OS Neutral COUNTER STRIKE 2 COMING SUMMER 2023!

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

Introducing Counter-Strike 2 | Limited Test

Counter-Strike 2 is the largest technical leap forward in Counter-Strike’s history, ensuring new features and updates for years to come.

counter-strike.net

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1638582078139928576

ITS HAPPENING! AFTER ALL THESE YEARS IT IS FINALLY HAPPENING! We are finally leaving CSGO behind!

Counter Strike 2 is a free upgrade to CSGO to the Source 2 engine, the same engine Half Life Alyx uses, and my oh my does it overhaul the game in major ways.

Summer 2023. It's going down

 

[Irishman]

I just really hope that this is a day one release for the Mac!

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

I just really hope that this is a day one release for the Mac!

Well good news because it is! This is a free upgrade of CSGO and datamines found Mac and Linux branches. The Limited Beta Test currently is just going to be for Windows however

 

[Irishman]

Well good news because it is! This is a free upgrade of CSGO and datamines found Mac and Linux branches. The Limited Beta Test currently is just going to be for Windows however

Les gooo!!!!

 

[Irishman]

I’m wondering if this will end up being the first Source 2 Engine game for Mac? Good sign for us seeing Half-Life Alyx?!?

And, do we think it’ll be DXVK or Metal??

 

[galad]

Dota 2 and that other one, was it called Artifac?, already uses source 2 engine and moltenvk.
Knowing Valve, they will do the bare minimum and call it a day.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

I’m wondering if this will end up being the first Source 2 Engine game for Mac? Good sign for us seeing Half-Life Alyx?!?

And, do we think it’ll be DXVK or Metal??

Half Life Alyx is never coming to Mac. That game is VR only and SteamVR for Mac was shut down in 2019 due to little to no usage because surprise surprise: No one buys a Mac for games, let alone for VR.

 

[Irishman]

Half Life Alyx is never coming to Mac. That game is VR only and SteamVR for Mac was shut down in 2019 due to little to no usage because surprise surprise: No one buys a Mac for games, let alone for VR.

I do (buy only Macs, and I buy them to game on).

And, Half-Life Alyx did launch as a VR-title, but since then, there’s been added a 2D mode for the game.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

I do (buy only Macs, and I buy them to game on).

Oh honey. Look I love Macs, macOS is my favorite operating system, but buying them for gaming you're only hurting yourself.

Get yourself a Steam Deck if you're gonna insist on getting a Mac for games, because there are a lot of games that will not run period even with CrossOver or Parallels, while the Steam Deck can run them. https://www.steamdeck.com/

And, Half-Life Alyx did launch as a VR-title, but since then, there’s been added a 2D mode for the game.

The 2D mode is not an official mode, it is a mod made by a teenager who wanted to see if he could do it, and said mod breaks the core game since the game was made and balanced for VR and motion controls, not a traditional flatscreen. Valve even had a debug mode for HL:A that backported the entire weapon set of Half Life 2 and they sent it to game journalists who said the game needed a flatscreen mode, just to show them how much the game would suck if it was on flatscreen.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1250341660677947393

 

[Irishman]

I forgot to ask you about your mention about datamines showing Linux and Mac versions of Counter Strike 2.

Where did you see that?

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

I forgot to ask you about your mention about datamine showing Linux and Mac versions of Counter Strike 2.

Where did you see that?

SteamDB. Valve dataminers are very thorough. It's how we knew about Counter Strike 2 and even Half Life Alyx's existence years before they got announced.

 

[Irishman]

SteamDB. Valve dataminers are very thorough. It's how we knew about Counter Strike 2 and even Half Life Alyx's existence years before they got announced.

Linky please?

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

Linky please?

Sigh...

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1636824673001394176

 

[Irishman]

Sigh...

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1636824673001394176

Thanks so much.

Sorry to put you out, but my Google Fu had failed me.

Jesus…

 

[winxmac]

The last Counter-Strike I played was version 1.3/1.5 and now Counter-Strike 2 is announced and will be available this year...

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

The last Counter-Strike I played was version 1.3/1.5 and now Counter-Strike 2 is announced and will be available this year...

Bro you missed out on peak with CS 1.6.

 

[GrumpyCoder]

There seems to be a lot of confusion with this game. We've seen Source 2 engine games on the Mac before DOTA 2/Underlords and Artifact, dating back to 2015. So the engine isn't new. CS2 is an update for CS:GO, once the update button is pressed, CS:GO will disappear and won't be playable anymore. This is different in the current beta where GO is still playable. So in that sense, CS2 is a DLC for GO that will completely replace the GO base game once released.

Since Source 2 has been on the Mac for about 8 years now and GO is running on the Mac as well, a release is expected. I do have to wonder if runs better than GO, which is a mess. To be fair, CS2 beta is on Windows only and isn't running as I would expect it so close to release. Particularly when smokes are on screen, motion judder starts to kick in. But it could be the servers of which at least some run at 64 ticks.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

There seems to be a lot of confusion with this game. We've seen Source 2 engine games on the Mac before DOTA 2/Underlords and Artifact, dating back to 2015. So the engine isn't new. CS2 is an update for CS:GO, once the update button is pressed, CS:GO will disappear and won't be playable anymore. This is different in the current beta where GO is still playable. So in that sense, CS2 is a DLC for GO that will completely replace the GO base game once released.

Since Source 2 has been on the Mac for about 8 years now and GO is running on the Mac as well, a release is expected. I do have to wonder if runs better than GO, which is a mess. To be fair, CS2 beta is on Windows only and isn't running as I would expect it so close to release. Particularly when smokes are on screen, motion judder starts to kick in. But it could be the servers of which at least some run at 64 ticks.

We won't know how the game runs on Mac until CS2 releases, but judging from how much better Source 2 runs on Apple Silicon than hopefully better. GO was on the modded Source engine which was far too old for what they wanted to do with it. The engine was not meant to run in 64 bit as evident from the fact Half Life 2's 64 bit update was cancelled due to how poor it ran.

 

[jeanlain]

I’m wondering if this will end up being the first Source 2 Engine game for Mac? Good sign for us seeing Half-Life Alyx?!?

And, do we think it’ll be DXVK or Metal??

Not Metal, that's for sure. I think Valve is on record saying that they'll try to avoid directX in favour of cross-platform APIs. I let you extrapolate...

That'll be moltenVK+rosetta or nothing. Heh, it's still better than openGL an we can consider ourselves lucky that Valve isn't dropping the Mac (yet).

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

Not Metal, that's for sure. I think Valve is on record saying that they'll try to avoid directX in favour of cross-platform APIs. I let you extrapolate...

That'll be moltenVK+rosetta or nothing. Heh, it's still better than openGL an we can consider ourselves lucky that Valve isn't dropping the Mac (yet).

They're not gonna drop the Mac. The last Steam hardware survey showed macOS is on the rise and the majority of Macs on Steam are using Apple Silicon. Plus Steam was updated two years ago to support ARM64 and Apple Silicon games (despite the client itself not being native which is...odd.)

As long as there's a userbase they'll support it. Hell they brought Steam to Tesla cars and they're bringing Steam to god damn ChromeOS now. Like who the hell was asking for Steam for ChromeOS?

 

[Irishman]

There seems to be a lot of confusion with this game. We've seen Source 2 engine games on the Mac before DOTA 2/Underlords and Artifact, dating back to 2015. So the engine isn't new. CS2 is an update for CS:GO, once the update button is pressed, CS:GO will disappear and won't be playable anymore. This is different in the current beta where GO is still playable. So in that sense, CS2 is a DLC for GO that will completely replace the GO base game once released.

Since Source 2 has been on the Mac for about 8 years now and GO is running on the Mac as well, a release is expected. I do have to wonder if runs better than GO, which is a mess. To be fair, CS2 beta is on Windows only and isn't running as I would expect it so close to release. Particularly when smokes are on screen, motion judder starts to kick in. But it could be the servers of which at least some run at 64 ticks.

Well, I’ll take the blame for the confusion about how many games run on the Source 2 engine on Mac. I think that was my failure to understand what to expect with regard to CS 2.

Is there any way to see if the beta runs under
OpenGL or another API?

 

[PineappleCake]

Good sign for us seeing Half-Life Alyx

I don't think so. Valve releases all their games on multiple platforms on day 1 otherwise their is no Mac port.

And, do we think it’ll be DXVK or Metal??

Souce 2 Engine is Vulkan based so most likely MoltenVK

 

[jeanlain]

They're not gonna drop the Mac. The last Steam hardware survey showed macOS is on the rise and the majority of Macs on Steam are using Apple Silicon. Plus Steam was updated two years ago to support ARM64 and Apple Silicon games (despite the client itself not being native which is...odd.)

To be clear, I wasn't suggesting that Valve would end Steam for Mac, but that they may stop releasing Mac games at some point.

 

[diamond.g]

They're not gonna drop the Mac. The last Steam hardware survey showed macOS is on the rise and the majority of Macs on Steam are using Apple Silicon. Plus Steam was updated two years ago to support ARM64 and Apple Silicon games (despite the client itself not being native which is...odd.)

As long as there's a userbase they'll support it. Hell they brought Steam to Tesla cars and they're bringing Steam to god damn ChromeOS now. Like who the hell was asking for Steam for ChromeOS?

Has macOS usage on Steam actually increased? It seems like it has always hovered around 2-3%.

 

[GrumpyCoder]

Is there any way to see if the beta runs under
OpenGL or another API?

Not in the game, as far as I know... (there might be some hidden console command for it though). Otherwise maybe with some 3rd party tool like MSI Afterburner.

Has macOS usage on Steam actually increased? It seems like it has always hovered around 2-3%.

No, it's the usual little up this month, down the next month and so on. macOS usage is pretty stable on Steam. Also, don't forget these statistics are based on returning players over a period of time. So naturally, whenever a new game comes out or DLC for a game or simply patches, those numbers will change, depending on what people play.