Development
Condition Zero started development in 2000 by Rogue Entertainment, initially announced in May 2001 at E3 of that year. Rogue's producer for the game, Jim Molinet, later that year moved to Sony and the development company went defunct, leaving Valve with the development. Later, they gave it to Gearbox Software, the developers of the Half-Life expansion packs, so that Valve could focus on the development rival Team Fortress 2 and its new engine.
Gearbox created an overhaul of Counter-Strike with high quality models and better graphics, similar to Blue Shift compared to Half-Life. They also added alpha blending, allowing for realistic foliage and weather effects. They added a single-player mode to the game, similar to the final game, based on inspiration of Randy Pitchford from console games such as Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec. They also placed explosive weapons such as a Molotov cocktail, tear gas bomb, and M72 LAW rocket. They also used the release of Steam to their advantage to help prevent cheating by ensuring constant code updates.
After a few developmental delays, it missed its late 2002 deadline and was given over to Ritual Entertainment, who completely remade the game into a single-player one with 20 unconnected missions. They enhanced the AI of the original Half-Life to create the initial bot AI. It was expected to have a release in early 2003 with a secondary multiplayer mode, and developed alongside the Xbox version of Counter-Strike.
However, after declaring the game gold and handing out review copies of Ritual's work, Valve saw an average review score of around 60%. The companies retracted the gold status and work on Condition Zero was essentially begun again. Ritual's share of development was dropped, and development was given over to the relatively young Turtle Rock Studios, who easily restarted where Gearbox left off. They developed an updated bot AI that was beta tested in Counter-Strike 1.6 before release. The final game contained a version mirroring Gearbox's version, along with 12 missions recovered from Ritual's single-player portion, called Deleted Scenes.
Read more about this topic: Counter-Strike: Condition Zero
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