Friday update makes "light" of older CSS maps

[CSN NewsBot]

The latest Steam news update has been released. Apparently, Valve plans to add HDR to previous Counter Strike Source maps, and quotes Dust as a possibility for being one of the first candidates.



Also, there is info about next week's Red Orchestra release, and more info on the Friends revamp.

Next week Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 will be released and playable on Steam. If you haven't preloaded this game ahead of the launch, you may do that here. There is also a trailer for the game that you may download to get a feel for what kind of game it is.



The Friends system is also nearing the end of its beta phase, and will soon be available to everyone running Steam. Friends allows you to see when your friends are playing games, and lets users chat with each other both inside and outside of many Steam games. There are also a number of additional features we'll be adding to it over time. Early next week, we'll be updating Steam with a convenient way to join the Friends beta.



We're also planning on going back to some of the older Counter-Strike: Source maps and giving them an HDR pass. Soon you'll get to play maps like de_dust with full High Dynamic Range lighting.

As usual, restart Steam to get your own personal copy of this announcement!

[Zips]

Just restarted my Steam to see this. Already pumped about the RO release, they toss in the news about Friends nearing completion (BETA for it is going smashing)... And THEN they toss in the news about updated CS: Source maps and just COMPLETELY blow me away.



Good show Valve, good show.

[ukHazard]

I bought UT2004 solely for Red Orchestra. Looking forward to this immensely!



It should literally be bloody good.

[Zips]

ukHazard wrote..

I bought UT2004 solely for Red Orchestra. Looking forward to this immensely!



It should literally be bloody good.

Quite right you are (some of my personal screenshots):

[hahnchen]

Giving old maps the HDR pass? I'd rather see some new ones. And how long until we see the HDR-ed maps?

[.Sn0w.]

Hmmmmm be good if they fixed some bugs like the defuse bug, spec bug and the bullshit power of a shotgun from long range!



It would be good to see aztec in hdr and also office

[Zips]

[I2o[G]uE TacT-X]

Is Red Orchestra for Steam built on the Source engine?

[asianrage]

I2o[G]uE TacT-X wrote..

Is Red Orchestra for Steam built on the Source engine?

No it is off of UT2004. The team won a mod contest and were allowed to sell and distribute their game as a standalone.

[Ryosuke T]

woop dee doo. hdr. i personally don't care if it's HDR or not. i would rather have them to fix them bugs instead.

[.Sn0w.]

agreed

[ukHazard]

asianrage wrote..

No it is off of UT2004. The team won a mod contest and were allowed to sell and distribute their game as a standalone.

Almost. They won licences for Unreal Engine 2.5 and 3.0. Ostfront is based on the 2.5 engine, so it has a lot more tricks than UT2004 can do.

[Syx]

I thought UT2004 was built on UE2.5? It definately was not 2.0 or below.



Anyways, Hooray for HDR, maybe by 2010 VALVe will have redone all of the CS:S and HL2 maps in HDR.

Then by 2012 they can add bump offset mapping to the Source engine.

[ukHazard]

My mistake. It uses the same engine as UT2004. It's just that because they have a full licence, the code base is much more of their own than a mod's.

[RP]

You understand that adding HDR to maps is made by "design" teams (i.e artists, mappers, modeleres) and fixing bugs is pure coding and there is no connection between the two right?