Last Thursday, when it became available, I purchased the Silver Half-Life 2 package via Valve's content delivery system, Steam. Right now, the only part of that package that is available is CounterStrike: Source, a conversion of the wildly popular CounterStrike multiplayer online game to the new Source game engine used for HL2. Here are my first impressions.
The first thing I did was crank up my own server so I could explore a couple of maps by myself without having to worry about getting shot in the head. They look a lot like the maps from the original game, although they've been expanded and touched up to take advantage of the new engine's capabilities. A good analogy would be the difference between the appearance the Massassi temple on the fourth moon of Yavin in the original Star Wars, and its appearance in the 1997 Special Edition. The overall shape is the same, but it now looks much more realistic and aged. While walking along, I noticed better lighting and shadows, partical effects used for dust floating in the air, and light reflecting from smooth tile surfaces. The player models are considerably more detailed as well. though currently there is only one model for each side. It would not surprise me if more are made available later on.
Although the maps have always been about gameplay rather than just looking cool, I did notice some interesting attention to detail. Perhaps the biggest example of this is in the Office map. Along with other objects, there are several computers, with monitors, keyboards, and mice located at various places. The computers themselves, if you shoot them repeatedly, can be disassembled down to their component parts. The case, motherboard, power supply, hard drives, CD drive, video card, sound card, memory chips, and CPU with cooler are all separate objects that have been assembled together to form the computer. All can be shot away.
After exploring a few levels, I then joined a server and started playing. I hadn't played in a while, so I was a bit rusty, but it didn't take long for some of the skills to come back.
It's really kind of interesting. I was never a CounterStrike fanatic. In fact, in it's first incarnation, it was one of the most frustrating multi-player games I've ever played. This was mainly due to how the physics of gunfire worked in the game. It seemed like I could pour round after round into an opponent and he would still be able to take me out with one or two shots. The idea was to model, at least to a degree, how weapons on full automatic fire, or on semi-auto but fired rapidly, are less accurate due to recoil. I remember one time I was playing on a very small map where the objective was simply to eliminate all members of the opposing team. You started out with nothing and there were a bunch of rifles, shotguns, and pistols laying around. You basically took the first one you walked over and tried to do your best with it. I was at point-blank range from an opponent with a heavy machine gun. I must have fired ten rounds or more before he started shooting back. Every single round I fired missed, even though my target reticle was centered on his chest. He gunned me down with at most two shots.
I can't say for sure yet, but CounterStrike: Source seems to do a better job of this. You still won't hit much if you just spray and pray. You still want to use short, controlled bursts. But I generally do at least some damage if I'm firing at someone, even if they end up taking me out. As before, though, the secret is to become the master of the head shot.
One thing I'm kind of surprised about is that the game doesn't appear to model the actual projectiles. Many games nowadays do that. Max Payne was the first one I played that did so. In CS:S, as with the original, the bullets appear not to be modelled individually but rather cross the distance in zero time and use old-fashioned aim-based hit detection. I do know that for at least some of the weapons in Half-Life 2 the individual projectiles are modelled. This is obvious from some of the gameplay videos. I'm guessing that they just didn't want to go through all the work to convert CounterStrike: Source to that model. Perhaps they will do it at some future time.
I'm still not a CounterStrike fanatic, and I doubt I ever will be. It's fun, but as big a reason for getting it now was so that I could find out how well the new engine performs on my system. When it comes to game performance, it's the same as when I bought it in April of 2003. I bought that rig in anticipation of Half-Life 2 which, of course, saw a couple really long delays. I'm happy to report that the game runs buttery smooth, even at 1280x1024 with all effects turned up to the max and with anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering turned on (though not maxed). With those settings it averages over 40 fps in the video stress test included with CS:S. With the defaults (1024x768, all effects maxed, but no aa or af) it averages over 90. Half-Life 2 itself may push the envelope a bit more; it seems to me like there will probably be more objects in the environment as they play a much larger role, but I expect that I'll be able to maintain these settings and still have a high enough framerate that it will still appear smooth. We'll see.
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