The latest Counter-Strike update is mostly map changes, though there are also a few miscellaneous
tweaks, like cheat-protecting a console command that dumped these stats about the network
connection. And another misc tweak stops the team’s
coach from sometimes being able to view wherever they want to… which, as you can imagine,
could give their team a slight advantage. The rest of the updates are all map changes!
Cache has gotten ‘subtle visual enhancements’, which mostly involves stripping the map of
what little green it has left, and by giving all remaining trees a brownish tint. Walls
and grass have been brightened slightly, presumably to improve visibility. Apparently there was
a door stuck bug. I don’t know what it was but it was presumably something like this.
The Molotov exploit at dark spot mid was probably the one where you can chuck a Molotov below
the platform, and if it breaks, it’ll still set fire to the location above. To fix this,
a grenade clip has been applied to the pipe below, so grenades will now just bounce off
it. And presumably the updated nav mesh will let
bots play a bit better now, and soundscapes… work again?
So that was the first map, and the smallest changes.
Swamp has gotten some bigger ones, most notably a new route leading from here… up into heaven.
You could previously get up here by jumping on the truck outside, but now for the lazier
players among you, you can take the stairs. The place has also been widened a bit to make
it more roomy. The water is no longer as deep as it was before.
It looks identical, but now when stood in spots like this, you’ll see your view is
a bit higher up which will improve readability of players crouched behind these boats and
the like. The wooden planks here have been extended
upwards by just the tiniest, TINIEST amount, presumably to seal up a crack between them
and the wooden planks above. And, more noticeably, a corrugated panel at
CT spawn has been placed just here to obstruct vision between this spot and long A.
And a few new wooden planks have been placed here, because previously the wall stopped
short. And, just for the sake of covering everything,
ambient sounds have been quietened so as not to interfere with gameplay, the radar’s
been updated, there are performance improvements… and there should be visible water splashes
now. And the last map to be changed is Mutiny,
which has gotten the most changes. The whole pirate ship at T spawn has been pushed back
to give CT’s more time to prepare, which will subtly change the timings across the
whole map. And long A has gotten another change. Last
time it was just to smooth out the walls to help grenades, but the entire place has been
remade to be more like a corridor, and I believe is now a lot shorter than it was before, and
it enters the site from a different angle. But the question is: was T spawn moved back
because of this change, or was this change made AFTER T spawn was moved back?
And that flimsy wooden support has been taken out completely, since it clearly wasn’t
doing a lot in the first place. And a few textures and trims have been added.
The lighthouse and a few of the buildings around the map now use a new brick texture
with cleaner, more distinctive looking bricks. A lot of the foliage has been removed from
the walls around A. But never fear! For it looks like it’s all been added to around
long A instead. And that broken wall at the site has been
lowered, which makes it easier to jump up onto in the first place. You can still stand
on the top of the main wall around the site, but if you’re alone you’ll have to get
up there from over here instead. Multiple bomb reset triggers have been added
to the water to respawn the bomb if it gets chucked in there. And if you’re getting
a sense of déjà vu here, that’s because this was added to the patchnotes last time
as well, and I even said that I hadn’t had any problems with it before that. So I don’t
know what they’ve changed here, but it’s presumably EVEN MORE fixed than it was before.
This bit of cover at A has been moved a bit, which leaves an odd little gap between it
and the remaining small crate. And this door at the A site now blocks more
damage, so you can’t spray through it into lobby room quite so effectively any more.
And I appreciate the updated broken wall here, which blends in with the surrounding scenery
a lot better… but still not perfectly! But before it looked like something straight from
Half Life 2. It wasn’t mentioned in the patchnotes, but
it looks like the sea was updated to be darker, with visible waves and foam and stuff. I don’t
normally like things getting less pretty, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it.
There are general FPS improvements, lighting adjustments and texture alignments, I mean
I feel like this could be added to any update where the mappers have forgotten about all
of the minor tweaks they’ve made since last time. But one thing I did notice was the radar
shifting over- so I assume that it DIDN’T line up with the map until now. So that’s
a step in the right direction. Quite literally.
Bye