AnimGraph2 Beta - Changing CS2’s Future
Valve has finally decided to step up, and after a long due, 3rd-person animations for Counter-Strike 2 are now updated, thanks to AnimGraph2 - An animation system Valve has been working on for Source 2 based games including Deadlock.
AG2 or AnimGraph2 is supposed to reduce the CPU usage and networking cost associated with animations in the game. As per the data on the Internet, CS2’s packet size is roughly ~600 bytes while CS:GO was at CS:GO’s ~150, about 4× more which is why Valve decided to work on this new animation system.
On April Fools Day, Valve decided to push this non-fool update called AnimGraph2 Beta and you can test it yourself by going to CS2’s Settings -> Game Versions & Betas and then selecting “animgraph_2_beta”.
Just Note: You will not be able to play online with this Beta Branch as it’s meant for offline testing the new animation system.
The main part of this update was all the new third-person animations that have been re-authored and in several cases adjusted in response to player feedback.
Here’s the biggest change that will be very much noticeable in the game, Counter-Strafe animation:
Counter-Strafe Animation in Old vs New AnimGraph2
As you can see, the movement is much cleaner, however the community is reacting both ways. According to a few nerds on X/Twitter, the head is moving a bit more when the opposite key is pressed..
The skin community is also happy with this update as one of their favorite knives, Karambit, got an improvement in the 3rd-person animation. It took Valve only a few years to get this issue resolved.
In the Release Notes, Valve also mentioned smoother in-air crouching transitions in both First and Third person perspective.
There’s not a Counter-Strike 2 update without future update leaks, and as always, Valve leaked a bit of interesting stuff this time.
They added a new material and model called cash_stack, It’s added in a folder called gameplay, which means the chances of this being used in a new game-mode is very likely.
Apart from that, another leak is related to Paintball - CS2 Devs added Six Paintball Impact Decals to the game files in the AnimGraph2 Beta update, which means we might be getting a Paintball based Game-mode.
And that’s not it, there’s one more leak which kinda confirms that Counter-Strike 2 team is working on an Operation, for the very first time. Valve added a new library screenplay-tools to its third party legal notices file and this library is used for representing a screenplay format. It's used in a system that involves scripted narrative content.
And these captions are most likely used in the cutscenes or cinematics used by Operations.
Most of the community members were expecting a half-yearly Armory Update but AG2 Beta came as a surprise. We still do not have a “Last Chance” banner on any of the collections in The Armory.
We all know that Valve is willing to Add 2 Weapon Collections and 2 Sticker Collections to the Armory in the future update, but no one knows when.
Overall, this was a very good update and the future of Counter-Strike 2 seems bright, AnimGraph 2 will definitely improve a few things and make the gameplay smoother for everyone.
Let’s hope once the fundamentals are clocked in, Valve starts focusing on other big issues like Cheating.
