Show HN: Cs16.css – CSS library based on Counter Strike 1.6 UI

147 comments

·January 24, 2025

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culi

I've been eagerly awaiting the opportunity to expand my collection!

https://alexbsoft.github.io/win95.css/ windows 95

https://botoxparty.github.io/XP.css/ windows xp

https://cs16.samke.me/ counter strike 1.6

https://edwardtufte.github.io/tufte-css/ edward tufte

https://jdan.github.io/98.css/ windows 98

https://khang-nd.github.io/7.css/ windows 7

https://micah5.github.io/PSone.css/ playstation one

https://nostalgic-css.github.io/NES.css/ nes

https://sakofchit.github.io/system.css/ apple system

https://thesimscss.inbn.dev/ the sims

fusedshadow

Belongs here: https://code.divshot.com/geo-bootstrap/

culi

I like it! But how would you describe this one? This collection is meant more for tight/inspired themes. But I also included https://bootstra386.com/ which is on the edge too so I'm not against including this

progmetaldev

That Bootstra386 reminds me of the Mosaic web browser. Not sure if that was the "feeling" behind it, but it feels like the early internet days.

fusedshadow

Geocities is infamous.

progmetaldev

Wow, this takes me back! I remember visiting pages like this in the early 90's while rendering fractals in Fractint. I remember following a bunch of Geocities pages that looked at Pink Floyd's The Division Bell album, and there being a hidden meaning. Turned out to be created by the record company, but as a high schooler on the early internet, I was fascinated with it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publius_Enigma

the_sleaze_

I can smell that windows 98 theme, the gray plastic and the rubber mouse ball that used to get schmootz in it.

can16358p

For a better experience, please clean the rubber mouse ball and put it back and set your browser window to 1024x768 resolution for the ultimate experience.

punnerud

Even more important to remove the dirt from the rollers that attached to the mouse ball

agumonkey

and update drivers to enable 24bit color depth

bicx

Gotta scratch the schmootz off those little rollers too.

MortyWaves

That 95 theme is terrible. May as well use the 98 theme.

com2kid

You forgot snes! https://snes-css.sadlative.com/

culi

Thanks! I'll add this next time I post this list :)

Mizu_048

is there a place like a rentry or github readme where you keep this list?

notpushkin

Ah yes, my favourite retro UI theme... Edward Tufte

culi

This isn't really meant to be a retro UI theme list. It's just a list of CSS stylesheets with a tight theme that's a specific reference to some sort of UI

Not to be confused with design systems or UI libraries. Just CSS stylesheets

Sharlin

I mean, typography on dead tree is a form of UI, and very retro too!

duxup

I was watching my son play Half Life 2 recently and it occurred to me how much more real or immersive it seemed when the menus and such had this style and they look like actual computer system UI. Dated maybe, but they feel industrial and real.... and easy to use all in one.

Meanwhile many games have hyper stylized menus with flowery wingdings all over them and makes it unrealistic / a horrible experience / chore.

Sohcahtoa82

> Dated maybe

When current UI trends are designed to be flat and hide functionality, destroying discoverability, a key component of UX, I'd argue that "dated" is a feature, not a bug.

duxup

I mentioned in another comment that I used some very old (2.0) bootstrap for fun recently and yeah I like it better than the flat / colorless stuff.

brap

Don’t even get me started on modern games’ menu UIs.

I got the latest CoD for PS5 like a year ago and I couldn’t figure out what the fuck was going on in the menu. Incoherent mess impossible to navigate. I felt like I was going insane.

I guess I’m just getting old.

archagon

You’re fine, the CoD UI is indeed an inscrutable mess designed to maximize “engagement.” Same for other live service type games. I think they want the same entrancing effect as stepping into a casino.

unethical_ban

Exactly!

Fortnite UI changes constantly and is horrible to use.

Factorio has a great UI.

brap

Glad I’m not the only one. I could barely figure out how to start the campaign.

Aside from the atrocious menu structure, they also throw all this lingo at you with zero explanation like you’re already supposed to know how everything works. Challenges? Plunder? DMZ? Season pass? I don’t even know what a “season” is! Let me play the damn game!

no_time

The menu system of the MW2 reboot and all CODs after look like they were designed by the netflix UI people while smoking crack.

Similar horizontal scrolling list of tiles shoehorned into an interface where I'm NOT okay with just going with the flow and picking whatever is offered because I exactly know what I'm looking for. Bonus points for the little tabs

Insanity

Honestly, when I boot into CoD the menu is enough to make me want to alt-F4 instantly.

It is definitely not designed with PC in mind, but even on Xbox it feels horrible to navigate. Takes too long to get into an actual game and there is a constant “upsell” happening for premium things.

I miss the days of CoD1/2/4.

progmetaldev

If you look up the more later versions of CoD on PC, you'll find that they are actually accessing the webcam and watching the user to drive "engagement", and the users are not made aware of this. I wish I had the link, but I found a YouTube video about it. I believe it started with CoD BlackOps on PC.

gumperbumper

I’m also getting old. I tried playing a few of those mobile, micro-transaction driven, pay-to-win games to see what the hype was. I couldn’t even figure out what I needed to buy, and thus could not really play the games. Now I know how my grandparents felt seeing computers!

bakugo

> many games have hyper stylized menus with flowery wingdings all over them

It can work depending on the style/tone of the game.

The real problem, in my opinion, is all the games nowadays with perfectly flat, generic, colorless UIs with absolutely no style or identity. Nintendo has been doing this a lot, for example.

duxup

I'll be honest, I went back to some OLD bootstrap styling for some things and I liked it a lot. The candy looking buttons are nice ...

I'm done with flat and muted all the time.

Also (more to my example) it looks like a realistic UI. A lot of game stylized UI are UI nobody would ever make intentionally for a thing you're supposed to use often.

So yeah like you say just some depth and realistic UI feel goes a long way.

skydhash

I don't mind style or identity. But I want good UX with a good menu tree and clear active/inactive state and menu/background separation.

lelanthran

I liked the menu system in Crysis 2 (or 3 - not too sure).

Really made you feel like you were inside the cryosuit.

kenrick95

ikr, the old UIs have good affordance: whether or not the UI elements are interactable or not unlike the "modern" UIs which are kind of terrible in this aspect

nolan_wyss

Very nice! I installed CS 1.6 last year again, after almost 15 years of not playing, and now I almost play every day 10 - 15 mins against bots to clear my mind. To make it more fun I even created my own bot team and a whole tournament where I play against all the pro teams of the ±2008ties. I also rediscovered a map I created back then on a super old hard disk - never thought that with almost 40 I would still play it - so thank you past-me.

albertgoeswoof

CS has always been a great mind clearer. A ranked 5v5 game is high pressure and intense, lasts about 30-45 mins, and has enough human contact to satisfy me. I haven’t found anything to replace it since I quit a few years ago.

Cyph0n

TF2 (another Valve game) is an excellent option if you want something more casual/low stress and also flexible when it comes to time (no penalties on leaving since it’s a casual game).

nxobject

Watch out for 1/2-hour ish capture-point campaign style maps, though... I wasted so many Fridays in my early 2010s doing that.

thot_experiment

DotA is the same thing for me, though I assume you quit for a reason that would probably hold true for DotA as well. I hate how harshly CS punishes acting rashly, it really encourages you to hold angles and play methodically/strategically and I feel like in DotA I'm afforded more leeway to gamble with flashy plays. That all being said they are both brilliant games. There's something particularly appealing about the round model in CS, buy vs save rounds and the way the game gives you an opportunity for a series of rematches where you can learn from the way your opponents played the last round to try and get a better outcome is just a really compelling gameplay loop, even if I don't love it personally. (rather be playing q3dm17)

jmb99

> I hate how harshly CS punishes acting rashly, it really encourages you to hold angles and play methodically/strategically

It does, but at the same time it doesn’t. If you spend as much time practicing rushing/+w as you do playing methodically/intelligently/holding angles, it works really well. Especially considering most people don’t expect it and don’t have a good counter to it since most people don’t play like that. This is true at all levels of play (except maybe tier 1/2/3 professionals teams). Check out the streamer/youtuber renyan for an example (on de_vertigo in particular). His play style worked well enough to get him to 4400 elo on faceit in csgo, so it can’t be that bad.

pea

I have great memories playing kz_ maps for hours in 2005. The amount of skill of some people was mind blowing. Something nostalgic about the feeling of being alone in a kz map at 3am and then hearing someone else hopping around.

digestives

Ah, memories flood back of LAN or dial-up sessions with friends on custom maps like de_747 [1]

1: https://gamebanana.com/mods/82979 I still contend it is one of the most atmospheric custom maps ever made - how else do you get to role play as Gary Oldman or Harrison Ford!

sintezcs

I also haven’t touched CS 1.6 for 15-16 years, it will be cool to try it. Is it possible to run it on Mac M1 or I need a VM? Also, can you recommend any resources where I can read how to setup and configure bots? TY!

soulthoughts

Recently tried running on Mac M2 and it was relatively easy: https://thatskevinjain.github.io/jekyll/update/2025/01/10/cs...

selectodude

Isn’t ported to ARM64. Runs really well in Whisky though.

https://getwhisky.app/

Lammy

I've been using this to play TF2 Classic on my M3 MBP and it works perfectly. I had some freezing-while-sound-skips-endlessly issues when using the voice chat hotkey, but that was resolved using WineTricks (built in to Whisky UI) to install `dsound`.

Now's a great time to start playing — The TF2C 2.2 “Double Down Update” comes out today!! https://tf2classic.com/double_down/

e: And I also had to disable macOS's default keyboard layout switching shortcuts (which I never use anyway) since I kept triggering it while crouch-jumping lol

e 2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42816545

dewey

Back in the days on lan parties there was what we called "the russian version" that only had question marks in the installation dialog (Because of unsupported fonts most likely) which had Z-Bot included.

That's probably this one: https://archive.org/details/cs-1_6_z-bot

wave-function

You had the fonts, but your system was configured for cp1250 or something like that, while the installer used cp1251. So it was a text encoding issue.

Lammy

https://down-cs.su/clean.php

archagon

You can try this browser version! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34628386

Edd314159

Isn’t this technically the original _Steam_ UI, not just Counter Strike?

rtehfm

True, but the original Steam was created for managing updates to Counter Strike and their anti-cheap system (VAC if memory serves me right). Also back when having a low WON ID (now SteamID) was a badge of honor (like having a low Slashdot account ID).

Ringz

Sorry for the useless comment but I really like the idea of a „anti-cheap system“.

I will use it in my next presentation for shareholders. /s

nxobject

I'm sure the behavioral economics people at Activision and EA trying to get kids to buy more cosmetics would have a lot to say about that...

bakugo

Yes, the Steam client was originally built on top of the same VGUI library used in Valve's games, and used the same style as HL1/CS/etc back then.

c_r_w

Was VGUI built on GTK back then? It looked exactly the same as other GTK apps I was using in the early 00s.

jamesfinlayson

Not sure - the VGUI code in the Half-Life SDK was a bunch of header files and a .lib file but I'm not sure what actually implemented it. Back in the early 2000s I assume it was either Windows-specific or rendered using DirectX/OpenGL.

jamesfinlayson

It was added to Half-Life (and not long after to Counter-Strike) in March 2000 or so. Not sure when Steam first launched but I think there was a beta from 2002?

WorldMaker

Yeah, still feels like even today Steam could pop up something in this style somewhere when you press a less common button or cause a less common error. Kind of like how Windows would occasionally have even Windows 3.x style dialogs up until last year in Windows 11, and still has a few stragglers from Windows 9x era.

Plagman

https://alpynedreams.github.io/vgui.css/demo_greensteam

sedatk

This one uses <progress> element for progress bar too.

Lammy

More reading about VGUI: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Category:VGUI

Fun fact: in CS 1.6 it could actually be reverted to the old-style WON UI by with `setinfo "_vgui_menus" "0"` in config.cfg or in the console, or buried in the menus as "Options > Multiplayer > Advanced > Buy menu type > VGUI Menus".

jamesfinlayson

Yeah the text-based menus were what Half-Life launched with in 1998. Counter-Strike used these same text-based menus in 1999 and it wasn't until 2000 that the engine was updated to include VGUI. I guess Counter-Strike left the old ones in place for those that preferred them.

phatfish

This is the Steam UI (server browser and config), rather that CS 1.6 specifically i think? I'm having a hard time remembering what it looked like before Steam integration though.

least

CS 1.6 was exclusive to Steam; I remember waiting quite a while to register because I didn't like the idea of Steam but ultimately caved (still have a 6 digit steam id, which used to sort of but not really mean something). The server browser in CS 1.5 and below was built into the menu's on the application.

This is indeed the Steam UI, not Counter-Strike. This was also back when they had games like Go built in that you could play with people on your friends list.

jamesfinlayson

Oh yeah, I remember those game .dll files shipping with Steam long after they were disabled.

jamesfinlayson

It's VGUI2 which was created for the Source engine, re-used for Steam and back-ported to the GoldSource engine when the games were launched on Steam.

sedatk

Steam was pretty much a CS 1.6 launcher at the time.

myheartisinohio

Everyone runs faster with a knife.

mattigames

A bit funny how that's still true in modern games like Call of duty black ops 6 (melee weapons in general, not just knife)

myheartisinohio

Truly.

unethical_ban

My heart's beating! My hands are shaking!

theandrewbailey

Boom! Headshot! Boom! Headshot! BOOM! HEAD-SHOT!

pknerd

Awesome

Though I am not a gamer I have seen my son playing different games, I loved it not because it belonged to a certain game but because it is clean and different.

Are there any other unique CSS libs that could be used on pages?

graypegg

https://github.com/matt-auckland/retro-css Some fun ones on here!

chrisweekly

awesome, thanks for the link!

wiseowise

90s, early 2000s were peak times for UI.

Sohcahtoa82

It was a time when tech companies were trying to make computers a common household item, so they did tons of user testing and we made great strides in UX as discoverability became king.

Then, starting about 10 years ago, they started throwing all that research out the window in favor of minimal, clean, flat, "sleek" UIs because the screenshots are easier to market.

They started appealing to the lowest common denominator. We've lost choice and customizability in favor of allowing Apple and Microsoft to decide what our desktops should look like because some people might be confused if they open up an options panel.

I hate nearly every single thing about the MacOS UX. The dock is awful, and so many insane defaults all over the place. Hiding scrollbars is a bug, not a feature. Pointer acceleration is a bug, not a feature. The scroll wheel operating in reverse is a bug, not a feature.

At least with Windows, I can make it tolerable with third party software to make my task bar and Start menu look and feel like the Win2K days. My biggest complaint about the modern UX is coalescing multiple windows from one program into a single item and not having text. If I have 3 Firefox windows open, that should be 3 items on my task bar. It makes it so I can switch to any of them in a single click. It also means that I can use a window as a widget to monitor something by having the status as the title of the window.

dimgl

> I hate nearly every single thing about the MacOS UX. The dock is awful, and so many insane defaults all over the place. Hiding scrollbars is a bug, not a feature. Pointer acceleration is a bug, not a feature. The scroll wheel operating in reverse is a bug, not a feature.

I disagree with every single thing you've said here. And I'd be willing to bet most Apple users do too.

That being said, I do think there's some charm in simple, "outdated" UIs.

skydhash

Most people barely use their computers in a way that different from mainframes/terminals age. They only have a couple software they use (and web apps) and have routines for them. Most don't even care for preferences. The applications, the OS, the hardware (if it's not a laptop) don't really matter.

MacOS is a bad bet if you like to adjust your computing environment to make it more pleasant, like disabling animations, or having different motions for scrolling with mouse and trackpad.

pimeys

Yeah, me too. And I kinda hate how Gnome followed that path and made the same mistakes what Apple did. I am in trouble every time I need to use the UI. It is just very unintuitive and I get quite annoyed with it if I need to use it for longer periods. The small scrollbars, the dock, how useless Finder feels like after Dolphin...

tanepiper

When I was playing with WebSerial, I ended up using XP.css because it reminded me of configuring with old serial modems - I think the aesthetic works quite well.

https://web-serial-app.netlify.app/

(Source: https://github.com/tanepiper/web-serial-controller)

IYasha

Can't agree more!

But, to be fair, I still use win7 in native (unthemed) UI mode and haven't played many modern games to have a proper comparison :D

dvh

Why you didn't use progress or meter for progress bar?

sedatk

This one does: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42817979

dylan604

why make everything need a class rather than just styling the DOM elements directly. Why wrap a checkbox into a div rather than just a <form>?

why did you skin the cat that way when there's 98 other ways to do it?

maybe there's a logical reason more than "that's just what came to mind", maybe not. that's the beauty of the whole thing. there is no one way

marcellus23

I'm not sure that argument holds here, not every solution in programming is equally good just because. A <progress> element has the advantage of semantically actually representing a progress bar, which improves accessibility and who knows what other browser behavior and heuristics. In general you should try to use semantically correct HTML tags unless you have a really good reason not to. Maybe in this case he couldn't get the appearance he wanted using <progress>, which would be an acceptable reason.

Obviously this is nitpicking and this UI was made for fun rather than being a serious library intended for production. But that's a different criticism of the GP than the one you made.

dylan604

It's released with an MIT license so you're free to made any "improvements" you see fit to make. Fork away my friend. Then come back and do a Show HN with a full and complete write up for every little decision you've made. Not just you, but anyone else in this thread that needs to know.

Bjartr

Not every question is a criticism that needs to be defended against. The person you're responding to could very well just like to know the reason if one exists, no more, no less.

If you know a better way to get that info than asking the question, I'm all ears.

(major digression ahead)

This is actually something I've been digging into for a while, trying to improve my own communication. My own current best answer for this sort of situation is the social expectation is that a neutral question will always be accompanied by praise and gratitude, and any question asked that lacks that accompaniment will be interpreted as antagonistic.

For example, the comment you're responding too could have started with "This looks really cool, ..." or "Wow, this takes me back..." or "I can see a lot of effort went into this..." and it would have resulted in the question coming off as neutral instead of critical to some people.

What's fascinating is when I mention this kind of thing I almost always get one of two responses

* Of course that's how it works, everyone knows that!

* That's ridiculous, no one can be expected to do that!

richardlblair

I think I'm more cynical. Almost everything stated on the internet will be perceived as antagonistic. At least by some. It's more a representation of the reader's internal state rather than an issue with the question / statement. Unless, of course, the question / statement is overtly antagonistic.

sgc

Precisely why it is perfectly fine and good to be inquisitive, and ask why people do things the way they do. It's the point of a show and tell.

fnikacevic

Just looking at this makes me feel like a noob.

I tried installing CS 1.6 20 years after launch roughly and it was pointless trying to compete.

pelagicAustral

That's because the servers that are left are filled with die-hard players that know the maps, and every little quirk about the gameplay to the pixel level... There still a lot of fun in there, some mini games, more esoteric modes, deathmatch... The other characteristic of many server is that they are modded to the gills, and in some cases the work that has been done on the game over the years ends up giving some very pleasant surprises...

I logged in about 120 hours in 2024 after not playing for 12 years, and everything was different and the same. You got a lot of 30-something's playing after office hours, keeping the servers alive, and like I said, some servers are at a completely different level, I had so much laughs and met quite a few new people...

I recommend to look a bit more and I'm sure you'll find a few servers to stick around to, even if you get headshotted by an AWP from across the map on each round.