Counter Strike Wall Banging
The update that Valve released to Counter Strike: Global Offensive yesterday was a huge one to the community as it solved many problems that users were experiencing with bullet penetration, also known as Wall Banging. The problem with the previous implementation of bullet penetration in Counter Strike: Global Offensive was partially that it wasn’t very scientific and partially that it made very little sense. You could should through a thin metal grate and basically do no damage to someone, or shoot through a fairly thick metal vent and do an amazing amount of damage. In fact, you could do more damage to someone through the sides of the vent than shooting through the grates. Also, shooting through certain metal objects bullets would randomly penetrate or not without any reliability. The same went for cardboard boxes and wooden boxes. Essentially, it was a crap shoot. Because of this, certain shots in game would be considered kills while others were not. However, with the new update Valve have significantly improved the bullet physics and wall banging in game so that it is now far more predictable and can be used more like if it were in the real world.
As Valve states, not all guns shoot projectiles that can penetrate (wall bang) and not all surfaces can be penetrated. They also state, logically, that if a bullet successfully penetrates, it will lose some of its power and do less damage after it exist the object or wall on the other side. The calculation of how much damage this bullet does is purely a function of the weapon, distance traveled through the object and the materials of the surfaces penetrated. And like in the real world, the further the bullet travels through the object the more power it will lose. And once it has lost all of its power it will simply fail to penetrate and stop traveling altogether.
Now, each weapon has varying penetration, from a glock to an awp where the power can range from anywhere between 0 and 300. A value of 0 means that it will never penetrate any objects, while 300 will mean that it will penetrate harder surfaces for greater distances, but cannot go through everything for an unlimited distance. Also, the total number of surfaces that any bullet can penetrate in a single flight is capped at 4.
Valve has also made a list of the surfaces of the objects that you shoot and the materials that they are made of.
Material Ease of Penetration
Glass Very Easy
Cardboard Very Easy
Metal Grate Easy
Wood Easy
Plaster Average
Tile Average
Metal Hard
Concrete Hard
Brick Hard
Solid Metal Very Hard
To see the raw wall banging numbers for all materials and their penetration value, see the file named
csgoscriptssurfaceproperties_cs.txt
The entry you want to look for is “penetrationmodifier”.
How wall banging works through wood with different weapons and distances
They’ve also included some examples of wall banging as well as tools that allow you to test exactly how it works in-game.
What a wall banging shot looks like when shown in game with tools
To test bullet penetration for yourself, open the console while playing on a private server (or offline with bots), and enter the following command: sv_showimpacts_penetration 1When a bullet penetrates a surface, you will see a report including information about the type of surface penetrated, the distance the bullet traveled through the material, and the damage lost in the process.You can increase the amount of time this information stays on the screen by changing sv_showimpacts_time
They have also included an FAQ to explain exactly any kinds of questions you might have about the new wall banging system.
