It’s been less than 5 months since DangerZone first came out, and in this update, it’s
gotten its second map… as well as a few refinements and new features.
We can assume this map is located somewhere roughly… HERE, since sirocco is the name
for a wind phenomenon where warm air from Africa mixes with the colder, wetter air from
Europe. The map uses many of the assets from Dust2… as well as a few from Left 4 Dead
3 Source 2 Half Life 1 VR confirmed. Though I suspect this was because they had already
made suitable assets, and decided it was better to use them than to make them all from scratch
again. I’m sure that by now, many of you have had
time to play on it. I have and really enjoyed my games… though it always helps to win
most of them! It looks and plays very differently from the original Blacksite map, and although
that original map is TEMPORARILY unavailable, I don’t think anybody will mind too much
for now because this new map’s a lot of fun. And also very nice and bright and sunny.
But I also like what this update tells us about Valve and their intentions for Dangerzone.
Having it released last year was exciting. But there was always that feeling that it
might have been a knee-jerk reaction to Battle Royale’s success in other games, and may
have just been a one-off attempt to jump on the bandwagon by shoehorning the gamemode
into CS:GO. So it’s nice to see a second map released
for it- along with so many refinements and additions to the gamemode in this update.
It shows that they do intend to support it and to make it into a very decent standalone
gamemode for CS:GO. And having analysed the map in the editor, it hasn’t been created
overnight- there’s been a lot of thought and at least a bit of love invested into it
by the game’s developers. Which I’ll cover a bit later on.
First, the gameplay changes. I was kind of hoping that as Danger Zone was
updated, it would move away from the other Battle Royales, becoming its own thing. But
from these changes, it’s evident that it’s been heavily influenced by Apex Legends. Though
since that’s one of the best Battle Royales out there, this may not be such a bad thing.
For a start, players can respawn! In Apex you have to collect a tag from their body
and then run to a respawning station, but here you simply respawn if your teammate can
survive on their own for a certain amount of time.
The first time you respawn it takes 10 seconds, then the second, 20, the 3rd, 30… and after
that, who knows. Just be careful, since you respawn with nothing!
And there’s usually not a lot left to pick up once you land. Plus, you can be shot whilst
abseiling down into the map, so try to pick somewhere away from the action.
But it’s great that death doesn’t just mean that you have to spectate your teammate
until the end of the game. It also makes the matches feel more populated, since although
there are only 17 players on an island, you may end up fighting each of them several times!
And it’s always nice to get revenge on a player who killed you earlier on. Also worth
mentioning: your team will have a new, blue-coloured jumpsuit on, and only enemies will be wearing
orange. This should let you quickly tell friend from foe.
Any way, respawning is the first big change. Next is the amount of ammo you get- you start
with far more. You still have to be careful with it, but as long as you’re sensible
it should last. The radar always shows the nearest BIG weapon
crate- so you always know where to go for a decent weapon once you’ve got some equipment
needed to open it. This makes finding a decent weapon less down to chance, letting people
get right on with shooting people with the best guns.
You can now choose an item to spawn with in Dangerzone- which is almost like a ‘class’
feature. A lot of these are currently ‘locked’. I wonder why they’ve done this. Maybe to
keep something fresh for a later update. Or perhaps they’re still trying to balance
the different options. Or maybe they’ll be cycled through on a weekly basis, like
the gamemodes were in Operation Hydra a few years back. Just to keep things fresh. They
all have a description next to them, so you can see what they’ll all do.
For now, you can start with an extra health kit, a parachute, a taser (should you want
to try and kill somebody early on!), or exojump, which is like, the only thing people will
want to start with right now. It lets you jump higher and further, reaching over double
the height of a normal jump. If you quickly crouch and jump you’ll be launched in the
direction you’re running. It opens up so many possibilities, letting you reach new
camping spots! The map is well designed for this, too- especially the city in the middle.
You can get almost anywhere with these! You will still take fall damage, though. So it’s
not quite Apex Legends just yet. Using cl_showpos 1 you’ll see a ‘stamina’ meter. I wonder
if this is tied to the exojump in some way. It replenishes so quickly it doesn’t seem
to make much of a difference at the moment, no matter how much you use it. So I wonder
if it’s something they’ve experimented with already, or if it’s something they’ll
test in the future when they realise how OP the exojump is. Just be aware that it makes
a lot of noise, so it will give away your position.
If you want to experiment with these new features in your spare time, I’ve provided a list
of console commands in the video’s description which will let you play about on this map
for as long as you like. In the buy menu, you can now buy a MOBILITY
PACKAGE, which gives you the exojump, a parachute and bumpmines, which let you jump EVEN HIGHER!
This will leave you exposed while in the air and you’ll generally sustain huge falling
damage upon landing again… which gives them offensive potential, too. But when partnered
with a parachute and the exojump, you’ll soon be flying about the map with terrifying
speed. It really does make the map your playground, and I hope that future Danger Zone maps will
sport even more verticality to make the most of these features. They may not have intended
for Danger Zone to become the next Quake, but it’s heading that way.
These items, when combined, have so much potential. I fully expect that maps utilising these will
become as popular as surf or jump maps- because it’s a hellololallot of fun.
One of the features added, but not yet available, is a shield. Counter-Strike has had this before,
back in Condition Zero. I don’t know much about it in CS:GO just yet, but you won’t
be able to shoot whilst this is equipped, so it’s probably best used when part of
a team. The next new feature is the pinging system!
It’s found here in the controls section. Press the middle mouse button and it will
place a marker wherever you’re looking. It’s so simple it makes you wonder why it
wasn’t used before. It’s a great way of communicating with teammates, instead of the
usual old ‘HE’S OVER THERE’… which, let’s face it, doesn’t help. This is another
thing copied from Apex Legends. The pinging system in that game is still more robust,
since it’s not just a marker but it also tells your teammates what’s at that location,
be it an enemy or item of some sort. But this update is definitely an improvement over what
we had before. Lastly is a new radial weapon menu, found
here in the control settings. This works on all gamemodes for CS:GO, and like the pinging
feature is another that makes you wonder why it wasn’t added sooner. It lets you access
anything in your inventory in just one button press and a quick flick of your mouse in a
particular direction. It’s an optional feature, but a welcome one that will make cycling through
grenades less of a keyboard-mashing exercise. And again, it might have been ‘borrowed’
from Apex Legends. A few new radio commands have also been added.
As well as this, a Valve developer asked how you use radio commands a few months ago on
Twitter… so we may be getting a similar radial menu for them at some point. Which
will make it even more like Apex Legends!
I said earlier that some love had been put into this map. For those of you who were wondering:
it’s exactly the same size as Blacksite. It is. Also, it’s optimised in a similar
way, via a combination of fog and it being higher in the middle so it doesn’t have
to draw what’s on the other side of it. It has more than DOUBLE the number of displacements-
that is, bumpy bits of floor. And it has a similar number of props and func_details.
In blacksite, if you stuck your head underwater you’d be able to see the edges of the world.
But not so with this one. A nice little touch, even if you’re not supposed to be able to
stick your head underwater in the first place. One cool new feature I did notice was the
use of a MEGATEXTURE! Well, it’s not quite a megatexture, but it’s called a megatexture
in the game’s files, so I’ll go with it. I’ve never seen it used in CS:GO before,
but it’s essentially a huge texture that covers the whole map. It’s been used in
games like Quake Wars, Rage and Doom. The benefit of this that it makes each spot unique,
so there won’t be repeating textures. I always saw it as a solution to a non-issue,
since it’s easy to disguise repetition by placing details and props over the top of
it. And the downside of megatextures is that they’re HUGE. We’re talking tens of thousands
of pixels across, and filesizes measured in the GB’s. Just in case you wondered why
Doom was such a large download. The one used in Sirocco isn’t quite so impressive.
It’s a mere 2048 pixels across and has a filesize of under 3 MB. If you’re viewing
this on a 4K screen then you can see every pixel of sirocco’s megatexture.
But it still spreads over the whole map. As detailed as it might be, when it’s this
large it ends up looking horribly pixelated. So what do they do? They layer a detailed
texture over the top of it, to make it look better close up. This isn’t a new technology
either. Operation Flashpoint used it. Deus Ex used it. Hell, a game I made when I was
14 used it! But it works, so why not. And on top of that they’ve placed loads
of props and grass, so you can barely see the megatexture at all! But what it does do
is to give the illusion of erosion, particularly at a distance. Note all the dark lines- that’s
the megatexture. I don’t think something like this was necessary to make the map look
good. In fact, I see it more as an experiment. A labour of love! To find new ways to make
CS:GO look nice. And I know that if I had made it, I’d be excited to use it in future
maps as well. Perhaps even choosing a theme that would have previously shown the Source
engine’s weaknesses. The barrels are already brilliant. They inflict
huge amounts of damage. But they’re even better in this map, often placed in groups
to deliver enough damage to kill in one blast! If you go into the caves- which look awfully
like the ones from the CS:S benchmark back in the day- you’ll hear some strange sounds
in the room with the pay-to-win doors. Valve News Network live-streamed yesterday, pointing
out that they sound an awful lot like Striders. Of course, there are no striders to be seen
in this map. So maybe it’s an easter-egg of some kind. Half Life VR confirmed?
Also, what’s going on with this texture? Valve please fix.
Since I’m so late to release this video, another update rolled out the following day,
fixing a number of bugs with the first update, including visible sprites through walls. A
lot of you pointed it out to me, but it’s the kind of thing that’s so widespread it’s
safe to assume that Valve was aware of it. And it was fixed within 24 hours. A few of
the maps got small updates, too. One last thing- there was a serious lobby
bug that allowed for players to inject stuff into other players’ systems. I’m not aware
of how it worked, but it essentially let them bypass the sv_cheats command to reveal wireframe
and other console commands which should have been disabled. This kind of looks bad when
wallhacks toggle on a streamer’s PC, in front of all their viewers.
Once this issue had been made known, Valve shut down the lobbies until they fixed the
exploit. This was clearly a serious incident. I feel that Valve dealt with it quickly and
effectively and hopefully any bans as a result of this will be rolled back. I think the most
important thing to do right now is to clear the names of those who were affected. If a
streamer you’ve been watching started randomly wallhacking, it could have been this exploit
and not their fault, so don’t think less of them. It’s not fair that their reputations
should be damaged by something like this.
That’s it for now. Quite an eventful start to a new month.