by player, for example players searching for "Dust II" will see a number of players searching for "Dust II" + "Defuse Mission", players searching for "Defuse Mission" will see sum of all players searching for "Defuse Mission" or any specific defuse map, and so on.
- Estimated wait time for a competitive match now more accurately displays wait time based on the game type selected by player.

[ SERVER ADMINISTRATION ]
- Added Save/Restore of match state.
   - Added convar 'mp_backup_round_file [fileprefix]' -- If set then server will save all played rounds information to files with this prefix. Backup file contains players information like KDA, MVPs, cash, kevlar, helmet, defuse kit, weapons and grenades and match score for first and second halves. In a case of a tournament server crash backup file can be loaded using ' mp_backup_restore_load_file'. The default is 'backup'
   - Added convar 'mp_backup_round_file_last' -- Every time a backup file is written the value of this convar gets updated to hold the name of the backup file.
    -Added concommand 'mp_backup_restore_list_files [number]' -- Lists recent backup round files matching the prefix, most recent files first, accepts a numeric parameter to limit the number of files displayed (default 5).
   - Added concommand 'mp_backup_restore_load_file [filename]' -- Loads the specified backup file and applies players information like KDA, MVPs, cash, kevlar, helmet, defuse kit, weapons and grenades; sets the match score for first and second half and starts next round.
   - Added convar 'mp_backup_round_file_pattern,' that defines the pattern for naming backup files using tokens. Example: %prefix%_%date%_%time%_%team1%_%team2%_%map%_round%round%_score_%score1%_%score2%.txt. The default pattern results in 'backup_roundNN.txt'
- Whitelisted 'mp_logdetail' convar.
- Added convar 'sv_damage_print_enable', that determines whether damage given and received is visible in the console after a player is killed.
- Added 'cl_bobcycle' to 'sv_competitive_minspec'. It's now restricted to the defauklt 0.98 on servers that have 'sv_competitive_minspec' enabled.
- Made all server cash_ convars notify players when they are changed.
- Servers running with sv_pausable 1 will now correctly display 'server paused' UI element on clients when server is paused using 'pause' command.
- Added mp_spectators_max convar to control how many spectators are allowed in a match.
- Added convar mp_halftime_pausetimer that will indefinitely pause the halftime timer.
- Added convar mp_warmup_pausetimer that will pause the warmup period indefinitely. *Warmup periods shorter than 6 seconds cannot be paused.

[ PERFORMANCE ]
- Performance improvements for users running on AMD systems.
- Fixed a major performance problem for users running Bitdefender antivirus software.

[ BUG FIXES ]
- Fixed two crashes that could happen if you were on a team and went to spectator team.
- Fixed the timer display on the hud still showing even when the bomb was planted.
- Fixed avatar scaling issues on the spectator hud as well as the issues that would place the player slot avatars offset some distance from where they should be.
- Made some adjustments to the specttor UI and regular hud to account for hud_scaling set really high.
Fixed a really bad bug where going from the lobby to a game could prevent players from having input. This would result in not being able to select a team or move around.
- Changed flashbang visual effect in Spectator mode so that it is updated when the target changes.