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    Play Counter Strike 1.6, with full multiplayer, in the browser

    (play-cs.com)
    1345 points philosopher1234 | 20 comments | 02 Feb 23 16:00 UTC | HN request time: 0.21s | source | bottom
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    zactato ◴[02 Feb 23 18:41 UTC] No.34631181[source]▶
    I remember playing one of the early CS betas as a Half-life mod in ~1999. It was such a huge leap in gameplay and style from anything else out there.

    Most FPSs up to this point were SciFi based, guns like the BFG and plasma guns. Counterstrike's focus on realism really altered how you connected with the game. Columbine had happened very recently and was still very much in the zeitgeist. There was a very real cultural attack on video games as a scapegoat for the massacre.

    My friends and I would build CounterStrike maps that were the layout of our highschool and would then run around and shoot each other. This was very taboo at the time. We knew that this would be interpreted as threatening by the powers-that-be at highschool, but it was exciting.

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    ddtaylor ◴[02 Feb 23 20:21 UTC] No.34632421[source]▶
    > My friends and I would build CounterStrike maps that were the layout of our highschool and would then run around and shoot each other.

    There was a small netcafe nearby when I was young that had a good quality T1 connection and hosted their own CS servers. Some of the players got together and actually mapped out the entire netcafe store itself and some of the surrounding area to create a "de_" style map.

    This meant you could be playing CS and spawn in the same room that you were actually sitting in.

    I can still remember vividly as a 14 year old playing the game and completely dominating a room full of 20-something older guys in the other room. They didn't know who I was and every time I would stomp them they would yell "FUCK" from the other room. Eventually after a series of absurd kills they angrily stormed over to our room in a hostile manner ready to fight and 100% convinced I was somehow cheating. The look on their face when they realized they were "prepared" to fight a kid and the realization as I openly allowed them to inspect the PC for whatever they thought was modified on it was hilarious.

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    1. monktastic1 ◴[02 Feb 23 20:36 UTC] No.34632608[source]▶
    > a good quality T1

    Oh man, I remember the good ol' days, when a 1.5 Mbps connection was unthinkably fast. I imagined only God herself had a T3.

    replies(6): >>34632734 #>>34633321 #>>34636804 #>>34637862 #>>34640713 #>>34641981 #
    2. akiselev ◴[02 Feb 23 20:46 UTC] No.34632734[source]▶
    That was when I discovered the magnificent beauty of symmetry.
    replies(1): >>34633033 #
    3. tiahura ◴[02 Feb 23 21:06 UTC] No.34633033[source]▶
    And more importantly for gaming, low latency.
    replies(2): >>34633322 #>>34673350 #
    4. manual89 ◴[02 Feb 23 21:26 UTC] No.34633321[source]▶
    I remember the days when I tried to play Quake on my 28.8 modem over the net pre-Quakeworld.

    Almost made me swear online multiplayer off for life.

    replies(2): >>34636022 #>>34649279 #
    5. Legion ◴[02 Feb 23 21:26 UTC] No.34633322{3}[source]▶
    LPB, Low Ping Bastard.
    replies(1): >>34633602 #
    6. sholnay ◴[02 Feb 23 21:44 UTC] No.34633602{4}[source]▶
    haha! wow memories.
    7. Seanambers ◴[03 Feb 23 01:36 UTC] No.34636022[source]▶
    You should've tried Doom over dialup :)
    replies(4): >>34636810 #>>34639420 #>>34640087 #>>34640651 #
    8. 1letterunixname ◴[03 Feb 23 03:31 UTC] No.34636804[source]▶
    I finagled 512kbps SDSL from a startup telco for $70/month in 1998.
    9. 1letterunixname ◴[03 Feb 23 03:31 UTC] No.34636810{3}[source]▶
    It's all about Doom over null modem.
    10. godzillabrennus ◴[03 Feb 23 06:35 UTC] No.34637862[source]▶
    I remember thinking the T1 that lit up my entire school district was insanely fast. That was until I went to college and found they had a 2Gbit fiber optic Internet2 link on campus. That was mind blowing.
    11. Foobar8568 ◴[03 Feb 23 10:19 UTC] No.34639420{3}[source]▶
    Diablo 2 in HC over dial-up in South France was fun, especially with the random disconnection that was plaguing different providers...
    12. phplovesong ◴[03 Feb 23 12:11 UTC] No.34640087{3}[source]▶
    Duke nukem 3d. Dialup. Wow thats pure nostalgia!
    replies(1): >>34641922 #
    13. base698 ◴[03 Feb 23 13:18 UTC] No.34640651{3}[source]▶
    Doom was ok over dial up computer to computer. Quake was even slow connected direct over modem. I would guess the slowness was the extra data for the 3rd dimension going over the wire.
    replies(1): >>34661529 #
    14. CalRobert ◴[03 Feb 23 13:23 UTC] No.34640713[source]▶
    I remember the day I got ISDN at and I could listen to an MP3 as fast as I could download it (if it was encoded at 112kbps...)
    15. 29athrowaway ◴[03 Feb 23 15:04 UTC] No.34641922{4}[source]▶
    It would go out of sync and switch to single player.
    16. epolanski ◴[03 Feb 23 15:08 UTC] No.34641981[source]▶
    To be honest, it used to be.

    I have never, ever seen pings as low as the ones I've seen 15/20 years ago when playing online.

    I remember when I played Counter Strike 1.5 or 1.6 on a 10 MBit fiber which was very new at the time and pinging on servers nor far my house (few miles) even sub 10 ms. Those were numbers that competed with lan servers over ethernet.

    Nowadays I have a much better connection, and yet, I rarely see myself with such a small latency anymore, it's at least twice that.

    replies(1): >>34657677 #
    17. brewtide ◴[03 Feb 23 23:23 UTC] No.34649279[source]▶
    My memory was marathon on the Mac played over a similar connection speed. I forget the software but it allowed a networked game to be emulated over a PPP dialup session.

    Fondly look back at those times, indeed.

    18. pastage ◴[04 Feb 23 20:07 UTC] No.34657677[source]▶
    I agree about the big comercial servers/games. The community driven servers are often better latency, e.g. I got 7ms in this game, the same server was 60ms when gaming through the VPN and enterprise proxy.
    19. aliswe ◴[05 Feb 23 03:33 UTC] No.34661529{4}[source]▶
    Quake even synced gibs
    20. dang ◴[06 Feb 23 04:29 UTC] No.34673350{3}[source]▶
    This is off topic (because the current comment is just fine) but can you please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34673344?