CS-Nation

Covering the future of Counter-Strike
rich history
counter-point: rich history
Counter-Strike BETA 1 was released on June 18th, 1999 to a small crowd of fans. CS was one of the first mods for Half-Life. The seeds of a franchise were planted that night, and no one knew. Today—June 18th, 2003—we're all aware of Counter-Strike's commercial presence. CS Xbox, CS: Condition Zero, and the sequel will bring in millions; and it all started from the release of a free mod created by a bored college student.



From: asspennies [mailto:asspennies@counter-strike.net]
To: rizzuh [mailto:rze@counter-strike.net]
Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2003 7:09 PM
Subject: Historical Perspective

This is CSCentral's article on the history of Counter-Strike: http://www.cscentral.com/features/articles/history/

It's a perfect example of a good idea gone horribly wrong. Doing a retrospective study of each beta of CS is a really interesting and fun concept, however the person doing it should have *some* experience with what they're writing about. And having some modicum of grammatical understanding would be a helpful start.

Not to rag on our friends at CSCentral too much, they mostly do a great job, but their article had me thinking: what do I remember most, and appreciate most, about the development of Counter-Strike?

You've been there from before the beginning, in the alpha days. I came onto the scene during Beta 1, when my friend Dayv told me to "check out this Counter-Strike mod, it's pretty cool." We were playing TFC at the time.

One thing I remember about Beta 1 was how easy it was to kill your teammates—since everyone looked practically the same. An example is here:

http://www.csnation.net/image.php?id=295

Try telling those two people apart from a distance with your AWP on siege.

I also remember the maps—cs_prison was the first map I played. It almost stopped me from playing more when I couldn't figure out how to get down from a ledge. My next map was the aforementioned cs_siege. I've always had a soft spot for this map, ever since that time, during beta 2, that I went 29-1 AWPing people who ran around the cliff corner from the crate just outside the garage. It was the one and only time I've ever shown some skill in using any sniper rifle.

But one thing that needs to be addressed is the community. I didn't really get into the CS community until around Beta 3, when I started talking in the Counter-Strike.net forums. That was when there were only about 500 people playing the game and less in the forums. It's not so much that the community was tight-knit—no matter how romantic you want to be about it, it wasn't. It's just that there was a certain charm to the small size of it. You could make a post in the forums, for instance, and not have it drop 3 pages in an hour. You could ask a question and genuinely get it answered. It was a fleeting, but exciting, time.

Not that I'd like to go back to that. The benefits of Counter-Strike being as large as it is far outweigh the simple comforts that come from a smaller community.

What do you remember about the CS of old? Gun running, or the poor hostage pathing AI? A para that is actually useful? How about the "magic cheat stick?"



From: rizzuh [mailto:rze@counter-strike.net]
To: asspennies [mailto:asspennies@counter-strike.net]
Sent: Saturday, June 14, 2003 10:00 AM
Subject: Celebrating what wasn't there

Me and you both know that de_torn absolutely sucks, but some of the maps in BETA 1 were about thirty times worse. Well, only one was really bad. Prison apparently wasn't even tested before BETA 1 shipped. There were these towers with machine guns, and you couldn't get down from the towers since the ladders didn't like human beings. And falling five feet made you lose 80 health.

In a bit of "factor over form," cs_mansion was uglier than my back yard after burying twenty bodies. But I'll be damned if that map wasn't fun as hell. A bit analogous to CS as a hole.

Weapon Depot was an excellent map. The mapper, and the map source, up and disappeared. This guy also did early work for cs_747, which was a very highly anticipated map.

Siege is an odd tale. It used to be easily the most balanced and fun map in Counter-Strike. I don't know what changed—the community, the game, or both—but as we all know the map is horrible now. In some circles it might not be right to say that since the author of the map tragically committed suicide, but the study of Siege is an interesting one. It would be like de_dust magically becoming the least played map in CS 1.6.

BETA 2 came out less than two months after the very first release of Counter-Strike. In contrast, CS 1.5 was released just over a year ago.

Those guys who missed the BETA days missed a lot. Crazy, crazy things happened. For example, there were huge protests by players who absolutely hated that guns were cleared at the end of the round when the feature was added. Yes, that's right. Guns used to stay on the ground until the map changed. Eventually people abused this feature by continually dropping guns while running forward. Gun running.

In very early versions, there were integrated cheats to force a round win and to get a lot of money. gm_ilovefanny. Hell, remember the days when a headshot script was a joke? Something that was impossible?

This was all four years ago, but what happened in the earliest days of CS are important. In the first nine months of Counter-Strike, the game completely changed multiple times. It's this kind of pot-shot balancing that eventually led to the CS we play today.

I get asked a lot of silly questions. The biggest one is, "What's your favorite version of CS?" In the last year that I've been playing CS 1.5, I have to say that it has easily been my favorite version. But when CS 1.6 is released, it will be my new favorite version. My enjoyment of Counter-Strike seemingly ignores the version number—and even the gameplay, oddly enough—in that I just have a sincere love for the game.

We have always been at war with East Asia. We have always loved CS 1.5.

Maybe I'm just going off the deep end...