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I was just reminiscing about this with a friend last night. We had tons of free time and games like Counter-Strike were the wild west of creativity. My fondest

I was just reminiscing about this with a friend last night. We had tons of free time and games like Counter-Strike were the wild west of creativity. My fondest memory was a Spring afternoon in 2000 after school playing some janky fan made map whose name I don't remember and feeling so happy. Everyone was playing. We played every day. We went to a 300 person LAN party that summer. We formed a 5 man team and competed online. It was so fun cobbling together a computer that could run it. Trying every trick to squeeze a few more FPS out of it. Trying to shave a few milliseconds off my dial up ping. Going to that one guy's house who had broadband internet. It really felt like a golden age back then. My friends and I planned our own mod and started working on it, but our ambition outstripped our ability. That's how we all got our start though. Now we all work as software engineers. About six months ago, I felt nostalgic and started looking into what was up with CS. Amazingly, it is still going and is popular, but seems very focused on competitive play. I wanted to experience that public lobby on a janky fan made map feel. I found a server running custom 'zombie' maps which scratched that itch for a few days. Then I got busy again and haven't touched it since.

hypercube33 2y ago
Rats maps or the ones with a ton of vehicles were the most fun before the game got way too serious (before 1.5)
- fuzzzerd 2y ago
  I ran a server that was primarily rat surf maps with a Warcraft/RPG server mod for years back then. It was super fun and something that modern games just can't touch in terms of that kind of niche.
  - rightbyte 2y ago
    Surf maps were so strange as a concept. Dunno how stuff like that can become such a big thing. I miss the custom games of Warcraft 3 and the likes. The creativity was running wild. It is sad that hats, loot boxes amd dlc has killed modding in commercial games.
- lqet 2y ago
  I still remember the name "gimli", a creator of high-quality maps around 1.3.
  - jamiek88 2y ago
    He still publishes maps!
RGamma 2y ago
CS2 community servers are nothing like the 1.6 or Source golden era. Those games are still going, but the playerbase has shrunk considerably. I'm glad I got to experience it all (primarily in Source): gun game, deathmatch, RPG, surf, jailbreak, zombie mod and escape, iceskate, sliderace, hide'n'seek, trickz, xtreme climbing, multigames, deathrun, knifeball, HE wars, vehicle maps, bob, nipper maps, even hack vs hack, and the many many communities, each uniquely flavored and with their own story. Back then I took it for granted...
- Stagnant 2y ago
  I totally feel that. The most fun I ever had gaming was back in my teens playing various different game modes in source. And yeah the communities really made it so special, to this day I'm good friends with some people that I initially met in CSS. I can't help but feel Valve dropped the ball with cs:go and cs2. I mean, they did become incredibly popular but IMO there was potential for so much more if they would've supported custom game modes even just a little bit.
  - jamesfinlayson 2y ago
    I think they may have been possible with Metamod: Source and SourceMod but now that it's on the Source 2 engine, server plugins are once again an unsupported hack.
- aradox66 2y ago
  I spent long hours playing CS Surf. What a wacky mod. Good times, odd memories.
  - RGamma 2y ago
    You may be interested in KSF. They host skill surf servers and publish chill WR runs: https://youtube.com/@ksfrecords https://youtube.com/@ksfrecords The more modern surf maps are aesthetically quite pleasing and smooth to play.
  - astrolx 2y ago
jamal-kumar 2y ago
It's still tons of fun but definitely different now, and since they came out with counter-strike 2 a while ago, it's me being specced out on my old gaming computer all over again - as with you I'm way too busy as a working adult to get too deep into it, was fun to play a lot during the pandemic though. The craziest innovation I seen is counter strike 1.6 in the browser, fully playable multiplayer. Not sure how safe letting that much execution happen in wasm environment truly is but was still pretty funny to see how far the game has come in terms of graphics. Basically a bunch of the same maps still even though a couple have always been way skewed to one side or the other.
lqet 2y ago
> About six months ago, I felt nostalgic and started looking into what was up with CS. Amazingly, it is still going and is popular I played the "original" CS (at least a version that looked like 1.6) around 3 years ago, and was surprised how painless it was to install it on Linux using Steam. I was also surprised that it was still no problem to find a de_dust server with > 20 players. > That's how we all got our start though. Now we all work as software engineers. Yes. It was so easy back then to play around with game development, web development, or desktop development. Around 2002, I hosted a web site for months on my local desktop server, reachable via a DynDNS solution. Sorry for getting nostalgic, but it was even easier in the mid-90ies. As a 9 year old, I created a Dyna Blaster clone using a Demo-Version of "Klik&Play" on Windows 3.11 [0]. You could develop quite advanced games by just dragging around sprites, animating them, listening to mouse and keyboard events and object collisions. You could even "compile" the game into a single portable .exe! It was dead simple, but it introduced me to the basic concepts of programming and animation, and I didn't even realize it. A little later, I was able to teach myself BASIC by just reading the DOS man pages. We didn't even have internet back then. I very clearly remember realizing that "if ... then ... else" statements and variables were exactly what was missing in my "Klik&Play" demo-version. In the demo, you had to simulate these concepts by triggering the spawn of a hidden moving object and listening for the collision with another object. The hidden objects encoded the game state. Basically, the developers tried to remove Turing-completeness from the demo version, but failed and forced kids like myself to restore it via wild tricks (I remember feeling very clever when I had the idea for this trick). I only realized 2 decades later how useful these experiences were for a career in computer science. [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/comments/e2e98t/making_games_with_klik_play_on_windows_311/ https://old.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/comments/e2e98t/making_ga...
- time0ut 2y ago
  Very cool. The first web site I ever made was for my CS clan. I hosted it on the Linux server in my university dorm room that also hosted our CS server. I don't remember what I did for DNS back then. I learned so much that I still use to this day. I also think its neat, guessing based on your ISP, that you had such similar experiences at the same time half a world away from me (in the US).

hypercube33 2y ago

Rats maps or the ones with a ton of vehicles were the most fun before the game got way too serious (before 1.5)

fuzzzerd 2y ago
I ran a server that was primarily rat surf maps with a Warcraft/RPG server mod for years back then. It was super fun and something that modern games just can't touch in terms of that kind of niche.
- rightbyte 2y ago
  Surf maps were so strange as a concept. Dunno how stuff like that can become such a big thing. I miss the custom games of Warcraft 3 and the likes. The creativity was running wild. It is sad that hats, loot boxes amd dlc has killed modding in commercial games.
lqet 2y ago
I still remember the name "gimli", a creator of high-quality maps around 1.3.
- jamiek88 2y ago
  He still publishes maps!

RGamma 2y ago

CS2 community servers are nothing like the 1.6 or Source golden era. Those games are still going, but the playerbase has shrunk considerably. I'm glad I got to experience it all (primarily in Source): gun game, deathmatch, RPG, surf, jailbreak, zombie mod and escape, iceskate, sliderace, hide'n'seek, trickz, xtreme climbing, multigames, deathrun, knifeball, HE wars, vehicle maps, bob, nipper maps, even hack vs hack, and the many many communities, each uniquely flavored and with their own story. Back then I took it for granted...

Stagnant 2y ago
I totally feel that. The most fun I ever had gaming was back in my teens playing various different game modes in source. And yeah the communities really made it so special, to this day I'm good friends with some people that I initially met in CSS. I can't help but feel Valve dropped the ball with cs:go and cs2. I mean, they did become incredibly popular but IMO there was potential for so much more if they would've supported custom game modes even just a little bit.
- jamesfinlayson 2y ago
  I think they may have been possible with Metamod: Source and SourceMod but now that it's on the Source 2 engine, server plugins are once again an unsupported hack.
aradox66 2y ago
I spent long hours playing CS Surf. What a wacky mod. Good times, odd memories.
- RGamma 2y ago
  You may be interested in KSF. They host skill surf servers and publish chill WR runs: https://youtube.com/@ksfrecords https://youtube.com/@ksfrecords The more modern surf maps are aesthetically quite pleasing and smooth to play.
- astrolx 2y ago

jamal-kumar 2y ago

It's still tons of fun but definitely different now, and since they came out with counter-strike 2 a while ago, it's me being specced out on my old gaming computer all over again - as with you I'm way too busy as a working adult to get too deep into it, was fun to play a lot during the pandemic though. The craziest innovation I seen is counter strike 1.6 in the browser, fully playable multiplayer. Not sure how safe letting that much execution happen in wasm environment truly is but was still pretty funny to see how far the game has come in terms of graphics. Basically a bunch of the same maps still even though a couple have always been way skewed to one side or the other.

lqet 2y ago

> About six months ago, I felt nostalgic and started looking into what was up with CS. Amazingly, it is still going and is popular I played the "original" CS (at least a version that looked like 1.6) around 3 years ago, and was surprised how painless it was to install it on Linux using Steam. I was also surprised that it was still no problem to find a de_dust server with > 20 players. > That's how we all got our start though. Now we all work as software engineers. Yes. It was so easy back then to play around with game development, web development, or desktop development. Around 2002, I hosted a web site for months on my local desktop server, reachable via a DynDNS solution. Sorry for getting nostalgic, but it was even easier in the mid-90ies. As a 9 year old, I created a Dyna Blaster clone using a Demo-Version of "Klik&Play" on Windows 3.11 [0]. You could develop quite advanced games by just dragging around sprites, animating them, listening to mouse and keyboard events and object collisions. You could even "compile" the game into a single portable .exe! It was dead simple, but it introduced me to the basic concepts of programming and animation, and I didn't even realize it. A little later, I was able to teach myself BASIC by just reading the DOS man pages. We didn't even have internet back then. I very clearly remember realizing that "if ... then ... else" statements and variables were exactly what was missing in my "Klik&Play" demo-version. In the demo, you had to simulate these concepts by triggering the spawn of a hidden moving object and listening for the collision with another object. The hidden objects encoded the game state. Basically, the developers tried to remove Turing-completeness from the demo version, but failed and forced kids like myself to restore it via wild tricks (I remember feeling very clever when I had the idea for this trick). I only realized 2 decades later how useful these experiences were for a career in computer science. [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/comments/e2e98t/making_games_with_klik_play_on_windows_311/ https://old.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/comments/e2e98t/making_ga...

time0ut 2y ago
Very cool. The first web site I ever made was for my CS clan. I hosted it on the Linux server in my university dorm room that also hosted our CS server. I don't remember what I did for DNS back then. I learned so much that I still use to this day. I also think its neat, guessing based on your ISP, that you had such similar experiences at the same time half a world away from me (in the US).