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www.m--b.blogspot.com

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Creators: John "teh_destroyer" Brand
Senya "The Great One" Sohounov.

Other

• Counter-Strike equipment
• Counter-Strike maps
• List of Counter-Strike Maps
• Counter-Strike culture
• Broken Arms Gordon
  
• Cheating in Counter-Strike
• Half-Life
• Steam
• List of Half-Life mods
• Counter-Strike: Condition Zero
• Counter-Strike: Source
• Counter-Strike Neo
• Surfing (Counter-Strike)
• First-person shooter

ABOUT

Counter-Strike was released on June 18th, 1999 as a modification (mod) for the popular game Half-Life. It pits a Counter-Terrorist team (CT) and a Terrorist team (T) against each other in a variety of exotic and urban environments. It features three game modes: Defusion where T players plant a bomb and CT players defuse it, Hostage Rescue where CT players attempt to rescue hostages, and Assassination where T players attempt to kill a VIP that the CT players must protect. Counter-Strike is currently the most popular online action game available, even though it technically isn't even a game on its own.

Half-Life, released in November '98, was hailed as "Game of the Year" for its outstanding single player, but the multiplayer side of the game was never that popular until Team Fortress Classic and the Software Developers' Kit (SDK) were released. The SDK allowed programmers and artists to create modifications for Half-Life. Modifications, or mods, are common in First Person Shooter Gaming titles. Counter-Strike is a mod for Half-Life, and originally required a copy of Half-Life (HL) to play.

Jess Cliffe, a student, created the website for Minh Le's newest mod, Counter-Strike. Minh Le, known as Gooseman online, had previously worked on Action Quake 2 and Navy SEALs for Quake. Cliffe, who uses his last name as his online handle, was a webmaster of a Action Quake 2 map site and had developed an online friendship with Minh when he was working on that game's models.

Cliffe eventually helped more and more with the design of Counter-Strike before release; Minh was the main member of the CS Team. Minh did all the modeling, skinning, and animating for Counter-Strike, along with coding with knowledge he gained from Simon Fraser University. The maps were handled by those interested in the mod, not by a dedicated mapping team. Indeed, the core CS Team consisted of only two people. And while Cliffe did much to help design Counter-Strike, his main duty was with the website and PR stuff.

Counter-Strike's website, hosted on Planet Half-Life, built up much anticipation for the mod, which looked like the most complete mod in the HL community. This relatively new community had few mods in development at the time. Of course, partly due to Counter-Strike's success, Half-Life is a very popular target game for many mods.

Counter-Strike's first version was BETA 1; "BETA" software is software that is not final or software that is incomplete. This trial phase, basically an excuse to allow the CS Team to change anything it wanted to, continued until November of 2000 when version 1.0 was released. At that stage, Valve Software, the developers of Half-Life, took over development of Counter-Strike. At this stage, Valve released Half-Life: Counter-Strike which is also called CS Retail.

Minh and Jess still contribute to Counter-Strike's development, but only in designing the game and not actually programming or modeling. Still, many of the changes we see in our modern versions of Counter-Strike can be attributed to their choices. It's anyone's guess as to who is actually "in charge," but it is certain that many of the more daring changes (such as the slow-down after jumping in CS 1.4) were designed by the core CS team.

Counter-Strike is currently the official game of the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL), a company that houses two or more US-based LAN competitions a year that give out tens of thousands in winnings to competitive CS teams, or clans. Because of this, Counter-Strike has a large e-sports following full of clans that are very skillful and players that are dedicated to their craft. The online counter-part to the CPL, the CAL, is responsible for most online CS competition. Most players, however, aren't in clans and just play on public servers (sometimes called pubs) for fun.

Minh has developed Counter-Strike 2, which uses the new Half-Life 2 engine—dubbed "Source"—developed by Valve. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Jess graduated from Virginia Tech in 2003 and currently works for Valve in their Bellevue offices.

Player models

Corresponding player models for both Terrorists and Counter-Terrorists have appeared through development. The following eight are the original models which were to be (or are in the process of being) reproduced in CS:CZ and CS:S. Condition Zero also added two additional models; the Midwest Militia for Terrorists and the Spetsnaz for Counter-Terrorists.

Personally, I recommend:

Firstly, all players on one team should choose the same skin. As Terrorists you should choose the Elite Crew model. And as Counter-Terrorists, the GIGN model. "5 guys popping in and out 1 at a time will look like the 1 guy if you all have the same skin. Elite Crew is the skinniest and hardest to see model most of the time, and the GIGN model has the smallest head for Counter-Terrorists."

Counter-Terrorist models

All names are taken from real groups.

• SEAL TEAM 6- First appeared in initial CS beta - "ST-6 (to be later known as DEVGRU) was founded in 1980 under the command of Lieutenant-Commander Richard Marcinko. ST-6 was placed on permanent alert to respond to terrorist attacks against American targets worldwide.
• GSG 9- Added in CS beta 6 - "GSG 9 was formed out of the tragic events that led to the death of several Israeli athletes during the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, Germany."
• SAS (Special AirService) - Added in CS beta 5 - "World-renowned British SAS was founded in the Second World War by a man named David Stirling. Their role in WW2 involved intelligence gathering behind enemy lines and executing sabotage strikes and assassinations against key targets."
• GIGN - Added in CS beta 3 - "France's elite counter-terrorist group, the GIGN, was designed to be a fast response force that could decisively react to any large-scale terrorist incident. Consisting of no more than 100 men, the GIGN has earned its reputation through a history of successful ops."

Terrorist models

All (understandably) fictional.

• Phoenix Connexion - First appeared in initial CS beta - "Having established a reputation for killing anyone who gets in their way, the Phoenix Connexion is one of the most feared terrorist groups in eastern Europe. Formed shortly after the breakup of the USSR."
• Elite Crew (L337 Krew prior to CS 1.6) - Added in CS beta 3 - "Middle Eastern fundamentalist group bent on world domination and various other evil deeds."
• Arctic Avengers - Added in CS beta 6 - "Swedish terrorist faction founded in 1977. Infamous for their bombing of the Canadian embassy in 1990."
• Guerilla Warfare - Added in CS beta 6.5 - "A terrorist faction founded in the Middle East, this group has a reputation for ruthlessness. Their disgust for American lifestyle was demonstrated in their 1982 bombing of a school bus full of Rock musicians."

Other models

• Hostage - used in maps prefixed 'cs_' (eg: italy).
• VIP - Used in maps prefixed 'as_' (eg: oilrig)

Official maps

as oilrig cs 747 cs assault cs backalley cs estate cs havana cs italy cs militia cs compound

cs office cs siege de airstrip de aztec de cbble de chateau de dust de dust2 de port

de inferno de nuke de piranesi de prodigy de storm de survivor de torn de train de vertigo

Unofficial maps

• de_rats
• fy_pool_day
• fy_snow
• scoutzknivez
• awp_map
• fy_iceworld
• aim_ak-colt
• Awp_map
• surf_map (where the player "surfs" down a ramp then jumping from that ramp to another)
• "kz_" Levels where players try to climb to the top of the level before anyone else
• "ka_" Levels where players can only use knives

ABOUT/REQUIREMENTS:

teh basics

Developer(s)
Valve Software
Publishers
Vivendi Universal (PC) Microsoft Game Studios (Xbox)
Engine
Half Life engine (Goldsrc)
Release date(s)
June 19, 1999 (Original Half-Life MOD) November 8, 2000 (PC) March 25, 2004 (Xbox)
Genre(s)
First Person Shooter (FPS)
Mode(s)
multiplayer
Rating(s)
ESRB: Mature 17+ (M)
Platform(s)
PC, Xbox
Media
CD or Steam Download
System requirements
133 MHz processor, 24 MB RAM