CS Source

[atomizer]

I play CS 1.6 but was thinking about getting CS:Source. Is Source worth it? I've heard some people say that CS 1.6 is still better, but others have told me that Valve is really pushing CS:Source.

of course valve is pushing CS:S. they're a business and need to make money

i don't know that anyone can tell you which one is better. there's basically 2 camps: the old school and the new school and the 1.6 followers are many. i think it'd be safe to say that 1.6 is more of a 'hard-core' game. it's a little leaner and devoid of all the source physics and eye candy. you could say it's more pure.

source is loaded with specular graphics, effects and physics (like when you kick a barrel or shoot objects). you could say it's more realistic, aside from the weapon dynamics which are pretty much the same as in 1.6.

i have 2 pet peeves with all the later versions of CS, including CS:S: 1) there's a short period where your movement slows down after jumping. it's not realistic at all and i hate it. 2) bullet trajectories: weapons are far less accurate when jumping for instance. they are the most accurate if crouching and not moving. if you fire more than a 3 or 4 round burst from any automatic weapon, the bullets rise and you have to try and compensate. it tries to add some realism to the game, but it's not realistic at all (i've shot a lot of firearms). i just don't think that random bullet trajectories belongs in a game that is (or used to anyway) based on skill. i'd guess another reason for it is to help even the playing field between the newbs and the seasoned players, which i think it does to an extent. still, i hate it.

BTW, although your system is better suited to 1.6, i would think you could run CS:S just fine. maybe some tweaking would be in order though. source is quite a bit more demanding on your hardware.

Edited January 10, 2006 by atomizer

[Grunth0s]

i have 2 pet peeves with all the later versions of CS, including CS:S: 1) there's a short period where your movement slows down after jumping. it's not realistic at all and i hate it. 2) bullet trajectories: weapons are far less accurate when jumping for instance. they are the most accurate if crouching and not moving. if you fire more than a 3 or 4 round burst from any automatic weapon, the bullets rise and you have to try and compensate. it tries to add some realism to the game, but it's not realistic at all (i've shot a lot of firearms). i just don't think that random bullet trajectories belongs in a game that is (or used to anyway) based on skill. i'd guess another reason for it is to help even the playing field between the newbs and the seasoned players, which i think it does to an extent. still, i hate it.

hmmm...

I think you may be missing half the point of the game here.

I would agree with the jumping issue, I don't understand that little stutter on landing.

If you had a real weapon and tried to fire it while jumping compared to be crouched on the ground, I am absolutely positive you would be less accurate.

All automatic weapons suffer from 'recoil', forcing the barrel up and to the right.

Your statement that you have fired lots of weapons confuses me, as I have yet to fire any kind of automatic weapon (with the exception of some smaller calibre units), which doesn't suffer from recoil.

These are all added for realism, and control of these characteristics is what seperates the casual gamer from the pro 'CPL' players.

I personally can't stand CS 1.6 though, but this is due to the high volume of cheaters online.

CS Source suffers from its own raft of problems, not least of which are the absolutely appalling 'hit boxes' that the game has.

Personally, F.E.A.R. in a darkened room with the surround sound on, or Unreal Tournament 2004 Instagib are much more fun.

I also have a fair idea of what I am talking about with this one, having spent a lot of time in the military, and now am one of the main organisers for a LAN gaming organisation in the UK.

[atomizer]

If you had a real weapon and tried to fire it while jumping compared to be crouched on the ground, I am absolutely positive you would be less accurate.

All automatic weapons suffer from 'recoil', forcing the barrel up and to the right.

Your statement that you have fired lots of weapons confuses me, as I have yet to fire any kind of automatic weapon (with the exception of some smaller calibre units), which doesn't suffer from recoil.

These are all added for realism, and control of these characteristics is what seperates the casual gamer from the pro 'CPL' players.

your comment about being less accurate while firing a weapon when jumping is obviously very correct, no doubt. the reason i said it's unrealistic is because the 'random' effect is far more exaggerated in CS than it is in the real world. sorry if i didn't explain that well.

same with the rising barrel when full-auto (though it'll go up and left if you're left handed). it occurs in real-life, but it's relatively easily compensated for and very possible to hold a much tighter pattern at a given distance than in CS. i mention these difference because they are so dramatic. if CS weapon physics were even remotely close to real-world, i wouldn't bother. maybe, just maybe, in the hands of the very inexperienced a real-world weapon would exhibit similar behavior as in CS, but CS is all about terrorists and counter-terrorists - weapon experts.

my comment about firing a lot of weapons refers to real-world - M16 (military), SKS, 22, 243, 30-06, etc., a bucket load of pistols and various other weapons. i'm by no means considered good with any weapon, yet the dramatic difference between real-world weapons and CS weapons doesn't stack up.

long before CS was played professionally (CPL), QUAKE was king and there is no random trajectories in QUAKE (unless recently added). is CS more realistic? sure it is. my opinion is that it goes too far however. at any rate, i would guess that i'm the minority. still, it has been suggested many times that valve release a 'pro' version of CS that removes a lot of CS's limitations, causing the game play to be based on accuracy and skill and not how well you can compensate for random trajectories (which cannot be compensated for totally, even by the best player because they are just that; random).

[Thunderbolt 2864]

...Valve really screwed it up this time thanks to Steam.

steam is great - for valve. it bypasses the middleman and enables direct sales which = higher profits. i honestly commend them on their insight.

however, for may end-users, steam is nothing more than a big fat PITA. i'm one of them. after years of being actively involved in the HL community, providing artwork, scripts, running a server, etc., i finally just gave it up and i gave it up for no other reason than steam[ing-pile-of-s**t].

having to be on-line at least once in order to enable off-line mode - ???

having to be on-line in order to launch the SDK - a joke

steam server is down - really? what else is new?

friends is down - again? (or should that be "still?")

having to run an app in the background (steam.exe) in order to play a game that doesn't need it to run - silly

ads, displayed through the steam UI - for a game i PAID FOR???

there's over a 1/4 million posts in just ONE topic on the steam forums, many dealing with steam issues.

What really ticks me off about this crappy Steam program is, that you need to be online to launch their products. Now that is lame.

Another thing I hate about it is the constant updates. One time it updated my CS Source game and it end up corrupting the files, making the game unplayable. I was so p***ed off at that.

Yeah, you got that right. Steam(ing pile of s**t) alright. Its buggy, its lame, and its a waste of time. I just want to play the game. Have those idiots at Valve ever heard of just install and play? I'm never going to support or purchase products from Valve ever again unless they fix this Steam crap they have implemented. I feel sorry for the people who are using dial up internet or have no internet just to play HL2 or CounterStrike Source offline.

[atomizer]

@newbie

it's a double edge sword...

if you want all the bells and whistles, then there's going to be more issues - bigger patches, longer d/l's, slower loading, etc., etc.. other state-of-the-art engines suffer problems as well, though i wonder if any suffer as much as steam/source.

one of the tools valve uses to make development decisions is the hardware survey thingy. if you look at the results for those surveys (http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html), you'll find that the average specs are pretty high, so they design accordingly. problem is, they evidentially don't do enough public testing and the way that steam is implemented is a joke IMO. i like the general concept of steam, which is to make it easy to deliver new content and updates, but the fact that running the games, and even the SDK for cripe sake, is dependent upon steam being loaded is simply stupid.

this is just a guess, but from what i've seen it appears that a lot of the content developers for pre-steam HL games have abandoned the community. many of the old websites are stale or gone. one of the reasons may be because of the way HL content is packaged now (in GCF archives). it makes it more difficult to work with. QuArK, a popular level editor, is difficult at best to get working anymore. Hammer, valves editor, is rather limited compared to QuArK which is a very powerful, open source tool.

i think there's little doubt that steam and the buggy source engine has divided the community. non-steam (cracked) releases are very popular and the following for pre-steam releases is still formidable.

Edited January 11, 2006 by atomizer

[Agret]

i think there's little doubt that steam and the buggy source engine has divided the community. non-steam (cracked) releases are very popular and the following for pre-steam releases is still formidable.

I have Steam and I have my games legit but I still have to use cracked copies....why? Because Steam doesn't work in offline mode!!! I run steam when offline and it says its "updating" which is basically what it says when it can't contact any steam servers. 3 minutes later it asks if you want to start in offline or retry connection. When you click offline it either says "This option is not avaliable in offline mode" and quits or says "Unable to contact the steam servers" and quits.

I acquired the cracked copies at LANs and require them at LANs because there is no other way to play. It also annoys me that when I want to play I have to download the updates. Like the latest CS:S update adds the map Militia and makes it so hostages can open doors. Well I like the hostage part but I don't really want the miltia map and hostages should be taken care of serverside so where is my option "Skip update, I don't want a 30mb map"

Welcome to the world of DRM.

Oh, and for people that say steam helps stop piracy. When HL2 was first released all the pirates were playing it while the legit users were stuck at "Content servers too busy, unable to decrypt game cache" for several days.