CS-Nation

Covering the future of Counter-Strike
installation
First off, you must own Half-Life, Half-Life: Counter-Strike, or any VALVe software title. Please consult the following table if you own none.
Half-Life: Game Of the Year Edition
cover

 Half-Life: Counter-Strike
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All that is needed is a valid VALVe product key from either of these packages for acquiring Counter-Strike through Steam.
amazon.com

I n s t a l l i n g - C S

The first thing you need to do is get Steam. You can grab Steam right here.

Once you have Steam installed and running find the "Games" button on the main Steam window and click on it. A list of avaiable Steam games will be presented to you. Depending on your Steam install options Counter-Strike may or may not be installed already, regardless of these conditions simply right-click on Counter-Strike and select "Launch Game..." This is when Steam does its job of determining whether you need Counter-Strike installed or updated and responds accordingly.

That's it! Steam has simplified the once tedious installation process of Counter-Strike making it much easier to get into the game. If you do, however, run into Steam problems then stop by the Steam support page.

C o n f i g s

Load up Steam and launch Counter-Strike by following the same instructions mentioned above. Assuming there are no updates you should be sitting at the main CS menu so let's get down to business. On the main menu you are presented with a view different options, the first thing you'll want to do is get your controls and settings all ready, to do this click on "Options." From here, you can configure your video, audio, controls, your name, and all other settings. Don't worry, your configuration files will stay separate from Half-Life and other mods. Once you're done getting everything set up to your liking hit "Ok" and go back to the main menu and click "New Game". Right now, you should be in the local game configuration menu. Select the map you want to play on, but you don't need to touch the Number of Players field since nobody will be joining your game. Click on "Start" and it should start loading. Now that you have started your game, and arrived in your level, you should take this time to familiarize yourself with the game controls and feel.

Return to the very first screen and select "Options", then go to "Controls". There you may bind all your new commands and regular old keys, too. Remember which function certain keys do and get ready to play!

When setting the game up, you may want to switch the hand your gun is in from the default right to the left, and this can be done in the Options menu under Multiplayer>Advanced>Weapon Alignment> and then select your preference.

Also, aliases can be used to buy weapons on the fly, etc. If you want a premade alias config, check out RzE's CS Helper.

F i n d i n g - a - S e r v e r

Once you've got Steam and CS fully patched up to the latest versions, you'll want to start playing. Luckily Steam has made the process of finding a server to play on easier than ever. From either the main Steam window or the main Counter-Strike menu click the "Servers" button and you will immediately start downloading a list of servers for you to play on. However some of these servers will not fit your criteria and will need to be filtered out which I'll explain next.

In the server window select "Change filters". You are now presented with an assortment of criteria servers must meet in order to show up on your list. For the game field select "cstrike". Next, select the highest latency, or "ping", you feel comfortable playing with, usually around 100 on broadband, 250 on dialup. Now check "Server not full", "Has users playing", and "Not password protected". The map field is usually left blank unless you only want to find servers on a particular map. I recommend the location field set to "World".

Now all that's left to do is click on "Refresh All" to get a list of all the servers matching your previously specified settings. Once you have found a server that looks suitable, select it and click connect.

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