CS:Source Beta. Pretty and lacking monster-stuffed closets.

[Fabricated]

Hey, ragdolls that don't turn into pieces of modern art! Ion Storm take note!



As for the gameplay, here's everything I noticed that's worth mentioning:

-Source is very, very pretty. Moreso than Doom 3 IMO, but I think that's mostly because I can actually see what the fuck I'm doing.

-Source is also very very fast. Doom 3 runs around 25-60FPS with no AA at 1024x768 on High Detail. Source runs at 35-100FPS at 1280x960, Max detail, 4xAA, 8xAnsi, on a full 32+ player server.

-Flashbangs fucking rock your world now. They make your vision desaturate and ghost, along with knocking your hearing out. Flashbanging someone doesn't mean that they're mildly irritated for a second before they blow your brains out anymore, it means they can't hear or see shit for a good 6-8 seconds if you land it right.

This does however result in everyone buying at least one flashbang, turning the start of every match into a grenade war.

-Dust is littered with strange stacks of random physics objects, like empty milk cartons, bottles, and other debris, along with some tires and barrels. The physics of the barrel and tires are calculated serverside so they can actually provide cover, whereas the other physics objects are not.

[NiX]

I was bored and surfing through gamespot when I found an article for Source. It does look very nice. There's a video at gamespot of Aztec which is worth a look. The way bullets make water splash made me wet myself. I'm tempted to go and buy CZ just so I can beta this.

[SurfD]

Sooo, umm, are you going to tell us how WE can get in on some of this beta goodness?

Edit: Doh, just checked www.steampowered.com for news, and it seems only players of CS:CZ or people with the Ati/HL2 bundle currently have access :(

That is the ONLY thing that pisses me off about my AIW-9800 Pro purchase.  No halflife 2 voucher with that card :(

[Arcadian Del Sol]

amazing. I want that right now.

[TripleDES]

The physics of the barrel and tires are calculated serverside so they can actually provide cover, whereas the other physics objects are not.

Adding a bit of tech babble:

While the server simulates the game physics just as the client does, information exchange happens only on physical invokations on either side. Each client keeps its own physical environment, there's just a bit of sync between the server and client. If networked physical items get hit by bullets or collide with other physical objects, there's an information exchange. Otherwise both client and server seperately on the physics. Static collision objects like walls don't cause communication between client and server (unless you turn on terrain deformation, which Source supposedly supports).

Other objects like bottles and all that are purely client-side, since they don't affect the game. But mainly because of bandwidth reasons. While you could hurt someone by knocking a bottle over the head, making these objects networkable isn't viable, since you cant pick them up and throw, and chances an explosion will make bottles rain on someone are too low. So the tradeoff here would be keeping them strictly client side.

[Alluvian]

REALLY looking forward to HL2 and Team Fortress 2.  I have been avoiding going out and looking for information, but what is the current story with TF2?  Is it launching with HL2 or coming later?  Is it still going to be included in the purchase of HL2 (assuming I get the multiplayer moddable version of HL2 and not the crippleware one).

[Megrim]

Hey, ragdolls that don't turn into pieces of modern art! Ion Storm take note!

As for the gameplay, here's everything I noticed that's worth mentioning:

-Source is very, very pretty. Moreso than Doom 3 IMO, but I think that's mostly because I can actually see what the fuck I'm doing.

-Source is also very very fast. Doom 3 runs around 25-60FPS with no AA at 1024x768 on High Detail. Source runs at 35-100FPS at 1280x960, Max detail, 4xAA, 8xAnsi, on a full 32+ player server.

-Flashbangs fucking rock your world now. They make your vision desaturate and ghost, along with knocking your hearing out. Flashbanging someone doesn't mean that they're mildly irritated for a second before they blow your brains out anymore, it means they can't hear or see shit for a good 6-8 seconds if you land it right.

This does however result in everyone buying at least one flashbang, turning the start of every match into a grenade war.

-Dust is littered with strange stacks of random physics objects, like empty milk cartons, bottles, and other debris, along with some tires and barrels. The physics of the barrel and tires are calculated serverside so they can actually provide cover, whereas the other physics objects are not.

One of the things to note, is that CS:S only runs one map, de_dust. It's the least complex (visually and structurally) of all counterstrike maps so current framerates aren't good an indicator of what to expect.
Although i expect some heavy optimisation from the cs team before they whole thing goes live.

As far as the sound thing goes, HEs (or 'frag' grenades as they are now called) also knock out sound, and have generally been made much more deadly.

There have also been some pretty heavy changes to the recoil of certain weapons. Hitboxes and player animations are best described as suspect at  the moment, and thei netcode still needs a lot of work, but overall, for those of you interested in the "olololololol buttse!!!1!!~~1!oneoneon!1" side of multiplayer, it's definitely worth checking out (mind you, CS: Condition Zero is also a pretty darn good remake of counterstrike).

 - Meg

[MrHat]

REALLY looking forward to HL2 and Team Fortress 2.  I have been avoiding going out and looking for information, but what is the current story with TF2?  Is it launching with HL2 or coming later?  Is it still going to be included in the purchase of HL2 (assuming I get the multiplayer moddable version of HL2 and not the crippleware one).

If I remember correctly, TF2 is shipping w/ HL2 and should be completely badass.

A note on CS:Source - I was getting a pretty constant 40-50 FPS and pinging about 70ms on a 20 person server last night.  One thing that bothered me to no end is it seemed that the netcode itself was laggy, I mean, if you have ever played any of the Novalogic Delta Force games online, the sprite themselves seem to skip frames or 'lag' just slightly and it makes the whole experience disjointed.  Has anyone else playing CS:Source experienced this or is it just my rig? Cuz if it's my rig, I'll be very happy with what I saw.

[TripleDES]

REALLY looking forward to HL2 and Team Fortress 2.  I have been avoiding going out and looking for information, but what is the current story with TF2?  Is it launching with HL2 or coming later?  Is it still going to be included in the purchase of HL2 (assuming I get the multiplayer moddable version of HL2 and not the crippleware one).

Coming later, will cost the price of a seperate game but probably integrate into an existing HL2 install.

[Rodent]

Wait, I thought TF2 was about as mythical as Duke Nukem Forever at this point?

[ahoythematey]

I suppose a bigger sticking point than that is, assuming TF2 is actually released, will it really be as "uber-revolutionary" as originally intended, seeing as many, many current games have voice-chat, vehicular mayhem, tactical gameplay yadda yadda yadda.  On the other hand, I suppose it doesn't hurt even if it's just a really pretty version of Team Fortress.  I just hope they give it a return to the batshit crazy-physics of the original Team Fortress, or at least make it speedier than classic, something similar to Quake3Fortress's speed level.

[Trippy]

Wait, I thought TF2 was about as mythical as Duke Nukem Forever at this point?

It's slightly less mythical than DNF in that Valve has said they will make an announcement regarding TF2 after HL2 ships. Of course that announcement could just be "it's not done yet" -- we'll just have to wait and see.

[TripleDES]

I just hope they give it a return to the batshit crazy-physics of the original Team Fortress, or at least make it speedier than classic, something similar to Quake3Fortress's speed level.

What you need is the Source port of TFC (called TFC:S, duh).

TF2 will be some tactical game with realistic physics. At least that's what they're suggesting. Supposedly they worked on it in parallel with HL2.