markus’ blog

Counter Strike: Source

November 2nd, 2004

Having played CS:S for about 2 weeks ocassionally now I’m already seeing things here and there I’ld like to see being changed.

First, I’ve never played CS. I was one of those who choose the Q3-Way, and one of the games on this was a TC called Urban Terror. Due it’s nowadays outdated engine, UT cannot cope with todays 3D games. However it’s not the graphics I like about UT: it’s how the game feels. And it feels good.

I’ve read that many pro-gamers are not satisfied with CS:S, they call it “not better then the beta” or “still beta”. I guess they’re right, it’s always in the eye of the beholder. For me it’s not beta at all. Still, yes it has a serious bug with mvoeable objects and physics, see further down.

Let’s start ranting a bit about CS:S :

Physics:

• Blocking objects

  No game currently (except for Max Payne maybe) feels so real when it comes to objects and physics. Lets’ welcome CS:S. However, there’s a major drawback which leads to very much frustration during gameplay. The objects tend to either block or push back the player in certain cases. Both are pretty annoying because for me, as a player, I see no reason why I cannot jump without problems over a filing cabinet on the floor or why running against a barrel should push me back.

Movement:

• Climbing

  Actually, not implemented. I like climbing. I like reaching places beyond the normal path in a map. Jumping is nice and ok. UT implemented this and I must say, it’s really a cool feature. Climbing works like this: if you reach the edge of any object, and you press and hold the jump-key, your player climbs up the edge. It costs time, it’s slow, it makes noice to nearby players can hear you. It adds more for the tactics.

Graphics:

• Glass refraction

  If you compare D3s glass refraction to those of CS:S you’ll see that the refraction of D3 looks much better. It almost feels real. The glass in CS:S looks like it has a simple environment mapping applied to it, much like it’s done already with the Q3 engine in the past. If you look at the D3 glass effect, you can see how the scene behind the glass is distorted, adding more realsim to the scene.

  So much rant, I know. So don’t let us forget how great the glass breaks into it pieces, how you hear when you go through a half-broken glass in a window. Extra bonus points for this one. Still ;)

That’s it for now.

Update 26.Nov ’04:
Now that I’ve played HL2 a bit I’ve seen that Source of course can do the same kind of refraction D3 does with glasses. They’re just not using it for normal windows.

Entry Filed under: Games