Back in May, we reported that a Valve employee had revealed that the company was aware of a long-running bug that had been a thorn in the side of many a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player.
The bug affected the hitboxes around players in a way that could sometimes see a player shot multiple times at point-blank range without taking a hint of damage. This could be frustrating in a casual game, but in a game that sees players competing for large cash prizes, the consequences of the game not acting in a predictable manner are much more serious.
Now that bug has finally been addressed, along with many other issues, in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, affectionately known by fans as CSGO. It’s clear from the patch notes posted that this is no minor band-aid fix either, with several animation systems seeing significant changes.
The patch replaces all player body animations — a major overhaul. For the purposes of demo compatibility the previous animations were retained, but won’t be used in-game any longer. All player model geometry and scaffold animation has been re-rigged as well.
Another bug that could cause trouble in competitive play — weapon models sticking through doors and walls — has been fixed in the new patch as well. As with player model animation, all weapon model animation as been replaced and new animations have been added.
Just because Valve is making CSGO even better for competitive play, don’t expect the company to roll out a Counter-Strike equivalent of The International tournament for Dota 2. Though the tournament is popular, Valve’s Erik Johnson said in August that a similar tournment for CSGO wasn’t a given, though he did mention that the game would end up on the new Source 2 engine at some point.
The new patch addresses much more than just the few bugs mentioned here, though many of the fixes are of the more typical re-balancing variety. For the full list of changes, see the patch notes on the Counter-Strike website.