CS-Nation

Covering the future of Counter-Strike

about

Rogue & VALVe
On June 18th, 1999, a mod for the Half-Life engine was released called Counter-Strike (about Counter-Strike). The modest modification steadily grew into a well-rounded game with a fairly large fan base and Half-Life: Counter-Strike was released as a standalone product in retail stores around the country. Fans cried out for a single player experience, and thus Counter-Strike: Condition Zero was born.

A post at VoodooExtreme on April 28th, 2001 dispelled the rumor that Rogue Software was developing Counter-Strike 2. However, it did confirm that Rogue Software was doing some single player content for Half-Life. The product they were developing was eventually known as Condition Zero. The big exclusive was given to the July, 2001 issue of CGW. Rogue Software had just completed Alice. Rogue's title featured some very odd weaponry, such as a crossbow and the controversial (for obvious reasons) suicide belt.

Before CS:CZ was even officially revealed, VALVe took over development when Rogue's director of content left the company without discussing it with VALVe. Erik Johnson and his team continued work on the single player experience for CS until July of 2001. At that point they handed the game over to Gearbox Software, who were known for their work on Half-Life expansion packs Opposing Force and Blue Shift.

Gearbox Starts Fresh
With Randy Pitchford—president of Gearbox Software—in charge, CS:CZ started to take shape. Gearbox was presented with the task of taking a tried and true multiplayer game and converting it to a single player romp. Although some progress had been made on the Rogue/VALVe version of CS:CZ, Gearbox started from a clean slate. Gearbox's version of CS:CZ looked more like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater rather than a normal first person shooter single player experience.

CZ was non-linear and let you go back to previous levels to improve your score. If you scored well on a mission, you'd earn special bells and whistles, such as a new weapon or an added skill for your teammates. Your performance in the first missions affected how well you could equip your team for the second mission and so on.

Each mission included around nine objectives that you were to meet to get to the next level. If you completed the objectives in a shorter time, you were awarded more money or extra bonus items. Other aspects included in Gearbox's CZ were an improved AI coded by the creator of PODBot, enhanced graphics, a few new weapons and a couple pieces of equipment. Among the new weapons were a LAW, a disposable, single-shot rocket launcher, and the M60 machine gun. A riot shield and chemical gas grenade were added to spruce up the equipment department. To pull it all together, they used prominent members of the CS community, such as DaveJ, Hobbit, and narby.

The Gearbox team struggled to put together the game in time for their deadlines. The original release date was very optimistic, and soon it had to be pushed back. The second release date was also pushed back. The CZ project soon fell into a downward spiral of delays. In July 2002, after a year of work, Gearbox was likely forced to drop the project altogether. Rumors indicate that VALVe had asked for substantial changes in CZ's gameplay and Gearbox simply wasn't up for it.

Another Clean Slate: Ritual In, Gearbox Out
The game had a media blackout for almost six months, starting from around June, 2002. Then, in December, Shacknews broke word that Ritual Entertainment was now developing CS: Condition Zero and had been doing so since August of that year. Ritual Entertainment decided to scrap all of the work that Gearbox Software had done. They were going to rebuild the game from scratch, and make it more like a conventional single-player, scripted FPS.

Before development was switched to Ritual, the company was known in the gaming community for making a few big titles. Starting with a Quake mission pack, Ritual Entertainment eventually moved on to develop SiN and other titles including the popular Elite Force II.

The Ritual version of Counter-Strike: Condition Zero featured a linear approach to Counter-Strike single player with 20 separate missions, each with their own story and objectives. It also included new, high resolution player and weapon models.

With overly negative community feedback, and other problems with the project, VALVe decided that the Ritual version of Counter-Strike: Condition Zero was not up to the standards that gamers have come to expect from their software, and the title once again took another turn in development during the summer of 2003.

Turtle Rock Studios
After VALVe decided to return to the less linear roots of traditional Counter-Strike game play they paired up with the folks at Turtle Rock Studios to start development on what will, hopefully, be the final face of Condition Zero. CS-Nation was the first to get an exlusive preview of Condition Zero on October 10th, 2003.

Formed in the blossoming spring of 2002, Turtle Rock Studios is a small programming team based in Irvine, California. The team consists of only four former Westwood/EA Pacific employees. The studio, headed by Mike Booth, had its first major project-the Official Counter-Strike Bot-tested alongside Counter-Strike 1.6's BETA during the summer of 2003. Now, Turtle Rock Studios is prepping the version of Condition Zero that will be released next month.

What CZ Looks Like Now
Although you will still find some of the Ritual missions in the game, the meat of CS: Condition Zero is a new mode programmed by Turtle Rock Studios. Twelve Ritual missions will be in a section of the game called "Deleted Scenes." These missions were the best of the 20 or so that Ritual developed. But the new game mode that will comprise most of Condition Zero is a Tony Hawk Pro Skater-like challenge mode. Both your teammates and enemies will be computer-controlled players that attempt to re produce the action and experience that Counter-Strike is so popular for. You start the game by "purchasing" a squad of computer-controlled teammates from a list of available bots, the more points you have the higher skilled teammates you can acquire to fight along side you. Next, you select from one of 18 maps called "Tours of Duty", which are either updated with new geometry and detail textures from their CS 1.6 counter-parts, or are entirely new. Once you get into the game you are presented with various challenges and objectives based on your difficulty settings.

Along with the new levels there have been several other additions to the game. There is an option for new players known as the "tutor" which shows up in the top right hand part of the screen and displays a wealth of information that will help inexperienced players out. Also there are plenty of interesting new game modes which include everything from training events, again for inexperienced players, up to fun novelties like getting kills with the less-used weapons such as the Scout or P228 and the other vast assortment of useless weaponry in the CS arsenal. And for those looking for challenges which will require more skill and tactical abilities there are a number of new game modes to satisfy! One such example is in order to win you have x amount of seconds to complete the objective or eliminate the opposing team. Other examples include killing the enemy while he is blind, or getting three consecutive headshots.

Condition Zero has undergone many different development overhauls, and while we haven't gotten a chance to really experience all of them, it's safe to say the game has finally managed to capture the essence of Counter-Strike into a single player game, which is what it set out to do so many years ago when first announced. Condition Zero is in stores now, and you can purchase it through Steam or retailers everywhere like Amazon.

The Future
Condition Zero received its first content update on April 28th, 2004. In an exclusive CS-Nation interview, Cliffe and Michael Booth talk about the contents of the patch and their plans for the future. Since then CS:CZ has received many more content updates, and it will even be ported to Source.