Counter-Strike

The Glock 18C fires in a fully automatic mode; in the mod it only fires a three round burst. In Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, the prophecy of 1999 was used as the ressurection of Dracula and added that all born of the day of Dracula's demise are "Dark Candidates" meaning that that they'll be next in line to be Dark Lord. Also, the M4A1 weapon model's animation features the player charging the weapon by pulling backwards on the forward assist, a feat impossible in real life. In Scott Adams's comic strip Dilbert, "Nostradogbert" is a pseudonym of Dogbert. Perhaps the most notable criticism is the fact that weapons firing the same round (for instance, both the MP5 and Glock 18 both fire a 9mm round) do vastly different damages. In the DC Comics Universe, Nostradamus was an ancestor of Zatara and Zatanna. The M249 SAW's rate of fire is much too slow, and many of the game's weapons have artificial sound effects. A Phantom story from 1983 by Ulf Granberg and Jaime Vallvé featured an appearance by Nostradamus.

The weapons are also notably inaccurate for the ranges they fire at: most engagements in Counter-Strike occur at less than 100 meters. The story was made by Massimo Marconi and Massimo De Vita. While it falls squarely into the tactical shooter category, the mod features some inaccuracies. The boy of course became Nostradamus and the ripped pages from books explained his visions of the future. Counter-Strike has been criticised for its lack of realism. The boy had to go back to his own time and his memory of the future was erased, but before that he grabbed pieces of books. See Metamod, AMX Mod and AMX Mod X for more information. In an Italian Mickey Mouse story, Mickey and Goofy travel back in time and by accident a young boy followed them back to the present.

There have been many different mods and scripts to:. It is composed by Tonci Huljic. Even though Counter-Strike is itself a mod, it developed its own community of script writers and modders. Maksim, the cross-over piano player, plays a song entitled Nostradamus on his third CD. The prohibitively expensive cost of an up-to-date gaming PC makes it unlikely that another game will become as popular as Counter-Strike has been. Rapper Nas referred to himself as Nastradamus. Server statistics in 2002 showed that Counter-Strike servers outnumbered their Battlefield, Unreal Tournament 2003 or Quake III FPS counterparts at least 3 to 1. English singer/songwriter Al Stewart wrote a song called "Nostradamus", concerning the prophecies, for his 1973 album Past, Present, and Future.

There have been a multitude of games claimed by their developers, reviewers and fans to be "Counter-Strike killers", but none have seriously been able to dent its overall popularity. In 2005, Dutch band Kayak released a rock opera called Nostradamus - Fate of Man. Even Counter-Strike: Source has been criticised for not progressing the gameplay enough and failing to take full advantage of the Source engine. And in 1999, he set what was thought by some to be Nostradamus's prediction of the end of the world for soprano and chamber ensemble in The Final Prophecy. There is a growing frustration that the developers are unwilling to make official changes or add new features, maintaining the same map layouts and weapons to appease longtime CS players. Composer Robert Steadman has twice used Nostradamus' prophecies in pieces of music: in the 1987's quatrains by Nostradamus were juxtaposed with the Latin Requiem Mass text and poems on environmental issues. Counter-Strike was realistic for its time, but is dated in comparison to more recent first-person tactical shooters. Nostradamus has also been parodied on Comedy Central's Chappelle's Show as Negrodamus.

But as the the criticisms of Condition Zero showed, many players feel that the GoldSrc engine has reached its limits in its capacity to evolve and to stay updated. In the science fiction series First Wave, the protagonists use the quatrains of Nostradamus to fight back against an alien invasion. Indeed, one possible reason for Counter-Strike's continued popularity is that almost any PC made since 1997 can play it since the game does not need the powerful CPU and video card required of many current FPS games. The television series Alias prominently features the character Milo Rambaldi, a fictional Nostradamus-like prophet. However, the universal shift to the DirectX 7.0 level and beyond has not happened, and the continued popularity of CS has given older video cards such as the 3dfx Voodoo 3, ATI Rage 128, and Nvidia RIVA TNT2 continued usefulness. None of them can be regarded as factual or reliable. Likewise, gamers were expected to abandon the DirectX 5.0 Half-Life and its mods in favour of games utilising the hardware T&L capabilities of DirectX 7.0 graphics cards such as the Nvidia GeForce and ATI Radeon. He is the subject of many films and videos, including:.

Half-Life and other contemporary games took full advantage of the advent of hardware graphics acceleration in the late 1990s, replacing earlier software-rendered games such as Quake. To verify the authenticity of a purported Nostradamus quatrain, compare the identifying number (e.g.: C1, Q25 or 'I.25' means Century 1, Quatrain 25) against an authoritative version of Nostradamus' works, which will probably also contain the original old French – or click on the appropriate External Links below to see facsimiles of the originals. Counter-Strike has had a colorful and dramatic history which reaches far beyond what this document could hope to cover, and still remains extremely popular to this day. Nostradamus also never referred to a "third big war". The success of the game among both casual and competitive players highlights the wide appeal of Counter-Strike's simple game model. The fifth line was added by an anonymous Internet user, completely ignoring the fact that Nostradamus wrote his Propheties in rhymed four-line decasyllables called quatrains. While Counter-Strike is nowadays perhaps the most professionally played computer game in the world behind StarCraft in South Korea, most players simply ignore the professional side of the game and play for fun. For example, the phrases "City of God" (why is New York City the City of God?), "great thunder" (this could apply to just about any disaster), "Two brothers" (many things come in pairs), and "the great leader will succumb" are so ambiguous as to be meaningless.

Certain professional teams (such as SK, Team 3D and Team NoA) and players (Ksharp and HeatoN, for example) have achieved a measure of fame. Ironically enough, the research paper included this poem as an illustrative example of how the validity of prophecies is often exaggerated. Counter-Strike is famous for the culture surrounding it, which includes everything from professional gamers and leagues, to cheating and disruptive behavior. As it turns out, the first four lines were indeed written before the attacks, but by a Canadian graduate student named Neil Marshall as part of a research paper in 1997. All (understandably) fictional. Meanwhile the following spoof text was already being circulated on the Internet, along with many more elaborate variants (one of them signed 'Nostradamus 1654' – when he would, of course, have been just 150 years old!):. All names are taken from real groups. Thus, given that Arethusa was the classical nymph of springs and rivers, with a well-known 'spring of Arethusa' still visible today in the Sicilian port of Syracuse, the case for a '9/11' interpretation was evidently unfounded.

Elite Crew is the skinniest and hardest to see model most of the time, and the GIGN model has the smallest head for Counter-Terrorists.". For 968, similarly, Leo Marsicanus had reported in the same annals that ‘Mount Vesuvius exploded into flames and sent out huge quantities of sticky, sulfurous matter that formed a river rushing down to the sea’. "5 guys popping in and out 1 at a time will look like the 1 guy if you all have the same skin. 40-41) and his colleagues suggested that it applied particularly to the Annales Cassini's report of its lava eruption of 1036, at a time when the Lombards of Capua and the Byzantine dukes of Naples were constantly at war over the city prior to the decisive intervention of the Normans. And as Counter-Terrorists, the GIGN model. Subsequent investigation by Lemesurier ([3], pp. As Terrorists you should choose the Elite Crew model. 170) had already revealed (bearing in mind that, in French, faire la guerre aux rochers, or 'to make war on the rocks', simply means 'to struggle fruitlessly') that the reference was probably to Naples and its nearby volcano.

Firstly, all players on one team should choose the same skin. Once again, however, rather more sober investigation by Brind'Amour ([2, p. On the matter of the best model for competitive play in Counter-Strike, Whisper's Wiki recommends that:. Here, once again, the cité neufve was claimed to be New York; au tour de had to refer to the Twin Towers (even though, in French, the word tour in the masculine – as it is here – has absolutely nothing to do with towers); the Deux grands rochiers had to be the Twin Towers themselves; and Arethusa was (naturally!) an anagram of 'the USA'. Condition Zero also added two additional models; the Midwest Militia for Terrorists and the Spetsnaz for Counter-Terrorists. or, in a possible English translation:. The following eight are the original models which were to be (or are in the process of being) reproduced in Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and Counter-Strike: Source. Perhaps in frustration, the searchers now turned to quatrain I.87, which in the original 1555 edition (Albi copy) ran:.

Corresponding player models for both Terrorists and Counter-Terrorists have appeared through development. – which is indeed the latitude of Naples. In earlier beta versions of the game another official type called "es_" (Terrorist Escape) also existed. In this case, the first expression may simply be a version of. The three official types include "cs_" (Hostage rescue), "de_" (Bomb defusal), and "as_" (Assassination). 246-7; but compare Clébert) suggests that the verse is merely an undated projection into the future of the capture of Naples by the Normans in 1139 during a year marked by a notably violent eruption of nearby Mount Vesuvius that is recorded in the contemporary Annales Cassini. There are three official types of maps in Counter-Strike, along with many more user-created types. Lemesurier ([3], pp.

It is available today for download over Steam, bundled with Half-Life 2, or purchased in a stand-alone retail box along with Day of Defeat: Source, another game converted to the new graphical engine. After the factual nature of these claims was widely denied, some suggested instead that the first line might refer to the actual angle at which one of the hijacked airliners hit the World Trade Center (which seemed unlikely, even if the rest had fitted). Changes include the improvements inherent to the Source engine (such as better graphics and physics) as well as updated models, animations, maps, sounds, and some small gameplay changes. 'Five and forty degrees' was said to be the latitude of New York City (this being incorrect in itself), or was interpreted as '40.5 degrees' (even though the decimal point had not yet come into use in the Europe of Nostradamus' day); the 'New City' was claimed to be New York (even though Nostradamus refers in this way to various 'New Cities' whose names, unlike 'New York', literally mean 'New City', and especially Naples – from Greek Neapolis, 'new city'); and most of the attempts to fit in the 'Normans' seemed contrived at best. Counter-Strike: Source (CS:S) was released to ATI Radeon Voucher holders, in Half-Life 2 bundles available on Steam, and with the boxed retail version of the game. 145-6 under Sources). Following a period when the game was available to select 'beta' testers, the alpha version of the game was released on October 7th 2004. The various ways in which the enthusiasts chose to interpret the text, however, were almost universally panned by experts on the subject (compare the relevant sections of the Snopes and Lemesurier websites listed under External Links below, and see Gruber p.419 and Lemesurier [2] pp.

In 2004, original Counter-Strike developers Minh Le and Jess Cliffe, along with members of Valve and the Day of Defeat team, brought Counter-Strike into the Source engine as an obvious choice for the multiplayer component of Half-Life 2. With instant evidently a version of the Latin instanter ('violently, vehemently'), a reasonable English translation would thus appear to be:. It sold poorly compared to the original. The nearest that they could come up with was quatrain VI.97, which in the original 1557 edition ran:. However, the game was criticized for not being up to the standards of graphical quality expected of current commercial releases, due to the limitations of 1998's GoldSrc Half-Life engine. In response, Nostradamus enthusiasts started searching for a Nostradamus quatrain that could be said to have done so. Though still very similar to CS 1.6, Condition Zero contains several graphical, sound, model and map changes, as well as including bots. Almost as soon as the event had happened, the relevant Internet sites were deluged with enquiries into whether Nostradamus had predicted the event.

It had been plagued by numerous delays, most notably when Valve dropped Gearbox Software (who had developed the highly acclaimed Half-Life: Opposing Force) as developer in favor of Ritual Entertainment, and when Ritual Entertainment in turn lost the project to Turtle Rock Studios partway through development. As mentioned above, this applied most recently to the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York City. A long-awaited single-player version of the game called Counter-Strike: Condition Zero was released on March 23, 2004. Certainly, there is a persistent tendency to claim that 'Nostradamus predicted whatever has just happened'. For similar reasons, Valve may have made no attempt to have Counter-Strike ported to the PlayStation 2. Because of this, it has been claimed that Nostradamus is "100% accurate at predicting events after they happen", while the seer has acquired even more disrepute than he possibly deserves. However, the Xbox version of the game (playable on Microsoft's Xbox Live online game service) has proved less successful than its PC counterpart for obvious reasons; the online Counter-Strike audience for Xbox is well outnumbered by the existing Counter-Strike PC community, a subscription cost required to pay online on Live (playing the PC version online is free), and mediocre graphics (only texture upgrades to original CS models) which are below what is expected for the Xbox. Not surprisingly, then, detractors see such 'edited' predictions as examples of vaticinium ex eventu, retroactive clairvoyance and selective thinking, which find non-existent patterns in ambiguous statements.

It features basic single-player gameplay against bots, but it focuses on multiplayer online play like the original. This linguistic sleight of hand is particularly easy to carry out when the would-be commentator knows no French to start with, especially in its 16th-century form – to say nothing of French geography. Valve released a version ported to the Xbox game console in November 2003. Nostradamus does not in fact mention any of the above specifically, not even Hitler: the name Hister, as he himself explains in his Presage for 1554, is merely the classical name for the Lower Danube, while Pau, Nay, Loron – often claimed to be an anagram of 'Napaulon Roy'– evidently refers simply to three neighboring towns in south-western France close to the seer's one-time home territory. Valve has also been attempting to cash in on the game's popularity by producing more Counter-Strike games. The tradition goes right back to Nostradamus' own day, and naturally does the seer himself no favors. Counter Strike:Source was developed using the new Half Life 2 enhanced graphics and physics engine (Source). Indeed, they regularly make similar claims regarding each new world crisis as it comes along, for the most part shamelessly twisting either the words or the events to fit (see specific examples below).

The newest version of CS was labeled Source, released in November 2004 through Valve's new distribution platform called Steam. Nostradamus enthusiasts have credited him with predicting numerous events in world history, including the French Revolution, the atom bomb, the rise of Adolf Hitler and the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Later, Counter-Strike was bundled with Half-Life and several other expansions in the Platinum Pack. All of them are presented in the context of the supposedly imminent end of the world – a conviction that sparked numerous collections of end-time prophecies at the time, not least an unpublished collection by Christopher Columbus. The retail version was a standalone alternative that does not include or require Half-Life; alternatively, existing Half-Life owners can download the Counter-Strike mod free. Some cover a single town, others several towns in several countries. In November 2000, Counter-Strike 1.0 — the first non-beta, official retail version of the game — was released. Some quatrains cover these in over-all terms; others concern a single person or small group of persons.

The Counter-Strike team was acquired by Valve to turn the fan-created mod into an official mod for Half-Life. The disasters include plagues, earthquakes, wars, floods, invasions, murders, droughts, battles and many other related themes. CS gained in popularity just as rapidly. The bulk of the quatrains deal with disasters of various sorts. Counter-Strike Beta 1.0 was released in June that same year, followed by a relatively quick succession of the beta releases (by the end of 1999, beta 5.0 had been released). No fewer than five of the planets were in the same signs on both occasions. The Counter-Strike team was formed by Minh Le ("Gooseman") and Jess Cliffe ("Cliffe") in 1999. On the basis of Nostradamus's by-now well known technique of projecting past events into the future, Lemesurier [3] suggests that X.72 therefore refers back to the restoration to health of the captive Francis I of France (who was Duke of Angoulême) following a surprise visit to his cell by his host, the then Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in 1525.

This mode is not found in Counter-Strike: Source.. The phrase d'effraieur (of terror) in fact occurs nowhere in the original printing, which merely uses the word deffraieur (defraying, hosting). The most popular maps of this type are es_jail, es_riverside, es_frantic, and es_trinity. The well-known prophecy that "a great and terrifying leader would come out of the sky" in 1999 and 7 months "to resuscitate the great King from Angoumois" has been much over-stated. While not included in the current Counter-Strike distribution, this mode can still be played. This is similar to the Preterite interpretation of the Book of Revelation; John (the Divine) intended to write only about contemporary events, but over time his writings became seen as prophecies. Maps of this type are prefixed with es_. Some scholars believe that Nostradamus wrote not to be a prophet, but to comment on events that were happening in his own time, writing in his elusive way – using highly metaphorical and cryptic language – in order to avoid persecution.

Escape was discontinued because such maps gave an edge towards Counter-Terrorists. (For Dylan see Masters Of War , As I Went Out One Morning, Gates Of Eden, A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall, It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding), etc.). The Counter-Terrorists' objective was to prevent the escape of the Terrorists. A good demonstration of this flexible predicting is to take lyrics written by modern songwriters (e.g., Bob Dylan) and show that they are equally "prophetic". Weapons, armour, and grenades were placed in hidden locations near or around the spawn point of the Terrorists; the objective was for the Terrorists to secure weapons at the hidden location and then have all living members of the team reach an escape point before the clock ran out; eliminating all Counter-Terrorists would not complete the mission by itself. It has been stated, probably correctly, that no Nostradamus quatrain has ever been interpreted as predicting a specific event before it occurred beyond a very general level (e.g., a fire will occur, a war will start). The Terrorists started in a position relatively far away from the Counter-Terrorists, armed with only knives and Glocks and unable to purchase additional weaponry/equipment. Skeptics of Nostradamus state that his reputation as a prophet is largely manufactured by modern-day supporters who shoehorn his words into events that have either already occurred or are so imminent as to be inevitable, a process known as "retroactive clairvoyance".

Discontinued in the late-beta releases of Counter-Strike, this gameplay style put Terrorists against Counter-Terrorists in an escape-before-the-clock-expired mission. This may be due partly to popular unease about the future, partly to people's desire to see their lives in some kind of over-all cosmic perspective and so to give meaning to them – but above all, possibly, to their vagueness and lack of dating, which enables them to be wheeled out after every major dramatic event and retrospectively claimed as 'hits'. Members of the community who dislike the scenario argue that the Terrorists would just camp at the VIP's escape destination, shooting the VIP dead as he attempted the run to the exit. Indeed, they have seldom, if ever, been out of print. Assassination maps are the least played of the three types of Counter-Strike gameplay and they were not ported to Counter-Strike: Source, although a VIP mod is being produced by the community for Counter-Strike Source and surprisingly for some, is being greatly anticipated. Since his death, only the Prophecies have continued to be popular, but in this case they have been quite extraordinarily so. Maps of this type are prefixed with as_. It is a purported translation of an ancient Greek work on Egyptian hieroglyphs based on later, Latin versions, all of them unfortunately ignorant of the true meanings of the ancient Egyptian script, which was not in fact deciphered until the advent of Champollion in the 19th century.

The lack of ammunition for the pistol means that a VIP should not expect to escape without the team's assistance; however, the pistol in conjunction with the special armour provides adequate protection. A manuscript normally known as the Orus Apollo also exists in the Lyon municipal library, where upwards of 2000 original documents relating to Nostradamus are stored under the aegis of Michel Chomarat. When time expires, Terrorists win. The same book also describes the preparation of cosmetics. As usual, if all Terrorists die, the Counter-Terrorists win. One was an alleged "translation" of Galen, and in his so-called Traité des fardemens (basically a medical cookbook containing, once again, materials borrowed mainly from others) he included a description of the methods he used to treat the plague – none of which (not even the bloodletting) apparently worked. If the VIP dies, the Terrorists win. We know that he wrote at least two books on medical science.

The VIP's objective is to reach an extraction zone (1, normally), in which case the Counter-Terrorists win. Nostradamus was not only a diviner, but a professional healer, too. The VIP may not pick up dropped weapons other than the VIP's own pistol. See also here. In this mission, one Counter-Terrorist member chooses to become a VIP, a player with 200 units of Kevlar and nothing more than the Counter-Terrorist standard-issue USP pistol with one extra magazine. Often he published two or even three in a single year, entitled either Almanachs (detailed predictions), Prognostications or Presages (more generalized predictions). cs_office). The Almanacs - By far the most popular of his works, these were published annually from 1550 until his death.

Maps of this type are prefixed with cs_ (e.g. Given printing practices at the time, no two editions turned out to be identical, and it is relatively rare to find even two copies that are exactly the same. There is also a penalty associated with injuring a hostage by gun fire or grenade shrapnel (hostages do not take damage for falling). The third edition, with three hundred new quatrains, was reportedly printed in 1558, but nowadays only survives as part of the omnibus edition that was published after his death in 1568. Killing a hostage incurs a penalty of $2250. The second, with 289 further prophetic verses, was printed in 1557. Upon successfully escorting a hostage to a rescue point, $1000 is awarded. The first edition was published in 1555.

begins to rescue it), the Counter-Terrorist is awarded $150. The Prophecies - In this book he collected his major, long-term divinations. When a Counter-Terrorist 'uses' a hostage (i.e. In his dedication to King Henri II Nostradamus describes "emptying my soul, mind and heart of all care, worry and unease through mental calm and tranquility", but his frequent references to the "bronze tripod" of the Delphic rite are usually preceded by the words "as though". Therefore, the game may effectively become a 'Terrorist hunt' game if enough hostages are killed, although server settings may be such that players are disconnected (kicked) from the server after killing a certain number of hostages (5 is default). The popular legend that he attempted the ancient methods of flame gazing, water gazing or both simultaneously is based on an uninformed reading of his first two verses (see above), which merely liken his own efforts to those of the Delphic and Branchidic oracles. When round time expires, Terrorists win. His sole description of this process is contained in letter 41 of his collected Latin correspondence, as republished by Jean Dupèbe and translated by Lemesurier [2].

If all the surviving hostages have been rescued, and that number is at least half of the initial hostage count, then the Counter-Terrorists win, and each Counter-Terrorist is awarded $2400. ritually 'sleeping on it'). If all the members of a team have been eliminated, the prevailing team wins. Given that his methodology, clearly, was mainly literary, it is doubtful whether Nostradamus used any particular methods for entering a trance state, other than contemplation, meditation and incubation (i.e. The Counter-Terrorists' objective is to escort the hostages to a hostage rescue point on the map. The fact that they reportedly burned with an unnaturally brilliant flame suggests, however, that some of them were manuscripts on vellum, which was routinely treated with saltpeter. The map has hostages (usually four) generally placed near the Terrorist base. While it is true that Nostradamus claimed in 1555 to have burned all the occult works in his library, no one can say exactly what books were destroyed in this fire.

Professional tournaments are normally only played in Bomb Defusal maps. Latin versions of both had recently been published in Lyon, and extracts from both are paraphrased (in the second case almost literally) in his first two verses. de_dust and de_inferno). Further material (see Brind'Amour, Gruber, Lemesurier [2] and [3]) was gleaned from the De honesta disciplina of 1504 by Petrus Crinitus, which included extracts from Michael Psellus's De daemonibus and the De Mysteriis Aegyptiorum..." (Concerning the mysteries of Egypt...), a book on Chaldean and Assyrian magic by Iamblichus, a 4th-century neo-Platonist. Maps of this type are prefixed with de_ (e.g. Any criticism of Nostradamus for claiming to be a prophet, in other words, would have been for doing what he never claimed to be doing in the first place. Deaths due to the detonation of the bomb do not increment the player's death count. Michel Nostradamus' – which, except in a few cases, they weren't, other than in the manner of their editing, expression and re-application to the future).

When the round time expires, the Counter-Terrorists win. Michel Nostradamus' – which is precisely what they were – as 'The Prophecies of M. If the bomb has been planted and proceeds to explode, the Terrorists win, but if a Counter-Terrorist defuses the bomb (Counter-Terrorists can purchase an optional kit to speed up defusal times), the Counter-Terrorists win. (which, in French, as easily means 'The Prophecies, by M. If the bomb has not been planted, if all the members of one team have been eliminated, then the surviving team wins. This last is presumably why he entitled his book. The Terrorists' objective is to plant the bomb at a bomb site (of which there usually are two in a map, Bombsite-A or Bombsite-B), and ensure its detonation. In translation:.

One randomly selected Terrorist begins the round carrying a bomb. Nostradamus, it should be remembered, denied in writing on several occasions that he was a prophet on his own account. Each map is of a single game type. Only in the 17th century did people start to be surprised by the fact that much of his output was evidently based on earlier and often classical originals – which was no doubt why, according to the early commentator Théophile de Garencières, his Prophecies started to be used as a classroom-reader at that time. There are several game types in Counter-Strike which define the objectives of each team in the game, and rules which determine which team wins. Copying from the classics in particular, often without acknowledgement, and preferably from memory, was all the rage. However, movement is restricted while taking damage from gunfire. The whole Renaissance was based on the idea.

For example, relatively few shots will kill a player, and shots to different parts of the body deal different amounts of damage, but damage has no bearing on ability to run or jump, allowing a player with just a few hit points remaining to keep fighting. Meanwhile, if Nostradamus' many competitors – and he had many – never accused him of copying from it, it was because copying and/or paraphrasing, far from being regarded (as it is today) as mere plagiarism, was regarded at the time as what all good, educated people should do anyway. Counter-Strike is meant to be more realistic than futuristic FPSs such as Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament, but is also built to keep the action flowing faster than more realistic tactical shooters such as the Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon series. See selected Engilsh translations from it here. This technique, known as "ghosting", is considered cheating in many tactical shooters. The Mirabilis liber, (some of the predictions of which had already lapsed by the time Nostradamus started writing) was not translated into French until 1831 – and this mainly for scholarly and antiquarian reasons at a time when knowledge of Latin was beginning to die out. They are generally able to watch the rest of the round from multiple selectable views, although some servers disable some of these views to prevent dead players from relaying information about living players to their teammates through alternative media (most notably voice in case of Internet cafes and players in the same rooms of their own homes, playing on the same server). Nostradamus was, in effect, one of the first to present its prophecies (and others) openly in the French vernacular – as was also happening to the Bible at the time – which is no doubt why he has retained all the credit for them.

Players killed become "ghosts" for the duration of the round; they cannot change their names, nor can their chat/voice messages be received by the live players (unless the cvar sv_alltalk is set to 1). The obvious question – why the Mirabilis liber did not sustain its influence in the way that Nostadamus’ writings did – is explained mainly by the fact that the book (like the Bible) was mostly in Latin and in Gothic script and, to make matters even more complicated for the general reader, contained many abstruse scholastic abbreviations. The scoreboard also shows whether each player is dead, carrying the bomb (in bomb defusal maps), or the VIP (in assassination maps), although the player must be dead during the round to obtain this information of players on the opposing team. The book had enjoyed considerable success in the 1520s, when it went through half-a-dozen editions (see Links below for facsimiles and translations). The scoreboard shows team scores plus data for each player: name, score, deaths, and ping/latency (ms) on the map. His major prophetic source was evidently the Mirabilis liber of 1522 (Brind'Amour, Lemesurier [2] and [3]), which contained a range of prophecies by Pseudo-Methodius, the Tiburtine Sibyl, Joachim of Fiore, Savonarola and others (his Preface contains no fewer than 24 biblical quotations, all but two of them in exactly the same order as Savonarola). Standard bonuses in the game are:. (Refer to the seminal analysis of these charts by Brind'Amour, 1993, under Sources, and compare Gruber's comprehensive critique of Nostradamus’ horoscope for Crown Prince Rudolph Maximilian).

Surviving players retain their equipment in the next round; those who have died begin anew with pistol and knife. Even the planetary tables, already published by professional astrologers, on which he based the birth-charts that he was unable to avoid preparing himself are easily identifiable by their detailed figures, even where (as is usually the case) he gets some of them wrong. Players may buy equipment whenever they are in a buy zone for their team (some of which can be for both teams) and the round has not been in session for longer than a specified time (90 seconds is default). Many of his broader astrological references, by contrast, are taken almost word-for-word from the Livre de l'estat et mutations des temps of 1549/50 by Richard Roussat. Players are generally given a few seconds before the round begins (known as Freeze Time) to buy equipment but not move. His historical sources include easily identifiable passages from Livy, Suetonius, Plutarch and a range of other classical historians, as well as from the chronicles of medieval authors such as Villehardouin and Froissart. Each player generally starts with $800, two magazines of ammunition, a knife, and a pistol: a Heckler & Koch USP .45 Tactical for CTs or a GLOCK 18c for Ts. Astrology itself is mentioned only twice in Nostradamus' Preface, and 41 times in the Centuries themselves, though rather more in his famously baffling dedicatory Letter to King Henri II.

Counter-Strike: Condition Zero added two extra models, bringing the total to ten). It is thanks to this that his work contains so many predictions involving ancient figures such as Sulla, Marius, Nero, Hannibal and so on, as well as descriptions of "battles in the clouds" and "frogs falling from the sky". Each round starts with the two teams spawning simultaneously, as one of eight different default character models (four to choose from for both Counter-Terrorist and Terrorist. Recent research (Brind'Amour [1], Prévost, Gruber, Lemesurier [2] and [3]) has suggested that most of his prophetic work was in fact based on paraphrasing collections of ancient end-of-the-world prophecies (mainly Bible-based – the end of the world was expected at the time to occur in either 1800 or 1887, or possibly in 2242, depending on the system adopted) and supplementing their insights by projecting known historical events and identifiable anthologies of omen-reports into the future with the aid of comparative horoscopy. Server settings may automatically balance when one team has more players than the other. Nostradamus claimed to base his predictions on judicial astrology – the assessment of the 'astrological quality' of expected future events – but was heavily criticized by professional astrologers of the day such as Laurens Videl for his incompetence and for assuming that 'comparative horoscopy' (comparison of future planetary configurations with the astrology of known past events) could predict the actual events themselves. Counter-Strike is a team-based FPS in which players join either the Terrorists (T's) or the Counter-Terrorists (CT's). He was buried in the local Franciscan chapel (part of it now incorporated into the restaurant La Brocherie'), but re-interred in the Collégiale St-Laurent at the French Revolution, where his tomb remains to this day.

. On the evening of July 1 he is alleged to have told his secretary Jean de Chavigny, "You will not find me alive by sunrise." The next morning he was reportedly found dead, lying on the floor between his bed and a makeshift bench. CS was originally played online through the WON gaming service, but it was shut down in 2004, forcing players to switch to Steam (although some players responded by creating their own WON network, dubbed WON2). This was followed by a much shorter codicil. According to statistics gathered by Valve's content-delivery platform, Steam (1), these players contribute to over 4.5 billion minutes of playing time each month, making it the most popular online FPS in history. In late June he summoned his lawyer to draw up an extensive will bequeathing his property plus 3444 crowns (around $300,000 today) – minus a few debts – to his wife pending her remarriage, in trust for her sons pending their twenty-fifth birthdays and her daughters pending their marriages. In 2004, GameSpy statistics showed over 85,000 players simultaneously playing Counter-Strike at any point in time, accounting for almost 70 percent of the online FPS audience. By 1566 Nostradamus' gout, which had plagued him painfully for many years and made movement very difficult, turned into dropsy.

In 2002 there were over 30,000 Counter-Strike servers on the Internet (second place was Unreal Tournament with about 9,800). His brief imprisonment at Marignane in late 1561 came about purely because he had published his 1562 almanac without the prior permission of a bishop, contrary to a recent royal decree. CS has been the most widely played online FPS for the past few years and has over 19.5 million legal owners. In fact, his relations with the Church as a prophet and healer were always excellent. Signs of CS's wide influence can be found in mods for Quake III Arena, Unreal Tournament, and other standalone shooters such as Global Operations and Soldier of Fortune II. Some biographical accounts of Nostradamus' life state that he was afraid of being persecuted for heresy by the Inquisition, but neither prophecy nor astrology fell under this bracket, and he would have been in danger only if he had practiced magic to support them. CS is widely acknowledged as the most successful and popular of the tactical shooter genre. At the time, he feared that he would be beheaded, but by the time of his death in 1566, Catherine had made him Counselor and Physician-in-Ordinary to the King.

The latest incarnation of the game, Counter-Strike: Source (CS:S), is based on the Source engine developed for Half-Life 2. After reading his almanacs for 1555, which hinted at unnamed threats to the royal family, she summoned him to Paris to explain them, and to draw up horoscopes for her children. Counter-Strike pits a team of counter-terrorists against a team of terrorists in rounds of competition won by completing an objective or eliminating the opposing team. Catherine de Médicis, the queen consort of King Henri II of France, was one of Nostradamus' greatest admirers. The series also includes Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and Counter-Strike: Source. Some people thought Nostradamus was a servant of evil, a fake, or insane, while many of the elite thought his quatrains were spiritually inspired prophecies. Counter-Strike (CS) is the common name given to a series of team-based tactical shooter games which originate with Counter-Strike, a total conversion mod of Valve Software's first-person shooter Half-Life. The quatrains, published in a book titled Les Propheties ('The Prophecies'), received a mixed reaction when they were published.

Features include: varieties of teamkill punishes, auto-kick by certain triggers, rank system, advanced map changing and voting etc. For technical reasons connected with their publication in three installments, the last fifty-eight quatrains of the seventh 'Century', or book of 100 verses, have not survived into any extant edition. One of the most successful, if not the only one, "Mani Admin Plugin", is met on nearly every dedicated server nowadays. Feeling vulnerable to religious fanatics, however, he devised a method of obscuring his meaning by using "Virgilianized" syntax, word games and a mixture of languages such as Provençal, Greek, Latin and Italian. "Admin plugins", as they are mostly referred as, have become very popular. He then began his project of writing a book of one thousand quatrains, which constitute the largely undated prophecies for which he is most famous today. Give server administrators more flexible and efficient control over his/her server. It was mainly in reaction to the almanacs that nobility and other prominent persons from far and wide soon started asking for horoscopes and advice from him, though he generally expected them to supply the birth-charts on which the horoscopes would be based.

The weapon's attributes remain the same.). Taken together, they are known to have contained at least 6,338 prophecies (most of them, in the event, failed predictions – see Chevignard and Lemesurier [2] under Sources), as well as at least eleven annual calendars, all of them starting on January 1 (and not, as is sometimes supposed, in March). Only the user sees the differences. He was so encouraged by its success that he decided to write one or more annually. Provide options for weapon improvement (AKA Skinning: Affects the way guns look and sound to the user but remain unchanged to anyone else in the game. Following popular trends, he wrote an almanac for 1550, for the first time Latinizing his name to 'Nostradamus'. Keep track of player statistics and scores. After a further visit to Italy, Nostredame began to move away from medicine and towards the occult.

Control players not following set rules. Parts of the network remain today: thanks to much larger supplementary canals, there is even a hydroelectric station in Salon itself. Create different modes of play. Between 1556 and 1567, Nostredame and his wife would in due course acquire a one-thirteenth share in a huge canal project organized by Adam de Craponne to irrigate largely waterless Salon and the nearby Désert de la Crau from the river Durance. Make the game more humorous. Finally, in 1547, he settled down in Salon-de-Provence in the house which is still there today, and where he married a rich widow named Anne Ponsarde (nicknamed Gemelle, or 'Twinny') and eventually had six children – three daughters (Madeleine, Anne and Diane) and three sons (César, Charles and André). Give players superhuman powers (powers from units in Warcraft III, for example.). On his return in 1545, he assisted the prominent physician Louis Serre in his fight against a major plague-outbreak in Marseille, and then tackled further outbreaks of disease on his own in Salon-de-Provence and in the regional capital, Aix-en-Provence.

Remove features of the games which players felt were annoying. After their death he continued to travel, passing through France and possibly Italy. Improve gameplay. In 1534, however, his wife and children died, presumably from the plague. Add bots to make a LAN game multiplayer although there is only one computer. There Nostredame married a woman whose name is still in dispute (possibly Henriette d'Encausse), but who bore him two children. VIP - Used in maps prefixed 'as_' eg: as_oilrig. In 1531 he was invited by Jules-César Scaliger, a leading Renaissance scholar, to come to Agen.

Hostage - used in maps prefixed 'cs_' eg: cs_italy. After his expulsion, Nostredame continued working, presumably as an apothecary (though some of his publishers and correspondents would later call him 'Doctor'), and became famous for creating a "rose pill" that was widely believed (not least by himself) to protect against the plague. Their disgust for American lifestyle was demonstrated in their 1982 bombing of a school bus full of Rock and Roll musicians.". 25 of Lemesurier [2] under Sources) still exists in the faculty library. Guerilla Warfare - Added in CS beta 6.5 - "A terrorist faction founded in the Middle East, this group has a reputation for ruthlessness. The hand-written expulsion document (BIU Montpellier, Register S 2 folio 87 – see facsimile on p. Infamous for their bombing of the Canadian embassy in 1990.". He was promptly expelled again shortly afterwards, though, when it was discovered that he had been an apothecary, which was a 'manual' trade expressly banned by the university statutes.

Arctic Avengers - Added in CS beta 6 - "Swedish terrorist faction founded in 1977. In 1529, after some years as an apothecary, he entered the University of Montpellier to study for a doctorate in medicine. Elite Crew(L33t Krew prior to CS 1.6) - Added in CS beta 3 - "Middle Eastern fundamentalist group bent on world domination and various other evil deeds.". After little more than a year (when he would have studied the regular Trivium of grammar, rhetoric and logic, rather than the later Quadrivium of geometry, arithmetic, music and astronomy/astrology) he was forced to leave Avignon when the university closed its doors in the face of an outbreak of the plague. Formed shortly after the breakup of the USSR.". It is known, however, that at the age of fifteen Nostredame entered the University of Avignon to study for his baccalaureate. Phoenix Connexion - First appeared in initial CS beta - "Having established a reputation for killing anyone who gets in their way, the Phoenix Connexion is one of the most feared terrorist groups in eastern Europe. Little is known about Nostredame's childhood, although there is a persistent tradition that he was educated by his maternal great-grandfather Jean de St-Rémy – which is vitiated by the equally persistent tradition that the latter died when the child was only one year old.

Consisting of no more than 100 men, the GIGN has earned its reputation through a history of successful ops.". His known siblings included Delphine, Jehan (c.1507-77), Pierre, Hector, Louis (b.1522), Bertrand, Jean and Antoine (b.1523). GIGN - Added in CS beta 3 - "France's elite counter-terrorist group, the GIGN, was designed to be a fast response force that could decisively react to any large-scale terrorist incident. His adult religious leanings suggest, however, that his upbringing was devoutly Catholic. Their role in WW2 involved intelligence gathering behind enemy lines and executing sabotage strikes and assassinations against key targets.". While practice of the ancestral religion was apparently continued in secret, nobody knows whether this applied to Nostredame's family, or whether it still applied to him two generations later. SAS (Special Air Service) - Added in CS beta 5 - "World-renowned British SAS was founded in the Second World War by a man named David Stirling. The names of Nostredame's known forebears seem to reflect this.

GSG-9 - Added in CS beta 6 - "GS-9 was formed out of the tragic events that led to the death of several Israeli athletes during the 1972 Olympic games in Munich, Germany.". In this, he was merely following the example of thousands of others, thanks to increasing official French persecution of Jews, many of whom were the descendants of former refugees from Spain, where they were known as the Marranos. ST-6 was placed on permanent alert to respond to terrorist attacks against American targets worldwide.". The latter's family had originally been Jewish, but Jaume's father, Guy Gassonet, had converted to Catholicism circa 1455, taking the Christian name 'Pierre' and the surname 'Nostredame' (the latter apparently from the saint's-day on which his conversion was solemnized). SEAL Team 6 - First appeared in initial CS beta - "ST-6 (to be later known as DEVGRU) was founded in 1980 under the command of Lieutenant-Commander Richard Marcinko. Born in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence (see map) in the south of France in December 1503 (his claimed birthplace still exists), Michel de Nostredame was one of at least eight children of Reynière de St-Rémy and grain dealer Jaume de Nostredame, who was also a prosperous home-grown notary. CS: Source - 7 October 2004. .

CS: Condition Zero - 23 March 2004. Interest in the work of this prominent figure of the French Renaissance is still considerable, especially in the media and in popular culture. Version 1.6 - 15 September 2003. He is best known for his book Les Propheties, which consists of one unrhymed and 941 rhymed quatrains, grouped into nine sets of 100 and one of 42, called 'Centuries'. Version 1.5 - 12 June 2002. Nostradamus, (December 14, 1503 – July 2, 1566) born Michel de Nostredame, is one of the world's most famous authors of prophecies. Version 1.4 - 24 April 2002. Nostradamus at The Internet Movie Database (1994) Depicts Nostradamus's rise in influence, because of success in treating plague and his predictions, culminating in his appointment as court physician to Charles IX of France.

Version 1.3 - 19 September 2001. Nostradamus at The Internet Movie Database (2000). Version 1.1 - 10 March 2001. Nostradamus: The Man Who Saw Tomorrow at The Internet Movie Database (1981). Version 1.0 - 8 November 2000. Beta 7.1 - 13 September 2000.

Beta 7.0 - 26 August 2000. Beta 6.6 - 22 June 2000. Beta 6.5 - 5 June 2000. Beta 6.1 and 6.2 were "Server Only" updates, not for client/user machines.

Beta 6.0 - 10 March 2000. Beta 5.2 - 10 January 2000. Beta 5.0 - 23 December 1999. Beta 4.1 - 1 December 1999.

Beta 4.0 - 5 November 1999. Beta 3.1 - 16 September 1999. Beta 3.0 - 14 September 1999. Beta 2.1 - 17 August 1999.

Beta 2.0 - 13 August 1999. Beta 1.2 - 20 July 1999. Beta 1.1 - 27 June 1999. Beta 1.0 - 19 June 1999.

Kill an enemy: $300. Lose a round: $1500. Win a round: $3500.