Counter-Strike: Global Offensive engine branch

The Counter-Strike: Global Offensive engine branch was introduced in 2012 with the release of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. It is the latest Source 1 engine branch available and succeeds the Portal 2 engine branch.

This branch will be remained updated for CS:GO (via csgo_legacy branch) after the Counter-Strike 2 release, until it was discontinued in Jan 1, 2024, but it will remain maintained for third-party games that use CS:GO branch, including Strata Source.

Note:This engine branch has been upgraded over time, so some games or mods on this engine branch may not have all of these features. Many features are exclusive to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

Note: Dota 2 used to be the latest Source 1 branch available, but as of 2015 Reborn update, which upgraded the game to Source 2, this makes CS:GO as the latest Source 1 branch available.

Warning:Both article links have been verified to be broken and simply lead to a HTTP ERROR 500 page, or blank page (fix links with web archive or remove)

Features

New since the Portal 2 engine branch is:

FXAA anti-aliasing

Simple post processing effect aimed to remove jaggies on geometry and other object at the cost of image quality, but are much faster than other anti-aliasing method, such as MSAA.

FXAA can be also used with MSAA (such as 2X) at the same time. This will benefits most lower-end PC that struggles to run MSAA 4X or higher, it will also benefit models and other objects that MSAA was unable to remove jaggies or staircase effect on them.

Real-time dynamic shadows

env_cascade_light provides dynamic, high-resolution cascade shadow mapping for the outdoor light of light_environment.

Lightmapped Ambient Occlusion

VRAD can now bake ambient occlusion into the lightmaps for a map, leading to enhanced realism.

Bump mapped decals

LightmappedGeneric decals now support bump maps.

Newer Features

Phong reflections on Lightmapped materials

LightmappedGeneric and WorldVertexTransition now support diffuse Phong reflections.

Vertex lighting for bumpmapped static props Template:ClassicFix

Static props with bump maps can now receive vertex lighting, better blending them into the environment. All static props also now receive better lighting.

Anisotropic reflection emulation Template:ClassicFix

Brush shaders can now emulate anisotropic specular reflections using new parameters.

Bump map blending for LightmappedGeneric

Two bump maps can now be blended together for high-frequency and low-frequency bumpmap variation on the LightmappedGeneric shader.

Lightmapped_4WayBlend

A displacement shader that can blend four different materials together by luminance.

Prop combination

VBSP now supports combining selected static props during map compilation, increasing performance and lowering draw calls.

Increased engine and compilier limits

The engine now supports more entities, more models and more displacements.

Note:Document all of the increased limits.

New first-person weapon lighting.

First-person weapon view now support more detailed lighting.

Static prop scaling

Other improvements

Todo: Document these, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Todo: Celisej: soon add more.

Availability

• 2012 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (delisted)
  • Can still be obtained by selecting the csgo_legacy beta branch in CS2 on Steam Library. Remains up to date until Jan 2024, after that date, the game will be stop receiving bug fixes and other updates, but will remain available and playable, but any features relies on game coordinator over time will be broken or non-functional, such as Inventory.
  • On macOS (OS X), aswell as all systems running on 32-bit OS or with DX9 only GPU, which does not support Counter-Strike 2, will automatically have the CS:GO automatically downloaded instead.
• 2014 Insurgency (earlier version)
• 2016 Day of Infamy (earlier version)
• TBA Half-Life 2: Remastered (unreleased)

Confirm:While this game is currently unreleased, and not announced yet, it's most likely based off CS:GO branch heavily modified (according to SteamDB when viewing the Review_Build depot files) to include support for HL2 entities as it's contain some graphic features that can be only found in L4D engine branch and later (EKV files, replacing the old DirectX Versions system), Panorama/Qt UI, more...

• 2022 Jabroni Brawl: Episode 3
• 2022 Military Conflict: Vietnam
• TBA Operation: Black Mesa (unreleased)

A third-party, heavily modified version of this engine, called Strata Source, is also available, and it is used on the following games:

• TBA Portal 2: Community Edition
• TBA Momentum Mod
• TBA Portal: Revolution

Source code for these branches is not available. However, authoring tools exist for custom content.

• Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Authoring Tools