International Online Soccer

"International Online Soccer" or "IOS" is an online multiplayer soccer game developed by Mark Gornall aka Routetwo. The game is a modification of the Half-Life engine. It is played in first and third person. IOS is intended to be an online equivalent to popular console soccer games but with the multiplayer experience of an online game. Instead of controlling a whole team of players, you control just 1 player and play football with other human players on the server.

The mod has consistently won the Mod DB Top Sports Mod award in recent years (2004, 2005, 2006).

Player communities and teams are located mostly in Europe, Brazil, USA, and Asia. The European community is currently the most active, with many teams still actively playing games and recruiting new players.

History

International Online Soccer or IOS was originally announced back in September 2002 by developer Routetwo. The first video of the game was released on April 5th 2003 with the first beta coming in May of the same year. Beta 2 who many player regard as the best times in the community ran from July 22nd 2003 until January 15th 2004 when beta 3 was released. During beta 2 the changeover from the old WON servers to Valve's new STEAM program took place with great ease. With the STEAM 3rd party game search added a few new players to the mod. Beta 4 and the current release was released back in March 2005 with most of the known bugs fixed but still a few ones left. In May of 2005 IOS:Source was announced by the developer Routetwo and almost three years later the release is immenent and a dater has been set for March 30th 2008.

Gameplay

The player controls the person with the standard keyboard/mouse interface, but uses the mouse buttons to kick, and/or pass the ball. There are three different kicking techniques: kicking, shooting and passing. The player can take control of an outfield player or the goal keeper. The goal keeper also has the abilility to pick-up the ball inside the penalty area using the mouse buttons.

There are three types of match mainly played in International Online Soccer. These being the common 6 versus 6 matches where teams play with a Goalkeeper, 2 defenders, 2 wingers and a centre forward. The other type of match is the now uncommon 7 versus 7 map in which a map maker (Captain Caffeine) made a larger map to fit in another player. In the 7 versus 7 matches usually an extra defender is appointed but sometimes a team plays with a central midfield player who acts as an attacker and a defender. The third type of match is played on an Indoor map. These matches are played 3 versus 3 and each player usually plays a third of the game in goal, third of the game in defence and a third in attack.

IOS Leagues and Cups

The first official recorded IOS Cup was won by Super Soccer Team (SsT) back in beta 2, they beat Passing Makes Perfect (PMP) in the final 4-2 with SsT player Gizy bagging a brace along with CaptainCaffeine with Ollie and BlackCat scoring one each for PMP.
The second recorded cup happened in beta 3 with United we Stand (UwS) eventually overcoming the odds and beating the very strong Masters Of Football (MOF) team 3-2 with two very late goals included an own goal from MOF defender Iggy. Sudders who was known as the leading star of IOS at the time scoring the other two goals for UwS on the night.

IOS:Source

The IOS development team are currently working on creating the game on the newer Source engine. The team hope to recreate and improve on the gameplay of the current version of IOS.

IOS:Source Beta 1 has been released on March 30th 2008.

External links

* [http://www.planethalflife.com/ios/ Official Website]
* [http://ios.planethalflife.gamespy.com/iosblog IOS Source Blog]
* [http://ios.planethalflife.gamespy.com/iosforum/index.php?sid=c0fa97a1fc87343b4bbf0912dbc0d5de Official Forums]
* [http://ios.planethalflife.gamespy.com/download/download.htm Download]
* [http://mods.moddb.com/562/international-online-soccer/ MOD DB entry]
* [http://storefront.steampowered.com/v2/index.php?area=game&AppId=90007 Valve Storefront]