Steve Perriam

guys i located this in a link just now.....

For a while now, Valve Software has been touting their upcoming patch for Half-Life that would enable both voice communication and a special spectator mode for Half-Life and all of the Half-Life mods. The patch has taken a little while longer to complete than first announced but now it seems that Valve is very close to releasing the new 1.1.0.8 patch and the new 1.3 version of Counter-Strike. So much so, in fact, that they gave some gaming web sites a chance to sample the new patch for themselves.


HomeLAN was one of those web sites invited to check out the new Half-Life patch and play some Counter-Strike with and against Valve employees on Thursday night. After downloading both the 1.1.0.8 patch and the 1.3 version of Counter-Strike, I quickly joined the special Half-Life play test server that Valve had set up and tried out the new features.


One of the two big features is integrated voice communication. Of course, voice communication in games is nothing new but it usually requires a third party software package to enable it. Now Valve has put a simple but effective voice feature into the game. All you have to do is plug your microphone into the computer, join a game and push a key to speak. That’s really all there is to it. There is a small utility that you can use to test your microphone and to improve your volume in the game before you start but once that is configured you are good to go and you won’t need to fool with configuring it any future games.


When a player uses the microphone to speak, he or she doesn’t actually hear themselves in the game. That’s due to the fact of a tiny delay that has been put into the communication program. When others speak, their nick shows up on the right center side of the screen with a speaker icon. If you happen to see the player as he is speaking a speaker icon appears above its head in the game. You can only talk and listen to your teammates in Counter-Strike and after you die you can listen but not speak to your teammates.


I was on a 56k modem when I played on the Valve test play server, and while the audio quality of the voice communication wasn’t exactly Dolby surround sound, it was very much intelligible for most of the time I played with no noticeable lag (and I had a 300 + ping when I played, or rather participated; compared to the Valve Software folks, I’m a total loser at CS). Terrorists and Counter-Terrorists team members talked to each other to set up ambushes and plan strategy and generally seemed to work more as a team than if they just had to type out their words on the keyboard. It’s clear that once this patch is released, playing a game of Counter-Strike or any Half-Life game may never be the same for a lot of folks. Voice communication really adds a new dimension to the gameplay, however clichéd that may sound.


The other major addition to the Half-Life patch is a new spectator mode. This has actually been demonstrated at other LAN events by Valve before now but it’s another thing to actually see it in action on your computer screen. You do have to log on to a different port on the game server to use the new spectator mode. There is the traditional in-game camera views such as chase cams and first person views for each player but the coolest feature is viewing a two-dimensional version of an entire Counter-Strike map. If you have ever read the book “Flatland”, you may be reminded of it when you view the full map mode. The players on each team are represented by either blue or red circular logos that you can see move. A kill is represented by a skull and cross bones logo before it disappears. It takes a little getting used to seeing a game played in this way but it’s definitely a unique viewpoint. If you spectate in the game itself you can bring up the full 2D map in a window by pressing the crouch button and when you view the full map you can also check a windowed version of the in-game camera in the same manner.


One other minor chance is the redesigned multiplayer scoreboard which shows not just scores, kills and ping readings but also if they are using the voice communications features.


Valve has said in the past that they plan to release the source code for both the voice communication and spectator mode features so all Half-Life mods can use them. It could be interesting watching a Day of Defeat match in spectator mode and listening in on the team’s conversation. I wonder if there will be any role playing for Axis vs. Allies in that mod once they start speaking to each other.


Valve has not yet announced officially when the new Half-Life patch or Counter-Strike 1.3 will be released but if they are giving other folks a chance to try it out it must be pretty close. Indeed, cliffe at the official Counter-Strike web site has now stated that CS 1.3 is due out sometime in the first week of September. There are other enhancements that are planned for the new patch as well, such as support for smooth character models for people who will have the upcoming ATI Radeon 8500 video cards. Even after three years, the folks at Valve are still finding ways to improve Half-Life and keep it as the number one game for mods and multiplayer action.

cya l8r

steve

roadrunner

Please tell me you didn't sit there typing all that out

Voice Comm sounds great, I will definately start using it when it comes out!

BarryK

I believe it also stops people modifying their model, so aimbots etc will, for a time at least, not work.

Also bunny hopping loophole is closed and the leaping about like a Joey but still getting a headshot is sorted too.

That should be an interesting time on public servers.

Steve Perriam

rr : u mean i could have posted it without needing to type it all in

more info about 1.3 :

Changes/Additions:
------------------
- Multicast spectator added.
- Voice communication added.
- Added server chat to logging.
- Redesigned multiplayer scoreboard.
- CapsLock key is now bindable.
- Switching to Spectator is now logged.
- Changed minimum value for "mp_chattime" to 1 second
- Changed minimum value for "mp_buytime" to 0.25 (15 seconds)
- Radio commands can be heard by nearby enemies.
- Added commandmenu ability

Bug Fixes :
-----------
- Bunny hopping removed.
- Fixed client-side shots not matching the server-side counterparts.
- Fixed banned.cfg problem with more than 1024 entries.
- Fixed screenshots overwriting each other.
- Buffer overflow exploit fixed.
- "condump", "cmdlist", and "cvarlist" only write out to the game directory.
- Fixed Spectator mode bug.
- Fixed hitbox issues.
- Fixed nightvision bug.
- Fixed "slot10" not working correctly.


for more uptodate info on 1.3 take a look here :

roadrunner

Steve, you have too much time on your hands

rr

dsmith

"Fixed Hitbox issues"

Bugger - need to find another excuse now

2D Map View looks good. Particularly good for getting to know new maps and good-players tactics.

e.g.

Steve Perriam

yeah not enough work to do so i thought i'd spend time typing all that info in for you nice CS players

steve

roadrunner

CS 1.3 is out on Wednesday.......only 1 day to go...

orbv

From

Steve Perriam

xcellent news.

i think i need to alter plans and work from home in that case so i can download and test it

orbv : come and join us for a game ?

steve

BarryK

So does that mean all the servers will stop playing the previous version?

p36damien

This is sort of unrelated, but I have just bought the retail version, I installed it, updated it to 1.2 and tried to connect to a server running de_dust2. Becasue I did not have the map it started downloading it, so I exited in the middle to get the mappack somewhere else.

However, ever since I have done this, when I try to connect to a counter-strike game it says, "You cannot connect to a server running custom game cstrike unless you have the cstrike custom game installed." even though I am running it on CS Retail. Have tried a lot of things to fix it.

I have re-installed from fresh CS Retail, still problem. For now I have to keep using my modified CS1.1 through half-life which is very irritating.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Damien

(The Omen)

Steve Perriam

damien

so u had the mod version and then bought the retail one ?

sounds like the combination of retail and mod are in conflict ?

have you tired uninstalling CS and HL. Then re-install both and patch to latest levels.

or when 1.3 is released tomorrow it may solve your problem ?

steve

roadrunner

Damien

You mentioned you re-installed CS - did you re-install HL as well??. The quickest way I have found to resolve errors like these is to remove the app completely from the system before installing again. In your case CS and HL.

Other than that I haven't got a clue maybe posting on counter-strike.net forum would help

rr