Dota 2

Dota 2 is an upcoming action real-time strategy fantasy strategy video game being developed by Valve Corporation and the stand-alone sequel to the popular Defense of the Ancients mod for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and The Frozen Throne. Formally announced on October 13, 2010 via the website of magazine Game Informer, the game is currently undergoing a closed beta phase and is scheduled for a full release in 2012.Dota 2 will utilize a free-to-play business model, with a social network based around the game and its community. Dota 2 will be released via download by Valve's content delivery platform Steam, on which the game has been developed to run exclusively for both game launch and update delivery.Dota 2 will run on Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X.
The game consists of session-based online multiplayer activity, with the primary objective of each match being for the teams to destroy their opposing team's fortified stronghold. Each player controls a player character called a "hero", who is given the responsibility of participating in team combat, which generally takes place along a series of lanes that connect their opposing bases, lined with defensive towers. The gameplay elements are largely incorporated from Defense of the Ancients, with the game's lead designer, "IceFrog", being the longest-serving and current developer of the Warcraft III mod.

Gameplay

A game of Dota 2 in progress. Team coordination is critical, especially during late gameplay, as base encroachment generally becomes more frequent.

Dota 2 combines the real-time strategy element of traditional top-down perspective, while also incorporating the leveling and itemization system of a role-playing video game. Players are pitted against each other as two distinct factions called the Radiant and the Dire. The Radiant is a faction based at the southwest corner of the map, while the Dire is a faction based at the northeast corner. Players assume the role of a "hero" - a strategically-powerful unit with special skills, who, through combat experience, may progress to a maximum level of twenty-five.The heroes' methods of combat are heavily influenced by their primary property, which can be physical strength, agility, or intelligence. The basic setup of Dota 2 places two strongholds containing critical structures called "Ancient Fortresses" at opposing ends of an evenly balanced map. These bases are connected by three main paths (referred to as "lanes") which are guarded by defensive towers and constantly spawning waves of units which march from one side to another, combating the towers as well as each other along the way. Players are split into two teams, each consisting of up to five players, to compete as the primary defenders for each Ancient Fortress.
The overall objective of each match is to battle through the opposing force's defenses, in order to arrive at and destroy the opponents' Ancient Fortress. Because Dota 2 is highly team-oriented, players must coordinate with their teams in order to achieve victory. The towers and stronghold defenses are invulnerable to attacks so long as the towers nearest to the enemy side still stand. Periodically, groups of weaker units commonly referred to as "creeps" are spawned, which move along their lane attacking any enemy unit or structure upon sight.
The currency of the game is gold, which is granted periodically, but typically accumulates at a more practical level by killing enemy units, which grants a distributed amount of gold to the killer's team, with the greater portion being retained by the killer themselves. A common technique utilized to prevent the opposing faction from accumulating gold from a kill is "denying", which constitutes killing an allied unit or destroying an allied structure and can be employed when the unit or structure it is about to be used on is close to death or destruction, respectively. Players also gain experience, which accumulates to gain higher levels. The greatest portion of gold and experience comes from destroying higher priority forces, such as enemy heroes and towers.

Development

Concept

According to Valve's founder and managing director, Gabe Newell, Valve's investment in DotA was sparked from the collective interest of several veteran employees, including Team Fortress designer Robin Walker, programmer Adrian Finol and project manager Erik Johnson, who had attempted to partake in team play at a competitive level. As their interest in the game grew, they began corresponding with DotA's developer, IceFrog, over a series of emails, inquiring what long-term plans the scenario's developer had.The emails eventually culminated in an invitation from Erik Johnson, offering IceFrog a tour of the company's facilities and as a result, claimed to have "hired him on the spot". The first public notification regarding the development of Dota 2 was a blog post made by IceFrog, stating that he would be leading a team at Valve. No official word was given until its official announcement on October 13, 2010, when the website of magazine Game Informer revealed specific details about the game and its development, creating traffic on the website nearly to the extent of crashing their servers. Later that day Valve released the official press release for the game. Erik Johnson addressed the confusion over the written form of the brand name, citing it as "Dota," rather than "DotA," due to its increasing context as a concept, rather than an acronym for "Defense of the Ancients".
Shortly following a Q&A by IceFrog on the website of Defense of the Ancients, elaborating on his recruitment by Valve, a trademark filing claim was made by the company on August 6, 2010. Steve "Guinsoo" Feak, the original developer of the DotA Allstars variant and Steve "Pendragon" Mescon, both employees of Riot Games, expressed their concern that Valve should not maintain a trademark for the DotA name, due to their views that it should remain as a community asset. On August 9, 2010, Mescon filed an opposing trademark for "DOTA" on behalf of DotA-Allstars, LLC, a subsidiary of Riot Games, in order to "protect the work that dozens of authors have done to create the game".Rob Pardo, the executive vice president of Blizzard Entertainment, the developer of Warcraft III, expressed a similar concern, explaining that the DotA name should remain within the Warcraft III community. Blizzard acquired DotA-Allstars, LLC from Riot Games in 2011, to enforce their claim as not only the creators of the World Editor, but to have the rights from the company that made a claim to the mod previously. During the game's unveiling at Gamescom 2011, Gabe Newell explained Valve's perspective on acquring the trademark, which was that IceFrog desired to develop a direct sequel to DotA and that players would likely recognize it as such. Blizzard filed an opposition against Valve in November 2011, citing the Warcraft III World Editor and their ownership of DotA-Allstars, LLC as a proper claim on the franchise. On May 11, 2012, Blizzard and Valve announced that the dispute had been settled, with Valve retaining the rights to the term "Dota", while Blizzard would change the name of their map, Blizzard DOTA, to "Blizzard All-stars".

Design

As the sequel to Defense of the Ancients, the development cycle of Dota 2 has been concentrated primarily upon fully transferring the aspects of its predecessor to the Source engine, as well as building upon the core gameplay. Dota 2 recreates the factions of the Sentinel and the Scourge from Defense of the Ancients with the Radiant and the Dire, with cornerstone features of the characters' alignment reserved, while ultimately re-establishing the familiar qualities in a new form from Valve. Warcraft III composer Jason Hayes joined Valve to collaborate with Tim Larkin for developing Dota 2's musical score. Character names, abilities, items, map design and other fine details remain virtually unchanged, but the integration of these features to the Source engine allows for continued, scaled development to bypass limitations from the Warcraft III World Editor. Further support for the competitive experience is developed through the use of Dota account matchmaking, which scales a player's automated placement in accordance to their estimated skill level. Non-computed and unranked practice matches are made available through the use of either human players, AI bots or solo games. In the debut Q&A, IceFrog stated that Dota 2 will serve as the long-term continuation of the mod, building upon the original gameplay without making too many significant core changes that may alter the overall experience.According to Valve, the company contracted major contributors for DotA's popularity to assist in developing Dota 2, including the mod's original creator known as "Eul", as well as loading screen artist Kendrick Lim of Imaginary Friends Studios. IceFrog has stated that in order to further emphasize Dota 2's premise as a continuation of DotA, contributions would remain consistent from sources outside the main development team.
To accommodate Dota 2, Valve has worked to upgrade the Source engine to include high-end cloth modeling, as well as improved global lighting and improvements to Steamworks, which includes a wider expansion of utilities, such as player guides and the coaching system. Dota 2 utilizes Valve's Steam software in order to provide social and community functionality for the game. Steam accounts save personal files and settings on the online accounts using the Steam Cloud. Dota 2 also features multiple options of live spectating, in tradition of competitive Valve titles. The game host has the option to fill open slots with AI bots. Another option allows the host to determine if AI bots or other human players will be used to fill the vacated slot of a disconnected player. Valve is introducing a coaching system to allow for more experienced players to tutor newer players. The game will also feature tutorial sessions for further assisting players to mount the steep learning curve before competitive play. In addition to the online platform established by Steam, Dota 2 will support LAN multiplayer connectivity. As part of a plan to create a social network based around Dota 2, Gabe Newell announced in April of 2012 that the game would be free-to-play, with an accentuation on player contributions to the community.
To coincide with Dota 2's public debut at Gamescom 2011, Valve opened the sign-up for invites for the beta, with invites being sent out following the conclusion of Gamescom. During the debut, Gabe Newell revealed that Dota 2 would likely ship in 2012, despite original plans for a full release in late 2011. On September 23, 2011, Valve scrapped its previous development and release plans for Dota 2, which would have kept the game in its beta phase for over a year, in order to accommodate the full transfer of creative materials developed for the original DotA. The new plan described by IceFrog looked to release the Dota 2 beta at the nearest possible date and to implement the remaining heroes afterwards. Simultaneously, Valve announced that the non-disclosure agreement for the beta was being lifted, allowing testers to discuss the game and their experiences publicly.

Source:Youtube

Counter-Strike

Counter-Strike

Counter-Strike (English pronunciation: /ˈkʰʌn.tə(r) ˈstraɪk/, sometimes differentiated as Counter-Strike 1.6 and shortened to CS) is a tactical first-person shooter video game developed by Valve Corporation which originated from a Half-Life modification by "Gooseman" and Jess "Cliffe" Cliffe. The game has been expanded into a series since its original release, which currently includes Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, Counter-Strike: Source, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Counter-Strike pits a team of counter-terrorists against a team of terrorists in a series of rounds. Each round is won by either completing the mission objective or eliminating the opposing force.

The game was the most played Half-Life modification in terms of players, according to GameSpy in 2008.^[3]

As of August 2011, the Counter-Strike franchise (Valve) has sold over 27 million units.^[4]

Gameplay

Counter-Strike is a first-person shooter 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.

A player can choose to play as one of five different default character models (four for each side, although Counter-Strike: Condition Zero added two extra models, bringing the total to ten). Players are generally given a few seconds before the round begins (known as "freeze time") to prepare and buy equipment, during which they cannot attack or move. (one notable exception is that a player may receive damage during freeze time. This happens when a map is changed to spawn players at a certain height above the ground, thus causing fall damage to the player. This is a method map designers use to alter the starting "HP" of players on a map). They can't return to the buy area within a set amount of time to buy more equipment (some custom maps included neutral "buy zones" that could be used by both teams). Once the round has ended, surviving players retain their equipment for use in the next round; players who were killed begin the next round with the basic default starting equipment.

Standard monetary bonuses are awarded for winning a round, losing a round, killing an enemy, being the first to instruct a hostage to follow, rescuing a hostage or planting (Terrorist)/defusing (Counter terrorist) the bomb.

The scoreboard displays team scores in addition to statistics for each player: name, kills, deaths, and ping (in milliseconds). The scoreboard also indicates whether a player is dead, carrying the bomb (on bomb maps), or is the VIP (on assassination maps), although information on players on the opposing team is hidden from a player until his/her death, as this information can be important.

Killed players become "spectators" for the duration of the round; they cannot change their names before their next spawn, text chat cannot be sent to or received from live players; and voice chat can only be received from live players and not sent to them (unless the cvar sv_alltalk is set to 1). Spectators are generally able to watch the rest of the round from multiple selectable views, although some servers disable some of these views to prevent dead players from relaying information about living players to their teammates through alternative media (most notably voice in the case of Internet cafes and Voice over IP programs such as TeamSpeak or Ventrilo). This form of cheating is known as "ghosting".

 Development

Mods and scripts

Though Counter-Strike is itself a mod, it has developed its own community of script writers and mod creators. Some mods add bots, while others remove features of the game, and others create different modes of play. Some of the mods give server administrators more flexible and efficient control over his or her server. "Admin plugins", as they are mostly referred as, have become very popular (see Metamod, AMX Mod and AMX Mod X). There are some mods which affect gameplay heavily, such as Gun Game, where players start with a basic pistol and must score kills to receive better weapons, and Zombie Mod, where one team consists of zombies and must "spread the infection" by killing the other team (using only the knife). There are also the Superhero and Warcraft III mods which mix the first-person gameplay of Counter-Strike with an experience system, allowing a player to become more powerful as they continue to play. The game is also highly customizable on the player's end, allowing the user to install or even create their own custom skins, HUDs, sprites, and sound effects, given the proper tools.

Cheating

Counter Strike has been a prime target for exploitation by cheaters since its release. In-game, cheating is often referred to as "hacking" in reference to programs or "hacks" executed by the user.

• Wallhacks allows players to see through walls. These work by displaying objects that are normally obscured or by replacing opaque game textures with translucent ones. As the engine only renders the immediate area around the player, this does not allow a player to see the entire level at once.
• Speedhacks give the player increased foot speed. These work by sending false synchronization data to the server.
• Recoil hack removes any recoil (and thus improves accuracy) from a player's firearm.
• No spread is used to remove the random deviation normally experienced when the player shoots. This is similar to the recoil hack.
• Aimbots help the player aim at enemies. Practically the same as auto-targeting, These work by either modifying a bullet's in-flight path, or automatically moving the player's crosshair onto an enemy.
• ESP shows textual information about the enemy; such as health, name and distance; also information about weapons lying around the map, which could be missed without the hack. Most ESP cheats show info through walls.
• Barrel hack depicts an enemy's gaze as a visible line, this is also visible in the killcam.
• Anti-flash and anti-smoke remove the effects of the flashbang and smoke grenade. Implementation is derived from the wall hack.

Valve has implemented an anti-cheat system called Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC). Players cheating on a VAC-enabled server risk having their account permanently banned from all VAC-secured servers.

With the first version of VAC, a ban took hold almost instantly after being detected and the cheater had to wait 2 years to have the account unbanned.^[5] Since VAC's second version, cheaters are not banned automatically. With the second version, Valve instituted a policy of 'delayed bans,' the theory being that if a new hack is developed which circumvents the VAC system, it will spread amongst the 'cheating' community. By delaying the initial ban, Valve hopes to identify (and ban) as many cheaters as possible. Like any software detection system, some cheats are not detected by VAC and at times, the only effective anti-cheat solution is a human administrator watching an online game. Some servers implement a voting system, in which case players can call for a vote to kick or ban the accused cheater. VAC's success at identifying cheats and banning those who use them has also provided a boost in the purchasing of private cheats.^[6] These cheats are updated frequently to minimize the risk of detection, and are generally only available to a trusted list of recipients who collectively promise not to reveal the underlying design.

Release

When Counter-Strike was published by Sierra Entertainment/Vivendi Universal Games, it was bundled with Team Fortress Classic, Opposing Force multiplayer, and the Wanted, Half-Life: Absolute Redemption and Firearms mods."^[7]

On March 24, 1999, Planet Half-Life opened its Counter-Strike section. Within two weeks, the site had received 10,000 hits. On June 19, 1999, the first public beta of Counter-Strike was released, followed by numerous further "beta" releases. On April 12, 2000, Valve announced that the Counter-Strike developers and Valve had teamed up.

The non-beta public release dates of Counter-Strike are as follows:^[8]

• Version 1.0: November 1, 2000
• Version 1.1: March 13, 2001
• Version 1.3: September 12, 2001
• Version 1.4: April 24, 2002
• Version 1.5: June 12, 2002
• Version 1.6: September 12, 2003

Note: Version 1.6 effectively coincided with the release of Valve Software's Steam content delivery system on September 12, 2003. All further updates and bug fixes have been dynamically delivered via Steam, without any specific new version numbers. The name or abbreviation "1.6" is often used to differentiate it from the newer version Counter-Strike: Source.

Counter-Strike: Source

Main article: Counter-Strike: Source

Counter-Strike received a major technology update and refresh on November 1, 2004 with the release of Counter-Strike: Source, which was heavily updated using Valve's Source game engine to take advantage of more modern graphics and audio hardware. However, the original Counter-Strike is still available and played by many people via Steam, as the two variants are quite different, and players inevitably prefer one variant over the other. Both versions continue to co-exist today.

Counter-Strike was originally played online through the WON gaming service, which was shut down in 2004,^[9] forcing players to switch to Steam. The non-Steam version of Counter-Strike (version 1.5) can still be downloaded from sites such as FilePlanet.^[10] Due to the closure of WON, part of the player community responded by creating their own WON network, dubbed WON2.^{[citation needed]}

In March 2007, Valve implemented mandatory advertisements through Steam in official maps and in the game's GUI overhead. Customers have expressed frustration with the ads, including an over 200 page thread on Valve's official forums, saying that they violate original terms of service and distract from the game.^[11] The thread was later deleted by an unknown moderator.

Counter-Strike Online

Main article: Counter-Strike Online

Counter-Strike Online is available in South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, and Indonesia, and is now fully online. It is developed by Nexon Corporation with oversight from license-holder Valve Corporation, and is an attempt to increase market share of Valve's games in the Asian gaming market.

 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

Main article: Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

On August 12, 2011, it was confirmed that a new Counter Strike game is currently in development at Valve Software and Hidden Path Entertainment, which also codevelops Counter-Strike: Source, going under the title Global Offensive.^[4] The game is played on game consoles (such as PS3, Xbox 360, etc.) and PC and is aimed as a competition to other FPS games such as the Call of Duty and the Battlefield series.^{[citation needed]} The closed beta testing is out on November 30, 2011, only for those who got the keys in "Penny Arcade Expo" and Eurogamer. It will be opened once Valve thinks that the server is ready.