Counter-Strike

Counter-Strike is the most popular online first person shooter in the world. I played Battlefield 2 until Lt. Colonel as "Empty_Room" and I played Call of Duty 4's Team Deathmatch till I was sore. My priorities shifted for a while and I found that my internet bandwidth was consumed by Bit Torrent and TDM on CoD4 was no longer a possibility.

Counter-Strike has intelligent bots, and I got my TDM fix with Podbot and the Counter-Strike Deathmatch mod. Eventually I tried out the standard game modes for CS, but the combination of an extremely competitive online community, my gung-ho aggressive style of play, and the one life to live play of CS mostly keeps me playing with bots, for now. I did have a 12-1 kill to death ratio playing a few rounds in a pub the other day however. It is a very exciting game. I haven't had a game make me jump in my seat in ages.

Bots

1. Podbot MM
2. YaPB
3. E[POD]bot
4. RealBot

RealBot is interesting in that it doesn't use waypoints, but it does come with a tool called BSP2RBN.EXE that creates *.RBN files (not unlike waypoints) from *.BSP files (Counter-Strike maps). The official Counter-Strike bot comes with Condition Zero, which I don't own, and Counter-Strike Source, which I do. But I found that the official bots, while excellent (in other words the best by far), were very CPU intensive, especially for Deathmatch, and I like to play with a lot of bots. Of the above I prefer E[POD]bot because of the ability to minimize the bots radio chatter and the ability to disable bots gaining experience in order to save CPU cycles.

POD-Bot MM Settings

I keep pb_timer_sound, pb_timer_pickup, pb_timer_grenade, and pb_dangerfactor at default settings to save CPU cycles.

I have a minimum bot skill of 95 and a maximum of 100. I have pb_shootthruwalls disabled as enabling it displays unrealistic behavior.

Grenade usage is iffy as well, so I have all grenades disabled. For weapons I allow only the truly relevant ones: m4a1, ak47, mp5navy, knife, usp, glock18, deagle, famas, and galil. I experimented with the awp enabled but the bots too often found themselves in a bad spot with the wrong weapon.

Mods

• AMX Mod X
  • Counter-Strike Deathmatch
  • Advanced Weapon Tracers 1.1
  • Ultimate Gore v1.5
• Metamod
• StatsMe

Advanced Weapon Tracers and Ultimate Gore provide much needed weapons feedback as does StatsMe, which tells you where you hit your opponent and for how much among other things. The StatsX plugin for AMX Mod X does the same, when it works.

Skins

Counter-Strike Source is pretty, but only has the official bot available for it as far as I know, so I don't play it. I don't have a license for Condition Zero which does have noticeably better graphics than the original Counter-Strike. And I do think the default skins in CS are ugly, so I use CSS Transformation Pack v1.3, which gives me Counter-Strike Source-like HUD, models, sounds, and sprites for Counter-Strike 1.6.

Non-Steam Counter-Strike Communities

Not everyone likes Steam. I dislike it for two reasons. One is it uses system resources and can make playing games less fun on marginal systems. The second is it relies on online authentication. I ultimately don't think piracy takes away from video game sales. I do think that people who pirate software aren't the kind of people who'd buy the software in the first place.

• DigitalZone
• CS.RIN.RU
• Setti CS:S servers

Settings and Preferences

I prefer friendly fire to be on. I like short round times of 2 minutes with 10 people, or 2.5 minutes with 20. I've read that 2-3 minutes is a common range for PUBlic Servers.

I definitely prefer the M4. I don't play a sniper in any first person shooter.

Scripts

Here's my userconfig.cfg for Counter-Strike 1.5. F1 buys an M4 with vest and helm and defuse kit. F2 buys an Ak-47 with vest and helm. F3 buys an MP5 with a vest. F4 buys a Desert Eagle with a vest.

For 1.6 I also set cl_crosshair_color "255 255 255" for a white crosshair.

Gripes

Documentation sucks across the board for any mod of Counter-Strike. I don't understand why they didn't make Counter-Strike Source more realistic instead of a straight port of the original. The maps could have stayed the same, but the weapons and player movements could have been changed dramatically without killing the fun. The shooting model is really very silly [for those of us who have actually shot an assault rifle], the ability to peek around corners is standard, the damage model is ridiculous... In other words, they could have killed Call of Duty 4's Search and Destroy mode well before it arrived.

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