{ CS:CZ Preview... again! }
posted Monday, December 30, 2002 by Some1 Call 911
It ain't over yet. This month's Counter-Strike: Condition Zero media keeps exploding. Shacknews has a preview of CS:CZ which is obviously worth the read. I bring you this slice:

Something you'll see in Condition Zero that may surprise you at first is what looks like those "rag doll" physics for when enemies are shot and fall down stairs or over railings etc. Ritual in fact did not implement a new physics engine in to the game, but is actually taking advantage of their huge art team on hand and creating custom animations for each particular situation. They actual recreate a scene in 3DStudio, run a physics plugin, and then export it back in to the game. It really does looks just as good as the real thing, but if you run through the game 5 times you wont really be seeing much variance on that cool death scene.

{ Yet Another CS: CZ Feature }
posted Friday, December 27, 2002 by Some1 Call 911
Ok. I'm guessing many of you are getting sick of all these interviews, previews, screenshots, whatever. Well, to irritate you even more, there's one more interview up on Computer And Video Games with creative director Robert Atkins of Ritual Entertainment to discuss what are Ritual's plans for the game. Here's a slice:

We haven't heard anything on Condition Zero in some time. What are you actually focusing on in the game at the moment in terms of development?

Atkins: The attention and focus of the team has been on creating content. Artists have been busy creating all new weapons, character models, and skins. There have been hundreds of new animations, many which are custom to a particular scenario. We have added many new props and vehicles to the world, adding to the realism even further. The level designers have been sculpting some truly intriguing levels, full of action and interesting puzzles.

{ Counter-Strike: CZ Preview... again! }
posted Sunday, December 22, 2002 by Some1 Call 911
There is yet another Counter-Strike: Condition Zero preview. This one is over at The Adrenaline Vault. I found this screenshot quite interesting. Looks like Osama Bin Laden to me. Anyway, here's a snippet:

A good portion of Ritual's development on Condition Zero has been concentrating on enhancing the look and feel of Counter-Strike to meet today's visual expectations. In CZ, all of the familiar weapons and models have been enhanced dramatically, with over 60% more polygons and higher resolutions. Additionally, characters now exhibit new animations (such as vaulting over a fence), and have numerous pre-set animation sequences at different points in the game. Deaths will take advantage of intelligent scripting and a "rag-doll"-like fluidity, allowing killed enemies to plummet off the side of railings, or even tumble down a flight of stairs. The backgrounds will also be filled with new high-resolution locations, such as jungle, desert, arctic, and urban environments.

{ Counter-Strike: CZ Preview And Details }
posted Saturday, December 21, 2002 by Some1 Call 911
And the Condition Zero media coverage keeps rolling in! GameSpot got a closer look at Counter-Strike: Condition Zero thanks to Ritual. The preview takes a look at the game's new features since the project switched developers. The preview is also filled with interesting details for you Counter-Strike fans. Here's a snippet:

There's a fair bit of new content in Condition Zero, so it's pretty surprising that the game is due out in the spring even though Ritual started only four months ago. How can Ritual create a complete single-player game in eight months? There are two reasons. The artists and level designers know the Quake 1 technology inside and out. Another not so insignificant factor is that Ritual has 30 people devoted to Condition Zero, and let's not forget that Ritual has another game in development, Activision's Star Trek: Elite Force II. It so happens that the studio grew to include more than 50 developers this year with the help of EA, which had Ritual working on a PC version of Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.

{ Bunch Of CS: CZ Stuff }
posted Saturday, December 21, 2002 by Some1 Call 911
Firstly, Erik Johnson from VALVe has officially announced that...

The Riot Shield will block AWP fire completely when it hits the shield. It's possible that there is a bug of some kind in the build at the CPL, but it will be addressed before the 1.6 beta is live.

{ CS: CZ Q and A }
posted Thursday, December 19, 2002 by Some1 Call 911
After recently hearing about Ritual taking over the Counter-Strike: Condition Zero project, there have been a lot of unanswered questions floating around. This interview with Erik J over at HomeLan Fed will help answer some of those questions. Here's a snippet:

HomeLAN - What can you tell us now in terms of the actual content for Condition Zero, in terms of number of levels, weapons and other gameplay features planned?

Erik Johnson - There will be 20 single player missions, which are made of 3 to 4 actual levels each. There will be 10 new items that will be new to Counter-Strike. Some of these are items that you use at a specific point in the single player game, and some are weapons that will be in both the single and multiplayer games. Condition Zero will have a new user interface, which we'll be releasing first as part of Counter-Strike 1.6. Finally, the AI system is being extended from the original Half-Life system to account for CZ's play style.

{ CS: CZ Preview }
posted Friday, December 13, 2002 by Some1 Call 911
Recently we've heard about Ritual Entertainment's news that they will be taking over the Counter-strike: Condition Zero project from Gearbox. Today, Gamespy has a preview of CS: CZ to discuss on Ritual's changes and improvements to what Gearbox was doing. Everybody in CSR must read this, excellent preview. Here's a snip:

At the present time, Counter-Strike: Condition Zero is slated for spring 2003, but before then, CS fans are going to be getting a major update sometime in the beginning of the year. "V1.6 is one of the more significant updates for Counter-Strike," explains Johnson, "we will be introducing a new map, two new assault rifles, the riot shield as well as a number of tweaks and fixes. For CS and all Half-Life multiplayer games, this release will mark the introduction of the new launcher. Built on V-GUI 2.0, it replaces the now-very-dated system for server browsing, configuration setup, and starting a game."

{ CS: Condition Zero no longer a Gearbox Project! }
posted Friday, December 6, 2002 by Some1 Call 911
/me takes a moment to laugh out loud.
Ok. Enough laughing. Let's get serious. The seriousness in this, is that I knew this would happen. I didn't really see any progress in CS:CZ and I expected another company to take over. Anywho, Gearbox has officially announced that they are handing the project over to Ritual Entertainment (makers of SiN and Heavy Metal: FAKK2). Now, I hope they don't change anything about the game, just finish it. Anyway, here's the official announcement:

Counter-Strike: Condition Zero Development Moves to Ritual
The primary development of Counter-Strike: Condition Zero (CS:CZ) has moved to Ritual Entertainment. Counter-Strike: Condition Zero introduces single player gaming to the world's #1 online action game. Representatives from Ritual and Valve will be presenting the latest on CS:CZ during a seminar at the The CPL's upcoming Counter-Strike Championships in Dallas, Texas.

{ Erik Q and A }
posted Saturday, November 16, 2002 by Some1 Call 911
There's an interview with Valve's Erik Johnson over at B-F Total Gaming Network covering Counter-Strike, Steam, TFC, and Half-Life. Obviously, the interview is worth a read, so here's a snippet:

Counter-Strike will be receiving some significant content with this update, can you first detail the new weapons and riot shield that will be making an appearance?
There are two new rifles in Counter-Strike 1.6: the FAMAS and Galil. The FAMAS is an accurate and fast firing assault rifle. It has both single-shot and burst modes of fire. The Ts get the Galil, which is less accurate but does more damage.
The CTs will have the option of buying a Riot Shield that should mostly be used as the first line of defense when storming Ts that are holed up in their base (see pics 3 & 4).

Can you elaborate on the shield in particular? How effective do you think it will be beyond the first round given its inability to fully stop rifle fire?
In the current implementation, it will fully stop rifle fire.

{ Another Delay, Another Day... }
posted Saturday, November 16, 2002 by Some1 Call 911
I'll just continue to bring the bad news I suppose. Counter-Strike 1.6 is not going to be released mid-November but instead it has been delayed to mid-December. At the Steam Powered website you can view more news about this. With all these delays you can expect another. If you don't know what Steam is go to the support section.

Steam is a digital content management system that provides content delivery, component revision control and data security to developers of such content. Steam is embedded within a Steam-enabled application giving it a virtual file system from which it can obtain "resources" (not files) from a local cache, CD or from the Internet.

{ Disk2's HLamp Q and A }
posted Wednesday, November 13, 2002 by Some1 Call 911
CSR's very own Disk2 was interviewed over at BombSiteX to talk about his popular and nifty program called HLamp (which I use) which can let you control your Winamp and Winamp Playlist while playing Half-Life. Here's a snippet:

What was the most difficult problem in creating HLamp?

The most difficult problem was probably figuring out how to interface with Half-Life without using hooks and without triggering the VALVe Anti-Cheat. Another problem initially was getting HLamp to work with Winamp 2.x and Winamp 3.0, since they use slightly different commands to do the same thing. Other than that, it wasn't all that difficult.

{ No Surprise Here... }
posted Sunday, November 3, 2002 by Some1 Call 911
Are you sitting down? Well, yeah, I saw this coming like a few others. The ever anticipated Counter-Strike: Condition Zero has been delayed. Over at GameStop the release date is: 6/2/2003 (June, 6th). This is unofficial information since this hasn't been announced in a press release or at the official site. So keep in mind this may not be correct. This may be false because the Official Strategy Guide for Condition Zero comes out 6 months earlier which is a big date differance.
Comments (0)

{ DE_Simpsons Released }
posted Wednesday, September 4, 2002 by Some1 Call 911
Mapper Comments (2)

{ Not Counter-Strike related but... }
posted Monday, August 5, 2002 by Some1 Call 911
I now have a position over at ActionRealm. I'm a news poster and a mod/game reviewer and previewer. So, if you want to feed your need for action game content I really suggest you check out ActionRealm.

- Some1_Call_911
Comments (0)

{ Prowler interviews Gearbox }
posted Thursday, July 4, 2002 by Some1 Call 911
CSR’s (and Sony UK’s) very own Prowler has interviewed Randy Pitchford from Gearbox about their upcoming delayed title, Counter-Strike: Condition Zero. This interview runs a good 19 minutes and Prowler asks some of CSR’s requested questions. It’s quite noisy in the background so make sure your speakers/headphones are turned up or unless you can read lips your fine. Randy shows off some nice demos of CS:CZ like the Black Hawk Down mission where you have to rescue fellow Black Hawk pilots in the crash site. You may need DIVX Player to view this .avi if you want picture and sound. Grab it here:
If you have access to u_suk_it’s FTP please download from his FTP @ /ftp2 (133 MB)
If you don’t I was nice enough to upload to my FTP. My mirror here (115 MB) (not working yet)
Please post mirrors in comments and I will add them to this report.
FilePlanet Mirror (130 MB)

- Some1_Call_911
Comments (3)

{ CS: Condition Zero delayed... again... }
posted Tuesday, July 2, 2002 by Some1 Call 911
Apparently Counter-Strike: Condition Zero has been delayed to November from it’s original release date summer 2002. According to this Computer & Video games.com article when they got a hold of a spokesperson for Sierra UK they had no comment for the situation. This is starting to look like a Team Fortress 2. Are promises and release dates from Valve/Gearbox untrustworthy? It seems so. Let’s hope that this delay was a needed one in order to get better results from the game then if it were released this summer.

- Some1_Call_911
Comments (0)

{ For those of you who missed it... }
posted Monday, July 1, 2002 by Some1 Call 911
Yeah, this is sort of old news but for those of you that live under a rock your good ol' host of GnRadio, Sushi, has interviewed Rizzuh the guy behind CS Nation. It's a good 16 minutes long and ends with Sushi almost accidently (hm... accident?) hanging up on Rizzuh.
Grab it here:
FilePlanet Mirror
My Mirror

- Some1_Call_911
Comments (1)

{ Me, the new reporter! }
posted Monday, July 1, 2002 by Some1 Call 911
This is your friendly neighbourhood Some1_call_911, your new reporter! Thanks to u_suk_it I can start posting reports. But before all that here's the article that got me here:
CS Classic

This may bring a tear of nostalgia to some of our eyes. Remember back in the days around beta 5, 6, and 7? Well, seems Detonator (author of this mod) has compiled of version of CS that brings back old maps like cs_iraq, and cs_docks. It also has some of the old player skins. Unfortunately, the weapon skins are the same as the present. This does not replace your current version of Counter-Strike but makes a new directory as if this was a new mod. CS Classic isn’t exactly like the old betas, but it does the job.
Some things this mod doesn’t bring back were the things like the colt that could zoom. Maybe we can expect to see some new changes in a patch for this mod to take out some of the things that weren't in the old betas like the dual Berettas and the UMP. Overall the mod does what it’s supposed to do, bring back the old-schoolers and bring in the newbies who wonder what was the old CS like?
Grab it here: http://www.fileplanet.com/dl/dl.asp?/planethalflife/cs-classic.exe
Expect to see more reports from me in the future and i'm honoured to be CSR's newest reporter.

- Some1_Call_911
Comments (0)

{ The Post that will solve all the CS problems }
posted Saturday, March 17, 2001 by Smokin-Ya
Well I'm very pleased to see this guy take the time and effort in putting this very interesting article together. Most of the stuff I have to agree with but just a few things I dont.

"#1 the most complained about, The AWP or AWM - Arctic Warfare Magnum. The way I see this gun, the gun is not cheap. It's the person using it, For example noob with awp peg's 1 person and fall's to death. Expert, Peg's whole opposition. Thankfully in Version 1.1 the awp is going to be not as lethal."

You can read the rest of his 20 agurments here

Comments (13)

{ *Welcomes Self To The New Site Appearance* }
posted Thursday, March 15, 2001 by ne0n
*Cracks Knuckles* , *steals vans chair* , *sits back...* hmmm.. *glances around* o0o0o0oo0 new site design :D~ hmmm.. well.. as you probably all already heard, but ill say it again CS1.1 and the new halflife patches are out.. go get them :D from.. uhmmm. Here (Halflife Patch)
and.. Here (CounterStrike Patch) hmm... anyway.. thats enuff..

Cheers, ne0n
ICQ: 63537619

{ CS 1.1 }
posted Monday, March 12, 2001 by Smokin-Ya
Well Counter-Strike.net has posted a few screenshots of the new model looks for CS 1.1. All of you should go over their and take a look. I think they look TERRIFIC! Also It looks like CS 1.1 wont be released until cliff can get the new Half-Life patch from Valve. So expect it really soon guys!
Comments (2)

{ Won ID Changes }
posted Thursday, March 8, 2001 by Smokin-Ya
After sifting through the constant flood of messages from the HLDS mailing lists, I noticed an update from Valve's Erik Johnson on the rollout of the improved WON ID system for Half-Life. If internal testing goes smoothly, all HL clients will be issued a new WON ID on Thursday. Here's the straight skinny:

When fully deployed, the updated system will use a single WON ID for all users (for those unaware, the current system provides up to 3 IDs, 1 per AuthServer, for a user). Remember that WON IDs are based on CDKey and users with multiple CDKeys will have 1 ID per CDKey. The updated system will stop the Unban hack as soon as it is fully deployed.

During the rollout period, users will either get their new WON ID or one of their old ones depending on which AuthServer they contact. Also, the new IDs use a new sequence, so all existing WON IDs will be invalid once the rollout period is complete.

For those of you maintaining lists of banned IDs on your servers, be aware that during the rollout period, IDs will be unstable. No user will have a guaranteed WON ID until the rollout period is complete.


Comments (41)

{ HalfLife.net closing its doors }
posted Thursday, March 8, 2001 by Smokin-Ya
I'm sure you've all heard by now that HalfLife.net is due to cease all operations on April 1st, 2001. Along side Planet Half-Life, HalfLife.Net has been a driving force in the Half-Life community and will be sorely missed by all. Head on over to HalfLife.net for the full story on why the site is shutting it's doors.
Comments (3)

{ GeForce 3 lands in Europe }
posted Thursday, March 8, 2001 by Smokin-Ya
For all you gamers out their that think GeForce couldn't possibley make a better video card...they proved you wrong. GeForce 3 has been released in Europe and will be coming to the USA soon. When they say that their gonnna come out with a new video card every 6 months they mean it. Get the full store here.
Comments (4)

{ Cs Art }
posted Wednesday, March 7, 2001 by Neon
It Has Been Brought To My Attention, That CS Art Hasnt Been Receiving The Respect That It Deserves.
There Are Some Truly Talented People Over There, And I Think You Should Check It Out..

So If You Havent Already Been To Cs Art, Go Now, Take 5 Minutes Of Your Time , And Click On This Link And Be Gone!

Cheers, Neon

Comments (0)

{ Interview with Gooseman CS1.1 }
posted Wednesday, March 7, 2001 by Smokin-Ya
A interview of the man himself!

Is a new version of Cs in preparation ? Can we expect news maps ? What will be the main upgrades ?

Yes, CS 1.1 is almost done. You can expect about 6 new maps as well as a ton of new server variables that will help server admins a lot. You can also expect a new spectator mode and some other cool stuff.

Goose also reveals a couple details on projects with Valve and answers some of the same old questions. Read the full interview Here
Comments (0)

{ New CS hosted website }
posted Wednesday, March 7, 2001 by Smokin-Ya
The newest site to join the CS.net network, we want to give a warm welcome to Counter-Map which has just launched. This will be the CS mapping site which will replace the now defunct Anarchy Mapping. To start out they've got some new Docks shots and info. We've opened up the official Counter-Map forums as well. N@rby and others hang out there, so any CS mappers may want to shoot on over

Comments (0)

{ Counter-Strike Review }
posted Wednesday, March 7, 2001 by Smokin-Ya
I was surfing and I came across this article on PlanethalflifeCS Silent games posted a review on Counter-Strike. It's somewhat negative (20% of 100%), heres a clip:

Game Play: But will all this great mapping, weapon modeling, character modeling what is left? Not much but some nice eye candy. I couldn't care less about graphics and sound, just give me some good solid game play. The fact that this game moves slow and has all the negatives against it brings in newbies from around the world to dance around with other loosers.

Check out the full article
here.

{ Clan [LAN] Breaks up }
posted Wednesday, March 7, 2001 by Smokin-Ya
Well I'm sorry to inform you that clan [LAN] has offically broke up. During the DOG match for #1 rung in the east division agasint NHG their were playing very poorly from what [LAN]iKNOW has told me. But Beeker is trying to start [LAN] back up once again to make it #1 in the CS community. You can contact clan [LAN] at their mIRC channel.

irc.gamesnet.net
#lan

Smokin-Ya
Head Reporter
Comments (1)

{ Interview with Gooseman }
posted Saturday, March 3, 2001 by ThatHurt[CSR]
Check out this interview with the man himself the Gooseman. It has him talking about the new MOD Firearms.

http://www.digitalgunfire.com/cs/counterstrike/
Comments (0)

{ CS 1.1 }
posted Saturday, March 3, 2001 by ThatHurt[CSR]
And then we have..this little tidbit which I had to copy-paste as well..it's best left in cleoffy's words

Work continues on CS 1.1. Still no release date. Though I will say that CS server admins will have a couple more options when it finally does come out. More on that later. Thanks for your patience.
Whoo-wee..bet that sure makes ya wonder just what the hells' going into 1.1.
Comments (2)