Counter Strike

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The Last Stand said:
Will it be optimized on lower end PCs? Even so, there's still CS 1.6.
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I did not get into the beta test wave today, so I have no idea on performance. I don't think minimum specs have been confirmed yet.
 
Dom Cruise said:
This looks really snazzy and makes me wish we could get a non-VR Half-Life game and Left 4 Dead 3 on Source 2.

Could it actually happen? The fact that Valve has released just a good old fashioned game again gives me some hope.
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Counter Strike is one of their biggest cash cow games and has esports dedicated to it. To expect they'd actually jump to making more games in their other franchises is being a little too optimistic. This is more like Counter Strike Global Offensive 2.5. They'd already done a complete visual update with several engine changes over the years to the pount that GO as it is today is essentially not even the same game as it was at launch.
 
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Toolbox said:
Counter Strike is one of their biggest cash cow games and has esports dedicated to it. To expect they'd actually jump to making more games in their other franchises is being a little too optimistic. This is more like Counter Strike Global Offensive 2.5. They'd already done a complete visual update with several engine changes over the years to the pount that GO as it is today is essentially not even the same game as it was at launch.
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For some context for those who are curious, this is what Counter Strike: Global Offensive looked like on release:
 
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WTF happened to this games artstyle??? Everything looks like fucking plastic. Is this to appease zoomertards???? The artstyle was going downhill ever since the agent trash was released & the map re-makes, but they just threw it all out the window. Alyx looked nothing like this, zero excuses.
Troontown Online said:
For some context for those who are curious, this is what Counter Strike: Global Offensive looked like on release:
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LMFAO "cross-platform play", that aged like milk left in an Arizonian summer, I completely forgot the Xbox 360 version existed.
 
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vertebrae said:
WTF happened to this games artstyle??? Everything looks like fucking plastic. Is this to appease zoomertards???? The artstyle was going downhill ever since the agent trash was released & the map re-makes, but they just threw it all out the window. Alyx looked nothing like this, zero excuses.

LMFAO "cross-platform play", that aged like milk left in an Arizonian summer, I completely forgot the Xbox 360 version existed.
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Art style has to do with Source 2 rendering with lighting (at least partially). Clarity of player models is important in a game like this. If you look closely, all of the skyboxes are sunny in the footage, even on maps where the skybox used to be more gloomy, like Overpass. I think it's a welcome change personally.

You do have to remember that Global Offensive started its life with Turtle Rock Studios (the developers who have their origins with Left For Dead) as a console port of CSS.
 
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Thiletonomics said:
CS being a Valve game, with the Gabe Newell obsession that some people have (i.e. all the PRAISE LORD GABEN memes), Valve being considered to be the "ethical" company, compared to Activision Blizzard, Riot Games, Paradox, EA, Ubisoft, Sony, Nintendo, you name it, and Valve not being publicly traded, makes gamers give CS and Valve's other games a pass. They literally cream their pants whenever Valve adds a new CSGO skin case, or a new DOTA 2 Battle Pass, but whine and seethe when other games dare to even sell non-gameplay effecting cosmetics.
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CSGO is also going away as well it will become counter strike 2 meaning you can’t play it any like you can’t play overwatch 1. You can be anywhere on the internet and Valve drones will be there ready to defend daddy gabe. There were other rumors too that they are going to remove the word Terrorist for espn and streaming platforms this change will also be defended if it is true.

Also don’t think I’m salty over lack of tf2 updates I played my fair share of source and GO. I used to love valve, I basically lived on anything source engine but people will bend over backwards to defend valve doing the same practices that EA and Activision does.
 
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Thiletonomics said:
CS being a Valve game, with the Gabe Newell obsession that some people have (i.e. all the PRAISE LORD GABEN memes), Valve being considered to be the "ethical" company, compared to Activision Blizzard, Riot Games, Paradox, EA, Ubisoft, Sony, Nintendo, you name it, and Valve not being publicly traded, makes gamers give CS and Valve's other games a pass. They literally cream their pants whenever Valve adds a new CSGO skin case, or a new DOTA 2 Battle Pass, but whine and seethe when other games dare to even sell non-gameplay effecting cosmetics.
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Valve is the company that has really made linux gaming a viable thing so for me that really builds a lot of goodwill. Some of the listed companies have stifled it by putting rootkit malware anti-cheats in games.
 
Lone Wandering Courier said:
Valve is the company that has really made linux gaming a viable thing so for me that really builds a lot of goodwill. Some of the listed companies have stifled it by putting rootkit malware anti-cheats in games.
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Fucking Riot Games and Valorant. Even if I liked the gameplay, that rootkit anti-cheat was enough to make me uninstall. Get your Chinese-owned malware off of my computer please. I don't want another situation of an anti-cheat doing malicious things to my system, like how ESEA, the biggest 3rd party matchmaking system for CS at the time, had a bitcoin miner running in the background back in 2013. A bit off topic, but here's a cringey video from after that scandal that I still remember years later. I don't remember all the context of why it was made, so please don't ask.


On another note, Valorant has more hero shooter DNA than tactical shooter DNA at this point. You can see where the influence of 1.6 is on the game, but there is so much reliance on utility being tied to character abilities that it ruins the experience for me. While I can admit that there are some improvements in Valorant, such as random spawns every round not being a thing like they are in CS, I much prefer Counter Strike's system even with it's apparent flaws.
 
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vertebrae said:
Alyx looked nothing like this, zero excuses.
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Alyx has the same sort of slight stylization, almost like Dishonored (Half Life 2 shared its art director with Dishonored). I think this looks more cartoony because they prioritized visibility, so the grunge and sub detail is missing, and the lighting is much brighter with higher contrast. The actual models/textures seem similar enough to the style of Alyx.

I think all of Valve's Source 2 games (minus the Dota ones) have the same sort of art style, its just not apparent with the Portal stuff because its so Sci-fi

They did state that CS2 will eventually replace CSGO, but it won't happen until the full release.
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I wouldn't be surprised if they keep it around in a beta branch, theres too much custom content that just wont work in source 2

Will it be optimized on lower end PCs? Even so, there's still CS 1.6.
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Half Life Alyx runs on anything that can run VR, and does it with maxed out MSAA (when possible) at 90fps with two screens. Its safe to assume that this will run on anything that can run DX11 or Vulkan. I saw people saying the new smokes are going to kill their PC, but its not a smoke sim, and its a basic volumetric, we've had volumetrics in games for pretty much 10 years now.

Alyx Specs:
1679588683028.png

Everything is baked (Source 2 lighting bake is insane how good it looks) and the maps are still optimized like crazy (they can be even more optimized now because brushes aren't a thing). Source 2 utilizes Vulkan properly, meaning they can actually squeeze more perf out of it (instead of all those vulkan games with awful stutter because the devs don't know how to program Vulkan properly). I assume they are also running CS2 in the Tiled Forward+ rendering mode, which is what Doom Eternal uses, which is much faster than old deferred renderers (although to be fair Source has always been a forward renderer because it was always made for PC)
 
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Epoch said:
Everything is baked (Source 2 lighting bake is insane how good it looks) and the maps are still optimized like crazy (they can be even more optimized now because brushes aren't a thing). Source 2 utilizes Vulkan properly, meaning they can actually squeeze more perf out of it (instead of all those vulkan games with awful stutter because the devs don't know how to program Vulkan properly). I assume they are also running CS2 in the Tiled Forward+ rendering mode, which is what Doom Eternal uses, which is much faster than old deferred renderers (although to be fair Source has always been a forward renderer because it was always made for PC)
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Following up on the very informational post Epoch made with a video from 3kliksphilip about baked lighting in Source 2.

 
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Has anyone downloaded torrent of CS:2 Beta?
You can play it offline with steam emu(I used goldberg steam emu)
info hash: b14b63f071dc2a3b4d09c821ed4ba1d14b57bd6f
 
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Quamdale Dingle said:
Has anyone downloaded torrent of CS:2 Beta?
You can play it offline with steam emu(I used goldberg steam emu)
info hash: b14b63f071dc2a3b4d09c821ed4ba1d14b57bd6f
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Was not aware. Good to know, but I will just wait for access.
 
I am looking forward to this, but I think this will be hard for Valve to pull off. If they change nothing, people will be mad. If they change anything, people will be even madder. Some of the things that could use a dust-up (like grenade throwing), will make people uncompromisingly angry, no matter how the devs go about it.
 
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