Valve's CEO Resigns

Gabe Newell, CEO of Valve Software, has reportedly resigned.

When I first heard the news I assumed, like I'm sure a lot of others did, that he would be either moving over to a competing company or starting a company of his own. Nothing could be further from the truth. Mr. Newell is leaving Valve so he can go on tour with 3 piece folk/rock band, "Left of the Dealer". No that's not a misprint, Gabe is leaving the video game industry to go play in a band. It's not really that big of a shock if you think about it. Gabe is leaving Valve "on a high note". Half Life 2 is complete and out in the market and I'm sure his personal bank account didn't suffer with the stellar success Half Life 2 has seen.

When asked about his departure Gabe had this to say:

"it wasn't because of any conflicts at Valve - they're a great team. And don't get me wrong, I love making games. But there's a ton of creativity I'm just not able to express unless I'm with my guitar"

I located a copy of his band's mp3, "Chasing the Sun" that you can listen to here:

http://www.hlfallout.net/files/gabe_newell-chasing_the_sun.mp3

Gabe, thanks for your contributions to the gaming community and best of luck to you in your pursuit of your musical career.

Thanks to IGNIQ for the tip on this story.

Half Life 2 ::: The Lost Coast ::: Are You Ready?

G4TV's "Attack of The Show" guest last night was Valve's Doug Lombardi. He showed off a glimpse of the much anticipated new Half-Life 2 level, "The Lost Coast", which is due for release sometime in the next few weeks. It will be the first Half Life 2 map to feature the new HDR (high dynamic range lighting) technology.

While "The Lost Cost" will be free via Steam to Half Life 2 owners, many people will disappointed when they realize their computer is not capable of running this map. Running this map will require a "high end" system. When Doug Lombardi was asked if The Lost Coast would require a high end system he responded with:

"Absolutely, no bones about it. This is targeted at the super hardcore early adopter guy, or gal, who's got the latest and greatest stuff, and really the horsepower to haul the new API's and new lighting tricks."

It will be interesting to see exactly what's required, from a systems point of view, to play The Lost Coast. My primary gaming machine is AMD Athlon 64 3400+ with an Abit AV8 motherboard. I have 3GB of Kingston PC3200 ram and use a somewhat dated but still acceptable video card, the Radeon 9800 Pro 128. While the rest of my system should be ok, I'm wondering if my video card will provide the performance I'll need....we shall see I guess.

HDR will be a general upgrade to Half-Life 2 along with the new level, and an update to the Source SDK will allow modders to use the new tech in their games. It should be interesting to see how the mod community incorporates HDR in their future releases.

I for one hope we get a chance to see The Lost Coast in action before the end of April.

Turn off Your Cheats or Face the Music

According to previously published information this is the week that Valve is starting to test VAC (Valve Anti Cheat). What does that mean? Quite simply it means that those players who use hacks and cheats run a fairly high chance of being caught with them on their system. When that happens, Valve has indicated they will hand out LIFE TIME bans for the offending accounts. Not a 3 month ban...not even a year long ban...it's a permanent ban.

Prediction: when Valve "flips the switch" so to speak and start banning people we'll see a rash of forum posts along the lines of "I don't know what happened I think my friend/brother/cousin/mother was playing on my computer and installed a hack that got me banned."

Piece of advice: Your Half Life 2/Counter Strike Source account is yours - don't let people use it if you don't trust them. If "your brother got you banned" tell him he owes you a new copy of the game...because I'm willing to speculate that Valve will be pretty strict in the enforcement of bans - which they should.

While I'm sure no one believes that VAC will catch 100% of the hacks and cheats I think most people agree that it will help clean up the public server community as a whole. There will always be hackers and cheaters...it's inevitable. Whatever can be done to minimize their numbers is a step in the right direction.

On a more personal note, I am truly looking forward to the first round of bans handed out by VAC/Valve. It will be music to my ears:-)

Discuss Valve Anti Cheat system in our game forum

Valve Says No to E3Expo 2005

I found this story at GameShout...another great source for gaming news.

"As mentioned on GameSHOUT Radio last Wednesday, E3 is completely sold out. Valve Software is not listed as a participant. No booth, nothing. You have to wonder why a game company would not show up for this annual event."

Seems to me this is right in line with what Valve's corporate mission statement:

Valve - We make games, we don't communicate with customers.

Ok, so maybe that's not really their corporate mission statement...although I'd say it should be given some consideration;-)

Valve Anti Cheat (VAC) System - Beta Testing Announced

Just in time:-)

Valve announced today that they will start beta testing the new Valve Anti-Cheating system next week. Cheating is quickly becoming more and more prevalent on a lot of the public Counter Strike servers. The problems are usually minimized when server admins are present, but not all public CS Source servers have admins playing 24 hours a day.

Hopefully the beta goes well and the official release of VAC comes sooner rather than later.

From Valve:

"Next week we'll begin beta testing the new Valve Anti-Cheat system. For people playing multiplayer games, there will not be any visible difference while we're conducting the beta, but we will be logging cheating violations into our database to make sure it's ready for general release. This will be the last public notice before the system is released and active for everyone.

If you have any cheats for multiplayer games installed on your computer, now would be a good time to uninstall and stop using them. When a cheat infraction is detected, the offender will be permanently banned from playing on secure servers."

Discuss this announcement in the forums: Valve Anti Cheat (VAC) System Announced

Half Life 2 Expansion: Exclusive Demo Coming

Valve will be showing off HDR (high dynamic range) lighting technology as well as "The Lost Coast" on G4TV next Wednesday, March 30th.

It's been announced that on Wednesday's show Valve's Doug Lombardi will give an exclusive demonstration of the previously unseen "The Lost Coast," an upcoming expansion that utilizes a brand-new technology that Valve is implementing into the Source engine. Called "high-dynamic range lighting," (HDR) this new technology enables a leap in lighting realism from even the current high benchmark set by Half-Life 2 and the existing Source engine. In short, Valve will be demonstrating how an already great game is going to get better.

The show times are listed here.

If you're into Half Life 2 / Counter Strike Source this showing/demo is something you should make sure to catch. I know I will.

Comment on the upcoming demo in our Half Life 2 Forum.

Message to Valve

Dear Valve,

Have you noticed that Half Life 2 / Counter Strike aren't exactly what you would deem as "problem free"? In case you've missed it, there was pretty major exploit (plus a whole slew of smaller ones) that people have been taking advantage of for a quite a while, and, cheating/hacking in Death Match and Source is slowly but surely getting out of hand. Some would say it's far beyond "out of hand" already.

I'm the first to admit that gamers are a hard group to please. We spend $50 with your company and expect flawless software that never needs updating. The problem is never with how we have configured our computers, it's always with your software...at least that what any gamer with a problem will tell you;-) The gaming community can be difficult, that I concede.

The reality is that holes in your software will be exposed. You're the biggest, and anyone wearing that tag will always be a target. I understand that and can be somewhat sympathetic to your ploy. What I really can't understand though is how you communicate with your customers. I use the term "communicate" lightly because as a company your communication/public relations skills are horrible. They are not just bad - they are absolutely pathetic.

As a company you've managed to sell & distribute your games and subsequent updates to a lot of customers 100% online. I'll give you credit for that - anything that can save me a trip into Best Buy to pick up a game is much appreciated. As a company I think Valve really understands the importance of online delivery and using systems instead of people to deliver your product. That's why is so shocking that your online support and information is about useful as a leash for my goldfish.

Your "News" page is the most out dated piece of garbage I've ever seen. In the age of instant publishing why don't you guys open the checkbook and pay someone to update your news site multiple times a day? I work full time (not on Counter Strike or Half Life either) but manage to update this site more times in 1 week that you do in 1 month. Either that or just take your "news" site down - it's embarrassing and a company who prides themselves in doing things "online" you should be ashamed. It could be a great tool to keep your customers up-to-date on issues surrounding your products.

Your forums...oh man, are they in bad shape. If you can get past all the "Valve you suck" threads and actually find the thread you are looking for (the search feature in your forum is PATHETIC) be prepared to see 3 - 5 decent replies intermixed with 50 off topic replies. It's a joke trying to find anything of any value in your forums - with the exception of the stickies at the top of each section. Maybe you need more moderators, or maybe you just need more good moderators. The team you have in place right now doesn't appear, at least on the surface, to do much moderating at all. Maybe they have too much to do, maybe they just don't care. Either way, your forum has turned into a giant black hole void of any useful information outside of the occasional thread...if you're willing to spend the time looking for it in the mountain of crap posts that accumulate every day.

In the off chance that anyone associated with Valve ever reads this - take it for what it's worth. Rather than just complaining, I'm pointing out two areas that you could improve without much effort or difficulty that would help improve your image and standing in the gaming community. Talk to us Valve, that would go a long way in earning some respect among your customer base. You made the game of the year and made HUGE money. Spend some that money your customers gave you on some good public relations people. We've been loyal despite the issues but that won't last forever if things keep going like they are.

How would you rate Valve as a company? You can rate Valve, and view the results of our "Rate Valve" pole in our Game Forums.

Raining Skulls Update

A temporary patch has been made available for the Counter Strike exploit discussed in the previous post. You can find the temporary patch at:

Please note, this pacth not an offcial Valve update.
http://dackz.net/misc/code/serverplugin_tempent/

Here's the thread where I found the link. In the same thread it mentions that the makers of Mani Mod put out an update as well. Both of these patches give the admin(s) the ability to ban the person trying to issue the command that executes the exploit.

I find it fairly amusing that two independent sources have beat Valve to fix on this. Granted Valve has a little more work to do to issue a fix, but, they have the resources and should be able to react equally as fast.

As of now Valve has still not officially announced a fix.

You're Not Crazy, it is Raining Skulls

A lot of Counter Strike Source servers have seen something that's well, interesting, over the past few days. Someone discovered an exploit that causes the sky to pixilate with black and purple pixels, then it literally starts raining skulls.

There was some early speculation that this could be prevented by changing the sv_cheats from 1 to 0 in your server.cfg file. This is of course assuming you own/run your own server - regular players would not have access to the server.cfg file. This theory was quickly discounted though, as numerous servers (the CSGZ server included) already had the correct settings yet still fell victim to the "raining skulls" exploit.

Here's a screen shot taken by Sparkie, a guy who started a thread on the subject in the Steam forums. There's a few other screen shots take by one of our members, YeLLoW, at the close of this post.



At the present time it doesn't appear that the exploit causes any real damage. As one of the players on our server pointed out it appears the only real "damage" is that a lot of players get shot while they are standing around looking at the skulls instead of watching out for the other team.

If there's a bright side to this, I guess it's that an exploit has been discovered and will be patched, possibly preventing a copy cat exploit that could cause more harm in the future. Don't get me wrong, I'd lay money on the fact that this won't be the last exploit we see. Counter Strike is one of, if not the, most popular online game. It's a prime target for hackers.

Valve is aware of the problem and I would speculate that it will be addressed/fixed in short order....but only Valve knows for sure. A moderator at the Steam forums, smash, had this to say on the issue:

"We're aware. It's a new exploit found by "You Know Who" "

"You Know Who" would be myg0t. Love em' or hate em', they just exposed a pretty significant exploit.

If you own a server, keep your eyes and ears open for information regarding the fix and make sure to update your server right away when it becomes available. As soon as I have any more information I'll post it here. Feel free to drop in the forums and discuss the counter strike exploit too.

Here are a few additional screen shots:

Counter Strike History 101

The original Counter-Strike team was formed by Minh Le and Jess Cliffe in 1999. Counter-Strike Beta 1.0 was released in June of 1999, followed by a quick succession of the beta releases. By the end of 1999, beta 5.0 had been released. Counter-Strike gained popularity just as quickly. The Counter-Strike team was acquired by Valve to turn the fan-created, insanely popular, mod into an official mod for Half-Life. In November 2000, Counter-Strike 1.0 - the first non-beta, official retail version of the game was released.

Valve released a version ported to the Xbox game console in November 2003. The X-Box version features basic single-player game play against bots, but it focuses on multi player online play like the original. However, the Xbox version of the game (playable on Microsoft's Xbox Live online game service) has proved less successful than its PC counterpart. This really wasn't/isn't surprising to the Counter Strike community. Counter Strike / Half Life were designed for the PC...any attempts to port either of these games over to a console gaming station will never yield the same success that the PC platform continues to bring.

A long-awaited single-player version of the game called Counter-Strike: Condition Zero was released on March 23, 2004. Condition Zero includes multi player bots as well. Though still very similar to CS 1.6, this game contains several graphical, sound, model and map changes. Condition Zero was developed by Turtle Rock Studios and never reached the level of success the original Counter Strike did.

Enter: Counter-Strike: Source

Counter Strike Source was released in October of 2004 and has been met with good reviews from the CS community. Of course Source has it's share of glitches, but Valve seems to be pretty responsive and frequently issues updates via Steam. Since the October release we've already seen a handful of patches, as well as some "new" maps such as de_train, cs_compound and de_tides. Source has revitalized what some people considered a "dying" game...although people have said Counter Strike has been "dying" for years. Funny thing is, even before Source Counter Strike was still one of the most popular first person shooter online games ever and the number of players/servers didn't seem to be decreasing.

Here's a little trip down memory lane for some of you old school CS'ers.

Counter Strike Version history

Beta 1.0 - 19 June 1999 ( I remember this like it was yesterday)
Beta 1.1 - 27 June 1999
Beta 1.2 - 20 July 1999
Beta 2.0 - 13 August 1999
Beta 2.1 - 17 August 1999
Beta 3.0 - 14 September 1999
Beta 3.1 - 16 September 1999
Beta 4.0 - 5 November 1999
Beta 4.1 - 1 December 1999
Beta 5.0 - 23 December 1999
Beta 5.2 - 10 January 2000
Beta 6.0 - 10 March 2000
Beta 6.1 and 6.2 were "Server Only" updates, not for client/user machines
Beta 6.5 - 5 June 2000
Beta 6.6 - 22 June 2000
Beta 7.0 - 26 August 2000
Beta 7.1 - 13 September 2000
Version 1.0 - 8 November 2000
Version 1.1 - 10 March 2001
Version 1.3 - 19 September 2001
Version 1.4 - 24 April 2002
Version 1.5 - 12 June 2002
Version 1.6 - 15 September 2003
CS: Condition Zero - 23 March 2004
CS: Source - 7 October 2004

What's next? Only time, and Valve, know the definitive answer to that question.

Visit our Counter-Strike forums for more discussion on Counter Strike and other first person shooter games.

Counter Strike Source: More FPS!

Gamers everywhere are always trying to squeeze every last FPS (frames per second) out of their system in while playing Counter Strike Source. There is a thread in our forum, improving your FPS in Source, where members have posted tips for improving your FPS, as well an ongoing discussion about how high you can get, and hold, your FPS with various hardware configurations.

We would like this thread to be a great resource for the Counter-Strike community as a whole. If you have additional tips or tricks for improving FPS in Source stop in the CSGZ forum and share them with your fellow gamers.

Half-Life 2 Mod Rebellion Announced

Rebellion is going to be a multi player mod for Half-Life 2 that is based on the week long insurrection against the Combine during the Half-Life 2 storyline.

From GameShout (Full Story)

"There will be two gameplay modes implemented in the modification; cooperative and team based multi player. Both modes are based around assault and defense gameplay, where one team defends an objective from the other team. However, in cooperative play, the players will be the guerilla rebellion forces defending against the Combine forces. There will be a constant shortage of ammunition in cooperative mode, so the guerilla forces must use any obstacles and potential traps in the area to their advantage."

"The levels will both be modeled after the existing HL2 campaign levels, as well as original Eastern European architectual design loosely based off of City 17. There will also be original level designs that will somehow relate to the Half-Life 2 universe."

Check out the full story link above, it looks like this mod should be a blast when it's ready. Here at CSGZ we've been considering adding a few more servers to support other games...this one might just make the cut. Looks like it could be awhile before it's ready as the founders are still looking for help - but hey, I bet it's not 5 years like we all waited for Half Life 2.

The mod is currently looking for coders, mappers, and map modelers. If you are interested, contact Merc248, merc248@gmail.com

College Major in Video Games

Chicago's Columbia College will decide this spring if it's going to let some it's students major in video games. Yes, major in video games in college!

The course(s) would be focused on designing video games, not playing them. The video game industry is 7 billion dollar, and growing, industry. Developers who have worked on titles such as Half Life, Half Life 2, Far Cry, Brothers in Arms, Empire Earth, etc. command top dollar from their employers and get to make a more than comfortable living at designing what they enjoy - video games.

Columbia College would not be the first college to offer such a course - the University of Southern California, the University of North Texas and Westwood College in DuPage County, Ill., among others, already offer such courses. A master's program in gaming is available at Georgia Tech and at Carnegie Mellon University.

To me, this is just further proof that the video game industry is growing up and finally receiving the respect it deserves.

Video games in college - where do I sign up?

Share your thoughts on Video Games in College in our game forums.

Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30

Part I

My first impression of this game, which I just purchased over this past weekend is, quite simply, WOW.

I loaded up Brothers in Arms on my AMD Athlon 64 3400+, 1GB of Ram with a Radeon 9800 Pro 128. I cranked the video quality settings to the highest levels and set out to immerse myself in the movie like game play on Saturday afternoon. Of course the first trial run of the game is being played on the highest possible level of difficulty...play the game like it's meant to played (hard!), that's my take on it.

Brothers in Arms is not a game for children - the opening scene/gun battle is filled with obscenities...not unlike what I'm sure they guys were saying who were actually there. The opening scene ends with you staring a dead and bloody comrade in the face as he's lying on the ground after being shot numerous times. That's just the opening...the language and violence quickly escalate after you get into the first couple of missions.

Brothers in Arms is about as close as you can get to "playing a movie". While it initially reminded me of Call of Duty, which I expected, the authors of Brothers in Arms have taken the first person shooter/war game to new levels. You can control the other people in your unit and instruct them on such actions as covering/suppressing fire and advancing on enemy positions. the enemy AI is equally "intelligent...reacting to your actions in different ways depending on the present circumstances.

More to come, including screen shots, as I progress further through this sure to be a classic FPS war game.

What do you think of Brothers in Arms?

Gaming Not Just for Guys...

I was reading an article today at http://www.digitaldivide.net/news/view.php?HeadlineID=523 that talks about women/girls starting to make their way into the gaming community. While game makers and marketers continue to primarily focus on the male market, ages 16 - 35, this expaning market of female gamers is sure to get the attention of the game makers & game marketers.

For years I've seen the occassional girl on our Counter Strike, and now Counter Strike Source server. We have a couple female members that I'm aware of in our game forums as well. I'm all for more female players. In video games, unlike sports, physical ability is not important. Men and women compete on an "equal" playing field...hence the whipping some of our female players lay on the male players on our Source server.

You should be nice to the ladies in real life...when it comes to gaming though make sure to treat them just like "one of the guys";-)

Half-Life 2: Deathmatch Mapping Contest Winners

Yesterday Valve announced the winners of the Half-Life 2: Deathmatch mapping contest. These participants made some pretty awesome maps. I like seeing this kind of quality coming out of the gaming community:



Contest Winner
dm_underpass by Scott M Jordan, USA


First Runner-Up
dm_resistance by Jonathan Linker, Germany


Second Runner-Up
dm_powerhouse by Michael Schulz, Germany


Honorable Mention
dm_avalon by Michael Visser, Netherlands

Great work mappers!

Video Games Contribute to Violence?

For as long as I can remember people have suggested/argued that violent video games can lead to violence in real life. We have all seen the stories about kids who commit violent acts and subsequent investigations show that they also play violent video games such as Grand Theft Auto, or even our beloved Counter Strike.

I've been, and know, people who have been avid gamers for 10+ years - ever since the days of Zork & the Commodore 64. None of the gamers I know have committed any violent acts. I would like to believe that the last 10 years I've spent playing games hasn't instilled some strange sense of violence in me either. At last check, I've yet to commit any acts of violence.

I don't think video games contribute to violence. I think parents and other authority figures in young people's lives use video games (and even movies) as an excuse for the actions taken by violent or otherwise disturbed people...who also happen to play video games. One could easily argue that it's the color blue that causes outbreaks of violence. I'm willing to speculate that a lot of violent offenders have been wearing (or own) blue clothing. I'd be the first to admit that chances are the color blue has ZERO to do with violence...just like I'd be the first to admit that video games don't have anything to do with violent actions carried out by those who happen to play them.

Violent video games don't contribute to real world violence. Nut jobs and wackos contribute to real world violence.

If you have an opinion on this subject we would love to hear it. Stop in our forums by using the link below and let us know what you think.

Do video games contribute to violence?

Pre Order Empire Earth 2

Continuing on with Empire Earth II info for a minute...

Sierra Entertainment announced today that interested customers can pre-order Empire Earth II at North America's leading software retailers. Sierra also indicated that gamers who pre-order their copies will receive a Bonus DVD loaded with extras including the Empire Earth II Single-Player Demo, 20 minutes of exclusive behind-the-scenes video, exclusive multiplayer maps, the Empire Earth II Soundtrack, concept artwork, and more.

The bonus DVD seems like a cool - idea with the exception of the inclusion of the single player demo. When the full game is out I'm willing to wager no one who owns it will ever, for any reason, play the stripped down quirky demo again. Why on earth would they? Maybe Sierra just needed to fill 170 meg of space or so.

Empire Earth II Demo Screen Shots

I picked up a copy of PC Gamer this month and inside was a cd that includes the demo version of Empire Earth II. It's completely stripped down and only offer the minimums in terms of game play. You can only advance through three of the ages (7 - 9), can't do a multiplayer game and what I consider to be the worst, you can't save a game.

I want to play it some more before I comment on the game play itself, but here are a few screenshots I took while getting started. The graphics in the game look much better than I can post here due to having to scale the picture down to fit.

House Passes Video Game Legislation

The Illinois House of Representatives just passed new legislation that could make Illinois the first state in the nation to ban the sale and/or rental of violent or sexually explicit video games to kids. After passing Wednesday in the house by a margin of 91 to 19, the legislation now moves to the senate.

The Safe Games Illinois Act would, if passed, ban the rental/sale of violent or sexually explicit video games to kids under 18. Stores that violated the ban would be committing a Class A Misdemeanor and could face up to one year in prison or a $5,000 fine.

Store owners would also have to label violent/sexually explicit games accordingly. If they dont, the first three violations would be $1000 each and then jump to $5,000 for every violation after the third.

Upcoming Video Game Releases

There are quite a few games right on the horizon I'm really looking forward to getting my hands on. These are not in any particular order, but I'm looking forward to them all:

Empire Earth 2
Brothers in Arms
First to Fight
Battlefield 2
Stronghold 2
Call of Duty 2

All will be out at different times...some very soon. Of the entire list I'm most looking forward to Call of Duty 2. The First Call of Duty was awesome. From the intense gun battles all the way through the unbelievable sound effects the game was top notch.

Setting up a Counter Strike Source Server

Anyone who runs/owns a Counter Strike Source server knows it can be a real joy, but it be a real PITA sometimes. Trying to remember hundreds of setting and commands, uploading/downloading files countless times changing settings and what is a seemingly endless process of searching the Internet looking for pieces of information or trying to figure out exactly what a specific command does.

Here's link, Setting up a Counter Strike Source Server, that everyone should know about. It's a link to a forum post...but it's one of the most complete an informative pieces of information I've come across regarding setting up and configuring a Counter Strike Source server. Check it out and add it to your favorites...I know I did.

Half Life 3

In case you haven't heard Half Life 3 is in the works. While no official release date has been announced you can bet we won't have to wait 5 years for this one. Valve is using the same engine that's used in Half Life 2 so development and release should be MUCH quicker than it was with Half Life 2.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Half Life 3 released this year around November....just in time for the holidays. That's just a guess on my part though, don't start saving your money in anticipation of that release date based on my uninformed opinion:-)

New Source Map Coming: de_port

Hmmm...looks like this could be the "official" Valve version of de_docks. I haven't been able to locate any actual screen shots yet, but here's a concept sketch of the map from Valve:

Concept Sketch

Looks kind of like de_docks...I'll post actual screen shots as I locate them.

Steam Authentication Problems

If you've noticed some Counter Strike servers being a little empty over the last day or so you're not alone.

The following was in an e-mail from the CSGZ game server host:

It seems steam has a bunch of Authenication servers offline or running maitnence. Some people can connect to any servers fine but most people are having problems at the moment trying to connect to any Half-Life or Half-Life 2 game servers. I've sent a request to Steam notifying them of what we have seen and believe they are now aware of the problem. Once the Authenication servers come online just try rebooting your game server and everything will be back to normal.

Just so you understand the auth servers are what all clients connect to before connecting to any online server. Even if the server is online and the auth servers are down then you will get an error when trying to connect. I know some auth servers are up but believe they are maxed out thats why you get the error somtimes or most of the time because they are at capacity.