Valve have turned revolutionary announcements into standard business practice. After making the greatest class-based combat game free for everyone, they casually announced “We’re making a sequel to the most popular online shooter of all time” as if they were pointing out there were biscuits beside the tea. EA made more noise about their being a Madden 2012, even though the only thing which could have prevented that was the sun exploding. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (rocking the most perfect acronym of CS:GO) will be shown off at the Penny Arcade Expo within the week even though it won’t be released until next year. That’s classic Valve – a playable game is just the starting point for another year’s work. Which is important, because getting CS:GO right is more important than defusing a nuclear warhead correctly.

It’s very easy to screw up sequels. Crackdown had the plot of “Superpowered cops destroys criminals,” and the sequel played like they went back in time to give themselves brain damage. Even Counter-Strike’s creator doesn’t understand what makes the game, with his Tactical Intervention sequel promising civilians and attack dogs and various other things which control from the player worse than hand-paralysis. Counter-Strike servers are purer tests of sheer skill than Shaolin Temples, while Promod servers are already working to upgrade the experience. Which is why we’re not just dribbling at the prospect of a new Counter-Strike – we’re laying what we’d love to see, while there’s still time.

Clan and League Support

Counter-strike has more established competition than the Olympics, because those amateurs only play once every four years. The competitive community is more essential to CS servers than electricity, but the software makes it easier to reset your advanced shader options than say anything about your team. That’s why most player’s names look like the file got corrupted.

TF2 servers prove how hard Valve listen to their fans. The Catholic church doesn’t pay as much attention to their practitioners, and they have an entire sacrament based on sitting in a dark cupboard with someone to tell them secret naughtiness. Items, maps, entire weapons sets have been integrated from fan support. The next generation of Counter-Strike should have clan identities at the options level, beside your name and spray. A simple request-confirmation system would allow clans to have creat automatic pages, clan servers, organise league matches and much more. Right now you can look into a random TF2 player’s backpack easier than you can find their clan affiliation, and even then you’re depending on people not lying.

Software support for clans would do the same thing for CS leagues as Free 2 Play did for TF2: a lot of initial whining, a whole bunch of beginners, and those who stay to play (everyone no matter what they claim) benefits from a far larger player base. Automated league matching and scorekeeping would eliminate 90% of the whining from shooting other people in the face. And in videogames, the real crime in that sentence was the whining.

Multiple Modes at the Menu

Counter-Strike has been subjected to more custom modifications than the Nissan, and they work far better.

LEGO cars look manlier

Counter-strike servers allow more alternate kinds of fun than a Hollywood sex club and you don’t have to mop them afterwards.GunGame, jump matches, surfing races, knife-ball, sniper duels – they sound like the X-Games stopped playing around with skateboards and really became Extreme. These mods aren’t hard to install (and you can have them included on your own CS server just by asking) but the fact you have to find them at all means many never hear of their incredible joy.

Counter-Strike itself started as a mod. Its entire heritage is how hard players rock when they’re allowed to make more fun things for free just because they want to. TF2 has already integrated a stamp system to support matchmakers – neglecting mod support in CS:GO would be blinder than throwing a flashbang at the Sun and staring at it.

The Ultimate In Anti-Cheat

The greatest joy in running your own server is instantly destroying cheats (here’s how to spot them.) VAC and PunkBuster do their best to defend us from scumbags, but Counter-Strike needs to better at detecting and destroying cheats than a Terminator turned referee.

In the future, people who use aimbots get to meet a real one. Briefly.

We’re looking forward to CS:GO. We can trust Valve to make a sequel because they want to make it better, not just make more money (see: Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2, Portal 2.) The name clearly recognizes the massive player base and global competitions. And the best bit?

We’ll always have the old games. CS: Source servers are still running with tens of thousands of players, and GO would have to ship with atomic warheads to end Counter-Strike 1.6. It’s the ultimate shooter, enjoyed by those who value actual skill over shiny graphics, and we’re not waiting for a replacement. We’re looking forward to even more of it.

Counter-Strike’s weapons have been set in stone for almost a decade. You’d meet with less rage and hatred if you tried to alter the Mona Lisa, despite how this armory is less balanced and more lethal than an atomic warhead perched on a slingshot. There’s the AWP, the deagle, and a pile of other rubbish to show you can’t afford either of those yet.

Rock Paper Scissors EXTREME!

That’s why we’re looking at other weapons we’d love to see on a CS server.  The key is that these aren’t the most lethal weapons possible. Those would make the game less fun, Doom’s BFG requires less skill than appearing on a reality show, and if you really wanted to kill everyone ever you’d just need to bolt an AWP to a sentry gun.

Effective, but boring

These are fun guns! And that’s a brilliant sentence! As long as you’re talking about video games!

5. Grappling Hook

Rope beats Attack Helicopter, rather counter-intuitively

Just Cause 2 taught us that every game should have a grappling hook, and that it’s fun to fight your enemy on an island-sized gas station. A grappling hook would revolutionize Counter-Strike strategies as experienced players rediscovered the best paths through their favorite maps (assuming their hard-wired reflexes don’t short-circuit at shock of taking a different route through cs_italy.)

Great responsibility my Spider-Asshole!

Of course there’d be a bit of tuning to remove exploits, but there already are exploits in CS. And being shot in the head by grappling hooker still saves you the indignity of dying to a “bunny hop.”

4. The Fluorescent Decoy

An ancient idea saved for single-player by sensible programmers, but recently resurrected by Halo 3, the decoy hologram has always annoyed multiplayers. It’s always either obviously fake, and therefore useless, or not, in which case it’s incredibly annoying because there’s no way to use skill to tell. But they could do great things on CS servers: add decoy holograms which run and register as real characters but have incredibly obvious signs that they’re fake. Make them wireframes, or glow bright red, or carry huge signs saying “I’m fake and anyone shooting at me is using an aimbot.”

Anyone shooting the obvious fake is instantly booted from the server – think of it as an online anti-cheat Corbomite maneuver. This would only catch the most obvious cheats (where the computer does all the firing, as opposed to other scumbags who use systems where the computer aims but the person shoots), but anything which boots even a single scumbag cheat is worth it.

3. Eyelander

THIS, like the man said, IS A KNIFE!

In a game with guns that can kill you from clear across the map, the knife isn’t just badass – it’s heroic. Being brave enough to bring a knife to a gun-fight, Italian style, already gives you a speed boost on CS servers. But kills should give you even more! The Eyelander’s speed and health boost are a perfect model. Getting knife kills should make you a better person, or at least give you a cash bonus, because you are a better person than the guy whose spine you just stabbed.

Or at least, you are now. What with him being humiliatedly dead and all.

2. Holy Bolter

The deagle is the most lethal thing you can hold in one hand without being Galactus. It’s the king of all pistols.  If you’re going to have an instant-killing gun anyway (assuming you can headshot) it may as well look the part. Which is why we want this incredible Holy Bolter model from Crysis imported across.

The best bit? That gun’s user is gigantic genetically-engineered power-armored warrrior, a warrior from beyond the stars, and true to the spirit of deagle he can still be dropped in one headshot.

Helmets are for wimps.  Or survivors.  Whatever you call those pansies!

1. Split Portal Gun

Of course people want the Portal gun in everything, because it’s the most incredible weapon every made (and it’s already appeared in Half Life 2 for people who want to shoot their enemies through tears in reality), but we don’t want the full model.  That would be the worst thing to happen to a CS server outside of AI hostages. Instead, split it into two of the one-sided portal launchers from early in the game, and give them to different team members – just as the bomb is assigned to one player each round. This forces team-work, and a well co-ordinated team can pull off incredible approaches and surprise attacks, while beginners would die even quicker than before. The special forces call doorways “coffins” for a reason, and if your strategy is creating a glowing target circle then running straight through it then you’ve just reversed the meaning of “strategy.”

With the new routes through de_dust (a priceless joy and the automatic VIP aspect of how the portal-wielders become higher-value targets than TF2 medics who are also the heads of a foreign governments, it would be a whole new game.

The best bit? It’s bound to happen. It’s incredibly obvious that Half Life Episode 3 will feature the portal gun and more, and then it’ll be mere moments before someone unlocks it all for a Counter-Strike Source server.

The wonderful world of Counter-Strike:  “advanced military hardware”  and “basic illiteracy” haven’t been so effectively combined since the last  National Rifle Association convention.  We only wish we were competently insulted while defending de_dust (we’re pretty easily pleased as long as we’re playing CS), which is why we’ve written this handy guide!

Valve have returned to the most popular “Shooting people in the head” simulator since CIA Assassination Camp ’63, adding achievements and all sorts of player stats.  Particularly important are the new “lifetime achievements” screen, almost sarcastically accurate for people still complaining about camping.

But what would Counter-Strike be like if they’d been supporting it like Team Fortress 2?

FROM THE DESK OF GABE NEWELL:

When we decided to add our most important inventions of the past decade to Counter-Strike, we ran into a serious problem – the counter terrorists already have hats!  This shattered morale.  Many staff quit, or cried, or committed the final Valve option of “Hati-kiri“, pulling their hat down over their eyes so that they could no longer see and retiring from human existence.  What could possibly replicate the insane dedication displayed by hat-hunters have without accidentally including actual function?

(the remaining notes on the desk appear to be a termination notice, a government announcement that any company not currently producing food or post-dystopian leather gear was to be liquidated, and a crude attempts at fashioning small paper hats from food stamps.)

Counter-Strikers are among the most competitive creatures ever to exist – Darkseid once crossbred piranhas with Vikings, teleported them into a CS server, and they were crying into their fishy beards with AWP-holes through their gills within a day. But while twitch-reflexes and noscopers dominate de_dust, how do they stack up against unconventional foes?

vs Skiers

Many countries are confused about how to deal with computer gaming – Australia only recently stopped trying to ban them altogether, while the lack of imagination in setting obviously bothers Germany more than most – but Norway’s sending an Olympic skier to a LAN party. It’s not clear what they’re expecting to happen apart from a horrific demonstration of just how few advertising opportunities there are for world champion skiers.

SteelSeries gaming is deploying double Olympic gold medalist Petter Northug in a two-man team with Counter-Strike champion Patrik Lindberg, in what could be the most insane buddy-cop movie of all time. Though at least we’ll get some original one-liners: “That n00b looks piste off!”

vs Strippers

Probably the most famous photos of a LAN party on the internet, enabling delighted (if unoriginal) gaming sites to sneak tits into an article without resorting to cosplay.

The pics were copied more than Elvis, with every half-snarky internet commentator

1. Making the same sad jokes about nerds ignoring women
2. Demonstrating that those players are far smarter than everyone talking about thome.

Those gusy are top Russian teams (Virtus.pro and forZe), they play Counter-Strike servers constantly, and that means they have the internet. They don’t need to embarrass themselves slobbering over cheap Russian slappers in public – unlike every single person trying to mock them. They can see that, and much more than that, any time of the day or night, when they’re not busy playing a national-level match in the coolest lan ever – look at that place, it’s like a Borg Cube of Counter-Striking.

Craning your neck to see past a stripper isn’t just dedication, it was the only dignified response. Because the only photos more embarrassing than being harassed by half-naked women would be ones of you ogling them like a twelve-year-old.

Note: Even when professionally paid to be there they look bored to tears.

vs Porn

See, Counter-Strikers know about online porn. Though some of them don’t know about “display monitors.”

vs Cheats

Counter-Strike servers are plagued by cheat, dual-wastes of both virtual and physical space who believe steering a computer around as it plays the game for you counts as “fun” (as opposed to a vicious parody of the concept of life.) One such scummy super-powered-player was playing in a Chinese internet cafe, using a wallhack to make obstacles in the game transparent.

Some other people saw him, and, well

He survived, proving that karma isn’t an active force in the universe. Of course we can’t recommend brain-stabbing as a method of conflict resolution (we prefer private servers and competent admins), but on the list of people we actually feel sorry for this guy’s somewhere below the “Smashing our hands in drawers for fun” society.

Fans simply don’t get more dedicated than Counter-Strike players. If you don’t believe me, log on to a clan server and start playing – you’ve already died before finishing this sentence. These people understand the recoil mechanics of an AWP better than those of their own legs, and sport intensities which make a mountain monastery dedicated to World of Warcraft look like casual gaming. So when a team decided to build the ultimate version of CS, it was expected to be better than an Ark of the Covenant filled with cures for cancer.

The Origin of Promod

Promod grew out of dissatisfaction with Counter-Strike: Source, where longtime players were horrified to discover that an entirely new version meant that some things had actually changed. This would not stand! But not all problems were nit-picking – the worst were with the netcode, hitboxes and recoil mechanics which meant that running-and-gunning actually worked some of the time – eliminating years of practice for previous players.

Dedicated fans directed torrents of abuse at Valve who, looking at the number of new fans playing on the upgraded CS:Source servers, decided the didn’t have to listen. Thus a hardcore group decided to build their own upgrade intended to be CS 1.6 (and ONLY CS 1.6) with better graphics.

Developmental Difficulties

Building an upgrade of 1.6 into the CS: Source engine without access to the code of either is a bit challenging. But internet fans are determined! A small team worked with the Half Life 2: Episode 1 Source Development Kit, painstakingly recreating the original mechanics in whole new engine – including those mechanics which only existed because of glitches in the original engine.

Unfortunately their extremely unprofessional approach causes massive delays, with the first two “head” programmers just deciding they couldn’t be bothered anymore (and disappearing with all the code each time). Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice without me making backups? Shame on me.

The Disastrous First Launch

After two non-starters, third time wasn’t just unlucky – it was an utterly unprepared failure which almost destroyed the project. After years as part of a group dedicated to viciously criticizing things people made, the team were actually surprised to be viciously criticized over the thing they made. That’s irony so intense you could build a bridge-y out of it. When your entire mission statement is “Valve screwed up the details and we hate them,” you can’t release buggy code and say “It’s our first time so be nice guys THX!!!!” Being a small team isn’t an excuse, it’s a reason not to release until you’re ready.

The backlash almost blasted Promod out of existence. Built up as a cross between Jesus returning as a CT and the Counter-Strike Singularity, the first version of Promod couldn’t even handle people running into walls. The team were suddenly as welcome as a travelling troupe of leprous bailiffs, and disappeared.

To work in secret.

Salvation?

The team learned their lesson, disappearing from public view and deciding to work on actual code instead of bathing in forum praise. The result of nineteen months of silent labor is Promod Beta 1.04, the “We’re Sorry About Before” Edition. And it is good.

The trains are gorgeously Sourced and the gun recoils right too!

Beta 1.04

They’re actually beginning to deliver on their promise of tightened terrorist-shooting with 1.6 mechanics but non-comical graphics. It’s explicitly designed to cater to pro-players, with fan-favorite ‘features’ (as in “it’s not a bug, it’s a”) explicitly recreated in the Source code. These include

Boosting
The extra-ordinarily difficult stunt whereby players can perch on each other and, by jumping with better timed than the average Olympic gymnastic routine, boost the upper into otherwise inaccessible regions. Locations taking people into map exploit-level locations have been removed, but tactical trampolining-on-terrorist locations remain.

Wall-spamming
Probably the cheapest 1.6 “feature” to remain, and the one which makes a total mockery of their stated intention of attracting new players to a graphically-improved old-school Counter-Strike. Wall-spamming is where you shoot through a wall where the (old) code accidentally leaves a chink in reality, transporting the bullets across the map to their targets. Line up, rattle off shots at the right time, and you’ll pepper people with absolutely no way of knowing you’re about to do it. Real popular with ‘professional’ players, less so for lightweights.

Even the inconsistency in the exploits they upgrade speaks of the intensity of their passion, if not perfect sanity.

Crouch-bugging
Source‘s ability to peek over obstacles without exposing yourself (by tapping crouch) has been removed. If you want to see them, you’ve got to show yourself and probably get shot in the head.

Jumping Sound
Promod’s passion is visible in the FAQ, where the question “Does jumping make any type of sound in CSPromod?” is answered with “No, and it never will.” Clearly an important subject in their camp.

If it hadn't included this it wouldn't have been CS at all

Conclusion

It’s finally becoming what it was always meant to be – Counter-Strike servers for fans, by fans. There’s still work to be done (from fine-tuning details to installing the eSports-friendly spectator system), but it blows previous Promods out of the water. If you play Counter-Strike servers, you simply have to try it. And it’s free, so you have to try it NOW.