ounter-Strike is a tactical first-person shooter video game developed by Valve Corporation which originated from a
Half-Life modification by Minh "Gooseman" Le and Jess "Cliffe" Cliffe. By the fourth beta version, Valve Software, the developer who created
Half-Life, began assisting in the development of
Counter-Strike.
In 2000, Valve bought the rights to
Counter-Strike, and would publish the title for Microsoft Windows that year, and later in 2003 for the Xbox. OS X and Linux ports were available in January 2013.
The game has been expanded into a series since its original release, which currently includes
Counter-Strike: Condition Zero,
Counter-Strike: Source, and
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
Counter-Strike pits a team of terrorists against a team of counter-terrorists in a series of rounds. Each round is won by either completing the mission objective or eliminating the opposing force.
The game was the most played
Half-Life modification in terms of players, according to GameSpy in 2008.
As of August 2011, the
Counter-Strike franchise has sold over 25 million units.
GAMEPLAY
Counter-Strike is a first-person shooter in which players join
either the terrorist team, the counter-terrorist team, or become
spectators. Each team attempts to complete their mission objective
and/or eliminate the opposing team. Each round starts with the two teams
spawning simultaneously.
A player can choose to play as one of eight different default character models (four for each side, although
Counter-Strike: Condition Zero
added two extra models, bringing the total to ten). Players are
generally given a few seconds before the round begins (known as "freeze
time") to prepare and buy equipment, during which they cannot attack or
move (one notable exception is that a player may receive damage during
freeze time. This happens when a map is changed to spawn players at a
certain height above the ground, thus causing fall damage to the player.
This is a method map designers use to alter the starting "HP"
of players on a map). They can return to the buy area within a set
amount of time to buy more equipment (some custom maps included neutral
"buy zones" that could be used by both teams). Once the round has ended,
surviving players retain their equipment for use in the next round;
players who were killed begin the next round with the basic default
starting equipment.
Standard monetary bonuses are awarded for winning a round, losing a
round, killing an enemy, being the first to instruct a hostage to
follow, rescuing a hostage or planting (Terrorist)/defusing (Counter
terrorist) the bomb(C4)in the bomb site.
The scoreboard displays team scores in addition to statistics for each player: name, kills, deaths, and ping
(in milliseconds). The scoreboard also indicates whether a player is
dead, carrying the bomb (on bomb maps), or is the VIP (on assassination
maps), although information on players on the opposing team is hidden
from a player until his/her death, as this information can be important.
Killed players become "spectators" for the duration of the round;
they cannot change their names before their next spawn, text chat cannot
be sent to or received from live players, and voice chat can only be
received from live players and not sent to them (unless the console variable
sv_alltalk
is set to 1). Spectators are generally able to watch the rest of the
round from multiple selectable views, although some servers disable some
of these views to prevent dead players from relaying information about
living players to their teammates through alternative media (most
notably voice in the case of Internet cafes and Voice over IP programs such as TeamSpeak or Ventrilo). This form of cheating is known as "ghosting."
DEVELOPMENT
Counter-Strike is itself a mod, and it has developed its own community of script writers and mod creators. Some mods add bots,
while others remove features of the game, and others create different
modes of play. Some mods, often called "admin plugins", give server
administrators more flexible and efficient control over his or her
server. There are some mods which affect gameplay heavily, such as Gun
Game, where players start with a basic pistol and must score kills to
receive better weapons, and Zombie Mod, where one team consists of
zombies and must "spread the infection" by killing the other team (using
only the knife). There are also the Superhero and mods which mix the
first-person gameplay of
Counter-Strike with an experience
system, allowing a player to become more powerful as they continue to
play. The game is also highly customizable on the player's end, allowing
the user to install or even create their own custom skins, HUDs,
sprites, and sound effects, given the proper tools.
RELASE
When
Counter-Strike was published by Sierra Entertainment/Vivendi Universal Games, it was bundled with
Team Fortress Classic,
Opposing Force multiplayer, and the
Wanted,
Half-Life: Absolute Redemption and
Firearms mods."
On March 24, 1999, Planet Half-Life opened its
Counter-Strike section. Within two weeks, the site had received 10,000 hits. On June 19, 1999, the first public beta of
Counter-Strike was released, followed by numerous further "beta" releases. On April 12, 2000, Valve announced that the
Counter-Strike developers and Valve had teamed up.
Counter-Strike's primary beta release dates occurred on
- Beta 1: June 19, 1999
- Beta 2: August 13, 1999
- Beta 3: September 14, 1999
- Beta 4: November 5, 1999
- Beta 5: December 23, 1999
- Beta 6: March 10, 2000
- Beta 7: August 26, 2000
The non-beta public release dates of
Counter-Strike are as follows:
- Version 1.0: November 1, 2000
- Version 1.1: March 13, 2001
- Version 1.3: September 12, 2001
- Version 1.4: April 24, 2002
- Version 1.5: June 12, 2002
- Version 1.6: September 9, 2003
Note: Version 1.6 effectively coincided with the release of Valve Software's Steam content delivery system
on September 12, 2003. All further updates and bug fixes have been
dynamically delivered via Steam, without any specific new version
numbers. The name or abbreviation "1.6" is often used to differentiate
it from the later versions
Counter-Strike: Source and
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
In March 2007, Valve implemented mandatory advertisements through
Steam in official maps and in the game's GUI overhead. Customers have
expressed frustration with the ads, including an over 200 page thread on
Valve's official forums, saying that they violate original terms of
service and distract from the game.
The thread was later deleted by an unknown moderator.
In January 2013, Valve began a Beta of 1.6 for targeting Linux and OS
X users. The updates are available for Windows users via the Beta
opt-in tab as part of the properties of the game within Steam.
These changes were later rolled into an update of the standard (non-Beta) game in April of 2013.
