[HN Gopher] Play Counter Strike 1.6, with full multiplayer, in t...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Play Counter Strike 1.6, with full multiplayer, in the browser
        
       Author : philosopher1234
       Score  : 768 points
       Date   : 2023-02-02 16:00 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (play-cs.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (play-cs.com)
        
       | thisisnico wrote:
       | This is my childhood and much of my teenage-hood!
        
         | hackernewds wrote:
         | CS made me lose my college scholarship
        
       | kept3k wrote:
       | The best FPS. I've been playing COD on PS5, but it is not the
       | same.
       | 
       | The game play is so much better, and more intense in Counter-
       | Strike:
       | 
       | * Respawn points are consistent
       | 
       | * You have to manage money
       | 
       | * It gets intense when you are the only one left on your team
        
         | npteljes wrote:
         | To me, Rainbow 6: Siege was a good follow-up. They solved a lot
         | of the issues I had with CS (and COD), like stupid movements
         | using jump, nothing to do after you die. They integrated some
         | inevitable things into the gameplay itself: peeking pixels
         | became a legit strategy, and now you can even make your own
         | peekholes because of the destructible environment. You can use
         | fixed and mobile cameras to gather intel, and share that with
         | teammates, even after death. And the gadgets add a lot to game
         | too, in regards to play style. I guess R6 it's not as sterile
         | feeling as CS, so I understand if someone likes one and not the
         | other, but to me, it renewed the fun for a good 700 hours.
        
         | anthk wrote:
         | Playing an FPS on a console sucks, sorry. The best handling
         | it's a kb+mouse because of the precision.
        
           | doodlesdev wrote:
           | You can play the most recent COD using keyboard and mouse in
           | the PlayStation. Quite a few games where that's relevant
           | allow it nowadays [0].
           | 
           | [0]: https://gamesbustop.com/ps5-games-that-supports-
           | keyboard-and...
        
       | zactato wrote:
       | I remember playing one of the early CS betas as a Half-life mod
       | in ~1999. It was such a huge leap in gameplay and style from
       | anything else out there.
       | 
       | Most FPSs up to this point were SciFi based, guns like the BFG
       | and plasma guns. Counterstrike's focus on realism really altered
       | how you connected with the game. Columbine had happened very
       | recently and was still very much in the zeitgeist. There was a
       | very real cultural attack on video games as a scapegoat for the
       | massacre.
       | 
       | My friends and I would build CounterStrike maps that were the
       | layout of our highschool and would then run around and shoot each
       | other. This was very taboo at the time. We knew that this would
       | be interpreted as threatening by the powers-that-be at
       | highschool, but it was exciting.
        
         | stanmancan wrote:
         | That's around the time I started playing too. I still go
         | through phases where I'll get really into a new game. I don't
         | have the reaction time of the younger generation but the skills
         | built up over decades of gaming allows me to stay competitive.
        
         | timeon wrote:
         | There were also several other mods, like medieval one.
        
         | geph2021 wrote:
         | We knew that this would be interpreted as threatening by the
         | powers-that-be at highschool
         | 
         | These days that kind of behavior, if reported to law
         | enforcement (mandatory reporting in some cases), will get
         | investigated with the potential for criminal charges, and
         | likely school expulsion.
        
           | sneak wrote:
           | I wonder if that's legal, given that mapmaking is protected
           | expression, and a recent ruling saying that (public) schools
           | can't police protected expression off of school grounds.
           | 
           | Without a clear expression of threat, I don't think simple
           | mapmaking is sufficient grounds for a terror threat charge.
        
             | vuln wrote:
             | > simple mapmaking
             | 
             | It's not simple mapmaking though is it? It's creating a map
             | inside a video game to simulate school grounds.
             | 
             | Drawing a map of the school and putting it in a frame on
             | your wall? Fine.
             | 
             | Drawing a map, recreating it inside a first person shooter,
             | then spending hours playing (training) memorizing the map?
             | I believe anyone could see that as a terroristic threat.
             | 
             | Edit: Example Legos. Having a Lego model of the US Capital?
             | Fine
             | 
             | Have a Lego Capital, attend the Jan 6 protest, have books
             | and other militia type information? Probably going to get
             | questioned by the feds.
             | 
             | https://www.businessinsider.com/fbi-took-lego-set-of-
             | capitol...
        
               | lstamour wrote:
               | I think you might also need to consider the context
               | though - well before the thought of a "school shooting"
               | was an annual occurrence. If schools had metal detectors
               | it was for knives or worst case, a hand gun. And guns
               | themselves are not universally liked or practiced with. I
               | seriously doubt someone would suggest that playing an fy_
               | map is grounds for practicing anything except video
               | games. Extending a video game to reproducing a school
               | ground or neighbourhood seems natural - when I wanted to
               | make my first text based game, I tried making it about
               | different rooms of my house, for example. People often
               | want to model the world around them just to see if they
               | can.
        
               | vuln wrote:
               | What about the context of flying a commercial airliner
               | into a skyscraper?
               | 
               | Moussaoui enrolled in a flight simulator training course
               | at a Pan Am facility near Minneapolis, Minnesota. Pan
               | Am's Minneapolis facility used flight simulators only,
               | and the training there usually consisted of initial
               | training for newly hired airline pilots or refresher
               | training for active pilots.
               | 
               | https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/archive/speci
               | al/...
        
               | jml7c5 wrote:
               | It's a Cessna rather than a commercial airliner, but
               | slamming a plane into landmark buildings was not tabo or
               | out of the ordinary pre-9/11:
               | https://youtu.be/ssig3LUCwng?t=4m35s.
        
               | lstamour wrote:
               | Again, context. That's actually a training course. And a
               | plane is mostly computerized. So it makes sense to not
               | train for emergency situations up in the air in a real
               | plane. If Counter-Strike were used for actual training,
               | and maybe it was somewhere, then I'd agree this breaks
               | the rule. But I would never say that making a map means
               | wanting to plan something in real life. It just doesn't
               | mean that, even if it looks that way. A game like CS is
               | generally not actually a training simulator, it's just a
               | way to waste time with friends, etc. You don't actually
               | get any real world feedback or exercise or anything. I
               | would argue actually playing paintball at school would be
               | riskier, though... it also sounds like fun. Maybe it's a
               | question of harm or intent?
        
               | protocolture wrote:
               | It is in fact, simple mapmaking. And fun. You have to
               | project your own fears on to it to make it any more than
               | that.
        
               | [deleted]
        
           | mywittyname wrote:
           | Kids got in serious trouble for this back then too. I'm not
           | sure I could find a article, but I do remember hearing about
           | it happening in the news (post columbine). I'm pretty sure
           | the kids who committed columbine also did this with a Doom
           | level editor. So rightly or not, school officials would see
           | this as copy-cat behavior.
        
         | Legion wrote:
         | > My friends and I would build CounterStrike maps that were the
         | layout of our highschool and would then run around and shoot
         | each other. This was very taboo at the time. We knew that this
         | would be interpreted as threatening by the powers-that-be at
         | highschool, but it was exciting.
         | 
         | I think every budding DOOM and Duke Nukem 3D map creator made
         | their school at one point. Of course, that was years before
         | Columbine (despite the inclusion of DOOM in the Columbine
         | finger-pointing), and nobody thought twice about it then.
        
         | anthk wrote:
         | Doom users did what you say on creating real life based
         | environments before, to be honest. And, yes, FPS where scifi
         | based but the Delta Force series had more realism than CS
         | itself.
        
           | zactato wrote:
           | Sure there were some real gun mods in doom, but the gun
           | sprite resolution was crap, the limitations of the engine
           | added limitations to map design and while multi-player was
           | possible it wasn't anything like the post-quakeworld era.
        
         | howlin wrote:
         | > My friends and I would build CounterStrike maps that were the
         | layout of our highschool and would then run around and shoot
         | each other. This was very taboo at the time.
         | 
         | I had a friend that was the victim of a local news "expose" on
         | this. Just a harmless high school geek who thought it would be
         | fun to combine the School blueprints with his CAD course to
         | build a "fun" way of digitizing the blueprints.
         | 
         | The main lesson we learned from this exercise is that the Duke
         | Nukem 3D pistol is totally OP when used in realistically
         | proportioned hallways. Auto-aim and all.
         | 
         | The other lesson we learned is that local news investigative
         | reporters care more about a compelling story than to represent
         | the mundane truth.
        
         | rco8786 wrote:
         | > My friends and I would build CounterStrike maps that were the
         | layout of our highschool
         | 
         | Ah yes, forgotten artifacts of an innocent past.
        
           | danuker wrote:
           | They could have argued it was self-defense training :)
        
           | proser wrote:
           | Naive feels like a much better word than innocent.
        
         | naet wrote:
         | I wanted to make a map of my high school for CSS but I thought
         | it would be too taboo in the post columbine world, so instead I
         | made a version of my parents house with some added ladders.
         | Honestly it was great fun playing with my friends who had been
         | over and knew the real life layout. Hiding in the closet or
         | peeking out the back window into the yard for flankers was
         | great!
         | 
         | I miss map making. The hammer editor wasn't the best but it was
         | simple enough to figure out, and I actually had some old
         | blueprints of the house layout that made it easier to get
         | things to scale. I don't think many newer games like Call of
         | Duty have the same community spirit of community servers,
         | community maps, etc.
        
         | gzalo wrote:
         | We also built a similar map while in high school in the late
         | 2000s, no one really complained (keep in mind I'm not from the
         | US). Some of our teachers quite liked it though. We just viewed
         | it as a familiar location (albeit with secret tunnels, lifts
         | and higher ceilings), it had no particular negative
         | connotations.
         | 
         | I still have it, you can view some screenshots and download the
         | bsp here: https://gzalo.com/en/projects/cs_electronicaort/
        
           | pezezin wrote:
           | I was in high school in 2001 when Counter Strike exploded in
           | popularity in Spain. We also discussed to make a map of our
           | high school, one teacher even got us the floorplans! Mind
           | you, this was one year after a guy killed all his family with
           | a katana and the media blamed it on games. Still, nobody
           | thought we were criminals. The benefits of living in a mostly
           | peaceful country I guess...
        
         | darkwraithcov wrote:
         | I remember creating a map of my high school in the Build engine
         | for duke3d.exe matches. This was before Columbine, but every
         | outsider, nerd kid had fantasized in a similar way.
         | 
         | We got our aggressions out on deathmatch, but it never occurred
         | to us in a million years to actually hurt people IRL. We hated
         | the jocks and the preps with the burning passion of a billion
         | Wolf-Rayet stars, but never thought to hurt any of them, we
         | simply accepted our lot in the genetic and social lottery and
         | hoped to get revenge later in life (so far so good, judging by
         | facebook).
        
         | ddtaylor wrote:
         | > My friends and I would build CounterStrike maps that were the
         | layout of our highschool and would then run around and shoot
         | each other.
         | 
         | There was a small netcafe nearby when I was young that had a
         | good quality T1 connection and hosted their own CS servers.
         | Some of the players got together and actually mapped out the
         | entire netcafe store itself and some of the surrounding area to
         | create a "de_" style map.
         | 
         | This meant you could be playing CS and spawn in the same room
         | that you were actually sitting in.
         | 
         | I can still remember vividly as a 14 year old playing the game
         | and completely dominating a room full of 20-something older
         | guys in the other room. They didn't know who I was and every
         | time I would stomp them they would yell "FUCK" from the other
         | room. Eventually after a series of absurd kills they angrily
         | stormed over to our room in a hostile manner ready to fight and
         | 100% convinced I was somehow cheating. The look on their face
         | when they realized they were "prepared" to fight a kid and the
         | realization as I openly allowed them to inspect the PC for
         | whatever they thought was modified on it was hilarious.
        
           | sholnay wrote:
           | The only cheat I needed was my bindings, which I stored on my
           | website so I could download at the cafe ;)
        
           | monktastic1 wrote:
           | > a good quality T1
           | 
           | Oh man, I remember the good ol' days, when a 1.5 Mbps
           | connection was _unthinkably_ fast. I imagined only God
           | herself had a T3.
        
             | akiselev wrote:
             | That was when I discovered the magnificent beauty of
             | symmetry.
        
               | tiahura wrote:
               | And more importantly for gaming, low latency.
        
               | Legion wrote:
               | LPB, Low Ping Bastard.
        
               | sholnay wrote:
               | haha! wow memories.
        
             | manual89 wrote:
             | I remember the days when I tried to play Quake on my 28.8
             | modem over the net pre-Quakeworld.
             | 
             | Almost made me swear online multiplayer off for life.
        
       | latexr wrote:
       | The "perks enabled" icon1 looks like the Pocket logo23.
       | 
       | 1 https://i.imgur.com/JKzbRTV.png
       | 
       | 2 https://i.imgur.com/mqGh2X3.png
       | 
       | 3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocket_(service)
        
       | squegles wrote:
       | Wow, this is a throw back! Thanks for sharing
        
       | aroman wrote:
       | Does anyone know what they're doing for multiplayer? WebSockets
       | or WebRTC?
        
       | bastardoperator wrote:
       | I just played for a couple of minutes, it's a little rough but
       | still fun.
        
       | thedudeabides5 wrote:
       | amazing, thank you
        
       | grapescheesee wrote:
       | I recall installing CS from CDs. I was so excited to play, but my
       | internet was so slow it took basically the rest of the day to
       | download the updates. Then, when I got into the game, some
       | servers had mods and maps to download which took forever.
       | 
       | Needless to say, once I was playing I felt so gradified and cool.
       | My dad brought home a 'flat' CRT a few months later from his
       | work. It felt life changing at the time.
       | 
       | A while later, I thought it would be fun to try out some of the
       | cheat packs.. It didn't take more than 15 minutes for a ban.
       | Still have a VAC ban on record with Steam. 6,400ish days ago. Its
       | an odd reminder, and badge of honor.
        
         | dopeboy wrote:
         | At a LAN party I hosted, I'd typically demolish my friends at
         | CS. So one time, unknown to me, they installed a hack on their
         | side (aimbot?) and always started headshotting me. I remember
         | getting flustered (I was and am a competitive person) and then
         | just broke out laughing.
        
         | Hikikomori wrote:
         | A cousin brought me a CD with cs beta 0.6, had not heard about
         | the game before that. Spent several days downloading a half
         | life patch on 33.6k modem. Recall having very low fps (p1
         | 133mhz) and 200ms ping. Also tried out hacks later on but made
         | sure to do that on servers without anti cheat enabled.
        
         | kaldev wrote:
         | Still have a VAC ban on my account for 5402 days from 1.6.
         | Never downloaded cheats and no idea how I got it. I'm kinda
         | proud of it now but was devastating at the time. Still astounds
         | me knowing that my account has been around for that long.
        
       | dzonga wrote:
       | it crashed for me: firefox on ubuntu
        
       | _boffin_ wrote:
       | This is amazing. i can't seem to get the mouse to work though.
        
       | arduinomancer wrote:
       | Are there any modern games that recapture the same magic of CS
       | 1.6 custom maps?
       | 
       | It feels like custom maps aren't as big a part of gaming now days
       | for some reason
        
         | jayd16 wrote:
         | Probably Minecraft and Roblox mods but it helps to be a kid I'm
         | sure.
        
         | kirse wrote:
         | By the end of my CS 1.6 days I loved those Nipper maps,
         | Hookmod, Warcraft mod etc.
         | 
         | It's mostly the console gaming experience has taken over with
         | few outlets for modding. FPS kids these days don't know what
         | it's like to precision aim with a mouse or have a piece of
         | clear tape stuck to their CRT so they can 360 no-scope w/ AWP.
        
       | fareesh wrote:
       | Hmm it loads wav files for sound effects - is the file size
       | savings minimal at that length?
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | aceazzameen wrote:
       | This reminds me of the days when I used to have an ATI graphics
       | card with a TV tuner!
        
       | eptcyka wrote:
       | Crashes firefox.
        
         | JimWestergren wrote:
         | Worked for me but without sound.
        
           | squegles wrote:
           | Same for me.
        
           | Fil0sOFF wrote:
           | Setting media.autoplay.block-webaudio=false in about:config
           | enables sound for me. Sound is crackling though. It happens
           | when audio output sample rate is not 44100hz according to
           | their forums.
        
         | AndrewUnmuted wrote:
         | I am running 108.0.1 on nixOS and it played great.
        
           | eptcyka wrote:
           | 108.0.2, also nixOS.
        
         | __henil wrote:
         | crases for me as well.
         | 
         | I am running firefox nightly version 109.0a1
        
       | 0xbadcafebee wrote:
       | Lan party is really the only way to play CS 1.6. Easier to spot a
       | cheater, and then you can all duct tape him to his chair for the
       | rest of the game.
        
         | caogecym wrote:
         | Have fond memory of LAN party. My childhood city had a lot of
         | net cafes, some big ones have 3 floors with each floor about
         | 100 people playing.
         | 
         | During new year holidays, I could spent 10+ hours everyday with
         | my two uncles playing CS 1.5 there, having meals at our
         | computer desks. The contrast between super cold outdoor (-20
         | degree Celsius) and cozy warmth indoor provides extra sense of
         | satisfaction.
         | 
         | My younger uncle was so good at it that we could hear one
         | frustrated player from another side of the floor shouting at
         | the game server manger asking to kick my uncle's player out.
        
       | bagels wrote:
       | Is this legal? They want my social login for something that might
       | be piracy?
        
         | eukara wrote:
         | It is not.
         | 
         | To clarify, this mixes proprietary code with GPL code from id
         | software. Valve has spoken out about the engine used [1] before
         | and has barred it from being used for mods on Steam.
         | 
         | [1]
         | http://web.archive.org/web/20160701071741/http://www.moddb.c...
        
           | andrewmcwatters wrote:
           | At Planimeter, back when we were "Team Sandbox," we ran into
           | similar issues when attempting to publish Half-Life 2:
           | Sandbox.[1] People can still find the source and game code on
           | our repository listings from when we migrated off Google
           | Code.
           | 
           | Valve Business Development did not give us the go-ahead.
           | 
           | Notably, we were the first usage of LuaJIT in the Source
           | Engine, and we think that later GMod caught up to us. But you
           | couldn't use native Lua modules prior to then. Only with our
           | mod.
           | 
           | Half-Life: Update failed for the same reasons we did, and
           | also our team was in our 20s when we were about ready to
           | publish, too.
           | 
           | [1]: https://github.com/Planimeter
        
             | eukara wrote:
             | Wow! Fascinating. Source needed a open-source sandbox thing
             | from the beginning. Can't believe things went the way it
             | did - but it doesn't surprise me. The original HL SDK
             | license also prohibited you from releasing anything but
             | game-code in object form. Thank you for this effort.
        
       | 8s2ngy wrote:
       | Wow! this brought back a whole lot of memories. I spent countless
       | hours of my childhood on de_dust, de_dust2, the Italy map and the
       | pool one. I still remember the "Roger that", "Fire in the hole",
       | "Follow me", and so on. Playing this on my _constantly-virus-
       | riddled_ Windows XP computer is one of my earliest computer
       | memories.
        
         | RGamma wrote:
         | And so many servers had the Quake sounds
         | https://youtube.com/watch?v=6duy25F8lpo
         | 
         | Really cool in gun game. Also, the vehicle maps were a blast :)
        
       | hardware2win wrote:
       | Cs 1.6 and surfs/kz/easyblocks/hns <3
        
       | nodomain wrote:
       | I feel old now. Thanks.
        
       | deeteecee wrote:
       | nice, you even brought my 500+ ping lag back into the mix.
        
       | jasonm89 wrote:
       | More players are playing this version than there are on steam.
        
         | henriquecm8 wrote:
         | The web version has around 800 players now.
         | 
         | Steam version has around 14k players right now.
        
           | jasonm89 wrote:
           | Do you have a way to see active players? I started up 1.6 in
           | steam a week ago and tried to find servers with active
           | players.
        
       | whoomp12342 wrote:
       | well that was fun. a little choppy but fun
        
       | sergiotapia wrote:
       | it's been over 15 years but b43 came back instantly, woah!
        
       | gwill wrote:
       | this would have been great during high school. we had to install
       | it to thumb drives in order to play.
        
         | capableweb wrote:
         | My son specifically got into computer security as he found it
         | more fun to figure out how to get around various security
         | policies and whatnot in his school in order to figure out how
         | to play games (with CS 1.6 being the most popular at his school
         | at that time).
        
         | Insanity wrote:
         | That brings back memories. We put the files on a shared network
         | drive in highschool (windows computers) to which we had access
         | during our IT classes.
         | 
         | We had teachers who'd let us stay in the classroom over breaks
         | to play the game, lol.
        
       | bogwog wrote:
       | Played this for a bit but ran into some trouble with the key
       | mappings. CTRL to crouch means that I can't really press anything
       | else without causing firefox to ruin the game.
       | 
       | * CTRL+R (reload) causes the page to refresh
       | 
       | * CTRL+W (walk forward) attempts to close the current tab
       | 
       | * CTRL+S (walk backward) opens a dialog to save the current page
       | 
       | * CTRL+D (walk right) bookmarks the current page
       | 
       | Luckily firefox shows a confirmation dialog before refresh or
       | closing the tab, but that causes the game to freeze until you
       | dismiss it.
       | 
       | Also sound didn't work at all
        
         | nerdponx wrote:
         | If there's ever a case for an Electron app, maybe this is it!
        
           | cypress66 wrote:
           | An electron app for cs 1.6? I assume this is sarcasm.
        
             | cal85 wrote:
             | Why?
        
               | outworlder wrote:
               | Probably because, if you want to have an app anyway, why
               | don't you just install the native game?
        
               | yakshaving_jgt wrote:
               | Probably because differences in CPU architectures make
               | that impossible. CS 1.6 won't actually run on MacOS
               | afaik.
        
         | wbobeirne wrote:
         | If you install the page as a PWA then it will be able to
         | prevent those shortcuts https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
         | US/docs/Web/Progressive_web...
        
         | bee_rider wrote:
         | It is too bad esdf lost to wasd as the convention for FPS
         | controls. Then we could have the unimportant qwazx keys on the
         | left, instead of all these special keys like control and alt.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | cl3misch wrote:
         | CTRL should work correctly in fullscreen mode
        
         | yamazakiwi wrote:
         | That's good to know, I haven't been able to try it yet, maybe
         | map crouch to C and use your thumb?
         | 
         | Edit: It looks like it has a notification to use C while in
         | windowed mode
        
           | ddtaylor wrote:
           | Unfortunately for most of us Counter-Strike players the idea
           | of remapping any keys is a non-reality at this point. We've
           | been playing the game for 20 something years and our brain
           | has accepted keys as they are.
        
             | yamazakiwi wrote:
             | I guess that's what happens when you play using the same
             | configuration for 3000 hours of playtime. Fortunately, you
             | don't have to remap keys since it's already mapped to ctrl
             | and c, but you would have to remap your brain.
        
         | rollcat wrote:
         | Say what you like about Apple, but having all these functions
         | on the Cmd key instead is not just more logical, it's actually
         | _sane_ (doubly so for the terminal). I think MS has missed an
         | enormous opportunity when they introduced the Win key; and X11
         | desktops, toolkits, and apps imitated the more familiar (rather
         | than the better) solutions.
        
           | skunkworker wrote:
           | Personally thumb + C and thumb + V on apple keyboards always
           | felt a lot easier than pinky finger + C and pinky finger + V
           | which just felt and still feels weird.
        
             | zerd wrote:
             | Cmd+Shift+T is fine to hold to re-open a tab, but
             | Ctrl+Shift+T makes my hands hurt on a regular keyboard.
             | It's also annoying to have to switch between Ctrl+C to copy
             | in normal apps, but in a terminal that would cancel the
             | command, so you have to do Ctrl+Shift+C there. On a mac
             | keyboard it's always the same. I've tried to use e.g.
             | autohotkey to get the same consistency but it's rather
             | annoying (need to inspect which window is active, sometimes
             | doesn't work).
        
           | l2silver wrote:
           | Try zooming in without a right click button. It's fun!
        
           | arcanemachiner wrote:
           | I will concede that for once, Apple's insane keyboard
           | mappings actually work in their favor.
           | 
           | But I still won't get them any credit, since it is purely a
           | coincidence that their mappings happened not to mess with
           | this one browser game.
        
             | victorbstan wrote:
             | What's insane about a standardized key mapping that is
             | predictable across apps and works? On windows you can never
             | be sure what any key combo will do from app to app.
        
             | bobbylarrybobby wrote:
             | It's a whole extra button, how is it a coincidence. (Yes
             | windows has the windows button but it isn't a modifier in
             | the same way.)
        
             | outworlder wrote:
             | > it is purely a coincidence that their mappings happened
             | not to mess with this one browser game.
             | 
             | Not really a coincidence and that's not the only scenario
             | where it's preferable to have a dedicated command key
        
               | jml7c5 wrote:
               | It is a sort of coincidence that Apple decided the pinky
               | finger button should be control rather than command. The
               | other way around and crouch-jumping would be more
               | difficult and you'd want to rebind it... but you would
               | then run into the same keybind overlap issue as
               | experienced on Windows/Linux.
        
             | LordDragonfang wrote:
             | The control key was designed with the intent of subtracting
             | 0x60 (or 0x40 if you assume the base state is caps) from a
             | character code to send a _control code_. It 's not some
             | coincidence that "ctrl-c" sends an interrupt on the
             | console, if you take a look at any ascii table[1] you can
             | see it was _designed that way_.
             | 
             | Repurposing that key to instead perform unrelated arbitrary
             | commands is the insane move, and it only seems normal
             | because you grew up using Windows and never thought to
             | question it.
             | 
             | Apple's mappings make much more sense, especially with both
             | OSs having a Meta key.
             | 
             | [1] https://www.asciitable.com/
        
             | shepherdjerred wrote:
             | It comes in handy in terminals as well. You can use CMD + C
             | to copy, CTRL + C to send a code.
        
           | outworlder wrote:
           | One thousand times this. Even though there are exceptions, it
           | makes for a far better experience. Even as I am writing this:
           | control+A is Emacs-like keybindings, goes to the beginning of
           | the line. Under Windows and even Linux, depending on the app
           | it's probably going to run "select all", and we have to
           | resort to home and end (but then these also have a chance of
           | scrolling stuff).
           | 
           | It's good to know that "command" will run commands. Easier to
           | explain to new users too.
           | 
           | The Windows key is indeed a missed opportunity. The main
           | reason the opportunity was missed is likely to be because
           | Microsoft did not control the hardware. Even after Windows 95
           | was introduced, many keyboards continued to lack the Windows
           | key for quite a while. How do you deal with that? Not
           | allowing apps to run? Having a fallback for when there isn't
           | a windows key? Now the interface is inconsistent.
        
             | peoplefromibiza wrote:
             | > Under Windows and even Linux, depending on the app it's
             | probably going to run "select all"
             | 
             | that's CUA. Which is a much nicer and saner standard than
             | Emacs/Vi keybindings.
        
               | spudlyo wrote:
               | We're going to have to agree to disagree on that one. I
               | love that macOS uses the command key for traditional CUA
               | bindings, leaving control sequences open for me to
               | continue using my Emacs style keybindings in all cocoa
               | text widgets.
        
           | peoplefromibiza wrote:
           | the point of the CTRL key is to send CONTROL messages
           | 
           | anyway, this is just a coincidence, CS was a Windows only
           | exclusive-full-screen game where those combinations had no
           | possible conflict
           | 
           | no one thought we would be playing CS in a browser in the
           | future
           | 
           | on Macs the CMD key is simply a poor man's CTRL key, except
           | when you are in a terminal, where you have to use CTRL
           | again...
           | 
           | doesn't sound so well thought.
        
             | rollcat wrote:
             | > on Macs the CMD key is simply a poor man's CTRL key,
             | except when you are in a terminal, where you have to use
             | CTRL again...
             | 
             | Let me check.
             | 
             | Cmd-F in Notes.app, finds things in the current note.
             | 
             | Cmd-F in Terminal.app, finds things in the current terminal
             | session's history.
             | 
             | Cmd-C in Calendar.app, copies an event.
             | 
             | Cmd-C in Terminal.app, copies the selected text.
             | 
             | Cmd-T in Finder.app, opens a tab.
             | 
             | Cmd-T in Terminal.app, opens a tab.
             | 
             | Cmd-W closes the current window/tab. Cmd-Q quits the app.
             | Cmd-S saves. And so on, in _any_ app, tracing back to 1984
             | or so.
             | 
             | Whereas Ctrl-C, Ctrl-T, Ctrl-F, Ctrl-S, on Windows/Linux...
             | all do wildly different things, depending whether you are
             | in an xterm, cmd.exe, a game, Emacs, or some other app.
             | 
             | You know what else? Ctrl-C in Terminal.app does the same
             | thing as Ctrl-C in an xterm. This sort of thing is
             | consistent in _every_ app. You 're literally having your
             | cake and eating it too.
             | 
             | Windows couldn't use Ctrl-W to mean "close the current tab"
             | in _every single_ application, because - indeed, in a game,
             | holding down Ctrl could mean crouch /sneak, and W to move
             | forward. Windows could've chosen to use Win-W for that, but
             | ignored the opportunity.
             | 
             | > anyway, this is just a coincidence
             | 
             | One of these patterns visible here is deliberate design,
             | the other is piled up coincidences. I don't think it's that
             | easy to confuse one for the other?
        
           | chungy wrote:
           | Can't speak for Windows, but GNOME and KDE heavily use the
           | window key by default for DE and window management functions.
           | Applications are pretty free to use control and alt keys to
           | their heart's desire (they're free to use the window key too,
           | but if the DE/WM captures a particular hot key, it won't
           | work... it's not often that applications try to actually use
           | it).
        
       | rightbyte wrote:
       | Impressing in some sense. But in the end only impressive because
       | it is in the browser.
       | 
       | It lagged way to much to be playable. Also sound seem to be not
       | working.
        
         | kodt wrote:
         | Yeah it was a slideshow for me, and no sound. And getting
         | instant headshotted by guys in Russia with 300 ping. I'm
         | guessing they found a way to make it run properly?
         | 
         | edit: Try in Chrome, it is decently playable and has sound, it
         | doesn't work in Firefox.
        
       | WirelessGigabit wrote:
       | AWP, aim, shoot, press q for knife, back to AWP, aim, shoot.
        
       | diimdeep wrote:
       | Like with all games and cybersport in particular, that last 0.5%
       | of finesse is all that matters, this is decent imitation but not
       | really CS1.6.
        
         | reidjs wrote:
         | This gave me a nice nostalgia kick, but I'm not gonna keep
         | playing it for that reason. Not _quite_ CS 1.6
        
           | r9550684 wrote:
           | for one it's not a cs 1.6 without crt monitor artifacts :D
        
       | abbbi wrote:
       | damn, i need to search a mouse...
        
       | MuffinFlavored wrote:
       | Met what ended up being a great friend in real life somewhere in
       | some random IRC room looking for a 5th member to join my friend's
       | group
       | 
       | He had a special CRT monitor to get the best refresh rate to be
       | as competitive as possible for the game
       | 
       | Feels like a lifetime ago
        
         | Zurrrrr wrote:
         | "He had a special CRT monitor to get the best refresh rate to
         | be as competitive as possible for the game"
         | 
         | People like that always trying to compensate for a lack of
         | skill
        
           | dbttdft wrote:
           | Bad monitors are just a gimped setup. Ungimping your setup
           | doesn't mean compensating for a lack of skill. 60Hz LCDs are
           | extremely hard on the eyes because of the large amount of
           | motion blur inherent to displaying something at 60Hz without
           | strobing. They also had very bad pixel response in 1999. They
           | also had medium-high input lag depending on the model and
           | what colors are being displayed on the screen. You also
           | wanted a high end CRT for both better still image sharpness
           | and better refresh rate (lots of them only did 60Hz or 75Hz,
           | and anything that maxed out at 75Hz probably had bad focus,
           | because focus decreases as you raise the refresh rate). Once
           | you start fixing your system (changing mouse polling rate
           | from 125Hz, disabling mouse acceleration), the monitor is
           | just one more thing to fix. All of this is needed just to be
           | able to game competently with the top say, 50% of players
           | (unless your play style just avoids aiming).
           | 
           | I remember in UT99 for years always running into situations
           | where my aim was slightly off in situations where I was dead
           | sure it should have hit. Turns out it just used the mouse
           | acceleration feature in windows: the speed at which you move
           | the mouse influences how far the crosshair (or cursor) moves.
           | Once I disabled that I became about 5x better. The next big
           | jumps were turning off vsync (and making sure it doesn't turn
           | itself back on) and going back to CRT from LCD.
        
             | brezelgoring wrote:
             | In cycling there's a term called MAMIL, which means 'Middle
             | Aged Man in Lycra'. It represents a grown man, clearly out
             | of shape, with the latest and greatest equipment that
             | probably cost him north of tens of thousands of dollars,
             | singing praises about about the edge his equipment gives
             | him over everyone else - whilst sporting legs worth about 5
             | dollars.
             | 
             | I play RTS games, which don't need any fancy equipment to
             | play and win, but still don't believe you need a 5K USD
             | monitor to play CS.
             | 
             | My point is those things that cost money don't help win,
             | reader, unless you're talking about those Nike sprinting
             | shoes that were all the rage in the Olympics last year,
             | those things rule.
        
               | dbttdft wrote:
               | Yes I'm well aware of the consumer whore, but you don't
               | understand, none of this is about money, it's about
               | proper configuration.
               | 
               | Vsync: Unbearable amount of input lag, feels like you're
               | moving your mouse in molasses. It can be disabled for
               | free by setting an option. (the amount of lag decreases
               | as refresh rate increases. 60Hz vsync was the worst thing
               | ever. 120Hz is somewhat acceptable).
               | 
               | Me and my friends actually enable vsync from time to time
               | to train ourselves to rely on aim less.
               | 
               | 125Hz mouse: Visibly jittery. Just set it to 1000Hz,
               | works on most mice even from 1999.
               | 
               | 60HZ CRT: Kills your eyes due to flashing. Get 75Hz
               | 
               | 75Hz CRT: Might have bad focus. Get one with good focus
               | 
               | 60HZ LCD: Kills your eyes due to motion blur. Suggest
               | 120Hz at bare minimum (yup, motion blur decreases as
               | refresh rate increases). Some models lag as bad as vsync,
               | just get a model that doesn't lag. This has nothing to do
               | with cost, it's a common firmware bug that some models
               | have some don't.
               | 
               | 120HZ/240Hz LCD: Might be some garbage with so much
               | overshoot that it's just as bad as the slow pixel
               | response it tried to prevent. Get one without that issue
        
               | fergal_reid wrote:
               | Is this actually true, or BS? If true, can someone
               | explain?
               | 
               | My mental model is that vsync will lock the framerate to
               | the same as the monitor refresh.
               | 
               | So if monitor is 60hz, my games graphical update rate
               | runs at 60fps.
               | 
               | Let's say without vsync, my graphical update rate would
               | generously go up to 120hz.
               | 
               | Worst case we're talking about an additional input
               | latency due to vsync of maybe 1/60s? 16ms?
               | 
               | I don't believe 16ms is significant for non pro level
               | eSports players and even skeptical it's a big factor at
               | that level.
               | 
               | What am I missing here?
               | 
               | I could understand if the get clock speed was tied to the
               | graphical update rate but I presume that's not the case
               | for CS, server side game etc; or even if it was it's
               | still not going to be that material.
               | 
               | I'm just skeptical - what am I missing here?
               | 
               | Is the mouse input code tied to graphical clock rate or
               | something in some surprising bad way?
        
               | enragedcacti wrote:
               | >Worst case we're talking about an additional input
               | latency due to vsync of maybe 1/60s? 16ms?
               | 
               | its generally closer to 2 frames with V-Sync [1][2]
               | 
               | > I don't believe 16ms is significant for non pro level
               | eSports players and even skeptical it's a big factor at
               | that level.
               | 
               | It actually is fairly significant. LTT did a series of
               | tests with pro players in CS:GO focused on monitor
               | refresh rate, but one test they did was 60hz/60fps vs
               | 60hz/300fps and found that reducing the render latency
               | drastically improved performance despite the display
               | still being locked to 60hz.
               | 
               | https://youtu.be/OX31kZbAXsA?t=1911
               | 
               | [1] https://displaylag.com/reduce-input-lag-in-pc-games-
               | the-defi...
               | 
               | [2] https://www.cse.wustl.edu/~jain/cse567-15/ftp/vsync/i
               | ndex.ht...
        
               | leetcrew wrote:
               | it's true that all of these things make a pretty
               | noticeable difference when you know what to look for. but
               | you're not going to recognize 60hz or vsync as
               | "unplayable" unless you're very accustomed to playing on
               | a better setup.
               | 
               | > I could understand if the get clock speed was tied to
               | the graphical update rate but I presume that's not the
               | case for CS, server side game etc; or even if it was it's
               | still not going to be that material.
               | 
               | in cs source, the client could not send updates to the
               | server at a faster rate than it was drawing frames. in
               | other words, if you were playing on a 66 tickrate server
               | but only rendering 50 FPS, you were actually losing some
               | simulation fidelity. of course, if you're not the type of
               | person to notice your frame rate dropping to 50 in the
               | first place, you would probably also not notice this
               | consequence. just an interesting technical fact.
        
               | r9550684 wrote:
               | if you have 0 input delay, worst case latency is still
               | 32ms, because your input might come in when back frame is
               | ready, but blit hasn't happened yet: render frame A,
               | input comes in, blit frame A, render frame B, blit frame
               | B.
               | 
               | but your input delay is not 0, so your input might come
               | in before frame A above, but frame A doesn't reflect
               | input yet, which makes your worst case input latency
               | 48ms: input comes in, blit ..., render frame A, blit
               | frame A, render frame B, blit frame B.
               | 
               | there are also bad vsync implementations, that by virtue
               | of being enabled, introduce further delay between state
               | and graphics. or if fps drops under refresh rate, things
               | go out of sync, and your vsync becomes a compounding
               | effect.
               | 
               | finally vsync delay existing _in addition_ to whatever
               | other delays. a 30ms delay for whatever reasons, becomes
               | an 80ms delay because vsync on top.
        
               | hackerman_fi wrote:
               | The vsync latency is real and unbearable in some games. I
               | think it uses a queue/buffer for frames which can cause
               | latencies of multiple frames.
        
               | sjm wrote:
               | 100%. At my peak of competitiveness I played CS and
               | QuakeWorld 640x480 on a 170hz CRT with my Intellimouse
               | overclocked to 1000hz. Movements in game felt like an
               | extension of my arms/hands and getting into a flow state
               | was so easy. I have a 144Hz LED now and it's nice, but
               | not the same.
        
               | Zurrrrr wrote:
               | It's exactly this. People blow money on things they think
               | give them even a slight advantage. At least, people who
               | have money do.
               | 
               | Then again, a fool and his money are soon parted.
        
               | eertami wrote:
               | Or because the experience is just noticeably improved...
               | 
               | I could play tennis with a 30$ racket from ALDI but it
               | would be a lot less fun.
               | 
               | I bet you use a high resolution monitor for work? You
               | could argue that is blowing money on something for even a
               | slight advantage, since you could do the same work on a
               | 15" 1024x768 monitor too. Oh, but the experience sucks?
               | Yeah exactly - that's why people want to improve their
               | gaming experience even if those people are casual/only
               | playing as a recreational hobby.
        
               | robbs wrote:
               | A high refresh rate monitor does help in measurable ways.
               | 
               | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2dPIHPNOeY
               | 
               | You don't need to spend lots of money to get 120+hz
               | screens. They can be had for $150 if you're willing to
               | make compromises.
        
               | zerd wrote:
               | LTT also tested this for FPS games and both professionals
               | and casual gamers improved significantly going from 60HZ
               | to 144+. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX31kZbAXsA
        
             | Zurrrrr wrote:
             | Yeah that's a lot of "gold wire gives better sound" vibes.
             | 
             | Yes, all of that stuff can make a slight difference, but at
             | the end it's not going to be a determining factor in your
             | skill.
        
               | r9550684 wrote:
               | you're skeptical but you had to have been there! cheap
               | 90s hardware was jank, and characteristics you take for
               | granted, because they are on standard issue hardware
               | today, were only available on high end expensive
               | machines.
               | 
               | in Eastern Europe we had computer clubs, which were like
               | internet cafes, but without internet. you went there to
               | play lan games, paid by the hour. they were usually
               | packed, and people were usually decent. you had computer
               | club rats, and I was one of them. I played q1, q2 and
               | then cs for money. you show up to a club, strike a pose,
               | "your club's cs fu are that of a dog, I challenge any one
               | of you lamers to de_dust 1x1 deagle only", and then
               | sometimes if you met your match you'd put cash up. even
               | working, well maintained hardware ranged in quality to
               | the point of making significant difference to a game. you
               | always carried your own mouse at least (and sometimes a
               | keyboard), and a config on a floppy disk. but the one
               | thing you learned to spot were monitor makes and brands,
               | for the reasons guy you responding to stated. in fact,
               | occasionally computer club admins in collusion with their
               | house teams will put you on a machine with poor monitor.
               | if you had big team vs team match planned, you'd schedule
               | an outing to a downtown club with known high refresh rate
               | monitors and quality hardware (they were never "the club
               | next door" and their hourly rate was usually higher) to
               | both level the playing field and provide peak possible
               | playing experience.
        
               | Zurrrrr wrote:
               | You don't get it: I WAS there. I'm almost 40. I was
               | playing CS from the very start.
               | 
               | I maintain that the people spending tons of $$$ to try
               | and get an advantage in CS are mostly trying to buy
               | skill, and it never works.
        
               | _puk wrote:
               | Does that count for cable internet too?
               | 
               | We were one of the first to get cable in the area, so our
               | ping was generally about 5ms..
               | 
               | This was when many others were still on bonded ISDN for a
               | (nice stable) ping of about 120ms or dial up (150+ ping).
               | 
               | That made up for a lot of skill :D
        
               | r9550684 wrote:
               | well, my anecdote was supposed to demonstrate that I have
               | a direct lived experience where hardware made a
               | significant difference, everyone knew it made significant
               | difference, and both that knowledge and the implications
               | of that knowledge were part of the social game, because
               | money and prestige was riding on it.
               | 
               | it is also from the world that's entirely unconnected to
               | the American obsession with "buying the best skiis,
               | recommended by the skiing daily magazine, before ever
               | getting to a slope", which is a real thing, and I agree
               | with you there.
               | 
               | there's definitely a Boris somewhere in the middle of
               | nowhere who can cyka blyat on a 60mhz crt and a pentium 4
               | in cs:go to this day smh, and there's also a lamer with
               | souped up ryzen who can't aim for shit. but all else
               | being equal competitive advantage from hardware is _not
               | always and not exclusively_ "golden vacuum tube amp
               | connectors".
        
               | Seanambers wrote:
               | In computer gaming (RTS / FPS) equipment matter,
               | especially in FPS. Not to mention your internet
               | connection.
               | 
               | I would guesstimate about 100% more effectiveness
               | compared to a subpar setup. Meaning all else equal the
               | guy with the better setup would win an encounter twice as
               | often.
               | 
               | You also need to know about all of the configuration
               | steps to maximize advantage. What might look superhuman
               | on youtube for instance may very well just be a good
               | setup.
        
               | Zurrrrr wrote:
               | Sure, internet matters.
               | 
               | Equipment matters less these days.
               | 
               | All I'm saying though, is if you're a crappy player, it's
               | not because of your equipment, and buying better
               | equipment won't make you a better player.
        
               | kube-system wrote:
               | It depends. Being a couple milliseconds faster won't make
               | a difference if your reaction times are a hundred
               | milliseconds slower than your opponent. But there's a lot
               | of junk today that didn't exist in years past. Buy some
               | cheap bluetooth accessories and you might just end up
               | with latency that is orders of magnitude worse than
               | devices from the 90s.
        
           | ackatz wrote:
           | Meanwhile all of the best players in the world are using
           | 240hz monitors...
        
             | Zurrrrr wrote:
             | I didn't say refresh rate didn't matter. Buy buying a new
             | CRT in the late 90s with a slightly better refresh rate
             | isn't going to be much of an advantage.
        
               | nrb wrote:
               | The difference was pretty drastic. My NEC FP2141SB in the
               | early 2000s ran 1280x1024 @ 100hz, those
               | Diamondtron/Tronitron tubes were next-level for their
               | time even though they were super finicky.
        
               | dbttdft wrote:
               | Yeah the range of CRT quality was huge and visible. Those
               | were a type of product where price actually correlated to
               | quality. With an LCD you could pay $1000 for a "gaming"
               | model and still get something that has basic issues like
               | high input lag or strong overshoot. With CRT it meant the
               | screen is now flat, the image is now bigger than 17", and
               | the focus is now sharper.
        
             | kcb wrote:
             | Most of them purposely gimp themselves by running in 4:3.
             | I've watched major tournament losses due to pro players not
             | being able to spot someone they would if they were running
             | widescreen.
        
               | the_doctah wrote:
               | Don't you think pros would run widescreen if it was an
               | actual advantage?
        
               | deadbunny wrote:
               | The reason they run 4:3 on 16:9 monitors is to stretch
               | the horizontal and make their targets effectively larger
               | on their screen.
               | 
               | Obviously that comes with downsides as you mention.
        
               | mywittyname wrote:
               | i'm kind of surprised this isn't considered cheating.
               | It's effectively zooming in.
        
           | w0m wrote:
           | I wouldn't go that far. Those people are usually still in the
           | top ~5%; just looking for _any_ advantage.
        
         | glonq wrote:
         | I know a couple that got married after meeting in CS1.6 Wild!
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | Waterluvian wrote:
         | I was always amused by how many of my friends got crazy
         | monitors but still just used headphones. Surround sound for 1.6
         | made the game incredibly unfair. Being able to hear
         | specifically in what direction and volume footsteps were coming
         | from was basically a wallhack. I would often use headphones
         | because parents weren't the biggest fans of hours of that a
         | night, and it was so crippling.
         | 
         | Funny enough, my semi-pro career (I made $60 total) ended when
         | I abandoned my surround sound when moving out in undergrad.
        
           | dbttdft wrote:
           | You already get 99% of that "wallhack" by having stereo
           | headphones. The game is mostly flat.
        
             | Waterluvian wrote:
             | For casual level play it's indeed fine. But the "flatness"
             | of a level doesn't really mean much. You want to know which
             | specific part of a nearby room someone is in. To the
             | left... in front? Behind? Are they going through the
             | hallway or cellar in cs_italy?
             | 
             | Like any game, you get huge value out of slight advantages
             | when you get to the more high level skill.
        
               | Hikikomori wrote:
               | You can just move the mouse horizontally slightly and
               | you'll know the direction of the sound instantly.
               | 
               | Stereo is not for casual play, it's clearly the opposite
               | as here's not a single professional player that uses
               | surround to my knowledge.
        
               | justsomehnguy wrote:
               | >cs_italy
               | 
               | FYI there are AMA thread from makers of it on Reddit
               | somewhere.
               | 
               | A quite fun read.
        
               | least wrote:
               | I was around CAL-M level in 1.6 and I never had a
               | surround sound setup, but I'm unconvinced that it has any
               | meaningful benefit over headphones, which worked
               | perfectly fine for intuiting where someone was. That's
               | hardly a real benefit in higher level play, anyway
               | because you know where everyone _could_ be, anyway, and
               | your movement is dictated by that knowledge as well.
        
           | Hikikomori wrote:
           | How many pro CSGO players use surround?
        
             | dvlsg wrote:
             | Pro players almost definitely all use headphones, because
             | they're typically on stage for tournaments with their
             | teammates right next to them and their opponents somewhere
             | nearby.
             | 
             | But even when they're not on stage, they're often in the
             | same room with their teammates. And even if that isn't the
             | case for some reason and a player is in their own room,
             | winning those tournaments is generally the highest honor,
             | so pro players would likely want to practice as close to
             | tournament conditions anyways.
             | 
             | Directional audio over headphones is surprisingly good
             | nowadays, though. HRTF is pretty cool stuff.
        
               | Hikikomori wrote:
               | And because surround is mostly useless, if not messing up
               | sound. With stereo all you need is to move your mouse
               | horizontally to locate the exact direction of any sound.
        
               | dvlsg wrote:
               | Yeah, for sure.
               | 
               | There are other considerations as well - if game sound is
               | coming over loud speakers, you run the risk of it also
               | being picked up by your microphone when you try to
               | communicate with your teammates.
        
           | saiya-jin wrote:
           | Friend painted dot in the center of his screen with permanent
           | marker for sniper rifles, especially strongest one became
           | 1-off shotgun. We hated him for that
        
           | __alexs wrote:
           | You only have ~2 ears, there is no need for 5.1 channel
           | surround sound.
        
             | nonowrong wrote:
             | Did you stop to think for two seconds before posting this?
             | People can tell where a sound is coming from in a 3d space.
             | That's why you can tell the difference between a sound
             | directly in front of you and directly behind you.
        
               | uxp100 wrote:
               | You can easily create sound in front of and behind you
               | with headphones.
        
               | Avamander wrote:
               | Accurate positional audio from a stereo source is far
               | from easy.
        
               | neoromantique wrote:
               | It's even harder with surround setup.
        
               | veec_cas_tant wrote:
               | I remember being blindfolded in high school science class
               | and testing this by having someone clap two sticks
               | together around my head. Surprisingly difficult to tell
               | if something is in front or behind you.
        
             | peepee1982 wrote:
             | Hearing is more involved than taking sensory input from two
             | sources. If it weren't, there wouldn't be mixing and
             | mastering engineers using speakers. Which they mainly do.
        
               | voxic11 wrote:
               | Pretty sure they use speakers because they are mastering
               | primarily for speaker setups. Not because it increases
               | the accuracy of location information encoded in the
               | sound.
        
             | tuetuopay wrote:
             | We only have ~2 eyes, there is no need for a third
             | dimension!
        
               | kllrnohj wrote:
               | You meant this as a sarcastic response, but literally all
               | VR headsets are just 2 displays, 1 per eye. The same
               | thing is true about audio & ears. If you've got a speaker
               | that you know is dedicated strictly to a single ear, then
               | all you need is 2 speakers to simulate audio coming from
               | anywhere.
               | 
               | It's called HRTF and it's not at all a new technology.
               | All you actually need is stereo headphones to have 3d
               | positional audio.
        
               | voxic11 wrote:
               | You only need a 2D display to create fully 3d images (see
               | the 3DS for an example).
        
           | kentonv wrote:
           | Weird. My experience has always been that headphones are more
           | effective at producing precise 3D sound than speakers. And
           | intuitively, it seems like they should, because they can feed
           | each ear with exactly the sound that ear should hear.
           | 
           | That said it does require that the game has good 3D sound
           | generation, which isn't trivial, especially differentiating
           | front and back which requires accounting for the shape of the
           | human ear.
        
             | peepee1982 wrote:
             | Since everybody's headshape and mass is different, it's
             | hard to do binaural audio that works for everyone.
             | 
             | Also, I'm pretty sure the brain uses small movements of the
             | head to know where sounds come from. So you'd have to have
             | head tracking with virtually no latency.
             | 
             | A bunch of speakers in a circle around you don't have any
             | of these issues.
        
               | teawrecks wrote:
               | The latency issue would be in the timing of samples
               | between the sound drivers, not from the game to the sound
               | port. The sound data could take 50ms+ to make it through
               | the DAC, but as long as it plays the signal to each
               | driver with enough precision relative to the other (and
               | assuming the response of the driver is sufficient), your
               | brain would get the orientation info. The frames you're
               | seeing are already around 50ms late for most games anyway
               | (unless you're playing the game at hundreds of fps, which
               | is very possible with cs1.6), and mouse latency is
               | between 50-100ms.
               | 
               | Head tracking wouldn't be necessary because you're always
               | looking straight at the screen and the camera is always
               | aligned with your character's head. You're never going to
               | physically turn your head to get a better angle on a
               | sound source, you'll just turn in game.
        
               | ace2358 wrote:
               | I'm surprised to hear 50ms for audio processing. I'm a
               | music producer and I can feel it at about 20ms of
               | latency. (Pressing key on keyboard (musical) to hearing
               | sound)
               | 
               | I would have thought video games wouldn't have more
               | latency than audio production software.
        
               | kentonv wrote:
               | My DDR setup -- a Windows gaming PC connected to a pretty
               | standard stereo receiver -- has 70ms total latency
               | between button press and audio. That's more than enough
               | to make the game unplayable, except that of course
               | StepMania lets me configure it to pretend button presses
               | occurred 70ms in the past.
        
               | kentonv wrote:
               | TBH a bunch of speakers seems like it would be much
               | worse.
               | 
               | If you had an infinite matrix of speakers located at
               | every possible point relative to your head, then you
               | could play each sound from the exact speaker representing
               | the correct direction, and get perfect 3D audio. _Maybe_
               | it would even be sufficient to have a sphere of speakers
               | around you, or even a circle if elevation isn 't relevant
               | in most games.
               | 
               | But in practice we don't have any of those. We have 4 or
               | 5 speakers roughly arranged around the player. If one of
               | those 4 or 5 directions happens to be exactly what you
               | need, then great, play the sound from that speaker and
               | you're good. But if not, then what?
               | 
               | The brain decides the direction of sound based primarily
               | on the relative latency between when it is heard in each
               | ear [0]. How do you create a precise time difference when
               | you have 4-5 different speakers _each_ of which can be
               | heard by _both_ ears?
               | 
               | Plus the game doesn't even usually know exactly where the
               | speakers are located relative to the player's head.
               | Exactly how far away are they? Are the front speakers
               | closer than the back?
               | 
               | With headphones, none of this is a problem. The game can
               | precisely control exactly what the person hears,
               | including precisely controlling interaural time
               | difference.
               | 
               | [0]
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interaural_time_difference
        
             | Waterluvian wrote:
             | You generally need special headphones for that and they
             | really didn't work that well 20 years ago. I don't recall
             | there being any way to tell the Half Life engine or my
             | sound card "output 6 channels to the headphones" and the
             | engine wouldn't do A3D if it was a stereo device.
             | 
             | By having a 5.1 setup surrounding me (about 2 feet away in
             | each direction, it was.. cluttered), the brain produces a
             | surround sound effect the way it does in normal life.
             | 
             | An expert would have to speak further about how headphones
             | can emulate that, but I don't recall it ever really being a
             | thing in the early 2000s.
        
               | garaetjjte wrote:
               | Surround audio using headphones needs HRTF:
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-
               | related_transfer_function. There is no single profile
               | that works for everyone though, because it is dependent
               | on head and ear shape.
        
               | rzzzt wrote:
               | The Sierra version of Half-Life had EAX support, IIRC,
               | with strangely long reverberations each time you walked
               | on something made out of metal. _claaang_
        
               | florbo wrote:
               | You had to tweak a lot of settings with EAX to make it
               | sound decent, but you could also configure it so you
               | could hear extreme distances, giving you quite the
               | advantage. I bought a Sound Blaster Audigy Gamer card
               | because of that. I had a huge config file that set all
               | sorts of network settings, and even bound PgUp/Dn to
               | cycle through various ex_interp values.. lol
        
               | pprotas wrote:
               | You are the first person I've ever seen talk about how a
               | surround sound speaker system is better for competitive
               | shooters than stereo headphones, but I might be showing
               | my age here since you are talking about the 2000's :P
        
               | qup wrote:
               | No, I played CS1.6 and I wouldn't consider playing
               | without my headphones.
               | 
               | I didn't have a surround sound system because I was a
               | teenager, but I knifed thousands of noobs coming around
               | the corner wall in iceworld because they were too dumb to
               | walk.
               | 
               | I'm guessing it was an identical effect to the surround
               | sound, it was basically radar. You could hear people
               | across nearly the whole iceworld map.
        
               | kentonv wrote:
               | I have a vivid memory of playing Doom 2 on a 486 in the
               | 90's, hiding in a building with a cyberdemon circling
               | around the outside, and being able to tell exactly where
               | he was based on sound alone. Needless to say Doom
               | produced no more than 2 channels of audio.
               | 
               | Interestingly Doom's audio code was licensed from a third
               | party. When they open sourced it, they had to rewrite
               | that part; I think Carmack said he backported Quake's
               | code. I wonder if that third-party code was just really
               | good or something.
        
               | deadbunny wrote:
               | I had the same experience with doom 2; heard an Imp
               | fireballing me directly behind me so perfectly I spun
               | around in my chair.
        
           | dopeboy wrote:
           | Is this true? I used headphones all throughout my CS days.
           | Stereo sound in headphones was enough to give a competitive
           | advantage.
        
           | r9550684 wrote:
           | sound blaster at some point allowed you to emulate
           | exaggerated "3d sound" polyphony. I distinctly remember a
           | control panel, where you could drag around surround sound
           | speakers and it would attempt to emulate them in headphones.
        
           | ceedan wrote:
           | Surround sound was unnecessary. As long as you had stereo
           | headphones you were fine. I had cheap headphones, expensive
           | headphones and even won headphones at LAN events. Directional
           | audio was never an issue on any headset I'd played with. I
           | tested them all with this video -
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUDTlvagjJA
           | 
           | The only headphone issue I had in my decades of playing CS
           | were with open ear headphones (Sennheiser HD555) that reduced
           | the punchiness of bass and made footsteps more difficult to
           | hear in CSS which was a terrible game with terrible audio.
        
           | krolden wrote:
           | I have no problem sondhacking with my 2.1 setup.
        
           | sC3DX wrote:
           | audio spatialization has gotten really fancy in games. We can
           | trick your eat into thinking sounds are coming from any
           | direction with a combination of filters, delays,
           | attenuations, etc. Of course it's not as good as the real
           | thing but it is still very convincing (and certainly good
           | enough to be competitive in CS these days).
        
           | MuffinFlavored wrote:
           | > but still just used headphones
           | 
           | I haven't thought of Ventrilo/Teamspeak in years...
        
             | Waterluvian wrote:
             | Ohhhh right that reminded me of another anecdote: sound
             | cancellation wasn't really a working tech back then so my
             | Vent buddies hated hearing my game. I would have a little
             | earbud in connected to Vent on my other computer so I could
             | hear them, but they'd always hear my game, so I ended up
             | developing this half-assed skill of speaking only during
             | quiet times.
        
               | totoglazer wrote:
               | Ventrillo, a voice chat program popular for gamers. I
               | guess sort of 2002 era Discord.
        
               | rightbyte wrote:
               | Like Discord but with like 10ms latency to your friends
               | in the area and no fancy pancy filters adding group delay
               | when you speak.
               | 
               | Overall a way superior experience to what we have today.
               | 
               | I remember having actual effortless conversations on
               | Ventrilo. Nowadays speaking in Discord or MS Teams or
               | what ever is exhausting since you interrupt each other
               | due to the delay.
               | 
               | Phones have also gotten worse. It would be interesting to
               | see a number of round trip "ping" for different Voip
               | providers and phone systems ...
        
               | hackernewds wrote:
               | What is a vent
        
               | Waterluvian wrote:
               | Vent aka. Ventrilo was a group voice chat application
               | from about 20 years ago. You'd log into a server and have
               | different "chat rooms" to be in, and it was voice-centric
               | (and text to speech and many other features).
        
               | anthk wrote:
               | Like Mumble?
        
       | Ancalagon wrote:
       | What does performance and load look like on a laptop? Anyone have
       | specs?
        
       | phplovesong wrote:
       | HAHAH! This is amazing!
       | 
       | I was an avid CS 1.5/1.6 player in the early 2000s. This is def a
       | bookmark!
        
       | EliRivers wrote:
       | I still have a copy of the alpha release version of CounterStrike
       | here somewhere. As I recall, probably as a self-extracting exe
       | but maybe a zip file, and it was about 8 megabytes; that's not
       | quite so amazing as it sounds, as it was purely a mod for Half-
       | Life and sat on top of an existing Half-Life installation.
       | 
       | I should check that it's available in historical repositories and
       | if not, see where I can send it for posterity.
        
       | kapitanjakc wrote:
       | Alright, let's move out.
       | 
       | That's the way it's done.
       | 
       | Owned.
       | 
       | Follow me.
       | 
       | Fire in the hole.
       | 
       | Roger that.
       | 
       | Affirmative.
       | 
       | Ah, negative.
       | 
       | Let's go sir.
       | 
       | Go Go Go.
       | 
       | ..... good stuff
        
         | yboris wrote:
         | My favorite at the beginning of the game is "get in position
         | and wait for my go" B-)
        
       | est wrote:
       | Damn, brings back much memories.
        
         | jeffwask wrote:
         | Bunny hop, shoot, bunny hop, shoot
        
           | creaturemachine wrote:
           | Shots penetrating meter-thick stone walls. Good times.
        
             | qbasic_forever wrote:
             | Sniper bullet to the foot just as instantly deadly as to
             | the head too.
        
               | capableweb wrote:
               | I don't think that was true, even the AWP (highest damage
               | in the game) wouldn't kill people if you shot them in the
               | legs or below. I think at least, was a long time ago I
               | last played the game. Scout was even worse, only
               | headshots would one-shot someone.
        
               | qbasic_forever wrote:
               | It was in the beta days. You could camp the long tunnel
               | on dust and every AWP shot to the terrorist feet as they
               | came down the tunnel (before they could even see you) was
               | an instant kill. It was 'fixed' so you had to hit them in
               | the head for a headshot instant kill.
        
               | capableweb wrote:
               | I guess it was "fixed" so that you had to hit them in the
               | body or above, because a body shot with the AWP would
               | kill someone instantly in 1.6, if I remember correctly.
        
               | aidenn0 wrote:
               | I remember the P90 having (almost?) no recoil or spread
               | in the beta days as well. Was like a firehose of bullets.
        
               | jeffwask wrote:
               | No AWP servers were fairly common and where I mostly
               | played. Even fixed the AWP never quite felt balanced.
        
               | manual89 wrote:
               | My favorite thing to do in the earlier versions was to
               | "gun-run" dropped weapons back to base, since they did
               | not despawn at the end of the round. So much fun amassing
               | a giant arsenal for your teammates to pick through.
        
             | AntoniusBlock wrote:
             | I spent hours watching demos of pro games to learn
             | wallbangs (especially de_nuke) and flash spots. Good times
             | indeed! Shout out to HLTV.
        
           | tukantje wrote:
           | I am not sure if this is made with source engine, would it
           | still have bunny hop if not?
        
             | r9550684 wrote:
             | no, bunny hop is an artifact of quake strafe code, which
             | was retained in valve's goldsrc. it was fixed in Source
             | since it's a completely new engine, but goldsrc counter-
             | strike also had its own mitigations, which I assume were
             | special cased hacks. I played from early beta (russia LAN
             | party "pro" cs player here), and I distinctly remember when
             | bunny hop stopped working. I was running out as ct on
             | de_dust, and went to do a hop and it wasn't working. "they
             | nerfed hopping! the game is _RUINED_! the casuals won! "
             | etc.
        
             | seabrookmx wrote:
             | 1.6 does not use Source. The appropriately named "CS:
             | Source" does.
        
             | jeffwask wrote:
             | I honestly can't recall when that was fixed. It's just such
             | an embedded counterstrike memory.
             | 
             | My second tech job IT setup an internal counter strike
             | server and a bunch of us would play at lunch or after work
             | until someone yelled at us for screaming at each other over
             | the cube walls.
        
               | jeffwask wrote:
               | Nothing quite like hearing, "Fuck you, you fucking
               | camper" echo across the office floor at noon.
        
               | timeon wrote:
               | That window in Italy.
        
         | scrapcode wrote:
         | The nostalgia is real with this one for sure. I started playing
         | CS with v1.3, and it is fascinating to me how terrible I still
         | am when I play the occasional round of CS:GO.
        
       | mushishi wrote:
       | After loading files, the game says: "Initialize shaders, please
       | keep focus on this windows." Nothing happens so I looked at
       | console.
       | 
       | There was: "Exception thrown: Uncaught SimulateInfiniteLoop"
       | Uncaught SimulateInfiniteLoop
        
       | bob1029 wrote:
       | fy_iceworld was my favorite from 1.6. I recall nothing could
       | touch it with regard to rapid, repeatable chaos. I've probably
       | put 500 hours into that one map alone.
       | 
       | You will find an almost identical structure in virtually every
       | Call of Duty multiplayer experience - One big room with 4 "cubes"
       | in it that players fight around, with various degrees of partial
       | cover scattered throughout.
        
         | Moissanite wrote:
         | Rampant wall-banging on scoutknivez until people call you a
         | hacker was my personal fave.
        
         | rajamaka wrote:
         | Don't forget fy_pool_day!
         | 
         | I always found it such a shame that a map like as_oilrig never
         | took off in a competitive sense. Always thought "protect the
         | VIP" was a really cool concept, but I guess the rest of the
         | world disagreed.
        
           | bob1029 wrote:
           | I remember pool day now! Definitely played that one a lot
           | too. Also have some memories of oil rig.
           | 
           | Agreed on the hostage maps. TFC had that one map too...
        
         | turtlesdown11 wrote:
         | ^
        
         | andrewmcwatters wrote:
         | fy_iceworld takes me back!
        
         | qup wrote:
         | I ran a 24/7 Iceworld server in my bedroom.
         | 
         | The latency advantage was real.
        
         | westhom wrote:
         | Sunk so many hours into fy_iceworld. I never enjoyed sitting
         | around and waiting for rounds to end on normal maps. Loved the
         | pace of iceworld and awp_map.
         | 
         | And using headphones on iceworld gave you wallhack like
         | abilities.
        
           | bob1029 wrote:
           | > I never enjoyed sitting around and waiting for rounds to
           | end on normal maps.
           | 
           | Precisely. I found it much easier to get my friends
           | interested in playing CS at LAN parties with this map (or
           | something wacky like jeepathon2k).
        
       | sakopov wrote:
       | I had a flashback to the day I figured out that the scroll wheel
       | cancels the reload animation on the guns. I immediately became 10
       | times better at the game. Also, the zombie servers were mindless
       | but fun.
        
         | pharmakom wrote:
         | Oh man you gotta turn off scroll switch and have specific key
         | binds for every weapon
        
           | exhaze wrote:
           | What was wrong with 1/2/3/4 for key binds? I played CS 1.3 ->
           | 1.6 professionally in 2000s, never really saw folks do this.
        
             | TomatoTomato wrote:
             | Many people use mouse wheel for jump as well
        
             | vecter wrote:
             | Cool, what was your gamer tag and clan?
        
             | pharmakom wrote:
             | Cycling through grenades using 4 is inefficient compared to
             | dedicated flash, HE, etc. keys
        
           | nwsm wrote:
           | with scroll wheel bound to jump of course
        
       | nashashmi wrote:
       | How long has this been out?
        
         | 007lva wrote:
         | I think two years.
        
       | b8 wrote:
       | This reminds me of Minecraft in the browser. Was fun to a play a
       | bit in Chrome on Windows.
        
       | nathias wrote:
       | sweet memberberries
        
       | Laaas wrote:
       | Unfortunately causes Firefox to crash on aarch64-linux with a
       | Qualcomm SoC!
        
       | geepytee wrote:
       | This is cool! I wonder what other multiplayer games can be ported
       | to run in a browser.
        
       | chakintosh wrote:
       | Never played CS in my life, tried this and managed two kills with
       | a MacBook Pro M1 trackpad.
        
       | klaussilveira wrote:
       | For the curious, this is based on the
       | https://github.com/FWGS/xash3d-fwgs engine. Probably this fork:
       | https://github.com/icrazyblaze/Xash3D-Emscripten/
        
         | bsagdiyev wrote:
         | They've also got an updated (reverse engineered?) HLDS DLL too.
         | reHLDS I believe is what it's called. Been meaning to check
         | what benefits/cons it brings for my own server.
        
         | RulerOf wrote:
         | Could I use this to put HL1 and its mods in the browser for a
         | LAN party?
        
       | nfriedly wrote:
       | One of the only times I got detention in high school was when
       | playing CS 1.6. It wasn't for playing the game, though - our
       | class had done something good and as a reward we were allowed to
       | goof off and play games that period.
       | 
       | But, a classmate had killed me several times in a row and was
       | having a good laugh about it. I gave him a middle finger and then
       | got back into the game.
       | 
       | At the end of the class, the teacher handed me a detention slip
       | and then explained that he had been standing behind me watching
       | my screen when I flipped the bird.
        
         | arbol wrote:
         | That's a pretty harsh punishment! People would've been
         | permanently in DT at my school..
        
       | wazoox wrote:
       | Unfortunately like 99% of such web games is mostly unusable if
       | you don't have a QWERTY keyboard...
        
         | Narishma wrote:
         | That's a non-issue. You just need a QWERTY layout. Most OSes
         | make it very easy to change on the fly.
        
         | planede wrote:
         | Why don't web games use KeyboardEvent.code for this? That would
         | mostly resolve the issue, assuming browsers are compliant.
         | 
         | https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/KeyboardEve...
        
           | constantly wrote:
           | This sounds like a lot of work to me to address a problem
           | that only impacts 0.1% of players, and KeyboardEvent.code
           | looks pretty obscure.
        
             | planede wrote:
             | > 0.1% of players
             | 
             | There are entire countries with different standard keyboard
             | layout than QWERTY, I'm pretty sure that 0.1% is
             | inaccurate.
             | 
             | I also remember that some desktop games handled alternative
             | layouts just fine by default, without reconfiguring key
             | bindings manually. I was only ever affected by QWERTZ, so
             | the impact was limited.
             | 
             | Apparently both desktop and web has the suitable API to
             | handle this well, yet web games don't seem to care.
        
       | fierro wrote:
       | i wonder how hard it would be to make this work for Counter
       | Strike: Source
        
       | cptcobalt wrote:
       | This is pretty wild! Seems like it's running the FWGS xash3d
       | engine, which seems to be some sort of rewrite of the Valve
       | goldsrc engine (which I didn't realize had available code to be
       | rewritten)?
       | 
       | I'm curious about how it's actually executing in the browser
       | (WebGL? WebGPU? WASM, even?) but cant seem to be able to get onto
       | a server to poke around at the moment.
        
         | spijdar wrote:
         | There's at least one public web version that uses Emscripten at
         | https://github.com/iCrazyBlaze/Xash3D-Emscripten
        
         | rmccue wrote:
         | The original Half Life, including goldsrc, is source-available:
         | https://github.com/ValveSoftware/halflife
        
           | eukara wrote:
           | That is only the game-logic (which has been 'open' since
           | 1999) and not the engine. That is under a proprietary license
           | and as per terms of the GPL incompatible with the code that
           | the projects here are using (which are GPL, as they take code
           | from the open-source Quake engines and community projects
           | that have been created over the past 2 decades).
           | 
           | However the projects in question are outside of US
           | jurisdiction for that to matter. They are in violation of id
           | software's and Valve's copyright though.
           | 
           | You can find the original HL SDK license here
           | https://pastebin.com/pAVKk1NL The copy on GitHub has just a
           | find-replace of the Source Engine license, which is not
           | compatible as well. Seems like Human Error either way.
        
       | dopeboy wrote:
       | CS before it went downhill. Played so much de_dust (before
       | de_dust2 became popular) from the beta days to 1.6.
        
         | danjoredd wrote:
         | When did it go downhill? I thought CS: Source was great fun.
         | Didn't really care for CS:Go
        
           | r9550684 wrote:
           | op implies that after half life 1 engine cs 1.6 it wasn't
           | same game anymore, which is a common sentiment among people
           | who were there. first, besides I think "urban terror" which
           | was a mod for q2 engine, cs was the first "realistic"
           | shooter, so if you played it beta to 1.6 you were part of the
           | creation of the new genre. second, most of the mechanism from
           | half-life engine were still exposed and the path from beta to
           | 1.6 was at least in part about tweaking your cfg to give you
           | a little edge. each new release would nerf and remove some
           | "exploit", and it was kind of exciting in its own way. third,
           | cs after it got bought by valve and later cs:source became
           | big publisher game, explicitly "e-sport", crystallized in the
           | conventions, big and flashy, one of many "realistic"
           | shooters, that came to dominate the shooter genre.
        
             | hackernewds wrote:
             | seems like a absurd reason not to like a game, stuck in
             | nostalgia and district elitism reserved for the "hipster"
             | crowd
        
               | danjoredd wrote:
               | I agree. The devs couldn't continue working on CS 1
               | forever, and eventually a sequel would HAVE to be made
               | somehow. It was never going to please everybody, no
               | matter what they did. Im glad that, despite the
               | controversy, CS: Source still ended up being good.
               | 
               | I remember I got it for GMod, and played it out of
               | boredom one day and I ended up loving it!
        
             | r9550684 wrote:
             | (q2 mod wasn't called urban terror (which is a name of a
             | free software cs remake) but I can't remember what it was
             | called. cs guys originally made "action quake", which was a
             | proto-cs but on quake engine, but I have a strong feeling
             | there was another such mod with "urban" in the name. unlike
             | that anybody who remembers will read this comment...)
        
           | ceedan wrote:
           | Source was a complete mess. It took years of updates before
           | that game was playable competitively -- it never truly was.
           | The half-life 2 engine was a disaster, and most players
           | didn't have the hardware to run those games well at the time.
           | That's what made 1.6 so wonderful - you could run it on
           | single core Pentium 4 processor and literally anything
           | better. For 10 years, it had the best gameplay and a huge
           | playerbase, with entry level system requirements. Many people
           | I knew didn't move to CSS, because getting a $1000 PC was out
           | of the cards - most of us were kids.
           | 
           | In 2007, DirectTV killed the North American professional CS
           | scene by pushing CS:Source into their televised CGS league.
           | The top pro players all left the 1.6 scene for 30-40k/yr
           | contracts to play in CGS (a no brainer)... most of them
           | openly hated the game while playing in this league too. The
           | 1.6 scene in the US was still large and active, but never the
           | same. Teams in Europe, Asia, Brazil & elsewhere continued to
           | play 1.6. After CGS folded in 2008, global competition sort
           | died off and many of he top NA players retired. There weren't
           | many NA 1.6 players good enough to keep up with European pro
           | teams after about 2010.
           | 
           | Imo, CS was an incredible scene from like 2000-2008. CSGO has
           | enjoyed a great run from like 2013-2018?. It's definitely
           | lost steam from the battle royal shooters (PUBG & Fortnite),
           | and now Valorant infringing on it's player base. Valve hasn't
           | really been very active in its own competitive scene, which
           | may also be hurting.
        
             | danjoredd wrote:
             | I don't think the Source engine is a mess, personally. Even
             | if CS:Source isn't as good as CS1.6, Half Life 2, Team
             | Fortress 2, Day of Defeat, etc. are all solid games that
             | feel good to play. I personally like CS:Source because
             | thats the one I grew up with, it being packaged with G-Mod
             | and all.
        
               | ceedan wrote:
               | CSS got better as it got older, but I heard about
               | grumblings from the 2010 update after I had already quit
               | playing it. I probably played until 2008/2009, and then
               | started CSGO again in 2012 or something.
               | 
               | Some of my CSS memories - We used to shoot barrels on top
               | of the bomb that would prevent defuses until you shot
               | them off. If you didn't have a grenade or extra ammo
               | (pistol rounds?) this was hilariously difficult. Leagues
               | had to ban this tactic, but there was no setting to just
               | get rid of the movable barrels so it still happened
               | occasionally.
               | 
               | - There was a bug where a players view would sit above
               | their player model - so they could duck behind a box and
               | see over it without being seen. I never learned how to
               | abuse it, but it was obviously very effective.
               | 
               | - Head hitboxes were bigger in CSS than 1.6. The game was
               | just easy.
               | 
               | - The deagle was way too good in CSS.
               | 
               | - Hacking in CSS was really bad. It took a while for 3rd
               | party anti-cheat clients to catch up. League play was
               | plagued by hackers.
               | 
               | - CSS had ragdoll physics instead of death animations.
               | Occasionally players would die while sitting or leaning
               | up against a wall. If you took a quick peek this might
               | make you think it's a player crouching and still alive.
               | The ragdoll deaths made it harder to detect if a player
               | was dead or not
               | 
               | - if they were running at you and died they might still
               | be falling forward in what looks like a running/ducking
               | animation for 100ms or so.
               | 
               | - The maps were needlessly complex. The addition of
               | flower pots, cans, trash, arches, window sills, steps etc
               | etc made grenade physics less predictable. There were
               | times where trash would block a doorway and make entry
               | into a site impossible without sounds from it as you walk
               | over. CSGO has this same problem, even with the chickens.
               | (https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/7ygcve
               | /chi...)
               | 
               | - I remember play shadows being something that was a huge
               | competitive advantage for players with a better PC. If
               | you set your shadow quality too low, you wouldn't see
               | them - and there were certain areas where you could see a
               | players shadow if you had the setting on high.
               | 
               | - Bullet impacts into walls were harder to see because of
               | how "dusty" CSS was. When you sprayed into a wall, the
               | clouds of dust that would come off made it hard to see
               | where the shots were landing. CSGO greatly improved this.
               | (https://youtu.be/Y4TVegjgvXc?t=180)
               | 
               | I could go on - obviously I kinda hated the game, but I
               | also had a trash PC at the time and was fraggin out with
               | 45fps-110fps and a single core processor for a while.
        
           | jeffwask wrote:
           | Source wasn't well received by a portion of the community.
           | The community bisected for a while with some folks staying on
           | 1.6. I don't recall everything behind the 20+ year old drama
           | but it was a thing. Source eventually won out and the rest is
           | history.
        
             | teeray wrote:
             | IIRC Hitboxes were different in the early days which kept
             | many folks on 1.6
        
             | r9550684 wrote:
             | source engine is different from goldsrc, and the "feel" of
             | goldsrc goes back to q2 (and some idiosyncrasies from q1).
             | so if you spent several years playing from beta days, or
             | for some people transitioned into cs from even more years
             | of q2 or q1, then source would just be an entirely new
             | experience. there's nothing valve could've done to preserve
             | the right feeling, which is fine. old timers continued
             | playing goldsrc until full blown grown up took over,
             | where's new timers were formed by the conventions of source
             | and further.
        
           | Heston wrote:
           | I'm surprised is wasn't mentioned yet but towards the end of
           | CS:Source, just before Go, Valve nerfed the aiming and added
           | in randomization to bullets fired that couldn't be corrected
           | for. It was done to make the game more approachable to new
           | players as a skill equalizer.
        
         | Insanity wrote:
         | I'd say Source was great. I sank in multiple thousands of hours
         | in that game - but only playing surf_. (The kind where you had
         | to actually kill enemy players, not the kind where you just
         | surf to a certain platform).
        
           | doix wrote:
           | I probably spent over a thousand hours playing
           | 'surf_greatriver2_1'. Absolutely sucked at regular CS, but
           | somehow got very good at shooting with the shotgun whilst in
           | the air.
        
             | Insanity wrote:
             | Haha, same here! I loved greatriver (the x_dream one
             | specifically).
             | 
             | I went back to it a couple of years ago, it was all just
             | servers and people with bhop scripts and AWPs.
        
           | nick123567 wrote:
           | Ah yes, I played tons of surf. Got into coding due to running
           | a surf server in my closet and programming server mods.
        
         | Zurrrrr wrote:
         | CS:GO is pretty great and still very active
        
         | ghostpepper wrote:
         | If you played the betas I wonder if you remember beta 7 and the
         | jeepathon2k map. Not many people know that CS had driveable
         | vehicles for a short time. It was pretty silly but a lot of
         | fun.
        
           | afavour wrote:
           | I'd totally forgotten about that! Man that was a mess. A fun,
           | fun mess.
        
           | hackernewds wrote:
           | people forget that CS was a mod of Halo. where of course you
           | could ride a lot of vehicles
        
             | r9550684 wrote:
             | I'm sure other people will correct you, but cs was a mod of
             | half-life 1, where drivable vehicles were a massive janky
             | hack.
        
             | redbar0n wrote:
             | hahaha, well played sir, well played.
        
           | ceedan wrote:
           | wow -- jeepathon2k made my brain tingle. I cannot believe
           | that I still remember that map.
        
           | vesrah wrote:
           | Ah, yes, the APC was the best way to die in cs_siege
        
           | icelancer wrote:
           | Oh yeah. Couple levels had the vehicles, I think. cs_siege is
           | the one I remember most.
        
       | metabrew wrote:
       | spent so many hours playing this years ago.. great memories. too
       | bad it doesn't seem to support inverting mouse y-axis or changing
       | keybindings. too much muscle memory to overcome.
        
         | philosopher1234 wrote:
         | I'm pretty sure you can change your controls from the home page
         | (not once you're in game). Not sure if the settings have
         | inverted y axis, but it had scroll to jump so I wouldn't be
         | surprised.
        
       | jacooper wrote:
       | I have been recently playing CSGO with my family members.
       | 
       | Its honestly very difficult to play, its really not suited for
       | Casual players(playing on speakers with mediocre mice and so on)
       | especially with the very difficult aiming system.
       | 
       | But I didn't find anything that is both free or basically free
       | and can run on everything, from macbooks with Intel/m2 GPU to a
       | gaming PC.
       | 
       | Overwatch 2, too gimmicky and heavy
       | 
       | Fortnite, same thing and we hate battle royal, so no COD WZ2 and
       | so on.
       | 
       | Its definitely an improvement on playing C&C Generals with
       | endless problems that come with a game, which is _checks notes_
       | 20 years old now.
        
         | BHSPitMonkey wrote:
         | > both free or basically free and can run on everything
         | 
         | Team Fortress 2 is still alive and well
        
           | jacooper wrote:
           | Doubt it would be any easier than CSGO
        
             | agileAlligator wrote:
             | The aim and movement mechanics of tf2 are certainly easier,
             | though the gameplay rules are more complex and there are
             | classes with different abilities and attributes.
        
           | agilob wrote:
           | It is alive, but saying it's well is a big overstatement.
           | Can't have 10 minutes without aimbots ruining the game.
        
         | ozarker wrote:
         | I've felt similarly about csgo. It's the game I always come
         | back to when I just want to jump into a game and have some
         | mindless fun. I used it as my tool to separate work from home
         | when the pandemic started. I'd work my 8 hours then play an
         | hour of casual csgo and that helped my mental health a bit.
        
         | climb_stealth wrote:
         | Someone else mention Urban Terror [0]. Similar in style to CS
         | but fast paced. Also because it's Quake3 based it has all the
         | strafe jumping and highly rewarding movement. Haven't played it
         | in years, but back then it was good fun. Whilst the aiming
         | itself is not necessarily much easier, it is more forgiving. In
         | CS you have one encounter and the round is over for you. With
         | this I'm pretty sure there are various deathmatch modes and
         | much more relaxed respawn rules.
         | 
         | [0] https://www.urbanterror.info/home/
        
       | fly_b0y wrote:
       | das gud stuff. man... this game is embedded into my core and
       | nature by now. it just transports me to other times. i cant
       | really describe it with words.
        
       | JARE_EE wrote:
       | This is really dope. Thank you for sharing! :D
        
       | replwoacause wrote:
       | I had so much fun playing this as a teen.
        
       | lqet wrote:
       | To this day, I still have _exact_ intuition for the time span
       | between  "Fire in the hole!" and "Boom".
        
         | Zurrrrr wrote:
         | Eh, my 'nades would get ya
        
         | hackernewds wrote:
         | still have B32, B14, commacommacomma memorized
        
         | MuffinFlavored wrote:
         | https://www.purepwnage.com/
        
       | afavour wrote:
       | Man, what a trip down memory lane. Learned to fear that AWP sound
       | again immediately.
       | 
       | Counter to others I'm actually surprised by how _little_ I
       | enjoyed it. I used to play a ton of FPSes back in the day (CS
       | betas to 1.6 heyday) then stopped for well over a decade. Picked
       | up Call of Duty during the pandemic as a means to stay social
       | with friends and told myself barely anything had changed. Boy was
       | this a great lesson that things have, in fact, changed a lot.
        
         | epolanski wrote:
         | I enjoyed it enough to download Day of Defeat 1.3 again :D
        
           | pezezin wrote:
           | DoD and DoDS might be my favorite multiplayer FPS ever. I
           | picked up DoDS in my last year of university (2007/08), and I
           | don't even know how I could finish my degree. The community
           | was absolutely amazing.
        
           | spudlyo wrote:
           | I really enjoyed playing Day of Defeat back in the day, but
           | now days there is a great WW2 hardcore FPS out there called
           | "Hell Let Loose" that is very immersive both extremely
           | frustrating and rewarding at the same time. RTS like meta
           | game, with FPS infantry squad mechanics, huge emphasis on
           | communication and team play, decent graphics, lots of
           | attention to little details.
           | 
           | It's not without its warts and faults, but after not having
           | played any serious WW2 shooters since Day of Defeat, I now
           | have around 400 hours into this game, and am still having a
           | ton of fun.
        
         | andrepd wrote:
         | COD is a notoriously shitty game. Counterstrike continues as
         | cs:go, and it's honestly a superb game (and a superb esport).
        
         | bob1029 wrote:
         | IMO, the latest COD is _really bad_ with regard to how the game
         | feels to play. There is still some sort of shitty e-sports
         | objective that is being optimized for and no one in charge
         | seems to care.
         | 
         | If you go back to something as recent as COD Vanguard, you will
         | find the gunplay is likely closer to what you recall. I play in
         | lobbies like Ship Haus 24/7 to get myself warmed up. It is
         | really hard to feel competent dropping straight into a gigantic
         | campaign-style map with skilled players scattered throughout.
        
           | nerdponx wrote:
           | I recently started playing Urban Terror after seeing it
           | posted here. The gunplay, weapon design, and map design all
           | remind me a lot of CS as well (I never played Quake 3 so I
           | have no reference point there).
        
             | anthk wrote:
             | Urban Terror it's like CS mixed with Hollywood action
             | movies from Bruce Willis and such.
        
               | RileyJames wrote:
               | That's exactly where CS actually came from. The Q2 mod,
               | Action Quake2, where every round starts with "Lights,
               | Camera, Action".
               | 
               | The developer of action quake 2, Gooseman, went on to
               | create CS as a mod for half-life.
               | 
               | Urban terror is the Q3 port of action quake 2.
               | 
               | AQ2 still has a small community of players. I get on
               | occasionally for the nostalgia hit. I've never found an
               | FPS that's as fast paced and difficult to master
               | (movement primarily).
        
           | JamesSwift wrote:
           | I only played WZ1, so didn't experience the in-between
           | iterations, but the current WZ 2 experience is such a miss.
           | It baffles me how that was playtested and no one said "this
           | is a massive regression in both fun and functionality". I
           | understand wanting to mix it up, but to introduce tedium
           | (looting system as designed), boredom (map size + mobility),
           | and frustration (ping system / loadout changes / general
           | bugginess) seems so misguided. Instead of leaning into what
           | made WZ1 a massive initial success (an arcade-style,
           | generally high-action BR) and try to emulate what other BRs
           | are doing better.... it makes no sense to me.
        
             | bob1029 wrote:
             | I think this is at the heart of what is driving me nuts
             | with COD lately. I never touched war zone except to prove
             | to myself that I hate it. You can still play COD the old
             | fashioned way (but even this sucks now).
             | 
             | Either make an arena shooter or make a BR. Trying to make a
             | game that fits both genres at the same time is what is
             | probably ruining everything. Gameplay that feels good and
             | balanced on a 100m^2 map is not going to feel the same on a
             | 100km^2 map.
        
         | shapefrog wrote:
         | > Picked up Call of Duty during the pandemic as a means to stay
         | social with friends
         | 
         | The pandemic had some really good times.
        
           | CTDOCodebases wrote:
           | So true. It was like that quote from Bane in The Dark Knight
           | Rises:
           | 
           | "Oh, you think social distancing is your ally. But you merely
           | adopted social distancing; I was born in it, moulded by it. I
           | didn't socialise until I was already a man, by then it was
           | nothing to me but BLINDING!"
        
       | [deleted]
        
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