Counter-Strike, the world’s number one online action game series, is a first-person shooter developed by Valve Software,
the creators of the renowned Half-Life series. This team-oriented
online shooter pits terrorists and counter-terrorists against one
another in round-based combat set all over the world. Using the power of
the "Source” engine, the original Counter-Strike has been completely
remade as Counter-Strike: Source—offering upgraded graphics, levels, and
the implementation of a new physics engine. Counter-Strike will never
be the same!
First released to the public on June 18th, 1999, Counter-Strike began
as a simple fan-produced mod for Half-Life. Thanks to a series of
steadily-improving beta releases, the mod started to foster a
progressively-enlarging and dedicated following. As the fast-paced,
tactical game play was refined and improved, and as new concepts and
maps were introduced, Counter-Strike moved from being a mere Half-Life
mod to an entirely new game.
With the release of Steam,
Valve's digital content delivery system, Counter-Strike found a new
footing within the gaming community. Counter-Strike’s first
single-player chapter, Counter-Strike: Condition Zero (Developed by
Valve and Turtle Rock Studios),
was a great success, bringing many new features and upgraded graphics
to the classic game. The release of Counter-Strike: Source only helped
boost the series further towards its now legendary status.
Counter-Strike is about as close as you’ll ever get to saving the world;
or destroying it!
What’s in This Section?
Counter-Strike not only revolutionized the world of modding, but the
entire Half-Life community, and we’re happy to show off our admiration
of this revolutionary series with our collection of overviews, guides,
strategies, tweaks, and tricks. Want to buff up on your Counter-Strike
knowledge? Check out our overview sections. Need help "pwning n00bs” on
de_dust? Swing by our map strategies section. Having trouble getting the
most FPS out of your computer? We’ve got tech guides at your disposal.
Want to turn your grenades into something more cute and cuddly, or
change your Counter-Strike menu background? Head over to our files
section for mods, maps, models, and more! Welcome to the last place you
will ever need to go for all of your Counter-Strike needs!
Essential Links
Counter-Strike Review @ IGN
Counter-Strike: Condition Zero Review @ GameSpy
Counter-Strike Forums @ Planet Half-Life
Counter-Strike Files @ FilePlanet
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Thursday, 15 September, 2011 – Planet Half-Life News |
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A surprise, and substantial, CS:S update
23:54 PST | Shadowex3 | Print News | Category: Counter-StrikeA
while back a laundry list of changes were run through the CS:S Beta,
looking like they were headed for mainstream. With today's update
it would appear that Valve hasn't forgotten the old girl after all and
has made some significant updates to the weapons and associated systems.
Here's the highlights:
Dynamic crosshair now uses actual weapon accuracy, rather than a separate simulation
Weapon spread patterns are no longer square
All weapons now have a new accuracy model which fixes many bugs and provides more intuitive weapon behavior
Weapons now have separate accuracy penalties for jumping, landing, and standing on ladders
All weapons are now more accurate while crouching
Accuracy penalties for movement no longer have a discrete threshold, but scale between crouch move and run speed
In addition to the systemic changes a number of
balance adjustments were made, most significantly bringing the Galil and
Famas run speeds up and further increasing the FAMAS' accuracy as well
as lowering the spread of its burst mode. There have also been a number
of console variable tweaks, some making the game more mod friendly and
others shutting down exploits, and more robust options for customizing
the crosshair were added.
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Friday, 26 August, 2011 – Planet Half-Life News |
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Kotaku spends an hour with the new CS:GO, Franchise Sale
9:50 PST | Shadowex3 | Print News | Category: Counter-StrikeIn an hour long preview at Valve's offices Kotaku
has learned of some details regarding the new Counter-Strike: Global
Offensive, starting with the surprise that the PS3 version will support a
mouse and keyboard. Summarising the news:
Maps have received a graphical overhaul but are "largely" intact
The game will ship with Dust, Dust2, Aztec, Nuke, Inferno, Italy and Office
There's a "Casual Mode" with unlimited money, alltalk, and full spectating
There is still "Competitive" mode, with a promise to "raise the skill ceiling"
Valve will be hosting stock servers featuring ELO or friendlist based matchmaking
The 360 will be stuck with a gamepad for now
They are "striving" for Cross-platform matchmaking
Random spawnpoints are binned for now
New weapons: Decoy Grenade, Molotov, Negev, Tec-9, Mag-7, Sawed Off, Bizon, and a humiliation Tazer None of this is set in stone however as Valve has proven willing to work with players, for example armor will not
be removed from the game after Source players argued against it
heavily. Additionally, in celebration of the latest CS:GO trailer the
entire Counter-Strike franchise is currently on sale.
And, on one last note, Valve employee Ido Magal has stated there will be NO INGAME HAT SALES.
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Friday, 12 August, 2011 – Planet Half-Life News |
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Scratch update, Valve announces new Counter-Strike game
13:33 PST | Shadowex3 | Print News | Category: Counter-StrikeIn a complete blindside Valve has announced that they will be working with Hidden Path Entertainment to create Counter-Strike: Global offensive.
CS:GO is billed as "[introducing] new gameplay modes, matchmaking,
leader boards..." as well as "new maps, characters, and weapons".
Is Counter-Strike going to become the next Left 4 Dead? Or is this
going to be another Condition Zero? We're all going to find out
together.
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Tuesday, 9 August, 2011 – Planet Half-Life News |
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Another TF2... Wait, a Counter-strike: Source update in the works?
13:14 PST | Shadowex3 | Print News | Category: Counter-Strike - Source EngineThe CS:S Beta has just received a significant set of updates
to various gameplay mechanics, mostly weaponry related, and given the
comprehensiveness of this update it's possible that these updates may be
a test for porting them over to mainstream Counter-Strike: Source. Some
highlights:
Weapons now have separate penalties for jumping and
landing, allowing better weapon control after landing (and greatly
reduced penalties for falling off small ledges). This also allows for
in-air shots with proper timing.
Dynamic crosshair now uses actual weapon accuracy, rather than a separate simulation.
Glock and FAMAS each now use same accuracy for all burst shot bullets.
Increased run speed for Galil and FAMAS.
Weapon spread patterns are no longer square.
HUD elements for health, armor, timer, and money now have a transparent background for better visibility.
Made a convar for lag compensation position change tolerance.
Made lag comp position checks use Length2dSqr (ignoring z).
Fixed an exploit where users could disable flashbang audio effects using alias commands.
Fixed burst fire prediction of FAMAS.
Fixed weapon accuracy related prediction errors that could cause performance problems. Hopefully a good few of these, particularly the bugfixes and improved hud visibility, make it to mainstream in short order.
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Sunday, 21 November, 2010 – Planet Half-Life News |
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Sunday Source Engine News: TF2 items, Source engine updates, and L4D2 news
15:08 PST | Shadowex3 | Print News | Category: Team Fortress 2 - Counter-Strike - Source EngineIn keeping with their tradition of support Valve has released Updates
to both TF2 and the Source Engine ranging from new items for TF2 to a
universal addition of another menu for tweaking custom mouse
acceleration and raw mouse input, which should help high DPI mouse users
who are experiencing issues. As always you can follow the link to the
full changelog or read the highlights here:
Source Engine (CS:S, DoD:S, TF2, HL2:DM)
Added support for raw mouse input. Raw input reads directly from
the mouse, bypassing Windows control panel mouse settings. This
addresses issues with high DPI mice, and provides for a more reliable
controller experience at various resolutions
Improved custom mouse acceleration
Updated mouse configuration UI to support raw input and acceleration; added tooltips to some of the options
TF2 Specific Changes
Fixed not being able to light arrows after the first arrow is fired unless they're drawn back.
Added the original Ubersaw taunt to the Vita-Saw.
Fixed an issue that prevented the game from running on Fat32 systems.
Fixed a Frontier Justice exploit that let Engineers have infinite crits for their current life/round.
Fixed a Heavy exploit that let him run at full speed while shooting.
Added Telltale Games items:
Dangeresque, Too?: Strong Bad's styling glasses (equipped by the Demoman)
License to Maim: Max's Badge (equipped by all classes)
The Iron Curtain: The Heavy's first love (equipped by the Heavy, obviously)
The Enthusiast's Timepiece: Tycho's favorite timepiece (equipped by the Spy)
Additionally Left 4 Dead 2 has an Update
as well, marking the return of Gib Fest as a Coop mutator, "featuring"
Realism Versus now with faster infected respawns, and the Infected will
now be able to tell the speed of the Survivors based on their Glow as
well as being able to keep track of the Witch. As with all Steamworks
and first-party games you need only restart steam to get the updates.
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Wednesday, 23 June, 2010 – Planet Half-Life News |
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Counter-Strike: Source Engine Update
15:58 PST | Shadowex3 | Print News | Category: Counter-Strike - Steam - Source EngineFor
some time now Valve has been quietly running a Beta for a new
Counter-Strike update, the ancient and almost mythical upgrade that
would bring CS:S to the latest Source Engine with as close to no changes
to the feel and behavior of the game as possible, deliberately
preserving the parts of Counter-Strike that we all know and love from
bunnyhopping and surfing to AWP Quickswitching.
Today Valve has released that landmark update, not only adding Mac compatibility but also bringing CSS the latest Source Engine fixes and upgrades:
Counter-Strike Source
Highlights
144 Achievements
Lifetime and match player stats
Updated scoreboard
Many Cvars added for customizing the new scoreboard's appearance
Domination and Revenge system
Cinematic Death cameras (May be disabled clientside!)
"many source engine updates"
Better flashlight
Better HDR behavior
Multicore Rendering support
Tick rate defaulted to 66
Fixes to tickrate affecting door speed, stuttering movement, and firing mechanisms
"Hugely improved" hit registration and netcode
Made ladders easier to climb Additionally, to celebrate the patch (or perhaps beating Modern Warfare 2 in playercount)
Valve has lowered the price of Counter-Strike: Source by 66% to a mere
$6.80. As with TF2 and other source games to receive Macintosh
Compatibility patches any player who purchase one version will
automatically have access to the other as necessary, allowing our
brothers on OSX to know the truly special fury that only Counter-Strike
can produce.
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Tuesday, 29 September, 2009 – Planet Half-Life News |
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Tactical Intervention: The Next Counter-Strike
18:57 PST | John Phillips | Print News | Category: Counter-StrikeCounter-Strike
has become more than just a casual game since it's original release in
1998, it's become an Internet gaming phenomenon. So it's no question why
fans have become irritated over the years at the lack of a
Counter-Strike 2, and the creator of Counter-Strike, Mihn Le, is no
exception to that rule. After issue after issue, Mihn Le announced in an
article with IGN his new in-development game "Tactical Intervention."
The game effectively is what Mihn envisioned Counter-Strike 2 to be,
the actual title itself having been shelved by Valve for other titles.
Mihn talks with IGN in a hybrid preview-interview and talks about the
game, his visions for it, and how it all came to be.
  I
had the opportunity to look at Tactical Intervention when I visited
Minh's office in the western part of Seoul. On the surface the new game
very much resembles Counter-Strike in appearance; both games run off the
same engine so the graphics haven't progressed much. "Graphics-wise, I
know it's not the best," said Minh. But the game is definitely his baby
as he is finally able to introduce some of the elements he wanted to put
in Counter-Strike into TI. Click here
to check out the full article. No solid release date for Tactical
Intervention was given, but the game is just entering into beta testing
and is projected to be released closer to the end of 2009.
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Wednesday, 26 August, 2009 – Planet Half-Life News |
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Garry's Mod and Counter-Strike: Source Updated
7:07 PST | ACPaco | Print News | Category: Garry's Mod - Counter-Strike - Source EngineTwo small updates for Garry's Mod and Counter-Strike: Source
have been released this week. The GMod update includes 15 new
Steamworks achievements such as "Startup Millennium" (boot up the game
1,000 times) and "Addict" (log in one year's worth of playtime). You can view all of the new GMod achievements here.
Change log:
Garry's Mod
Added an initial 15 Steamworks Achievements.
Fixed TF2 player and hat models being black.
Fixed some server lagging exploits.
Counter-Strike: Source
Fixed an exploit that allowed files to be uploaded to the server at arbitrary locations in the file system.
Fixed a server crash caused by a client packet claiming to be an HLTV client when HLTV is disabled on the server.
Fixed a server crash caused by spoofing a client disconnect message.
Fixed a server crash caused by sending malformed reliable subchannel data.
Novint Falcon support is now enabled by default. Remember to restart your Steam client to get all the latest patches an updates.
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Monday, 6 July, 2009 – Planet Half-Life News |
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Germany Bans CS From Public LAN Events
8:14 PST | John Phillips | Print News | Category: Counter-StrikeFollowing
a year of brutal school shootings in Germany, several German municipal
governments have decided to ban all "killer" games from public LAN
events, including Counter-Strike according to GotFrag.com.
The shootings, many of which had no explanations, left many German
authorities searching for any means to ease the tension and the
possibilities of more shootings.
This ban has lead to the cancellation of many ESL Friday Night
events and has now lead to the cancellation of the Convention-X-Treme
tournament. Tournament managers have given full refunds to all of those
who've already bought tickets, and are currently searching for a new
venue for future events. The question now remains on whether or not
Germany will man this a nation-wide ban, or if it remains the
prerogative of municipal governments.
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Tuesday, 30 June, 2009 – Planet Half-Life News |
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Counter-Strike 2D
6:40 PST | John Phillips | Print News | Category: Counter-StrikeCan't get out of the good old days of 2D gaming, but love Counter-Strike? Then you'll love Counter-Strike 2D! CS2D takes your favorite weapons, maps, and gameplay modes into a 2D environment with a few new additions as well.
  
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