Counter-Strike servers are still the single most popular playground for shooting people across the internet, and no matter how many appear it’s always worth adding your own. Want to play privately with friends? Enjoy alternate game modes? Fed up with online assholes and want to upgrade your MP5 with a banhammer? There are thousands of ways to customize your own CS Server, and here we’ll look at a few of the funner options:

1. GunGame5

Customization isn’t just screwing with skins and forcing users to download an infinity of idiotic audio files (PS: add cl_downloadfilter “nosounds” to your config.cfg to avoid that). There are whole other worlds of combat just waiting to be downloaded, conversions of Counter-Strike engineered by avid fans and free to anyone who likes games where you shoot things (that’s you.)

GunGame5 is the latest iteration of an action-packed arcade variant: instead of tactical flanking an buying guns, it’s a straight up slaughterfest where you work your way up through the weapons. Kills raise your rank, and each rank changes your weapon – not always for the better. Low-level pistol players have to swarm upgraded machine-gunners, while moving from the deagle down to the fifty-seven is something of a shock! You can alter the weapons order when you set up the server, and it’s traditional to make the final tier the knife – so the super-number-one killer has to go all commando to score the final point and win the game.

2. AWP Maps

The best thing about private servers is their embodiment of the internet’s “everything is permitted” sentiment (which has gone places than the Brothers Kamazarov could never have imagined). If you’re an anti AWP-activist, you can configure your CS server to stop snipers (or at least limit the number per team). But you can also embrace it as an alternate game mod, adding AWP-adapted maps to the rotation for some serious sniping fun (instead of de_dust-destroying imbalance). One excellent map is awp_island, an open expanse of snipercentric perches and pathways.

Did you spot the enemy?

I did.

The opposite end of the sharpshooting spectrum is represented by maps like awp_lego, an insanely small snipefest where everyone gets a gun and a knife and about two seconds to live.

If you’re just starting on sniper war get used to seeing this.

3. Brand New Classics

You know that other people are fun – it’s why you’re setting up a server – but one of the best things about the Counter-Strike community is how we’re still getting new maps ten years after the original release. You’re not even stuck with Source, with old-school CS 1.6 servers armed with new maps.

de_tuscan is everything you enjoy about the classics in a whole new level, a multiple-path bomb/defuse map for those who can crush all comers on existing maps while asleep. Setting up an extra map is simple – just shove it on the server and you can automatically download it to any connectors. Tip: If you’re planning a clan session, make sure people visit to download early so they don’t slow the server when people are actually playing.

4. The Green Green Grass of Home

For all our fancy fripperies, Counter-Strike servers will always be about the de_dust: the two best maps until someone draws a route to El Dorado. But even that can be invigorated when you’re in control, modifying the map server-side to insert a little freshness. And what could be fresher than grass?

The green green grass of Bombsite A

A tiny tweak to an all-time favorite, just different enough to be fun without enraging the experts who still whine about hitboxes six years later.

Even better is administering a server where others already do all the work. Some servers will take care of all the updates, adjustment and assorted issues for you – leaving you free to decide what you want to do and then do it.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 at 4:07 pm and is filed under Counter-Strike, Counter-Strike Source. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.