Post by Segaman on Oct 16, 2003 17:24:31 GMT -5
Good News From Valve (Counter-Strike: Condition Zero)
Since the oh-so-tragic online theft down at Valve most have been speculating more delays for two of their most anticipated games lately. We all have yet to hear about a Half-Life 2 delay, which seems imminent, and everyone is still wondering what happened to Counter Strike: Condition Zero. Valve has today announced what has happened since the would-be release of Summer 2003.
Earlier this year Valve was having a bit of trouble with the CZ development team. The game wasn't getting the best reviews from the press on what was to be the final product and they didn't want the game (which has to follow-up on the most widely played online game ever) to go wrong. Valve then decided they needed a change. Ritual Entertainment, the team originally appointed developer of Condition Zero, was replaced, so to speak, by Turtle Rock Studios. Turtle Rock then took over from where Ritual left off.
"Roughly four or five months ago, through internal play tests and from early press reviews of what was to be the final (Condition Zero), it became obvious that a change was needed to deliver a high-quality experience in CZ," said marketing director Doug Lombardi on the developer replacement.
"Michael Booth (CEO of Turtle Rock) has been developing the CS Bot for more than a year," says Lombardi. "An interesting bot was something we've wanted for quite a while, so we partnered with him and tabled the 'how to distribute it' question until it became compelling.
"Turtle Rock was in charge of creating the Official CS Bot, designing the final CZ game, and doing all the necessary code work to pull that together. In terms of art, they chose to leverage the extensive CS art library which contains player models, weapon models, maps, textures, etc., developed by Valve, Ritual, and the community."
With this out of the way, Lambardi continued to say that CS: Condition Zero has gone gold and is set for a release on November 18.
