Genre: Half-Life Mod PATCH
Developed by: "Gooseman & Co."
Published by: (free)

Finally the CS version 1.3 entered our world.. We had been waiting for it since July and at last.. there it was.. We all hoped it was like one of those things that became better the longer you waited for it to come.. Like wine (and several other important things ;-) )
Were we -Antwerp Fragging Unit that is- rewarded for our patience ?

At 20.00 CET Counter-Strike 1.3 was unleashed for the millions of CS players in the world… Not an hour later most sites crashed due to the enormous traffic they had to handle. Thanks to Cheetah, who managed to get a copy before the sites crashed (as well as the whole Internet I thought for some time) I had a copy of the update the same day and was able to test it for you.
What changes/fixes were implemented ? (I just copied it from the readme file)

Changes/Additions:
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- Multicast spectator added. (1)
- Voice communication added. (2)
- Added server chat to logging.
- Redesigned multiplayer scoreboard. (3)
- CapsLock key is now bindable.
- Switching to Spectator is now logged.
- Changed minimum value for "mp_chattime" to 1 second
- Changed minimum value for "mp_buytime" to 0.25 (15 seconds)
- Radio commands can be heard by nearby enemies. (4)
- Commandmenu support implemented.

Bug Fixes :
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- Bunny hopping removed.
- Fixed client-side shots not matching the server-side counterparts.
- Fixed banned.cfg problem with more than 1024 entries.
- Fixed screenshots overwriting each other.
- Buffer overflow exploit fixed.
- "condump", "cmdlist", and "cvarlist" only write out to the game directory.
- Fixed Spectator mode bug.
- Fixed hitbox issues.
- Fixed nightvision bug.
- Fixed "slot10" not working correctly.

1)From now on you have the choice between 'playing' a game and 'watching' a game. How low can you go, I hear you think ? Well, you also watch a soccer game on TV and since CS is your most important sport (now well ;-) ), you might learn something from it…
How to recognize a game which supports this feature ?

2)Voice communication. That was what we had all been waiting for, right ? NOOOOT… Every clan that respects itself uses battlecom or roger wilco and if you go alone on a server, you normally don't feel the desire to speak with the other players because flaming has become a common problem on public servers… Two headshots and you use aimbot… You have seen someone's hiding behind a crate and you can kill him ? must be wallhack…
Is Punkbuster the sollution then ? No…. It doesn't always work as it should be and can only detect 20% of all available cheats. Back to topic, what does this option offer? Simply press one button and all of your teammates hear you ? It's done like in fig.3

Quality is okay… If you speak the same language and the other one's voice communication is well configured, you can understand eachother. We were quite afraid of lag that this extra feature would bring… We - broadband users- have not experienced more lag than normal but we've done a little test.. For the battlecom users.. you can compare quality with Delta-compression.

Conclusion ? Although it wasn't something we were waiting for and that could excuse for the long delay but the idea is nice and it's well worked out... But… do we WANT to hear those other players ?

3)Have you ever played on a player with 32 players ? Yes, it's quite fun but it's a bit pity you couldn't see all the players listed.. Except if you used exceptional resolutions perhaps… Now a nifty scrollbar has been developped so you can see all players listed.

4)Yeah, it's quite cool to hear 'fire in the hole' somewhere in the neighbourhood and two seconds later you're dead by an enemy grenade… Cooler would be to hear 'need backup' when you're shooting the brains out of someone..

EP sez:

We had to wait for it for a long, long time but it's worth the deal… One negative point. It has become nearly impossible to play with the same cdkey on one server. Not that I'm a fan of illegal cdkeys etc but it's lame they only implent it now… They should have done this from the beginning or never, I think. I'd also like to thank Cheetah for his cooperation in taking the screenshots.

© 2001 Erwin's Pages
Paul "Spetsnaz" Praet


Links:

> Official Counter-Strike Site
> AFU