25 Apr 2013 -




Since we launched the CS:GO Maps Workshop back in February, over 1,400 maps have been uploaded. The CS team has been consistently blown away by how complex, well thought out, and just plain fun so many of these maps have been.

We really wanted these maps to reach a wider audience, and also get the people making these amazing new gameplay experiences rewarded for their efforts. But how? Luckily, in the time it takes a CT to hold up a flashbang and announce that it’s a flashbang, we hit upon the answer.

“Operation Payback” marks the first of an ongoing series of limited-time updates aimed at giving a well-earned financial reward to some of CS:GO’s most popular and prolific mapmakers. For a limited time, you can buy a pass half-priced for $2.99. That’ll get you unlimited access to a Classic Casual map group featuring seven of the highest-voted Workshop Maps. Invite your friends (even if they don’t have a pass) and enjoy uninterrupted low-ping play on official servers—all while rewarding CS:GO’s top-voted virtual mapmakers with real money. Buying a pass also gets you a one-of-a-kind challenge coin, upgradable by playing and viewable wherever your avatar is shown. “Operation Payback” will be live from now until July 31st, and it’s currently half-priced, so get in there!

And remember: “Payback” is just the beginning. Future Operations will highlight all-new collections of popular maps. So stay tuned, keep mapmaking, and keep upvoting!

Release Notes for 5/1/2013

[ GAMEPLAY ]
-Tweaked weapons
   DEAGLE: Reduced inaccuracy.
   Mag-7: Increased cycletime. Increased cost.
   XM-1014: Increased ArmorRatio. Increased cycletime.
   UMP-45: Reduced price. Reduced recoil angle variance.
   Mac-10: Increased maxspeed. Reduced price.
-Classic Competitive now allows 2 flashbangs and 4 grenades total.
-Implemented bodygroups penetration for maximum damage, now shooting through arms at the enemies head will apply headshot damage, or shooting through arms at the stomach will apply stomach damage multiplier.
-Removed aimpunch resulting from getting shot in the arms or legs.
-Auto switch when dropping a weapon (or after throwing a grenade) avoids weapons with 0 bullets in the clip.
-Reduced environment fog when scoped with a weapon.

[ MAPS ]
-CS_Militia: Fixed collision in CT spawn, added radar names
-CS_Assault: Added radar names
-CS_Museum: Fixed and updated radar and overview scales.
-DE_Library: Fixed bug where some clients would crash on bomb explosion.
-DE_Favela: Fixed bug were a prop was causing server lag, other gameplay tweaks
-DE_Seaside: Fixed bug were players would get stuck near Terrorist spawn.


[ MISC ]
-Weapon inventory HUD now displays the number of grenades held of a single type.
-Fixed a sound bug that resulted in ghost footsteps when taking over bots.
-Fixed player money getting set to the wrong value if the player took over a bot in competitive and survived to the end of the round.
-Added a server convar "sv_maxusrcmdprocessticks" to limit maximum number of user commands backlog, defaulting at 3; observed player speed by others will now always be within max movement speed even when user is cheating, experiencing high packet loss or exteremely low fps.
-Vote kick will record user's SteamID in the banlist and remove user from ongoing competitive match even if the user disconnected from game server before required number of votes have been collected.
-Spectating Operation Payback games via GOTV is now allowed without Operation Payback pass.
-Fixed crash on exit.

Release notes for 4/26/2013

[ MISC ]

- Reduced cl_radar_scale minimum from 0.4 to 0.25.
- Fixed a problem where workshop maps included in Operation Payback weren't playable on community servers without Operation Payback Pass.
- Fixed a problem where Operation Payback banner could sometimes show up over friends in Play With Friends lobby.
- Added an explanation to Operation Payback Pass to indicate that Operation Payback is a mapgroup for Classic Casual mode.

Release Notes for 4/26/2013

[ OPERATION PAYBACK ]
- Uploaded “Operation Payback, “ a Classic Casual map group made up of seven top-rated Workshop maps on official servers
- Allowed players to invite friends to play “OP” even if they haven’t purchased
- Added upgradeable challenge coin, viewable in avatar, that progresses from bronze to silver to gold with play

[ RADAR ]
- Spectators' radar was replaced with a minimap, allowing for better orientation and action-following without resorting to the overview.
- When playing competitive or with sv_competitive_official_5v5 set, the minimap will show player hotkey values like the overview map does.
- Added convar cl_radar_always_centered ( default 1 ) then when set to 0 makes more efficient use of the radar at the expense of moving the POV away from the center.
- Added 2 options to the radar, allowing players to change the scale and orientation. These are exposed in the Game Settings menu, or directly with the cl_radar_scale ( default 0.7 ) and cl_radar_rotate ( default 1 ) convars, respectively.
- Added convar cl_radar_icon_scale_min ( default 0.6 ) that allows radar icons to be kept large when the scale is reduced.
- Moved the planted bomb icon from below the radar to the timer.
- Fixed radar showing above or below on a player when spectating them from chase.

[ CS:GO PLAYER PROFILE ]
- All players can now view other players medals/coins on the in-game Player Profile page.
- Friends can now view your wins and Skill Group on your in-game Player Profile page.
- You can now view a Player's Profile page by hitting Z (the Command Radio Message key) when spectating that player.
- Added a shortcut to view a friend's CS:GO Player Profile page from the main menu friends list.

[ MISC ]
- Added "Disable Autogenerated DM Spawns?" to info_map_parameters entity that allows mapper to specify that no dm spawns should be autogenerated and will be mapper-placed instead.
- Added more options for map filtering in server browser:
   -The default map filter now performs substring matching. (dust will find de_dust2_se, cs_dustyhouse, workshop or fastdl versions of maps, etc.)
   -A single slash will search for a prefix in the base map name. (/cs will search for all hostage rescue maps)
   -An asterisk will search for a map name suffix. (*_se will search for any map ending in "_se")
   -A double slash will search for an exact map name prefix. (///125488374/ will search for the official workshop de_dust2_se. ///official will search for all official workshop non-se maps)
- Added support for official cs_militia map workshop id 133256570 to be played as part of dedicated servers workshop collection mapcycle.

Release Notes for 4/3/2013

[ MISC ]

- Fixed a bug where a player who joined team during halftime pause would not correctly switch teams together with teammates for the second half.
- Fixed auto team balancing code to not move players to other team during official competitive match after several players on one team abandoned the game.
- Added hostage spawn location indices to round backup files.
- Fixed loser money not restoring correctly from round backups at halftime.
- Fixed an exploit on de_vertigo.
- Added Macedonia country flag (MK)

Release Notes for 3/27/2013

[ MISC ]

- If CTs rescue a hostage and win game now plays "Hostage has been rescued" announcement before announcing "Counter-Terrorists Win".
- Hostages now correctly drop to ground when hostage carrier was killed mid-air.
- Menus will now correctly display on various resolution ratios including 5:4 and triple monitor
- Friends panel will now display an invited icon for invited friends.
- Fixed mouse input in demo playback .
- Lobby leader is now highlighted in lobby.
- Various layout changes to Lobby and Scoreboard.
- Map makers can now choose to show a custom loading image in place of the map overview/radar image
  --To do this, place a .jpg image in the same directory as the .bsp (in maps) named _loading.jpg (it needs to be packed manually into the bsp before uploading to the workshop)
- Fixed player viewmodel arms rendering inside out when cl_righthand was set to 0
- Added back player_say game event for server plugins.

Release Notes for 3/21/2013

- Added new Hostage Rescue map cs_militia
- Update Hostage Rescue Mode rules
- Hostage positions are randomly assigned at the beginning of the match. The hostages will start at these positions for the entire match.
- Hostages are now carried by CTs instead of following behind.
- Hold +use for 4 seconds to pick up a hostage. (Equipping a rescue kit will decrease the time required to 1 second.)
- CTs win a round when the first hostage is rescued.
- Reduced round timer. Round time is extended when the first hostage has been picked up.
- Rebalanced money rewards to accommodate new rules.
- Hostages now indicate whether they are above or below you on the radar.
- cs_office, cs_assault, and cs_italy have updated to use random hostage spawn points.
- Added convars to modify new hostage rules
-- mp_hostages_max - Sets the maximum number of hostages to spawn.
-- mp_hostages_rescuetime - Setting 0 removes the time extension when CTs pick up the first hostage.
-- mp_hostages_spawn_farthest - Setting 1 forces hostage spawn points to choose be the farthest possible combinations.
-- mp_hostages_spawn_force_positions - Setting a comma separate list (ex: 0,2 ) forces specific hostage spawn point combinations.
-- mp_hostages_spawn_same_every_round - Setting 0 randomizes the hostage spawn points every round.
-- mp_hostages_takedamage - Setting 0 allows hostages to be hurt.
- Added hostage entity properties for new hostage rules
-- HostageSpawnRandomFactor - Allows to increase probability of hostage random spawning rules to use that spawn point.
-- HostageSpawnExclusionGroupN - Hostages sharing same spawn exclusion group will never spawn together.
- The action of defusing a bomb will now terminate when you turn your view too far from facing the bomb.
- Players always play a quiet client-side jump sound that can only be heard by the jumper.
- Players play the regular jump (step) sound when moving greater than walk speed that can be heard by both the jumper and all clients in earshot.
- The timer that performs the random map selection visuals now properly gets killed when the scoreboard hides.
- Fixed convar mp_weapons_allow_map_place not properly eliminating map-placed weapons. NOTE: FY servers will need to set this convar to 1.
- Added an option to func_dustmotes entity volumes that lets them choose to not be affected by wind.
- Fixed in-game clipping for triple-monitor rendering configurations.
- Added overtime indicator to GOTV spectators miniscoreboard.
- Radar should now correctly follow spectated player when spectating via GOTV.
- Adjusted score and MVP rewards for gameplay events related to planting, defending and defusing the bomb, and for reaching, protecting and extracting hostages.
- Steam overlay game details will now correctly show players score.
- Fixed special characters of player name not correctly displaying in some UI elements.
- Fixed a bug where friends were banned from joining parties where one of the members failed to recently accept a competitive match.

Release Notes for 3/11/2013

[ MISC ]

- Fixed the end match map vote sometimes selecting the wrong map as winner
- Fixed a crash in dedicated servers related to the end match map vote
- Players can no longer cast a vote outside the range of maps in the end match map vote list

Release Notes for 3/8/2013

[ MISC ]

- The convar mp_endmatch_votenextmap (defaults to 1) is now accessible to everyone.
- If a server is running a map group with more than 10 maps in it, a random set of 10 maps will be selected from the group and will be shown to clients at the end of the match in the map vote list.
- Added mp_endmatch_votenextmap_keepcurrent (defaults to 1) that forces the current map to stay in the list of end match voting options. If not set, the current map is not guaranteed to be in the list and will randomly enter the list like any other map.
- Resolved a few bugs with the new random map selection.

Release Notes for 3/7/2013

[MISC]

- Dedicated servers hosting workshop maps now record previously hosted collection information. This allows workshop servers to keep operating when steam servers are down.
- Old versions of workshop maps now properly remove themselves from disk when the map gets renamed.
- If a server is running a map group and has mp_endmatch_votenextmap set to 1, players vote for the next map at the end of the match

- Fixed a regression where leaderboards were sometimes not getting updated for classic competitive mode.
- Added concommand tv_time_remaining that prints how much time is remaining to the broadcast after the match has ended. This provides admins a method to confirm that the broadcast is complete before changing the level.
- Round backup files now correctly strip workshop path when expanding %map% pattern token.
- Round backups now correctly restore player team assignments even when restoring backup from other match half or from halftime.
- Round backups support restoring match in overtime phase.
- mp_warmup_end can now only be called if in warmup.
- Team changes in warmup now take effect immediately.

[ TOURNAMENT ]

- Added built-in game rules for resolving tied tournament matches in overtime periods.
- Overtime convars:
- mp_overtime_enable ( default 0 ) - match will go to overtime if tied in regulation time.
- mp_overtime_maxrounds( default 6 ) - sets number of rounds for overtime, teams switch sides halfway through the overtime.
- mp_overtime_startmoney( default 10000 ) - sets starting money for each overtime half.
- mp_overtime_halftime_pausetimer - when enabled will turn on another convar mp_halftime_pausetimer after tied regulation time and after each overtime half which would require match server admin/bot to set mp_halftime_pausetimer to zero when teams are ready to proceed.