Counter Strike Beta 5.2 Download
Annemie Zierenberg
When Counter-Strike was in its beta phase, various patches were released, refining and improving the core gameplay. When development ended, the full game was finally released as version 1.0 on December 9, 2000. When compared to the retail game, these beta versions were tremendously different in terms of environments, graphics, and even gameplay. During this phase, many maps were included and ultimately discarded. The public beta began on June 19th, 1999 with Beta 1.0 and ended with the release of Beta 7.1 on September 13th, 2000.
During this stage, many concepts were still being refined and new weapons and maps were also added periodically. When compared to the retail game, these beta versions were tremendously different in terms of environments, graphics, and even gameplay. Many different maps that were included were ultimately discarded.
Minh Le has been previously involved with developing mods in the form of Navy SEALs for Quake and Action Quake 2.[3] However, he felt that he wanted more control over development and thus decided to start development on his own mod.[4] As Le had already used the Quake and Quake 2 engines when working on previous mods, he felt that using the Half-Life engine was a logical progression.[5] The fact that Half-Life was based on a realistic setting helped sell the idea that it would be the most suitable for his concept of a realistic mod pitting terrorists against counter-terrorists.[3]
The maps for the initial beta release of the game were to be chosen in a contest type of setting where the Counter-Strike Team picked the best maps out of all maps that had been submitted for the game.[12] It is not known how many maps were actually completed by the time maps were to be chosen for the initial beta, but it would seem there was quite a limited choice.[6][13] However, at least two maps were mentioned that didn't ever see the light of day (a factory and a bunker map[9]) which suggests that some maps were discarded based on the outcome of this contest.
Before the first beta had even been released, a pre-beta was leaked and started circulating around the web. It has been suggested that the initial beta release was rushed as a result of this,[6] likely to prevent people from getting a negative impression of the mod by playing the early leaked build.
The first beta was eventually released on June 19, 1999 featuring the hostage rescue scenario, an arsenal of 9 weapons, 4 maps and one player model for each side. According to Jess Cliffe, the release was well received by the community.[9]
The bomb defusal scenario was the new big thing in Beta 4.0. Shortly before its release, Cliffe was encouraging designers that were working on maps to utilize the new scenario instead of hostage rescue.[9][14][15] When the new beta was released it also introduced another new feature that allowed for more interesting map design - many entities would now be reset at the start of the round (which meant that things like breakable glass would respawn each round). At the same time this meant the end for an infamous tactic called gun-running, where players would stack weapons on the ground around their spawn before the end of a round as they could be picked up at the start of the next round.[16]
In late 1999, Minh Le started working at Barking Dog Studios while he was still finishing his studies. When Valve Software became aware of this, they asked if Barking Dog was interested in developing Counter-Strike Beta 5.[17] Valve offered to finance this development to show gratitude to the Half-Life community and mod developers.[18] Barking Dog Studios agreed, and they would do most (around 90%) of the work for the next beta as Le was very busy with university studies at that time.[17][3]
Following this statement, two major beta releases would still be issued. Beta 6.5 was mainly released to introduce the updated netcode that Valve Software had written for the Half-Life engine. The last major beta release, Beta 7.0, saw the introduction of driveable vehicle support.
On August 31, 2000 it was officially announced that Counter-Strike would be sold as a standalone retail product in addition to being available as a mod for Half-Life.[24][25] On November 9, 2000 the retail version of Counter-Strike was declared gold and the mod version of Counter-Strike 1.0 was released, thus the game had left the beta stages.[26]
There were several gameplay elements that were trialed in the game during its beta stages. Some ideas would be iterated in future releases and improved while other ideas would end up getting scrapped.
The hostage rescue scenario was the only scenario featured in the very first beta of the game. Originally level designers were instructed only to make sure a map had no more than five hostages present,[28] thus the amount of hostages in early maps range between 3 and 5.
In the first few beta releases, there were no separately designated hostage rescue zones and the Counter-Terrorist spawn points would function as hostage rescue zones. The ability for maps to feature separate hostage rescue zones was added in Beta 2.0.
During the beta stages of development, maps were rotated in the official release of the mod based on popularity.[9] This meant that numerous maps were at one point featured in the game but would end up getting cut during the beta stages.
As the early betas had a limited arsenal available compared to later releases, the weapons of choice were also quite different. Early on, the MP5 had proven to be the most popular weapon.[6] When Beta 4.0 was released the P90 was introduced. It was accurate, cheap and powerful and would stay the dominant weapon until Beta 6.0 was released.[6]
When the first beta of Counter-Strike was released, only one faction was included for each side. These player models were criticized for being very hard to tell apart.[7] Subsequent releases would introduce new factions as well as tweak the old ones. At times, there was an uneven number of factions available for each side (e.g. in Beta 5.0 there were only 2 Terrorist factions but 3 Counter-Terrorist factions). During development, the names of the factions were also frequently changed.
When the initial beta was released, there was a relatively small community surrounding the game.[5] By November 1999, there were already more people playing Counter-Strike online than there were people playing Half-Life though it had yet to achieve the same level of popularity as Team Fortress Classic.[36]
Counter-Strike is a modification (MOD) to the excellent game, Half-Life. It modifies the multiplayer aspects of Half-Life to bring to it a more team-oriented gameplay. Counter-Strike provides the player with an experience that a trained counter-terrorist unit or terrorist unit experiences. The MOD is team-based featuring one team playing the role of the terrorist and the other team playing the role of the counter-terrorist. Each side has access to different guns and equipment, as well as different abilities. Maps have different goals such as: hostage rescue, assassination, bomb defusion, Terrorist escape, etc. Weapons include the usual assortment of pistols, shotguns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, grenades, demolition devices. Each side has access to a different subset of weapons so for example only the counter-terrorist can use the M4A1, and only the terrorists can use the AK-47. We are confident that we've created a MOD quite unlike any other.
It was 20 years ago today that version 1.0 of Counter-Strike launched, boasting iconic maps like Dust and Italy. But what about the maps that didn't make it out of beta? CS had over twenty which bounced around betas but were cut by the full release, including all the maps representing one entire mode. I revisited the cut beta maps today and was surprised by quite how many I remembered, a lot of weird fond memories mixed in with a few moments of "Oh yeah obviously I see why this was cut". Come, let's revisit them.
I didn't play CS intently so I have a fair few gaps, but I did enjoy going back and seeing maps from betas I hadn't seen. More maps were removed between v1.0 and 1.6, mind, but these are the babies which never made it past beta. Let's start with the maps most recently removed, and work backwards to Beta 1.0.
Set in various locations around the globe, players assume the roles of counter-terrorist forces and terrorist militants opposing them. During each round of gameplay, the two teams are tasked with defeating the other by the means of either achieving the map's objectives or eliminating all of the enemy combatants. Each player may customize their arsenal of weapons and accessories at the beginning of every match, with currency being earned after the end of each round.
Counter-Strike is a first-person shooter game in which players join either the terrorist team, the counter-terrorist team, or become spectators. Each team attempts to complete their mission objective and/or eliminate the opposing team. Each round starts with the two teams spawning simultaneously. All players have only one life by default and start with a pistol as well as a knife.
Counter-Strike began as a mod of Half-Life's engine GoldSrc. Minh Le, the mod's co-creator, had started his last semester at university, and wanted to do something in game development to help give him better job prospects. Throughout university, Le had worked on mods with the Quake engine, and on looking for this latest project, wanted to try something new and opted for GoldSrc. At the onset, Valve had not yet released the software development kit (SDK) for GoldSrc but affirmed it would be available in a few months, allowing Le to work on the character models in the interim. Once the GoldSrc SDK was available, Le estimated it took him about a month and a half to complete the programming and integrate his models for "Beta One" of Counter-Strike. To assist, Le had help from Jess Cliffe who managed the game's website and community, and had contacts within level map making community to help build some of the levels for the game.[6] The theme of countering terrorists was inspired by Le's own interest in guns and the military, and from games like Rainbow Six and Spec Ops.[6]
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