Have you ever stopped to consider the technical wizardry inherent in computer networking? Ones and zeroes—slung hundreds, if not thousands of miles across countries and continents to deliver data packets from one computer to another. It’s near miraculous that it functions at all. When you come to realize that those simple packets of information can represent opponents, actions, and game states, it seems to embody the nearest thing to magic that the modern world may ever know.
Or, if you’d rather, it can ensure that your sorcerer’s spells find the enemy’s army of trolls.
Synchronizing this complex web of electronic infrastructure is no easy feat. Just as time zones were developed to assist in scheduling for the transcontinental trains, video games have come to rely on their own method of synchronization to ensure that all of the client machines keep pace with the server.
For Valve’s Source engine, they use “ticks” to coordinate game states between all of the machines involved. You can use the console command net_graph 1 to see a swath of stats including your current server’s tickrate for yourself.
net_graph provides useful information, including the server’s tick rate
Any given Counter-Strike server’s tickrate represents how often snapshots of the game are passed between server and client. With higher tickrates, the accuracy of the simulated actions between players improves. So why don’t all servers use high tickrates, some instead often opting for the Source standard 64 ticks per second?
There are certain pros and cons to the two main tickrates used by most servers. Higher tickrates provide more precise gameplay, but they also require more powerful hardware serverside and have greater bandwidth requirements. Lower tickrates mean less strain on the server and more inclusive bandwidth needs for a variety of internet connections. We aren’t here to debate the availability of broadband, just to analyze the facts.
Valve’s Official Matchmaking servers utilize 64 tick across the board, while community-run leagues like ESEA use 128 tick servers as an additional value proposition for their paying players. Rather than present a subjective perspective for the different “feel” to play with different tickrates, I would encourage you to seek out higher tickrate servers for yourself and take them for a spin. Under the “Community Server Browser”, most 128 tick servers advertise it directly in their title. Other options include FragShack servers or CEVO, which has a free-to-play league.
Objectively, higher tickrates mean less situations where the strobe-like snapshots thrown to and from the server would declare a hit on a player who had already taken cover or moved out of the enemy’s line of sight. Such discrepancies between what was seen and what the server recorded can be mitigated by the increased volume of data they have to work with. As thousands of players across multiple alternate leagues would agree, it’s a better way to play for all.
Come back next Friday for another article on tweaks and lifehacks for Counter-Strike
Articles posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday
Until next time, keep fragging!
As with anything in life, you can only perform at your best when you’re adequately prepared. There is another game that every CS player must learn to triumph over before they ever set foot in a server. One that no one else can help you with. A game that even the professionals struggle with, after years of competing in world-class Counter-Strike.
For this particular match your mind is the battleground, and your opponents can be anything.
Bad day at work? Stressed about something? Perhaps you’re hungry, or tired? Even small mental burdens can become a competitor, shutting you down before you begin, or simply ensuring that you aren’t able to offer your very best.
This might sound a bit melodramatic, but it’s a fundamental principle of life. The professionals and experts within any field have learned to confront and mitigate the negative influences on their performance, and if you want to improve, so will you.
Warm-up routines can make all the difference
Some players jump straight into pick up games, entrusting their warm up to random teammates and any number of variables. Sometimes it works—but after you reach a certain level of play, it becomes imperative that you spend some time refining the particulars. Here are some popular ways to help set yourself up for victory:
Once you’re feeling it, step up to Deathmatch or Gun Game servers. This can give you the chance to wake your senses, and get your mind working. Crosshair placement, wrist and arm movement—this is where you can exercise some of the techniques you’ll need on point when you hit it proper. Aim maps are also an excellent way to work on your accuracy and headshots under pressure.
Depending on which rank you’re worried about more, you can spend some time working the other matchmaking system to cap off your warm-up. Want to improve your ADR in ESEA? Finish your warm up in Valve’s Matchmaking and then transition over to ESEA Pugs. Vice versa if you have some work to do in making your rank reflect your skill level.
There are no rules with your warm-up. It’s all about getting your head in the game, and preparing yourself to win. If it gets you pumped, do it. Build a playlist. Watch professional players stream. Watch Youtube tutorials. Whatever it takes.
But no matter what, take each match in stride. Discouragement is the biggest enemy that you must learn to conquer. You can be as warm as possible, and still find yourself in a losing streak if you let yourself slip into a defeated mindset. Consistency will come with time, and it can’t be forced.
Come back next Friday for another article on tweaks and lifehacks for Counter-Strike
Articles posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday
Until next time, keep fragging!
Which handedness is best? Your answer might hinge upon the side that you favor irl, as it were. There’s no such simple resolution to be found among the Counter-Strike community, however. Most of the theories and speculation around weapon handedness seem to stem from a NON-SCIENTIFIC, yet plausible foundation of ocular dominance.
Ocular dominance is the tendency for the visual cortex of a human brain to favor input from one eye over the other. There are two widely used and convenient tests to determine your favored eye that you can perform from the comfort of your own home: the Miles test, and the Porta test.
Which do you prefer?
The Miles Test:
Extend both arms, and bring them together to form a small opening, framing a distant object such as a light switch or doorknob within the gap while keeping both eyes open. Then you must alternate between closing your right eye and your left eye, observing whether the object remains within the gap or “jumps” out. Whichever eye is closed that keeps the object within the frame is the non-dominant eye—the eye which causes the object to “jump” out when closed is the dominant eye.
The Porta Test:
Extend one arm, and align either the thumb or the index finger of the outstretched hand with a distant object, such as an old shoe or the face of your significant other, while keeping both eyes open. Then you must alternate between closing your right eye and your left eye, observing whether the object stays obscured by the finger or “jumps” out from behind the appendage. Whichever eye, when closed, causes the object to jump is the dominant eye, and whichever eye causes it to remain obscured is the non-dominant eye.
Allow me to illustrate the value of the test results . . .
To obstruct, or not to obstruct . . .
If a right-eye dominant player chooses to use right-handed weapon models, then a sizable portion of their favored visual field is obscured by the gun, leaving the area that their brain is less inclined to process wide open. However, a right-eye dominant player has the option to move their weapon to the opposite side, relocating the blockage to a visually quiet portion of their brain’s image processor, and freeing up the screen real estate directly ahead of the eye that they favor.
Of course, this is all just speculation.
But just as Olympic swimmers shave off every bit of body hair, determined to cut a few hundredths of a second off of their time, perhaps there could be similar merit in seeking every competitive advantage when playing Counter-Strike.
Want to try it out for yourself? Enable the Developer Console (located under Settings->Game Settings from the Main Menu), and use the following command once in-game:
If you want your right-handed weapons back, just enter the same command followed by 1 instead of 0. (1 = on, 0 = off)
Which handedness do you use in-game? Sound off in the poll attached to this post!
Come back next Friday for another article on tweaks and lifehacks for Counter-Strike
Articles posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday
Until next time, keep fragging!
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