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Counter-Strike: A billion-dollar game built in a dorm room

nytimes.com

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Re: Counter-Strike: A billion-dollar game built in a dorm room

#331

Post by viridian »

monkeywork wrote: post #135
GloriousKoji wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What baffles me is that Discord is basically mIRC with some extra features but the culture just isn't the same.

It's not a discord problem it's an online culture problem. People now are addicted to trying to find things to be upset about and put people on blast for - make an off coloured joke in the old days and you may suddenly find your new best friend, now it's being clipped and shared on twitter and some one is calling your boss to try and get you fired. It's not the tools it's the people

I'd go a couple of steps further, not the tools, or even the people, or even the culture, but rather the incentive structure. There are massive social rewards, psychological rewards, and even financial rewards, for identifying and sharing a novel source of outrage.

As you said, this produces a culture where there are steady pools of people both seeking out the content, and waiting to consume it. The flip side of this is that everyone also knows the game, and manages their online presence so they don't end up on the trending tab of twitter.

Re: Counter-Strike: A billion-dollar game built in a dorm room

#332

Post by 999900000999 »

throwaway34564 wrote: post #316
999900000999 wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Realistically, we would need to raise like 10 million so we could work full time on it and buy quality art. Outside of that it's just a pipe dream. If someone who actually knows how to run a business, wants to start this up I would gladly work at half of my corporate rate. If I was a billionaire I literally would do nothing but fund to open source video game projects. And then maybe pull a Red Hat and monetize it som…

A high-performance, multiplayer MVP would be the first order of business. No need for art so early. Remember fy_iceworld - that did not need much art! The question is, what to build it on. Godot?

Depends...

Are we talking about actually getting this done or just dreaming of a nice billionaire giving us money ?

https://codeberg.org/Liblast/liblast-framework

I'd start with that if you want to build it in Godot.

However, I'd prefer to build it from scratch with an actual engine designed for an FPS.

ID Tech for example makes amazing FPS games that aren't resource hungry.

From 30 seconds of googling,

https://github.com/RobertBeckebans/RBDOOM-3-BFG

Seems to be a modernized version of the last Doom engine.

Hypothetically if we could actually get a team together I'd put up my own money to get art done. However, I still think creating a high quality FPS would require money at some point.

Re: Counter-Strike: A billion-dollar game built in a dorm room

#333

Post by styanax »

strictnein wrote: post #208
rimunroe wrote: post #72

I will forever mourn the general demise of server browsers. Too many games require you to use matchmaking systems, which means it's very hard to build up a small community in-game anymore. You either have to rely on forming small parties with people you've stumbled upon one by one, or you have to seek out people from some much larger area like Reddit or Discord. It takes a lot of the serendipity out of the experience…

> I will forever mourn the general demise of server browsers. I miss GameSpy, the original application, not the service it morphed into later. It was so easy to find a server to play on, playing the levels/mods you wanted to play. Before that, I spent a lot of time (and money from my dad's credit card) on DWANGO. For those not familiar with DWANGO, you dialed in to their servers and then it acted like you were on a L…

> I miss GameSpy, the original application, not the service it morphed into later

You drove me down nostalgia lane, looked in email and have my GameSpy receipt with unlock code. We paid $21.55 after tax in March of 1998 - my memory is really fuzzy but besides CS I think Quake III Arena was also popular at the time.

Re: Counter-Strike: A billion-dollar game built in a dorm room

#334

Post by tejohnso »

somenameforme wrote: post #292
firesteelrain wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tbh better to stay anonymous as those were the days of not having to worried about being “cancelled” or “doxxed”

Yeah, exactly this. No idea exactly what happened but people at some point seem to have stopped accepting other people having different views or perspectives. With basically every community there was invariably some sort of oddballs. I remember a BBS with this guy called 'Nihilist' who was a total insufferable asshole that'd make glory days Linus look like the world's most gentle man. But as is the nature with commun…

> 'zomg burn the witch'

And that often comes from groups who loudly claim to promote, and obnoxiously demand diversity and tolerance.

Re: Counter-Strike: A billion-dollar game built in a dorm room

#335

Post by pbronez »

jamiek88 wrote: post #267
eru wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weren't consoles with split screen supposed to fill that niche (too), right in your living room?

Consoles don’t even have split screen any more. Sucks.

Sure they do - depends on the game. Baulder’s Gate 3 can handle split screen coop. It Takes Two is a co-op only platformer. Knight Squad gets up to 8 people playing at once.

You can find many more options here https://www.co-optimus.com/games.php

Re: Counter-Strike: A billion-dollar game built in a dorm room

#336

Post by viridian »

ViktorRay wrote: post #67
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #47

Something that wasn't mentioned in the article is that Counter-Strike spawned the creation of the most iconic FPS map ever: de_dust2. If an FPS supports custom maps, it's inevitable that de_dust2 will get ported to it. There's actually a mini-documentary about the creation of de_dust2 [0] which I think will be of interest to FPS fans. I wonder if de_dust2 is the most played FPS map or if it has been dethroned by some…

Thanks for sharing this! Very interesting! I believe de_dust2 is likely still the most played FPS map. Not sure which other map could have dethroned it. It can’t be Fortnite since Fortnite changes the map every few months and nowadays makes a new one every year or so. I guess Blood Gulch from the time when Halo was super popular was a very popular map as well. Then you also have 2fort from the Team Fortress games. Bu…

As much as I love all the maps you mentioned, and could probably sketch their layouts from memory, I think Rust and Nuketown from the call of duty series are probably better known by a wide margin. Rust has been featured in 3 different games that had a combined sales of over 2 billion dollars, but even that is small peanuts compared to Nuketown.

Nuketown has been featured in six different games, with 17 total variants of the map existing, and 8 different game modes that are Nuketown maps 24/7.

Re: Counter-Strike: A billion-dollar game built in a dorm room

#337

Post by 101011 »

vehemenz wrote: post #320
jokoon wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Toxicity is what killed the game for me. I was really involved in how serious cs was being played in 2002 or 2003, but valve did not seize the opportunity. 5v5 is the best format. Even today, the matchmaking is horrendous and toxic teammates ruin the fun. When you solo queue, individual performance is ignored, so you must carry your whole team if you want to gain rank. The game is great but generates too much frustra…

Even though I played CS at the highest level for the time, CAL-i, I always thought the maps were too small for 5v5 and that competitive would have benefitted from 7v7 or 8v8. That was how pubs were, and the dynamics were better. I think 5v5 won out due to practicality.

Hey, I was CAL-i too! At least...that's what we told people in IRC :P

Re: Counter-Strike: A billion-dollar game built in a dorm room

#338

Post by endymion-light »

Aeolun wrote: post #325
endymion-light wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, this is partially why I actually love a lot of what's on Hackernews. This site still seems to have a big proportion of old school geeks within it's population, and it feels like one of the only places left for good discussion that i've found on tech.

It’s kinda funny right? You’d expect the number of comments to rise with the number of users, but aside from a few highly controversial topics we still have posts on the front page that barely get to triple digits comments, if even.

I mean partially, i've still not really noticed a post that has more than 1000-3000 votes on a daily. As a comparison to other social media, that's miniscule

Re: Counter-Strike: A billion-dollar game built in a dorm room

#339

Post by joncrocks »

Melatonic wrote: post #43
zedascouves wrote: post #21

I Started with actionquake (aq2). check it out. Minh “Gooseman” Le, one of CS’s creators, was a fan of AQ2. Counter-Strike (first released in June 1999 as a Half-Life mod) built on AQ2’s ideas but refined them with better hitboxes, buy menus, maps, and more tactical pacing. AQ2 is often described as “the bridge between Quake and Counter-Strike”.

So many good mods back then - "the specialists" I remember being particularly fun as well

Ah, I just Ctrl-F-ed to see if anyone else had mentioned. That mod was a little mad!

Re: Counter-Strike: A billion-dollar game built in a dorm room

#340

Post by fantasy4z »

I can somewhat relate as the creator of fy_iceworld (if you believe). The one who commented on the Rock Paper Shotgun article.

The quote from the NY Times article, "it allows amateurs to add imagination with limited resources." is exactly what I was feeling at that time. I knew nothing about programming, had minimal art skills, but was able to create CS maps.

It makes me nostalgic and wonder, "What if I started making a mod or a game today?" I really miss those golden days of modding.

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