The recent patch for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has again fixed the smoke grenade exploit. Those smoking babies are a real problem generator. Today we are talking about the difficult and long struggle between the game developers and the naughty grenades.
It’s not a bug, it’s a feature
The smoke in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has quite a number of features. For example, it can go through walls maintaining its properties. This can help you even extinguish a burning molly behind the wall. The main thing is to know where it works and where it doesn’t.
Another interesting feature is the smoke’s ability to create a one-way barrier. This is a kind of smoke that creates small gaps, through which you can see the opponent at close range but at increased distances the smoke becomes non-transparent.
The smoke from the Molotov Cocktail depends on the player’s settings. Some settings will make it almost completely non-transparent at a short distance, the others, on the contrary, will block the view at a distance. All these points are not bugs, these are the features of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and the responsibility for changing them lies with the development team.
Floating smoke
Due to peculiarities of CS:GO maps it was previously possible to create a cloud of smoke floating in the air. This only worked in certain places and could be used to gain an advantage.
These issues were caused by the invisible “clip-blocks”, which are used by map creators to avoid jam problems. In places with complex geometry, the use of these blocks allows the player not to stumble over small corners.
The link between clip-blocks and the floating smoke was discovered by the owner of the Nefarious Gaming channel and was followed by a series of tests conducted by TrilluXe. He managed to prove in practice the unpredictability of such floating smokes’ appearing. That was a very serious problem that, fortunately, has been resolved.
Invisible Smoke
In the history of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, there have been several bugs and exploits that made it possible to remove clouds of smoke. In 2017, the ability to remove smoke at a distance was discovered. To do this, it was enough to delete or rename several files. This issue was quickly patched.
Two years earlier, in 2015, a bug was discovered that completely removed clouds of smoke. To make this work it was enough to minimize and then expand the game window. And that’s it! The smoke disappeared without a trace. The bug had only one nice nuance – the smoke was displayed correctly in the Overwatch records and many bug users got banned by the community.
The recent smoke removing issue was directly related to the three mentioned files from 2017. This time the effect was achieved in other ways, but the result was the same – the smoke was visible only at a close range, but if you increased the distance to several meters it disappeared. The development team fixed this exploit very quickly.
Through the smoke on instruments
In November 2018, the game community was involved in a big discussion related to shooting through the smoke. It all started with a very successful shot by Xyp9x. The player said that he saw the opponent’s leg and started shooting.
The discussion continued and many players pointed out the feature of the radar, which showed the enemy at the moment when the smoke started to clear. In many cases, this happened 1-2 seconds before the line of sight. Valve acknowledged the problem and tried to fix it, which led to another bug in the interaction of the Molotov and smoke grenades.
However, the developers eventually managed to solve both problems, and now the players hiding behind the smokescreen have much fewer reasons to worry.
Smoke grenades have repeatedly created problems for the CS:GO developers, and the recent exploit is unlikely to be the last one.
And what bugs have you encountered in the game?
