CS:GO has received another load of changes
under the hood, but a few of them break through
to the surface for us to see and take pictures
of.
Take a look at this clip from earlier this
month, in a match between Gen G Esports and
Cloud9. With the bomb planted on A on Inferno,
JT tried to escape the bomb’s blast zone
by running to Banana… but still managed
to be killed by the blast.
There was a bit of an outcry over how ridiculous
this looked, and Valve must have seen this
because in this update they’ve introduced
a new bomb blast kill notification, so everybody
on the server is alerted to ridiculous displays
such as this one.
This is just a visual notification, mind.
Being killed by the bomb still won’t add
a ‘death’ to the scoreboard.
Go to the Video options in-game and at the
very top now is the option to change your
main menu’s background image. It’s nice
to see the community-made maps such as Anubis
and Chlorine getting featured, which I’m
inclined to use to instil more nostalgia and
a placement in time should you rewatch this
video in a year or so when the mappool might
have changed.
And there’s a new sticker capsule containing
Warhammer 40,000 designs. You can see them
all here… and here’s how they all look
in-game.
And I’ll just talk some more so there’s
more excuse to show these close-ups…
…and oh look, some more.
You have no idea how long it takes to compile
this footage.
So that’s the immediately noticeable stuff
you’d get from the game’s latest blog
post. But there are other, more subtle changes
too. Players frozen by game logic no longer
take damage. Say the first half ends and you
drop a Molotov into a crowd of hostages, teammates
and orphans. Previously, you could have killed
your teammates and been kicked from the game
for it, even though it’s not really fair
since none of you can move. So this update
stops funny stuff like that from happening.
If you threw a grenade at a player and it
bounced off them and hit a door, it used to
pass straight through it, meaning you could
flash people on the other side of the door
without having to open it. But this has been
made ‘less likely’ to happen. Valve continues
to err on the side of caution by not ruling
out the possibility of players getting stuck
on mid-air grenades, but by claiming that
this has also been made less likely. And decoy
grenades shouldn’t block your ability to
stand up if stood on top of them.
Onto Graphics, and while it isn’t quite
Source 2, there are a few improvements and
updates. That experimental Texture Streaming
beta has been added for everybody and can
be found 3rd down the Advanced Video settings
menu. In my testing I have found no benefit
to using this, but it comes with the downside
of making textures look blurry for a split-second
until the game loads them properly. I still
have it enabled because I feel like I’ve
achieved something when I unexpectedly turn
around and catch a texture off-guard. But
the choice is yours. The release notes suggest
that this feature has received a load of improvements
but they’ve simply been copy-pasted from
the previous beta update post, so I don’t
expect it to be any better than it was 2 weeks
ago.
And a flickering shadow issue on ultra-wide
monitors has been prevented. And holographic
stickers will look less blurry and low-res
when viewed at an acute angle.
So although it might not be the most exciting
update, I like to think that it’s preparing
the game for future updates. Because the alternative
is boring.
