CS-Nation

Covering the future of Counter-Strike
the all-seeing eye
review: the all-seeing eye
The All-Seeing Eye (ASE) is a program which enables users to connect and administrate or view any server. You can issue rcon commands, monitor players, join a server when a free spot comes along, and much more.

Many of the All-Seeing Eye's features are inaccessible to unregistered users. Only once you get around to registering can you mess with the entire program and all of its features. Your registration is valid for life, and the program is shareware by default: you can test it for 21 days with a lot of the features.

speed and requirements
When the ASE is downloaded, you'll immediately notice the all white/black interface. While it's bland, this cuts down on some of the stress put on your video card, which is important when you change your resolution multiple times to play a game. GameSpy Arcade's fisher-price interface and loads of extra images eats valuable memory, even if you have it exit when you launch a game.


The All-Seeing Eye in action.
The All-Seeing Eye is a very original alternative to GameSpy's two server browsers. Other alternatives, such as HLiT for IRC, aren't even on the same playing field when it comes down to features. Once downloaded, you get a 21 day evaluation period, as mentioned before. When this time is up, you're prompted to either pay for a registration key or say goodbye to the All-Seeing Eye. There is no ad-laden free version.

Hold it up to GameSpy Arcade and you'll see that ASE does have its perks. You're not bothered for some username and password combo, it loads must faster, and doesn't have the all the useless eye candy that Arcade indulges in. GameSpy 3d is a bit better, but it still takes up much more memory than ASE. All of these items make ASE a better choice than either of GameSpy's offerings, especially if your computer isn't exactly this week's model.

usage
The ASE is based on a very, very user-friendly interface. This is great news for those of us whose pings are higher than our IQ scores. Several key features really make the program a pleasure to use. Your "Favorites" section stores the IP of any server you join, along with the rcon passwords you enter.


The modifiers are endless.
The best feature in the package is the modifiers menu on the left hand side of the All-Seeing Eye browser. You can filter by ping, country, map, mod, and various other things. Empty and full servers can be hidden, as can servers that require a password. You can filter by server additions such as Cheating-Death or write your own filters using an easy scripting format or a program on the ASE website (on the right-hand navigation bad).

All-Seeing Eye supports every known Half-Life mod and even the currently-in-beta Steam from Valve software. You can enter a name to be used in Half-Life, but this feature is not forced like with GameSpy 3d. Most players will find it better to let their config.cfg do the talking.

ASE also offers pre-configured support for Roger Wilco and Cheating-Death. Without these features it would be a lot harder to get everything running the way you want it to in a reasonable time. Its little options, such as the ability to launch a game running only Cheating-Death and Paladin (assuming the server has them installed), or having it set an ICQ away message with server details are what really round out the All-Seeing Eye experience.

Finally, ASE also supports many of the GameSpy 3d away-scripts for mIRC and other IRC programs. Simply point the script to your ASE dir and it'll work like butter.