ST-CS-10-339-75
March 2002
Preface (U)
This report examines version 1.3 of the on-line co-operative multiplayer real-time first person perspective shoot'em'up game Counter-Strike.
The order of the material presented is important. Each section builds upon and refers to concepts and issues described in previous sections. It is recommended that the report is read in order.
There have been two reports prior to this report, both of which concerned version 1.1 of Counter-Strike. The material from those reports which remains valid with version 1.3 (about 50 percent) has been amalgamated with new material concerning the current version.
It is the intention of the author to make updates, large or small, to this report as and when new information is uncovered and new versions of Counter-Strike are released.
In-Page Video (U)
Most pages in this report contain a single in-line video to actually show recorded Counter-Strike play so that issues being discussed can be clearly and exactly demonstrated.
The video codec used (DIVX) allows a trade-off between video size and quality. As such, the decision was taken to have two copies of every video, one high quality and large for broadband (cable/xDSL) readers, the other small and low quality for narrowband (56k/ISDN) readers.
The index page contains two radio buttons allowing the reader to select between narrowband video and broadband video.
A narrowband video will take approximately 25 seconds to download at 45.3 kbit/sec (141 kilobytes). A broadband video will take approximately 10 seconds to download at 256 kbit/sec (320 kilobytes). Additionally, the page itself and any images need to be downloaded.
| Page loading times | |
| 56k/ISDN | 35 seconds |
| Cable/xDSL | 15 seconds |
A few pages contain more than one video. The videos in such pages are further compressed to attempt to ensure that the overall page loading time remains as close as possible to the goal download times.
DIVX 5.0 Incompatability (U)
DIVX version 5.0 has very recently been released. This version of the codec fails to show the last frame of video played in-line in a browser. This is a devestating problem since the last frame of about one third of the videos in this report contains the crucial event being discussed.
Do not use DIVX 5.0 to view this report - use version 4.11 or 4.12.
Video Codec Download and Installation (U)
To view the in-line video, you will need to install the DIVX video codec; please download a copy if necessary from the two links in this table.
| Platform | Download | Size |
| Windows | DivX412Codec.exe | 566kb |
| Macintosh | DivX4.11Alpha.sit | 221kb |
DIVX supports Windows, Linux and Macintosh. Version 4.11 of the codec has been used in this report since 4.02 can display corrupted video. Unfortunately, the current Linux version of DIVX is 4.02 and does not properly play back video encoded with version 4.11. Note Macintosh users will need to install the Macintosh version of Windows Media Player.
The Macintosh view of these pages and the video is completely untested.
The DIVX codec will not be useable after installation until any open instances of Windows Media Player have been closed.
Browser Requirements (U)
This report has been tested with Internet Explorer 6.0 and Netscape 6.2. Earlier browser versions are expected to mis-render pages badly. Internet Explorer is the prefered browser because Netscape does not support server-side fonts and appears not to be able to use the DIVX plug-in under Windows NT.
Update History (U)
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