There are a lot of differences between videogames and reality.
Sure, us gamers know this already.
But occasionally the media gets a tad confused between the two.
I would like to cover some of these differences.
The kind of things that happen in games, but probably not in the real world.
Maybe the things I’ll be covering in this video will ruin your enjoyment of these maps
forever.
But I don’t care.
First off: Pecklesteiner.
This is a term that’s used to describe doors that overlap when closed, so that the key
can go through both of them at once.
It was first coined like, a week ago when sbizzle15 used it over on a Reddit post to
describe overlapping doors on a CS:GO map.
The world then imploded when Valve then mentioned ‘pecklesteiner’ doors in their patchnotes,
when fixing the said doors.
And so the word was coined and sbizzle15’s path toward world domination began.
For anybody who cares, the closest word to ‘pecklesteiner’ is probably Pichelsteiner,
a kind of German stew.
Fascinating stuff.
ANY WAY.
To a real person it seems silly that Valve would make such a GLARING mistake.
Why bother putting doors in that don’t fit properly when closed?
Well it’s because it’s a map.
It’s (hopefully) designed with gameplay in mind, with the graphics and theme coming
later.
Valve creates a hole in a wall for players to run through, decides that it plays well,
and THEN tries to justify its existence by decorating it with doors and so on.
Their function as a door doesn’t really matter since it will never be closed.
It could have been that somebody did lovingly measure it all up and created doors that did
fit, then another designer decided that the hole should have been narrower for gameplay
purposes but forgot to also shorten the doors.
Heck, this could have happened in real life too, so let’s not be too hard on Valve.
In fact, if you think about it, the idea of closed off environments doesn’t make much
sense in the first place.
Where do the people of Dust2 go if they want to escape from the terrorists?
Do they have to manually open these doors themselves or is there somebody around the
other side who does it for them whenever there’s a knock?
Admittedly Valve has become a bit more lax about this recently, blocking places off with
smaller and smaller obstacles to give the illusion that you’re running about a real
place than some horrendous death-trap arena that resets every 2 minutes or so.
I mean, this is a terribly anal thing to complain about.
It is perhaps the best proof that Counter Strike is a balanced and polished game when
issues such as these hit its reddit front page.
But it’s fun, so let’s carry on.
Windows.
You have no idea how many times people contact me to point out that a window looks different
on the inside to the outside, or that it is even in a different place!
Actually, this could be a problem, since players may use the representation of the windows
to shoot through, never to learn that they aren’t shooting through at the correct height
to hit people on the other side.
And yet even with Valve’s latest and greatest creation, Canals, this happens all over the
place.
Some are only present on one side of walls!
Valve, please fix!
Why not mention dimensions in general?
There’s a wonderful article over on the World of Level Design which shows all of the
unit figures.
I really suggest you check it out.
http://worldofleveldesign.com/categories/csgo-tutorials/csgo-sdk-beginner-03-scale-dimension-proportion.php Your view is 64 units above the ground, and
your characters are about 72 units tall.
Assuming one unit is one inch, that means that they’re 6 feet tall.
Which makes sense.
But this makes doors over 9 feet tall!
I certainly don’t have 3 feet of clearance above my head every time I walk through a
doorway in real life.
And your character can jump up onto things 64 units tall.
That’s over 5 feet.
Most computer games seriously underestimate the power of gravity and CS:GO is no exception.
I’d like to see people jump from the heights we do in Counter Strike.
Or maybe I wouldn’t, because it would be messy.
And lastly is the problem of optimisation.
If you’re not in a bit of a map then it’s not drawn, which can lead to strange situations
where really tall objects don’t seem to exist if you’re stood in another bit.
Check out this bit of pop-up from Dust2.
Ridiculous!
But I can do better.
With a bit of optimisation, I can make all of this disappear just by going around a corner.
This limitation goes wayyyy back to the Quake 1 engine, of which the Source engine is still
based on today.
Outdoor areas were treated the same as indoor ones, only with the a skybox used instead
of a ceiling.
This makes it look as though you’re staring at distant scenery, but in practice it behaves
the same as a solid ceiling, with grenades and stuff bouncing off of them.
And since they’re solid, things behind them disappear since they assume you can’t see
through the skybox.
I’ve always believed that the skybox should be far enough away from the level itself not
to interfere with grenades and stuff.
Take de_elysium, for example.
I extended the map far beyond where I should have just so that if you toss a grenade, it
won’t bounce back to haunt you.
It doesn’t extend all the way, though, so if you throw it far enough then it will eventually
reach the level’s limits, beyond which you see the mysterious 3D skybox, which is the
last thing that I’ll be covering in this video.
These 3D skyboxes are actually small models that are blown up to look really REALLY big.
You’ve probably found these before by going into noclip mode, using them to make chicken
and other stuff look hilariously large.
The Citadel in City 17 was too large to be a part of the level itself so every time you
saw it you were seeing a model version.
Valve uses 3D skyboxes a lot for towers and stuff since it means that they can still close
up their levels as if the outdoor bits are inside, yet still have the towers visible
from everywhere.
Since they’re not actually part of the level they’ll always be visible.
Of course you don’t want to put too much in the 3D skybox otherwise it will slow stuff
down.
So it’s kind of a balancing act.
But had Dust2 put their dome in the 3D skybox then it wouldn’t have the pop-up problem
it currently has.
Funnily enough this is what they did with the Source version of Dust2.
But I am happy to see that Valve is moving away from the old-fashioned method of closing
maps up, first by opening up bits of Dust2 before going as far as to open maps up entirely
like they did with Cobble.
And overpass, hence all of the olof boosts everywhere.
But I think it’s worth it in the long run.
The Source engine, ‘tis a silly place.
But it’s our place.
And with our rules.
Because it isn’t the real world, nor should it aspire to be.
Because the gameplay would be RUBBISH.
Though I’m pretty sure that there’s a little bit of Pecklesteiner in every door.