New 3Dmark… New Counter-Strike… It's all good!

Sorry about the lack of news, yesterday, but your trusty news guy (me) was heinously ill. Now I'm back, and all hell's broken loose across the atomic labs. On one hand Tim, Bennet and John are running around in lather over the release of

Sorry about the lack of news, yesterday, but your trusty news guy (me) was heinously ill. Now I'm back, and all hell's broken loose across the atomic labs. On one hand Tim, Bennet and John are running around in lather over the release of 3DMark2001, from Mad Onion . It's like Christmas, it really is. I pulled one of them aside from the drunken revels and tried to find out just what the new 3D benchmark has to offer.

Right at the top of the list is support for the new GeForce3 card and Pentium 4 processor. DirectX 8 is now supported, and new inclusions on the testing side are Vertex Shading, Pixel Shading and Full Scene Anti-aliasing to name but a few. John even tells me there's meant to be a new 'user interactive' feature to the software. 3DMark2001 is being downloaded as I type, so as soon as I can get a comprehensive thumbs up or thumbs down out of the gang, I'll let you know.

But there's even more excitement. Ashok and I have been chattering like schoolgirls over the release of Counter-Strike 1.1 . This new release should please a lot of people, while at the same time pissing off just as many - sometimes for exactly the same reason. Here's the 1.1 readme:

v1.1
-----
[3.13.01]

Changes/Additions:
------------------
- Added spectator mode -- allow_spectators (0/1)
- Terrorist bomb backpack re-added
- Upgraded player models to 512X512 textures
- CT defuse kit pack re-added
- Made jumping while shooting more inaccurate w/ submachineguns
- Took out sniper crosshair when zoomed out
- AWP leg shots now non-lethal
- Swimming animation added to models
- Status bar text uses team colors
- All CS Strings localized to titles.txt
- Added option to take "end game" screenshot
- Length of MOTD increased to 1536
- Added cs_thunder, de_vertigo, de_inferno, de_dust2 & de_rotterdam
- Upgraded de_dust de_cbble, de_vegas, de_aztec, cs_office, cs_siege, & cs_italy
- Logic used to cycle the map has been changed. The map will cycle if
one of three conditions has been met: "mp_timelimit" has been met,
"mp_winlimit" rounds have been won by one of the teams, or "mp_maxrounds"
have been played.
- Fixed many cheats
- Changed logging format to meet the standars @:
http://www.hlstats.org/logs/
Several events have been added to the logs:
a) "Begin_Bomb_Defuse_Without_Kit"
b) "Begin_Bomb_Defuse_With_Kit"
c) "Spawned_With_The_Bomb"
d) "Dropped_The_Bomb"
e) "Got_The_Bomb"
f) "Became_VIP"
g) "Escaped_As_VIP"
h) "Round_Start"
i) "Round_End"


Bug Fixes:
----------
- "Out of ammo" hint message fixed
- "Punished for tk" hint message fixed
- "Through floor" death animation fixed

Sounds great to me, though I know that a lot of AWP whores are going to hate what's been done to their baby. Personally, I think a bit more reality is a good thing, and anything that stops me getting nailed by bunnyhopping AK wielders is a good thing. As far as I know skipping is not a part of Spetznatz training. See you online.