Counter-Strike 2 – Limited Test for select CS:GO players | Hacker News Reader

Counter-Strike 2 – Limited Test for select CS:GO players

counter-strike.net

451 pointsswores301 comments

Sub-tick updates sound to me like they're still using a tick rate system, but specific CBasePlayer mechanisms will now undergo interpolation using UserCmd timestamps alongside their rewind buffer to understand specifically where you were during gameplay as opposed to looking backwards in the rewind buffer and not making interpolated calculations based on timestep.

There is still an upperbound where additional granular game states don't occur and that upperbound is based on framerate, afaiu.

We use a similar system in Planimeter Game Engine 2D.[1]

Planimeter engineers are former Source Engine developers.

[1]: https://github.com/Planimeter/game-engine-2d/wiki/Tick_rate_...

I love the promise of Planimeter but it's kinda intimidating to get started with. Are there any example games with source that I can tinker with?

We were doing some experimentation with a future Planimeter Game Engine 3D product, but will be moving back to Game Engine 2D development this upcoming quarter, with a new website planned, a getting started tutorial path, and sample game code included from internal projects. The current version includes example code in the game folder.

I am hoping that a getting started path will encourage new users to help one understand core workflows we've designed for developers, starting with creating entities in a test map, and then updating those levels, and finally, building your own fully-custom features which tie into premade systems.

I'm really looking forward to this. The fact is that there's no game engine (that I could find after hours of searching) that offers out-of-the-box multiplayer for skilled programmers who just want to make a game, and if Planimeter can deliver that _and_ have good documentation and a clear ramp-up path, it would appeal to a huge audience.

Thanks, that's been our #1 complaint about large mainstream engines like Unreal, Unity, and Godot. None of them have working out-of-the-box multiplayer (Unreal is the closest, but by default it rubberbands worse than Goldsrc!), and we find it super weird.

Otherwise, we wouldn't have written our own engine.

Are you guys going to separate the networking code from the engine? I would love a sane networking framework to use with Unity/Unreal. I've been writing my own source-esque networking to work with Unity but it's far from perfect. I would love a solid open source implementation here.

I've been wanting to do this for years. It's still sitting in my IDEAS.md[1] file. But it does require some abstractions that sit above reliable UDP or other alternative transports.

You need an idea of entities or at least some abstraction for a rewind buffer so that you can make calls to some sort of reconcile or predict function.

I don't have an idea of what that looks like in my head. I'd have to think about it. I know it can be done.

[1]: https://github.com/andrewmcwatters/IDEAS.md

Couldn't you separate input from framerate and interpolate based on the input timing? I do this in a reaction-based arcade game I'm working on in Unity with their newer input system. e.g. If they input happens 8ms before the current frame, a projectile is "fast-forwarded" by the equivalent of 8ms, and then is in sync with the tickrate. The bigger issue I've run into is since mobile is my primary target, I've found that phones don't report touch inputs more frequently than their screen refresh rate. Works perfectly fine in the desktop build though with 60fps and a mouse with a 8k polling rate though.

We write a general purpose game engine, but some of the predefined classes do have integrations exactly like this. What you're describing is similar to what we do for predicted projectiles, yes.

We reused the concept from Team Fortress 2, which is when Valve first implemented the concept, I believe. But the idea is as old as when QuakeWorld first came on the scene. I think I remember Carmack specifically talking about how projectiles wouldn't be predicted in his .plan files, but the overall feel would be much better.

This is correct. QuakeWorld pushed the limits of real-time networking projectile detection by keeping a small history buffer of interpolated data for the server to perform lookups and hit checks. It was never perfect but it was good enough for fast paced QW games.

https://icculus.org/~marco/quakec/csqc/prediction.html

https://fabiensanglard.net/quakeSource/quakeSourcePrediction...

Overwatch also has sub-frame/tick aiming that's based on your mouse's polling rate [1].

[1] https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/t/new-feature-%E...

AFAIK the discussion seems to have started even further back than that [0]

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/Competitiveoverwatch/comments/6xet7...

your granularity upper bound being the framerate is a result of LÖVE not passing SDL timestamps as well as it doing SDL_pumpevents once per frame, so even if you try to timestamp the individual events they are still bunched up into the start-of-frame rather than accurately being able to do sub-frame rollbacks.

To be fair, I think the way SDL hand wave the processing into one lumped Pumpevent is where the blame lies —- it is just a compromise made for the sake of being a cross-platform abstraction so they had to make it a black-box invocation

The smoke effects are cool, but otherwise, it doesn't feel like the graphics are really that much better, just different. Flatter dynamic range (everything is bright now). Busier textures. Exactly the same pixely shadows (most visible in the screenshot "Back Plat"), which makes me think the engine hasn't been modernized that much.

I think the big upgrades in Source 2 are around tooling. The Valve Hammer editor for CS:GO is a glorified Quake map editor. I think it can even still edit Quake maps.

Why bother with high quality shadows if everyone will just turn them off immediately?

If you turn off shadows in cs you're putting yourself at a significant disadvantage. Many games have been clinched on a shadow that was noticed.

Not turning off shadows, turning off high quality shadows

Why turn off shadows when you can actually see your own by looking at it? You would be at major disadvantage when playing competitive.

I think you might've misread the parent comment, as far as I can tell they meant turning high quality shadows off, e.g. switching shadow quality to low, not switching shadows off altogether.

Most players prefer the game to look good rather than min-maxing things that won’t affect their score anyway.

> Flatter dynamic range (everything is bright now)

This change seems arbitrary. In CS3, they could reverse this change and make the case that they improved the atmosphere, and people will agree with it.

It seems very intentional to me, they mention "character read" as a goal for the relights on the website. IMO CS1.6 still has the best ability to quickly see an enemy than any of the other CS games (it's still way better than something like CoD). The flat lighting with less visual noise could really help bring this back.

CS:S with cl_minmodels was the best for this, and I'll forever miss this feature. :(

Consider the comparison images:

https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/apps/csgo/images/csgo...

(The former is CS2, the latter CSGO). In my office, with the sun streaming in through the double windows, with relatively low-gamma, lower-contrast old IPS monitors that don't suck but aren't 4k professional OLEDs, yeah, I absolutely want everything to be bright. It kills the horror-movie feel, where your eyes are at the edge of their abilities, squinting and peering into the foggy shadows for barely-perceptible hints of motion, but if you want to actually see what you're doing you want flattened dynamic range.

If you're not watching on an HDR monitor in a pitch-black home theater, you can't see anything in Batman (2022) or Game of Thrones, or any of the modern "realistic", "gritty," underexposed shows. It's definitely more artistically appealing in ideal conditions, but if you're not going to perfectly recreate the ideal viewing conditions (and crank up the gamma on your display to compensate a bit while you're at it), it's pointless.

I have the same complaint regarding dynamic range with regards to sound mixes, too. I understand that the real battlefield sends soldiers home with tinnitus because explosions are head-splittingly loud. I don't want that realism when I'm in-game, flashbangs should not be mixed in Counter-strike such that their own monitors and headsets/speakers physically incapacitate the players if they turn the volume up to be able to hear the radio commands. When listening to a movie, I usually just accept that I have to turn on subtitles (even though my hearing is fine) and will have to read the dialog if I don't want to wake up my kids with the house shaking when there's an on-screen explosion.

> When listening to a movie, I usually just accept that I have to turn on subtitles (even though my hearing is fine) and will have to read the dialog if I don't want to wake up my kids with the house shaking when there's an on-screen explosion.

Some audio receivers feature some kind of "baby's asleep" mode that boosts the center channel & vocal-range frequencies while suppressing everything else. Folks who don't want the real Theatrical Experience (which I think is actually most home viewers) probably ought to just leave that mode on all the time.

An alternative for systems without that feature is to just manually boost the center channel.

I believe the former is CS:GO and the latter is CS2.

> Consider the comparison images

To be honest, I strongly prefer the CS:GO image. It looks more interesting, with better contrast and a spookier feel to it. It even has details where the CS2 image doesn't, like the grating on the floor on the left side.

The CS:GO version reads more cinematic to me, while the CS2 seems cartoony/gamey even though they might have improved the geometry (I can't tell).

Counter Strike isn't trying to create a cinematic or spooky atmosphere. It is a multiplayer FPS first and foremost, and being able to quickly identify players is the most important priority of level designers. A lot of tweaks over the years have been done in the name of readability.

CS2 seems much better on this aspect than CS:GO.

I felt like they kept the dynamic range, but now everything is 3 levels brighter and you have to deal with glare off surfaces.

> Flatter dynamic range (everything is bright now).

I was about to write this.

I like the improvements, but I dislike that everything is brighter and with less contrast in the examples. The CS:GO environments look more characterful, almost like comparing The Matrix with a greenish tint to a hypothetical Matrix where everything was bright and clean.

I wish they could mix the improvements with the older lights/contrast.

To me it looks more cartoony. Like TF2. Back in the day, "better" graphics normally meant "more realistic". It seems like either we've given up on that for the time being, or tastes have changed.

Also to me the smoke looks weird. Maybe real smoke does behave that way, I don't know. But I don't get why it just hangs there like it's an inflated balloon. And I don't get why after moving the smoke with an explosion the smoke reappears magically in that spot.

It really seems like their smoke processing is just removing/re-adding cubes into the volumetric model, then using the shape of the cubes to draw "a cloud". It looks more like a marshmallow than a cloud of smoke, to me.

It doesn't seem like they model air movement, at all, and I don't see how to get realistic smoke without some concept of wind.

https://steamcommunity.com/faqs/steam-help/view/5ED2-ED8E-81...

How do I gain access to the Counter-Strike 2 Limited Test? Players are selected based on a number of factors deemed important by the Counter-Strike 2 development team, including (but not limited to) recent playtime on Valve official servers, trust factor, and Steam account standing.

How do I know if I've been selected for the Counter-Strike 2 Limited Test? If you are chosen to participate in the Counter-Strike 2 Limited Test you will receive a notification on the main menu of CS:GO.

If you receive an invitation select "ENROLL" and begin your download. When the download is complete launch CS:GO and select the "Limited Test" option to play the Counter-Strike 2 Limited Test.

How often are players added to the Counter-Strike 2 Limited Test? More players will be added to the Limited Test over time. Keep checking your CS:GO main menu to see if you have received an invite.

How long will the Counter-Strike 2 Limited Test last? Counter-Strike 2 is expected to ship Summer 2023.

Amazing to finally see some work being put into CS, and just this smoke grenade sneak peek already makes me very curious to see how this will play in practice.

It's clear at least that they aren't afraid of changing the meta in a rather substantial way -- which is of course dangerous on one hand, since I'm guessing CS is so popular precisely because of its timelessness, but also necessary on the other hand if we ever want to improve upon it.

if starcraft/starcraft 2 is any indication of what might occur, they'll just be treated as two completely different games.

There's a part of the website that states it'll be an upgrade to CSGO. I wonder if that means we're losing CSGO, or if there will be some sort of "legacy mode" that either retains CSGO as an option or simply shims its gameplay into CS2.

Starcraft 2 and 1 are very different games not slight variations of the same shooter

People still play 1.6 competitively so of course we will add one more flavor. Just like MTG players and new formats.

CS does change substantially between releases. The movement has gotten slower and less nimble since CS:Source and the AK/M4 primary dominance is markedly reduced in CS:GO.

CSGO has had a lot of work put into it. It's a very different game than when I started playing it (over 10 years ago). I remember it wasn't even developed by Valve, originally. It was developed by Hidden Path Entertainment. For a long time after it was released, CS 1.6 and Source were still more popular than it. None of the maps in the current Active Duty pool were included in the initial CSGO release. They've either been re-made from scratch or are entirely new. Every weapon other than maybe the knife has undergone balancing changes in terms of cost, reload speed, movement speed, accuracy, etc. Various new weapons have been added to the game. New game modes have been added, including Danger Zone, which is pretty much an entire game of itself. Battle passes have been introduced. Skins implemented. Etc., etc. - and 1.6 and Source are all but forgotten.

I think this is actually the key to understanding the significance of CS2. It looks very similar to CSGO. But, in 10 years time, I suspect many major changes will have been made that will distinguish it very much from CSGO, updates that would have been impossible if they'd stuck with the source engine.

Am I the only one who thinks the added "realities" to Counter-Strike have continually made the game worse? I feel like the simplicity and hard corners of 1.6 made the game fantastic for 5v5 gameplay and more competitive. I enjoy the lack of layers and features.

This was my first thought when I read about lighting appearing on smokes. I understand they want to upgrade the look but I'm worried that too much will take away from the stripped down feel that makes CS so popular.

I’ve been playing a lot of 1.6 at play-cs.com recently and enjoy it way more than csgo. I think cs source was maybe the sweet spot but I agree that the maps now are too busy and distracting and take away from the gameplay.

I prefer 1.6 as well. Nostalgia. I do love the simplicity, movement mechanics and simple map design.

This update makes it more stylized though

The brighter colors feel like a return to a style much more like 1.6. Source and GO always felt too far along the realism slider for the visuals for some reason.

CSGO has just had the most concurrent player count. The game is by no means dying or unpopular. I think the game is in a great state and valve seems to be delivering a lot of what people have asked for. Im intrigued by the new smokes.

I'm happy to see more game devs eschew realism for the benefit of gameplay. Does shooting a bullet clear a tunnel through smoke IRL? No. Does making it do that make for some cool gameplay? hell yes

We're also getting out of the 2008/Xbox era of FPS design where everyone was going for a gritty, brownish Desert War realistic look. Think early CS:GO or Gears of War.

Finally we can return to having some colours on ours screens other than dark yellow and brown.

"Sub-tick updates are the heart of Counter-Strike 2. Previously, the server only evaluated the world in discrete time intervals (called ticks). Thanks to Counter-Strike 2’s sub-tick update architecture, servers know the exact instant that motion starts, a shot is fired, or a ‘nade is thrown."

Not sure what it means but it's probably related to the rollback tech in the source 1 engine, which is pretty outdated.

It means they're increasing the granularity of the timeline of events in order to improve accuracy and fairness.

Yeah, I'm interpreting this as instead of sending an integer of the tick that something occured on, they're sending a floating number of when it happened.

I assume the float they send will have a limit in accuracy however. So really it's not like ticks are 'gone', they're just getting much much smaller.

The ticks aren't going away. They're just sending exact timestamps for movement so the server side view of a hitbox is more accurate when rewinding hixboes. The difference on 60 tick was sometimes large enough to miss headshots on faraway targets. It'd of course help if their clock sync and anti-drift measures were better now. It's NTP hard mode.

Is there a reason you would expect them to use floats here instead of fixed-point? I would naively guess the latter.

They just meant that things now happen within fractions of a time slice, instead of always landing on exactly 1/60th of a second boundaries.

does that make aimbots more effective?

Aimbots are already too effective, I doubt this changes much.

Shouldn't really make any difference, because they're already super effective with ticks. Having more fine timing accuracy doesn't drastically improve them.

I would assume it works something like this:

At the server, client input events exercise some localized net code layer on a purely ad-hoc basis (i.e. serviced in small batches the moment packets are received). Players involved in these interactions could receive immediate updates from the localized, ad-hoc simulation (i.e. "infinite" tick rate).

The global tick is responsible for synchronizing these ad-hoc buckets (i.e. the same player can't die to 2 different kill shots). Rollback would likely be required in some cases, but if the global simulation is ticking at 60hz and the likelihood of a rollback is low, I think it could feel really good.

Rollback is really the best lag compensation tech we have, trusting a client to a very small degree to tell their state of the world (or rather a delta to current) is much better than most other contemporaries. Call of Duty still divides your RTT by half at the start of a match and rewinds by that much. On connections with asyncronous latency this can be extremely impactful.

I’m not sure your information wrt Call Of Duty is correct.

To my knowledge, the client timestamps their inputs and sends them to the server; the server will then rewind the state of the world to the time of the input before applying it. RTT isn’t an input. Each snapshot from the server includes the server world timestamp of that snapshot; the client will gently lerp its clock to match this per frame.

Source - I’m a COD engine developer the last ~15 years or so.

Oh, I remember you from T5 debug messages. You are most certainly more knowledgable about this topic than me.

My info might be outdated, but I've noticed that on asyncronous routes, there seems to be a large bias that's based on on assuming upstream latency == downstream latency. It might just be the clock not getting adjusted (even most NTP imlementations make this assumption), but it also has been since ~T7 that I even checked. Conditioning the network to add ~40ms to downstream latency could actually reproduce this behavior.

People don't really realize how hard of a problem sub-10ms clock sync can be on cursed networks.

I wish some of these latest AI advances went into giving us better in-game bots so I can have fun playing on my own rather than be sniped by an expert player from half the game away who thought he would play on the newbie server for (his own) fun.

I might start playing FPS games again. I'm too old to compete with younger people with more time than me.

>I'm too old to compete with younger people with more time than me.

Excuse when young: No wonder I suck, I'm competing with grownups with better computers than mine.

Excuse when adult: No wonder I suck, I'm competing with youngsters with more free time than me.

Sorry, are we talking about videogaming? Or a career as a programmer?

everything is the same.

Haha, the sweet spot only lasts so long.

In CS GO you really get better with Practice.

I tried some Aim Practice Maps from the workshop. That helped improve my aim. Don't get that opportunity during the actual game.

I used to play for 30-40 mins a day, that wasn't sufficient time in game to improve. Especially against players who are playing for the better part of a day.

Could this also be achieved with a better rating system that automatically matches you with players of your own level?

That's game-able though, no? I know people can on CoD.

We’re a more than a decade into the arms race of “video game matchmaking is game-able” and “let’s try to counteract attempts to game the ranking system,” I wonder who is winning at the moment.

That's not a difficult problem to solve.

The difficult problem to solve is to find the right space between "Matchmaking results in the most skilled players being at the top of the ladder" and "Matchmaking results in fun matches."

The casual community for any game is much larger than the top-0.1% community, and cares a lot more about the latter than the former.

And by my understanding at least some time back the top-0.1% community is anyways outside the ladder system. On third-party services. So CSGO kinda should aim for the later.

CS does match making now. They had a few problems:

1. Small pool of active players so queue times could be long

2. They had a "gulf" where you got de-ranked down into lower tiers and it was a lot of good players in the bottom tiers that couldn't fight their way out to higher tiers with possibly equal players.

They fixed 2 with a re-calibrating a few months ago. They have 18 ranks now. I jumped up 5ish with the re-calibrate.

1. Small pool of active players so queue times could be long

CS:GO usually has 900k players online at any time? Yes not all playing MM but still...

Have you played some of the community FFA servers? If you choose hard bots, on most servers, the bots have inhuman reaction and accuracy.

But I guess your point is fair -- it would be much nicer to see bots that cooperate as well as they aim. Would allow much more realistic takeover scenarios to be played.

Yea, I think your second paragraph captures it. "Better" doesn't mean mechanically better at aiming. It means more realistic, and player-like behavior. Maybe also more more behavioral variance, so they don't feel like a team of 5 copies of the same person.

I remember superhuman bots in Perfect Dark. It was kind of fun to play against them sometimes (by setting traps and cheesing map geometries mostly) but it was not very much like playing multiplayer at all.

The hardest bot level on CS:GO already is more challenging than low- or mid-level players. To be fair, the level below the hardest is way easier. All non-wingman standard maps don't allow sniping over much of the map. Are you talking about a different game?

You're being too literal.

Offline play with bots lets you control the difficulty. Online play largely does not. Some people just wanna be John Wick for fun.

I suspect the concern OP was referring to was not that bots aren’t challenging, but to the sense they play differently than players do. There is overlap in what it means to be good vs players and bots, but there are also elements unique to one or the other.

Yeah this is the biggest complaint with bots. It's like a Chess AI. Sure the best Chess AI can absolutely dominate any human player, but they do it in an inhuman and un-fun way.

Like sure a Counter Strike bot can aim better and faster than me. But their positioning and overall strategic gameplay sucks.

Yeah exactly. It's the same for racing games; at the moment most bots are just allowed to cheat (racing games) or are just very good at noticing everything (cs bots), but they're not "clever" like a person is.

What we really want is a cs bot that actually has some tactics, but can also make mistakes. I'd love to feel like I've been tricked by the bot (ie they throw a smoke out a window for no good reason other than now I know they're in the building, so I approach the entrance to the building, only to be shot in the back because the bot has repositioned; it threw the smoke not to occlude, but to bait me), but also feel like I have tricked the bot now and then (ie being able to tell that the bot reasoned fairly well about what I was trying to do, but that I still outplayed it).

The CSGO ranking system is not that bad, most of the time you play with others on your skill level

Yeah the issue is how fucking toxic the CS community is. I'm usually pretty numb to people talking shit but my god, I always remember why I stopped playing CS every time I reinstall to play it again.

It has been toxic since I started playing cs way back in 2000.

Last I played was in 2018 I think. I don’t remember many problems, even on the Silver ranks I played. Maybe every third game or so, some griefer or abusive player would get voted off the team, which was fairly frustrating but not always catastrophic to the game.

Every third game one player would get voted off the team in a 5v5 game, and you don't remember many problems? That's a serious issue, it absolutely isn't normal.

They updated the game so that you don’t get a bot anymore. This greatly decreased the amount of vote kicking.

While the community is generally garbage, Valorant and LoL have even worse chats, text or voice. I get chill teammates more often in CS than elsewhere.

Sounds like singleplayer games would be more your speed.

Speaking for myself: yes. The only multiplayer FPS I ever truly enjoyed was L4D, and only because it's cooperative (I did enjoy Versus mode, but coop is where it shined for me).

The problem is that many military shooters don't (or didn't) have singleplayer, or what they did have was a simple demo for the MP mode. That sucks. I enjoyed the first iterations of the CoD and Modern Warfare titles because they were all about the singleplayer campaign, full of plot twists. I got tired eventually and no longer play any CoD or MW games, but that's a different issue.

If you had very specific periods of time you were interested in, it was even worse. There was a time when there was absolutely no singleplayer 'Nam FPS, only Battlefield: Vietnam, which a- sucked, and b- was multiplayer.

More than a decade later, and I'm still playing 1 game of l4d2 each weekend with the same people. It is such a great game. (We do play Versus).

That said, many things make COD less fun to me today than in the past, but the root cause is not having dedicated servers. Running into the same people and actually having that sense of community is completely gone now.

Mostly? I like the Assassin's Creed games, Witcher 3, Far Cry etc. I'd probably play more multi-player games if I lasted more than 30s and didn't have to sit out the rest of the round.

(Yeah, yeah "git gud" etc)

I play offline with bots exclusively. I'm older, have been playing CS since the beta days and no longer have the patience to play with real people and all their inherent aggravations.

The 'reimagined' blood and gore effects shown on the game's official website are truly abhorrent :(

My interest has been continually been drawn to team-based first-person shooter games (like Counter Strike) for their potential in terms of strategy, tactics and team coordination, but the gore is enough to put me off most titles immediately. I can see that some effects like blood stains can form part of the games' mechanics, indicating the direction from which a shot came, but what if one simply does not want to see these graphics? CS:GO doesn't even have an setting to disable them, and this is not unusual in the genre - I hope this sequel adds such an option.

Looks amazing to me. I wish the heads exploded and whatnot. Super satisfying.

You may find fun in Killing Floor 2. If wave-based horde survival shooter is your thing.

Maybe try Valorant which is a "cartooned modern take" on the CS model.

Valorant has an option to disable corpses, replacing them with little tokens on the ground that mark the spot of their demise. I think there's also an option to tone down blood effects, etc.

> [...] what if one simply does not want to see these graphics? CS:GO doesn't even have an setting to disable them [...]

Yes it does.

1. Open up your console by pressing the ` key

2. Type in the following command: `cl_blood 1`

3. Press enter

I believe that doesn't actually work in CSGO (possibly it works in local servers against bots, but not in multiplayer where people actually want to play).

Hence people making workarounds such as changing movement keys to both move and to execute the command that hides any already created blood (and bullets):

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=23635...

https://wewatch.gg/blog/how-to-remove-blood-in-cs-go-binds-f...

There are sites where you can purchase and download different world regions CD keys. I'd first remove CS:GO from your library completely (steam offers a way to do this) then activate the German version of the game. There is built in censoring for death/blood/corpse ragdolls afaik.

There used to be a low violence mode where players didn't die, they surrendered.

Apex Legends might be just what you are looking for — basically zero gore, extremely tactical gameplay with incredible team dynamics on good days.

Valorant is far more sanitized in this regard and very “candy”-ish in its gameplay. I suspect the skins, female characters, and this candy-ness are why so many women I know play it. Personally, I think it’s super cute!

>directional blood impacts (that fade over time) give you more information as you move through the world

I guess these blood splatters will indicate damage. That can be a great gameplay mechanic if I can gauge how much health a person has remaining who I have just shot. And who probably ran away.

I can plan my strategy accordingly.

Great work by the team. Let's see how it all feels when the game comes out. The new smokes will have a massive impact in competitive play, perhaps more so for the entertainment value which comes from all the live events throughout the year.

Good for Richard Lewis who pretty much put his reputation on the line by calling out the fact that the release was coming. [0]

[0]: https://richardlewis.substack.com/p/sources-yes-counter-stri...

I'm dubious about the changes to smoke. The volumetric stuff, is cool, but being able to shoot holes in it and blow it away with grenades is a really huge game play change.

I suppose they have to shake up the game a little, but the CS community is very stubborn about change. We'll have to see how they take it.

If you look at the video, the smoke slowly fills the void again. https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/apps/csgo/images/csgo...

I think it could be a cool new meta.

I'm for it, and I know a few older-generation players who are as well

Smoke grenades have been a sort of movable one-way mirror for too long; being somewhat counter-intuitive

I'm sure they had plenty of feedback on all new features from the selected pros. It doesn't necessarily mean the change is good, of course, but at least it can be reverted.

> I suppose they have to shake up the game a little, but the CS community is very stubborn about change. We'll have to see how they take it.

Just learn from CS:Source and pour more money into tournaments et voilà.

As someone who has been holding ramp on Nuke for like 20 years I'm glad the upgrade looks dope.

I've been hearing about Source 2 port of CSGO since 2015. Now I can't believe it actually happened. When I quit playing a few years ago I was at over 5000h played. I might add a couple hundred for old times sake

To put 5,000 hours into perspective.

There's only 2,000 hours in an entire year, if you work a typical 9-5 job, 5-days per week.

This would be like play CS as a full-time job for 2.5 years straight.

Play times are often wildly inaccurate for me because I leave games up and running over long periods of time. Especially games like Dwarf Fortress or Rimworld. I could have them running for literally days at a time with me only hopping in between meetings or something to advance things a bit.

I don’t play CS anymore so I don’t appreciate this firsthand. Besides the smokes, it looks pretty much the same. Do the physics feel different or something?

My understanding is that this is CSGO ported to source 2. I’m not clear on what the differences between the engines are, or if it was a rework of the original engine or completely new.

As I understand it, the real advantage is that it will make it easier to make and maintain mods and skins and things than the aged CS:GO version. So they want to make it so that it basically plays exactly the same except prettier.

Well the new smoke mechanics will definitely be a game changer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y9MpNcAitQ

The thing that always killed me about CS:GO was the lack of mods and custom maps. They exist, sure - but not in the amount and creativity that was available for CS:Source or CS 1.5 and 1.6

CS started as a mod so it only makes sense to have tons of cool custom maps

Agreed. I played CS back in the beta days and I loved the different maps and things like the hostage and even the VIP scenarios. I miss that variety. dust2 is good but how about that one where you were small and you could turn the gravity down so you could jump all over? rattrap? something like that.

CSGO does not cater to casual players at all. I hope that changes a bit with CS2. I started playing CS as a 24/7 cs_assault public server player before getting competitive.

The new tick system will mean physics will be the same for everyone in matchmaking and pro. Previously 64 and 128 tick had different physics for grenades. Now thats completely eliminated.

Haven't been this excited about CS in a while. I'm coming back baby!

Same! Heck yeah!!!

I have literally lost 1.5 years of college around 2001 - 2007 due to Counterstrike. We had a clan with several people in my dorm, and it was awesome. It was also around that time that I felt like I had a productive day if I did laundry, and I had to really force myself to remove it from my computer as I realised it was simply too addictive for me to start a few quick matches all day long.

In hindsight, I don’t really regret it, it was probably one of the last times in my life I could procrastinate like that and get away with it reasonably well.

It is nice to hear these story, just to know I am not the only one with Gaming addition problem in Uni / College. And I think 3-4 years into the society I stopped all gaming completely. Working Life is exhausting.

Linux thinclient as my dormroom desktop: some of my best grades semesters

Windows gaming machine: some of my flakiest semesters

Incredible that shortly after many of us went through this, professional competitive gaming could later be a considered career.

Yeah but only 20-30 people in any region make it as a pro player. The odds are just about as bad as being an NBA player. You didn't miss out on anything.

It was also a much more pure game back then - there were no cosmetic items (besides free skins you installed yourself from people doing them for free - some of which were insanely high quality and others were just insanely ugly but also hilarious). There were no achievements. It was just skill and gameplay.

I catch myself wishing for something that would mix the game up a bit - say, new or different weapons, or maybe a system where you could assemble your own weapon skins from multiple materials or customize parts individually for different looks.

Then again, playing it safe because it's a popular competitive game title is probably a good idea and the improvements sound really good! Seems like a great way to modernize the game without changing it too much, while bringing people's items and such forwards.

I think subtle changes are going to go a lot farther in this game. In particular, I'm imagining the smoke changes are going to be a bigger change than they seem...

Absolutely! Seems like there is a counter-effect to smokes (throwing a HE grenade), one could imagine something similar will happen with other grenades too. For example, maybe flashbangs ends up being dampened by a smoke as well, or something like that.

This exactly. CS has a ton of established theory built in. Some of these changes are kinda equivalent to "pawns can take in front of them" level of disruptive to the established understanding/meta.

I'm fascinated about communities who play the same game for decades and don't want any changes to "the meta".

Is CS truly so good that any change which forces someone to re-learn the ropes is unwelcome? Do they want to keep playing the same game for another decade?

I think in general the community can try games like Overwatch, Apex, Valorant, COD, BF etc. And be pretty certain that most of the features and game mechanics from those wouldn't really make CS a better game.

I think they probably want to keep CS at least on core level same for more decades. It has been around this long so something must have been done right.

But at some point, playing the same videogame with the same meta starts to feel boring, right?

I know the obvious answer is "well, chess hasn't changed (much) and people play it for their entire lives". And yes, I would eventually find chess boring too!

It's kind of like comfort food. CS has variants like gungame and deathmatch, you can have modded servers with alternate damage, fire rate, recoil, low gravity, or even mods that change it entirely and turn it into a zombie horror game or an RPG. And those are fun, but ultimately I want to return to the game I know and love.

Chess is the obvious comparison, but also so is any major sport. There hasn't been anything significantly changed about Soccer, Basketball, Baseball, and so on, in a long time as well and most people don't have issues with that. Once you eliminate changing the game rules you're left with only trying to develop your own personal skills.

I don't know anything about CS, but in the Starcraft scene the meta is always evolving because new maps come into rotation that push players to develop new strategies. I guess LoL does something similar by adding new characters.

Yep, even something as small as a magazine capacity change or price for the AWP has huge effects on team strategy

Our awper ran out of bullets the other week forgetting the magazine change lol. Definitely changes the round dynamics as he can't hold the same and has to be more judicious.

(CS dropped from 10 bullets to 5)

And this is what CS devs understood over similar FPS of that era. Other game studios would always rewrite their game from scratch and create new balance mistakes and issues (looking at you tribes) while CS made incremental improvements where knowledge typically wasn't lost between generations of players and could be passed down.

So...technically this is the 3rd entry in the series, right? Game immediately disappears as Valve cannot count to 3

Counter-Strike

(Counter-Strike: Condition Zero)

Counter-Strike: Source

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

Counter-Strike 2

It's all pretty confusing.

Counter-Strike 1.6

Condition Zero (1.7)

Source (1.8)

Global Offensive (1.9)

Counter-Strike 2

It makes sense if you think of it like this:

CS - 1.5

CS (Steam) - 1.6

CS: CZ - 1.7

CS: Source - 1.8

CS: GO - 1.9

CS - 2.0

I'm hoping it's a jab at Overwatch 2 because that was also just a major update that replaced the current game, but not different enough for many players to agree it warrants a "2", and CS2 is going to be a major update that replaces CSGO.

This is unorthodox but will it have something like func_vehicle in the original Counter-Strike?

Discovering “fun maps” servers gave me a second wind with that game long after I was no longer a twitchy teenager doing 5v5

HL3 when???

Jokes aside, Valve does awesome work. Proton alone is a gift. Steam as a platform is best in class.

Reminder: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Valve_Time

Pretty amazing how well the core concept of Counter-strike still holds up today. Really looking forward for the technical articles which will supersede this launch.

It's hard to believe CSGO is already over 10 years old. I remember back at launch people were complaining that this was just CSS aimed at console-plebs (it actually had ports for the xbox 360 and PS3) and a lot of diehard Counter-Strike players were swearing they'd stick to CSS. There were of complaints about headshots being too easy because the hitboxes were a little larger than in CSS.

Valve did an amazing job listening to feedback and supporting their product; I know there are still a lot of people who stick to CSS and even CS 1.6 and I don't mean to de-legitimize their preferences, but today it does seem laughable to suggest that CSGO is just CSS for casuals.

I'm one of those that still launches CS:S instead of CS:GO. My main reason - the dedicated server browser by default and non-core gamemode popularity seems to be better. (surf, custon gg, ..).

I also disliked the loot boxes and skins. That said, I've also sunk in a lot of time in GO.

Don’t really play competitive FPS so I dont know if that smoke tech is novel or not, but it sure does look cool as hell.

>Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) is a 2012 multiplayer tactical first-person shooter developed by Valve

So that is a free upgrade after 11 years. How are they suppose to make money?

Edit: Thank you for all the replies. No idea CS GO have loot box and cosmetics IAP. My impression of CS is still stuck in the 1999/2000 era.

It is also amazing how long they kept the game running online. I guess since it is not a RPG there is very little things to store. Keeping running cost low.

Purely from a Graphics POV Source is definitely showing its age. Not that it matters as much for CS players.

How are they suppose to make money?

Whales bring in far more money than upgrade fees.

it's a free to play game. they literally print money on cosmetic items.

I would be willing to bet that a single day of lootbox profits would be more than an entire year of game sales.

You sweet summer child. CSGO is INSANELY profitable. Valve makes free money on every single cosmetic purchase, and takes a cut of EVER COSMETIC 2ND HAND MARKET SALE OR TRADE.

Specifically 2nd hand sales that take place on their marketplace, which is Valve's own cash store. Players can still do items-for-items trades for free and that powers a lot of third party markets where there is no Valve cut.

Really cool to see Valve finnaly announce CS 2 but it's somewhat sad knowing this will be the last CS..

Did they say that somewhere or are you just thinking that will be the case since valve isn’t doing tons of releases these days?

OP is referring to a common joke that Valve doesn’t count over 2.

Half Life 2

Team Fortress 2

…

Woosh - went right over my head. Haha okay yep I’m tracking

Don't forget CS2: Episode 1!

Is it just me or as the quality of the game improves, it's more difficult to spot the enemy? In CS 1.6, if you have a cop/terrorist standing against any wall, you definitely will notice it (mainly because walls/buildings/whatever didn't have that much quality regarding details). But in the video of CS 2, since the quality is so great (both for cops/terrorists and for the rest of the maps), somehow I think it's kinda difficult to distinguish others. Like in real life I guess?

I think you're right and it's generally a problem for gameplay. Real life scenarios often involve a lot of hiding and waiting. If a game becomes too realistic it starts to simulate that which leads to a boring game.

I had this experience when I played COD 4 (2007). It definitely felt different than the usual scanning for enemy player models.

The situation was even worse when Valve added custom skins players could buy. Some of those skins blended in with their background a little too well. Their initial "solution" was to add more lights to the maps to brighten them up, but that approach is obviously not great so they added a system to boost player model contrast dynamically against the environment [1].

[1] https://imgur.com/gallery/P37nKBs#o3QNSgs

If you check the video on maps they made everything brighter and made aesthetic changes to improve acquisition, so it was covered.

Back when CS: Source came out beta access was offered to CZ owners. I found it worth it to buy CZ just for that access, and in those few months people made some wild maps to test the new physics engine.

If there's a point to my story it's that the beta time is a special time. I haven't ever experienced that feeling in a game since. Physics is just meh these days. You never see those early maps anymore. Make sure to save whatever custom maps pop up in this beta and keep them in a time capsule!

> As a result, regardless of tick rate, your moving and shooting will be equally responsive and your grenades will always land the same way.

Is this a signal that they will reduce tick rate? Based off what they said, what would the reason be not to?

I’m familiar with tick rate as a user but I’m not sure how it manifests in the code/hardware. Like, if it’s some setting they can easily change or if it’s the consequence of something else. I wonder if they can easily reduce it to lower costs or something.

Valve is getting rid of tick rate entirely. Here is a video which explains it briefly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqhhFl5zgA0

Interesting, I will watch that when I get a chance. Maybe it addresses some of these thoughts already.

I wonder how much this is just reframing the concepts though. It kinda seems like they are just increasing tick rate tremendously because the type of system we call tick rate has changed.

I mean, there has to be some interval at which the game is updated right? Wouldn’t that be the tick rate?

There is no such thing as removing tick rate, the video is confusing, I think it's improvement with rollback and also gameplay improvements with how grenades work etc ...

Sounds more like rollback netcode to me. You can’t just remove tick rate.

The concept of "rollback netcode" is something that generally only applies to fighting games, shooters with dedicated servers use lag compensation instead which just means that, every time you shoot someone, the hit detection is done on the server but the server rolls back the player's position depending on your ping to make sure their position roughly matches what you saw when you shot. CSGO2 is just improving this so the rolled back player positions can be interpolated between frames instead of only being able to roll back to wherever a player was on an exact tick, which is what it currently does.

Definitely not. Games operate in a loop: gather input, run update (tick), and then render the frame.

The problem with the above is when sub-frame timings matter. What they're doing is being smarter about how they're calculating things.

Eg: A 'naive' approach to movement could be:

  forward_pressed() {
    moving_forward = true;
  }

  update_position() {
    if (moving_forward) {
      pos += time_since_last_update * player_speed;
    }
  }

But an approach which would improve timings is:

  forward_pressed() {
    forward_pressed_at = time.now();
    moving_forward = true;
  }

  update_position() {
    if (moving_forward) {
      time_since_pressed = forward_pressed_at - time.now();
      if (time_since_pressed < time_since_last_update) {
          pos += time_since_pressed * player_speed;
      } else {
          pos += time_since_last_update * player_speed;
      }
    }
  }

Except things are more complicated as you need to consider exact position someone was when someone else pressed the shoot button, etc.

To answer grandparent's question: They'll likely reducing tick rate to save server costs. However they can't lower too much without having noticeable effects for systems which don't account for sub-frame accuracy.

Nits: Above is a simplification and theoretically you could do things differently, but as this is in Source Engine 2, they're definitely using ticks still.

Aren’t you describing frame rate? Tick rate is different; it’s when the server synchronizes state across clients

Frame rate is often an interpolated and predicted view over a fixed tickrate.

We'll have to see whether there even still _is_ a tick rate. Afaik you only need ticks if you need to simulate something in your world that needs iterative updates, such as objects following a complex motion that doesn't have closed-form movement equations. I can't think of anything like that in CS, so basically all the events can just happen at arbitrary times, and the server and clients will still know the world's state at any other point in time just from extrapolating from the start time. Take e.g. grenades. So far they were updated through iterations at either 64 or 128 ticks per second, with both having a slight divergence from an actual parabola (the 64 tick variant diverging more than the 128 one), since between the ticks the moment would only be interpolated. That meant that nades were behaving differently depending on tick rate. Now, the grenade just has a start time and start vector, and you can know exactly where it is at any point in time using the closed form movement equations for an object in parabolic flight.

Not all source engine games play nice with variable tickrates but CSGO mostly does, that's why you can play on either 64 or 128. With this change to hit detection though, 128 tick will probably become redundant so 60-70 will probably become the standard across both casual and competitive play. I doubt they will reduce it under 60.

So....anybody work for Valve and want to get me in on this?

I do not have a ton of CS:GO playtime unfortunately but I do have an assload of CS:Source along with probably even more playing CS 1.5 and 1.6 (started in the early beta days). Also worked briefly as a video game tester and now I do system infrastructure - definitely good at finding bugs and gameplay improvements :-)

https://steamcommunity.com/faqs/steam-help/view/5ED2-ED8E-81...

So....anybody work for Valve and want to get me in on this?

Looking at announcement video that makes emphasis on smoke: have they ever seen smoke? Effect of a smoke grenade?

They stole their homework from Overwatch. So no. But yes.

All kidding aside --

This type of unrealistic smoke adds a new mechanic to the second-to-second gun play, where small mechanics like this can be used to turn the tide of a game by a player simply understanding the game, and how to take advantage of its mechanics, better than other players. Personally, I think "unrealistic" mechanics like this are what make competitive games, well, competitive.

I'm reaching an age where I don't have the twitch reflexes to compete on that alone, so I'm all for mechanics like this which give "game sense" players a boost.

It is not meant to be a real life smoke grenade, its meant to be a gameplay mechanic. This new smoke grenade is great because it introduces counterplay and tactics.

Smokes in CS right now are one of the areas where people don’t love the current implementation.

A few patches ago if you had your settings right you would get a competitive advantage on smokes due to the way they were rendered.

This new rendering feels more like Valorant and ultimately for CS players everyone in my playgroup is excited about the new smokes. They seem better to play with

I'm very surprised they aren't prioritizing the Linux build during the test.

I get most players are still on Windows, but Valve literally have a Linux console, and they've ported essentially all their games to Linux.

If Valve don't even prioritize Linux, why would other devs?

My expectation was actually a Linux-First-Approach to push Linux and the Steamdeck.

Delaying tests on Linux feels really bad because this means we will unnecessary bugs upon release.

Eh, this'll be cool but I hope they've changed a bit more than just getting parity with graphics/effects from more than 10 years ago.

We talk about bad games companies like EA, Blizzard, etc. But Valve is honestly taking the piss as well. They literally do nothing except prey on people with microtransactions/shoving lootboxes & gambling down childrens' throats.

The problem is, they do all the above for pure profit; there's not even the benefit of all that dough funding beloved games sequels or improving their services.

Tbh I'm more excited for whenever the hell the next (source 2) gmod is going to come out.

I am probably in the minority with this, but I would love for CS2 to have VR support

Now for the love of all that is holy: revert or fix the weapon sounds! Half of the reason I love Apex Legends is the sound engineering and how it contributes to the experience and satisfaction of the overall gameplay.

You might be getting what you wish for:

"Counter-Strike 2 sounds have been reworked to better reflect the physical environment, be more distinct, and express more game state. They have also been rebalanced for a more comfortable listening experience."

https://counter-strike.net/cs2

It's funny because "audio bugs" are one of the most frequent complaints in the Apex community. But that's probably just because the players have gotten so used to depending on spatial audio when it works properly, that they get especially frustrated when it doesn't.

I've always found the complaints about audio weird. It almost seems like something that plagues consoles or low end hardware? I only say this because I'm a day 1 player of Apex and can maybe think of a half dozen that audio has failed me, but for known things like the super quiet Octane pad landings having no audio or prior to Ashe's ultimate being made louder. But if you go to the Apex subreddit, especially daily threads there are dozens of users complaining about it as though it is a pervasive issue that everyone should care about. Is it random, but I've been lucky? Is it poor hardware? Is it only on consoles?

Doubly interesting knowing that both their engines are descendants of Source.

Valve is usually pretty good at sound, atleast it is in Dota 2. I can follow an entire game with only sound effects (I also did play the game for 10 years, which contributes).

I recently got back into CS (CS:GO) after over a decade long "hiatus". I've been enjoying it, but I really do miss some of the community servers and banter.

I know there's a community server browser, but if I search for UK servers, there's only a couple and they are all empty. What happened? I used to join 64 player university servers and the chat was half the fun. Now it's all Russian language and it feels so lonely.

I think it all got lost in the auto-queue/matchmaking stuff, and it's a shame

Wow, that's graphically impressively unimpressive.. That smoke effect looks like a proof of concept from 2003 (by someone who either didn't know what wind is, or didn't have the processing power to do it).. The fire from molotows look better in Postal 2.. It's almost as if a new generation of gamedevs are starting from scratch, not building upon, but re-inventing everything from scratch (but with higher system requirements)

I love Counter-Strike. Played 1.5, 1.6, (Not Zero), Source and Global Offensive.

Of course with changes there are things that you don't like at FIRST, but you learn to get used to them.

Except for the R8 Revolver in Global Offensive. Of all the realism in this game they put in a revolver where we need to wait to cock the hammer and we cannot keep it cocked. It does NOT make sense at all. Feels like some kind of Gauss gun that needs to charge and shoot at 100%, but if you don't make it to 100% nothing happens.

For anyone who doesn't like waiting for rounds to finish, try the Deatmatch mode! Its surprisingly fun! And more friendly to casual players.

Hope it remains free and easy to run on light laptops

I second this. From my youth where I just couldn't afford a better pc, to now where my gaming pc has been off for half a year again because I can't be bothered to switch computers, the relative undemanding nature of Counter Strike has been part of the core identity of the game and reason to stick to it for me.

(And of course it's just nice for as many people as possible to be able to play it)

This is amazing. This is truly a solid upgrade.

Will there be a battle royale mode, or have we finally moved past the trend of adding one to every new FPS game?

CS:GO already has this, it's called Danger Zone

I like what I am seeing here. Same game but better. I don't want to sound inflammatory but CS: Source felt like the only iteration that didn't feel right. Graphics were much better but I wasn't satisfied until CS:Go. It's basically CS with the Left 4 Dead 2 engine build.

having seen gameplay of some csgo personalities, it seems like the game looks and feels different but still plays more or less the same.

there are some silly bugs, but over all not too bad so far. can't wait to test myself, but at least the subtick system does not seem that much impressive.

i really hope they optimize the performance a bit as i see people getting signifcantly lower fps than before (i get 400 is still a lot, but we are talking about people getting 600+ in csgo). although staring inside a volumetric smoke does not drop fps like it used to in the current version.

Variable tick-rate, volumetric smokes, Source 2 engine. It will be AMAZING!

sub-tick updates is interesting. Remember it being a source of frustration 15 years ago, wonder how they're working around it.

How do we get early access?

https://steamcommunity.com/faqs/steam-help/view/5ED2-ED8E-81...

Will people be able to build on the engine like the original? I used to love playing the Day of Defeat mod (ww2 themed) and could definitely see mass appeal for that on top of this new engine.

I never thought I would be excited to play CS again, but here we are...

I'll playtest the new Reverse Gungame (read: Arms Race) for as long as you want me to if I can get enrolled :)

Hope the issue with weapons not being assigned in the right order will be fixed...

It is good that they will be keeping the same skins in the new engine

I made a bet that they would and my skins have increased about $40k in value over the last two years :P

I didn't realize Valve was still actively developing new games aside from Dota. What was the last big non-Dota game they did? Portal 2? CS:GO?

Half Life: Alyx

Artifact came after Dota

Valve made a game again!

TF2 when :)

15 years ago.

TF3 when?

A few years after half-life 3?

I’ve been replaying Portal 2 on the switch with my wife and Valve games really are something special. We need more of them. I want to play HL: Alex so badly but can’t justify the price of the VR headset, personally.

There is only one feature I would need to see changed to get me into Counter-Strike again. Remove the loot boxes. At least make the game itself not include a slot-machine. Ideally, do something about the third-party gambling websites.

The page says

> Bring your entire CS:GO inventory with you to Counter-Strike 2

So, that's not ruling it out, right? (Yes, I am aware that this is essentially asking for the money tap to be turned off)

As long as the loot boxes don't impact actual game play, I personally don't mind. I don't care for my weapons to have a certain skin, so loot boxes doesn't impact me at all. Although without them, Valve would probably have to start charging for the game again, and that feels unlikely. Plus they probably earn more money on CS now than they ever did before so yeah, unlikely.

Hopefully EU will make them illegal, its basically gambling for kids.

Even of it does get legislated as a form of gambling, I can see it continuing in CS behind some sort of age gate. I think it's more of a per-country thing.

Real gambling is very legal in many EU countries.

I don't really understand what's your problem with that? It has close to zero impact on actual gameplay.

Considering it's how this game makes money and it's very effective at that, I highly doubt your wish is becoming a reality.

I actually like how you can trade all the skins with other players, so if you don't enjoy gambling but want the skins there is a really convenient option.

Not OP, but I’d really like to have “No skins” switch.

Having all sorts of rainbow, golden skins ruins immersion for me.

they'll never do this because one of the main drive to buy cosmetics in multiplayer games is to show off to others

>ruins immersion for me

Maybe Arma is a better fit?

The visual improvements definitely make me curious about logging in again as an old guy with glasses now

Those smoke effects are beautiful!

Is it just me, or does the added colour saturation on some of the before/after pics make CS2 look like Fortnite?

I'd say it's a lot closer to Valorant than to the max-saturation graphics of Fortnite. But I think they found a good balance, it still looks like you can take the world seriously imho.

Nah Fortnite is much more vibrant especially since the new Unreal engine update https://youtu.be/O6GC8TZbJmI

It’s more colorful for sure but still looks “pale”

The saturation and brightness looks overdone in my opinion. Too unrealistic and cartoonish.

It's an attempt to solve "player readability". It's common complaint in CS:GO. Many pros play with color vibrance cranked in driver or monitor settings.

the new gui reminded me of Valorant.

That would hardly be a bad thing in my opinion, given that Fortnite looks fantastic

I gave up on FPS games that use spray patterns.

Makes no sense to aim at your feet to shoot an opponent after memorizing the spray pattern, or missing an opponent after shooting at them point blank for 3 seconds.

Reminds me of Morrowind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNXYrAkUntU

you won't miss point blank unless you are moving :D

source: my CS movement sucks

It’s certainly unintuitive, but surely it isn’t necessary for video game mechanics to map directly onto real world actions to be interesting.

The way I see it, the other two options are to have random spray patterns or have every shot be perfectly accurate. Both of those seem worse than current spray patterns.

Really it's a style thing. Arena shooters like Unreal have plenty of perfectly accurate weapons, but they have totally different mechanics to support that.

Something like CS where the TTK is basically instant certainly can't have that, but at the same time I don't think it'd be "patterns" if it was done today. Changing something that fundamental at this point though would probably lose you the scene, as it's just "part of the game" at this point, and if you don't like it there's plenty of other options.

Apex has relatively low TTK, and uses spray patterns, because it's trying to be a competitive, modern, high-skill-ceiling shooter, where it's possible to waste a year of your life on memorizing and compensating for them.

The reason is because they want to remove randomness from the game, so player skill is the deciding factor in winning a fight. It's actually the exact opposite design from Morrowind, where it was inspired by the randomness of tabletop RPGs.

So if the shots aren't randomly distributed in a cone, and aren't perfectly accurate, and aren't a fixed spray pattern...what exactly is left?

Make the gun move… but follow the gun with the reticle. So you still need to adjust for recoil but the bullets actually go where you are aiming

Games have tried that before, it's extremely jarring to have your cursor/camera shake around without your input, and depending on how it's done it makes visibility suck.

Why not tap or burst instead of spraying then? "click heads", as they say.

Because hitscan everything makes it too easy

Man this has been in the talks since at least 2015. Dota got Source 2 in 2016...

Aww, I wish this was coming to consoles but get why it's not.

Why is their main point a smoke? Seriously, so many more could have been done.

Because this is a big complaint from the current player base?

Do you play? I do and these new smokes will absolutely shift gameplay and I think towards faster more dynamic games.

The smoke looks cool, but is there a way to play without cheaters?

People have been wondering if this would come with better management of cheaters, but it looks like it's unclear. The main reason I picked Valorant over CSGO is mostly because of how well they deal with cheating. But I think CSGO might be the better game, as Riot doesn't really seem to have good judgement when it comes to introducing meta breaking changes.

It's CS2 not CSGO2?

they're so close to just giving us what we really want and that's HL3, at this point I'd just take HL2 Episode 3 to round out the story of Episode 2.

I don't like the updated aesthetic, looks too cartoony.

oh you're one of those guys who wants to take us back to real life through computers?

This is exciting. Guess I need to build another windows PC.

Me too!

Valve ships all their games on Linux and Mac, so you don't need to run Windows.

>Can I participate in the Counter-Strike 2 Limited Test on Linux or macOS? [1]

No. The Counter-Strike 2 Limited Test is only available on Windows.

I'm sure this will change with an official release though.

[1] https://steamcommunity.com/faqs/steam-help/view/5ED2-ED8E-81...

Wouldn't Proton let you run the Windows version?

Have you tried to play CS:GO on a Mac? I can tell you that it does not at all feel the same as a PC.

If you wish to participate in CS2 testing however, you do need Windows

I was hoping being a seasoned CS:GO player on Linux might bump me into a niche to get a ticket, but alas - Windows only for now

The way smoke moves out of the bullets way is comical

It's always somewhat baffled me that Valve didn't do more with the CS brand, and instead allowed Call of Duty and (to a lesser extent) Battlefield to be the go-to FPS games.

Valorant, CS:GO, Apex are the most streamed FPS according to https://gamesight.io/leaderboards/fps-games.

The counter strike player base is really massive.

Is CoD and BF really more popular than CS? Hard to find numbers for CoD and BF, but CSGO currently have 1,000,000 online players right now, ~0.5 million viewers on Twitch. CoD Warzone + CoD MW 2 has ~50k viewers on Twitch, but unable to find number of online players, but I cannot imagine it being 1 million if there is only 50k viewers on Twitch.

If you play on consoles sure...

I hope they don’t turn it into Modern warefare

Shouldn't this be Counter Strike 5?

looking at the before/after of the scenes, looks like it went from action movie to a tourist brochure

Is this an official Valve project?

I kind of miss the 1.6 version :(

Please do Day of Defeat next!

Imagine Garry’s Mod.

So, S&box which is already made on Source 2 and already made by Garry?

As a Garry's Mod veteran, S&Box looks like something entirely different. Although Garry says it's a kind of sequel, it doesn't look like it is. It's more like a meta game engine. Or metaverse (god I hate that word.) I don't expect it to be a hit sadly.

S&box is so confusing to me coming from a guy who through early GMod releases released something as soon as possible and released updates frequently.

It's the complete opposite strategy. Do nothing for several years, and then hope people buy it when it comes out.

You took the words right out of my mouth. I think Garry overcorrected and became a perfectionist concerned more with the code and engine than making something that people will want to play.

Garry's Mod was fun because it was silly. It was far from perfect but we were happy putting thrusters and balloons on jeeps and flying around. He's lost sight of that it seems. He wants to build something perfect and I fear that's going to make it a sterile experience.

that's a fair point, but it's not exactly an audience of none. there's a fairly large play tester base. it's just invite only.

after GMod was launched on Steam with much better support for Lua scripting, what we call Garry's Mod grew into just one game mode (the sandbox gamemode). with S&Box, I think Garry's idea is that the GMod sequel is just one of the game modes. he/they are focusing on the developer platform first and foremost.

I think there will be a GMod 2 gamemode that resembles what we remember (balloons, thrusters, etc)

amazing, it's everything we dreamt it would be

Source is showing its age, just switch to Unreal already…

It’s not like Valve makes games anymore.

Given unreal is owned by their biggest competitor theres little to no chance of that happeng. Valve arent really a video game developer anymore, they just tinker on the side for fun.

Granted, last time Valve released a proper game was in 2020 (Alyx), but to say they are not a developer anymore isn't super fair. They take their time, and their priorities probably are elsewhere, they still do develop games.

Valorant, CS:GO's closest competitor, is in Unreal and looks similar. These games are going for high framerates and running on the majority of PCs, even ones with integrated graphics. Switching engines wouldn't do them any favors, and it would severely cripple their modding tools.

I haven't followed CS for some time so I might be missing something key about this announcement... but to my eyes the graphics and effects look smooth, but strangely outdated. The smoke effects look like something that would be exciting a decade ago, and the characters move awkwardly and unnaturally.

Nothing about new weapons and shooting model, it will be the same arcade joke

it's a game not a shooting simulator? and one of the most successful at that. i'm not sure making it more realistic would achieve anything at all

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