A nice surprise for some classic Valve games today with multiple titles like Counter-Strike: Source and Day of Defeat: Source getting major updates. Not many developers continue supporting their games this long after release! Although, Valve do have a lot of resources to do such a thing thanks to how popular Steam is.
These updates are mainly about bringing them up to scratch on modern systems complete with 64bit support, improved networking, UI scaling and some little features pulled in from the Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update. Exciting to see!
Changes for Counter-Strike: Source:
- Added 64-bit Support. 64-bit binaries will automatically be launched on systems with a 64-bit OS.
- Added a borderless window option to video settings
- Added bicubic lightmaps (from Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update)
- Added radial fog (from Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update)
- Added support for Steam Networking
- Added UI scaling for high-resolution screens
- Made the default server name for listen servers include the player's name
- Made the game launch in native resolution by default instead of 640x480
- Client-side prediction fixes (these fix 'jank'/rollback in certain situations)
- Fixed a bug where when unducking, the view could glitch out if the player doesn't have space to unduck
- Fixed gifts not randomly dropping when players are killed during the winter event
- Added sv_autobunnyhopping so bhop servers can have this wanted behaviour with client-side prediction
- Fixed a prediction bug where if the player was moved on the client, their input-based movement for that tick was not taken into account in non-player actions
- Improved prediction for walking on props and other entities
- Made certain client-side entities only trigger local prediction errors
- e.g. If the viewmodel experiences a prediction error, the player will not experience a prediction error
- Fixed prediction of viewmodel sway
- Fixed a prediction error regarding weapon idle animations
- Fixed certain breakable props not gibbing correctly
- Fixed an issue where certain variables like position would not be updated correctly to match the server in certain situations
- Fixed the player's base velocity (eg. conveyors, moving items etc.) getting subtly out of sync from client/server
Pictured - Counter-Strike: Source
Changes for Day of Defeat: Source:
- Added 64-bit Support. 64-bit binaries will automatically be launched on systems with a 64-bit OS.
- Added a borderless window option to video settings
- Added bicubic lightmaps (from Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update)
- Added radial fog (from Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update)
- Added support for Steam Networking
- Added UI scaling for high-resolution screens
- Made the default server name for listen servers include the player's name
- Made the game launch in native resolution by default instead of 640x480
- Client-side prediction fixes (these fix 'jank'/rollback in certain situations)
- Fixed a prediction bug where if the player was moved on the client, their input-based movement for that tick was not taken into account in non-player actions
- Fixed prediction errors (rollback) occurring while prone
- Improved prediction for walking on props and other entities
- Made certain client-side entities only trigger local prediction errors
- e.g. If the viewmodel experiences a prediction error, the player will not experience a prediction error
- Fixed prediction of viewmodel sway
- Fixed a prediction error regarding weapon idle animations
- Fixed certain breakable props not gibbing correctly
- Fixed an issue where certain variables like position would not be updated correctly to match the server in certain situations
- Fixed the player's base velocity (eg. conveyors, moving items etc.) getting subtly out of sync from client/server
They're not the only ones that got updated, there's even more! Similar updates were also released for Half-Life 2: Deathmatch (changes) and Half-Life Deathmatch: Source (changes).
On top of that there's an even bigger surprise for Team Fortress 2.
Seriously, when you're not into all those skin and loot box shenanigans, Counter Strike: Source feels like running Linux after Windows 11.
I thought Counter Strike: Source was dead already. Why are people still playing that when CS2 exists? And why are the servers still up anyway?
CS:GO and CS2 community servers were never as big as CS 1.6/CS:S, so if you're looking for custom maps and modes, you'll probably have a better time on those games.
Not to mention old games are easy to run on low-end PCs, even at very high framerates, while CS2 is still challenging to run in many cases (e.g. if you don't have a dedicated GPU).
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