These days, (in 2019!) You can’t seem to boot a game up without being greeted to a
large, open world to explore! The sky’s the limit… and sometimes it isn’t.
And with the Battle Royale update, CS:GO has jumped on the bandwagon with their very own
large, open Blacksite map. I’ve already made a video talking about its size, and how
small it still is compared to others from the genre, like from PUBG or… ARMA. Source
lacks many of the modern graphical effects and techniques that the competition use to
craft their worlds. But I’m going to look behind the scenes to show you why, considering
the circumstances, Blacksite is a work of art.
And then I’m going to ruin for you by showing you all the flaws.
CS:GO is still based on the Source engine. Most engines have their roots in the 90’s…
but Source more than most. It works by splitting every level up into a series of rooms, and
then only drawing the ones that can be seen from the one you’re currently stood in.
This was essential in the 90’s, when computers were less powerful. And it suited the games
at the time, which were usually a series of rooms! But while most engines have advanced
and found better ways of rendering large, open spaces, Source sticks to its method of
splitting its levels up into a series of rooms. The graphics have been improved and they’ve
got better at disguising the fact that everywhere’s a room, but it still works in the same way.
You see this? Is it sky? No! It’s just a ceiling that’s been given the sky texture.
That’s why, if you throw your grenades high enough, they’ll bounce off it. With CS:GO
they’ve gotten a lot better at disguising this by raising the height of these ceilings,
but they’re still there. Even in Blacksite! The island of which is just one, big room.
But this is the problem. If Source can’t split the map up into smaller rooms, it has
to draw everything at once- and Source doesn’t like that.
You’d hope that the ground would hide whatever’s behind it. But it doesn’t. The island of
Blacksite is made of displacements, which are bumpy looking bits of floor. It’s surprisingly
efficient for your computer to draw these, but the down-side is the engine doesn’t
see them as solid things that can’t be seen through, so continues to draw whatever is
behind them. Blacksite gets around this by featuring a
pyramid. An invisible pyramid, as large as the island itself, but hidden underground!
While displacements don’t hide what’s behind them, these blocks do, and the pyramid
acts like one large, staggered wall. It’s not as effective as if the map had been a
series of rooms, but it means that your vision from one side of the map across to the other
is blocked, and it doesn’t have to draw anything over there as a result. The island
itself is also pyramid shaped, with the middle being highest up. Had it been the opposite
of that, like one big valley, then this method wouldn’t have worked since you’d still
see everywhere from everywhere else at once. So if you think about it, an island with the
highest points being in the middle is the best possible shape for an open-world Source
map! Although the island itself is like one big
room (with an invisible pyramid in the middle), it still features many buildings and indoor
areas. And these are places that can be optimised- Blacksite does this by blacking out windows
and openings at a distance. Once this is done, it no longer has to draw what’s inside.
And that includes players! This is one bit of optimisation that I’m a little unsure
about, because it can clearly affect gameplay. If a sniper is stood inside, and another player
is in the distance somewhere, the sniper will be able to see him, but they won’t be able
to see the sniper. In fact, in true battle-royale fashion, it greatly favours snipers since
zooming in removes these blacked out areas. But for the average pleb with a rubbish weapon,
they’re doomed. The more I looked at this feature, the more
difficult it got- there are signs that Valve put a lot of thought into where this happened.
Although most entrances that black out do so at a distance of 2600 units (which really
isn’t that far, and is well within the range of the bigger weapons in Counter-Strike)…
others fade out sooner, and some not at all. Somebody at Valve had to decide for each and
every window how it would behave at a distance! That big abandoned building near the sea doesn’t
black itself up. Maybe because it’s so open and visible from a distance it would have
impacted gameplay too much. Maybe there’s not a lot to draw inside the building so it
doesn’t help too much to do it here. It really is a difficult decision that needs
to be made on a window-by-window basis. Take this house here! All of the windows black
out at a distance… apart from the room on the right. Well, this is even more confusing!
This is by no means a simple topic. Had they been able to, I suspect Valve would have kept
every opening visible. But be it engine limitation, of framerate optimisation, they’ve chosen
not to. And this is one area that could lead to unfair gameplay situations.
One of the things that has made open worlds possible is Level of Detail. Rather than to
draw everything in high quality as though you’re stood right next to it, as it moves
away from you, stuff is swapped for lower detail versions until it becomes a simple
2D picture on the horizon. Modern computers have enough power to make
this transition almost perfect, but particularly in earlier games, like Oblivion, it’s easy
to spot the low quality models, and the transitions between them.
Here, for instance, is a 2D tree that’s pretending to be a 3D one. As you run around
it, it will turn so that it’s always looking at you.
And here’s the transition between low-quality 2D model and high(er) quality 3D model. I
will admit, I’ve lowered the settings quite a lot to make it obvious here. It’s a lot
better with the sliders set to high. In an open-world game like Oblivion, different LOD’s
are needed to keep the game at playable framerates. The props in CS:GO, however, don’t do this.
I’m not sure why not, but I can give you some reasons for why not having LOD is good
for a game like CS:GO. If you swap a prop for a lower quality one at a distance, there’s
the risk that it will look different enough to change the gameplay. Say a person is hidden
behind a car and it’s swapped for a lower quality model, it might change the car’s
shape and outline, revealing a player who would have been hidden if still behind the
higher quality model! I don’t know about you, but I struggle to
know how hidden I am on games like PUBG when hidden in grass. At far enough distances (further
than this example), grass is no longer rendered and I HOPE another trick is used to emulate
concealment, otherwise your character is left exposed and easily visible on what appears
to be completely flat ground! Although not perfect- or even very good- the Arma series
makes distant people sink into the floor a bit to simulate being partially hidden by
grass that is no longer being drawn. Blacksite doesn’t do this. If you’re hidden in grass,
you’re hidden in grass. Just look at all of it!
This has been a feature in Source ever since Half Life 2, but I never feel the games have
used it as much as it could have been… until now! Blacksite is littered with the stuff!
They’re only simple 2D images that spend their whole time looking at you. They don’t
even try to hide it! This might be why you always feel there’s somebody behind you
on this map! In general you won’t notice this, but move about them slowly and the illusion
breaks. This strikes me as funny- sticky-out grass is generally the first thing to fade
out at a distance in games. But here, they remain visible ‘till the bitter end!
So, the props in CS:GO don’t change how they look at a distance, and the grass on
blacksite never fades out. This earns the game some brownie points over the competition.
But then it immediately loses all of these, and some more besides, for fading large things
out completely! Props fading out in CS:GO have always been
a thing, but in normal maps have been reserved to pointless details outside the playable
area. Not so in blacksite! For some bizarre reason,
and much like the windows being blacked out from earlier, a map designer from Valve has
hand-selected certain props to fade out far earlier than they should do. There must be
some kind of thinking behind their decisions! But I can’t find one.
I understand it on stuff like these pipes here. They’re above the playable area so
are unlikely to reveal a hidden player behind by fading out. Plus they’re cleverly hidden
from most of the map by these buildings here- which further justifies their fade-out distance.
Nice. You’ll notice most of the details inside
the houses are below window height. This is clever since you can’t see them fading out
too clearly from outside. Nice. But what’s the deal with fading smaller
trees like these out early?! I imagine that some players might use these, thinking that
they’re hidden, completely unaware that to a distant enemy, they might as well be
stood out in the open! This feels like an oversight for a map that has clearly had so
much thought put into the rest of it. Don’t trust small trees on this map. Though I’m
well ahead of you there- I haven’t trusted them for years.
And what are they playing at with the staircase here?! Can you imagine it if another game
had staircases that randomly disappeared and popped up when they felt like it?
Okay. Maybe it’s a battle royale thing.
So Blacksite doesn’t use different levels of detail, but it does fade some items of
cover out completely, and blacks out windows.
But perhaps Blacksite’s most powerful optimisation trick is to use fog! One of the oldest tricks
in the book to keep framerates high. Fog used to be a hated feature in games, though volumetric
fog has brought it back into fashion somewhat. But no, this is not that. This is proper fog,
pure and simple. Fog in a battle royale map is kind of odd.
In a game like PUBG, so much of it is about stalking players at a distance, or firing
shots you know would never hit but you fire any way and then you run out of ammo and wonder
why you did it and then you unfairly get one-hit killed by the enemy.
But in Blacksite… it doesn’t seem to matter. The map seems designed to draw you close to
your enemy, playing it more similarly to how you would in a standard game of Counter-Strike.
Which I guess makes sense, since we’re talking about Counter-Strike here!
The fog in Blacksite starts at a distance of 1000 units, and ends at 6,500. Anything
beyond this distance will be fog-coloured. I’ve got the exact colour right HERE. And
then, at just over 7000 units… things stop being drawn entirely. The map relies on its
clutter to disguise this, but from the right spots you can still see it quite clearly.
In terms of gameplay, you can shoot a rifle or sniper a little bit further than you can
see in this map, but with anything else you’re restricted to just over half the visible distance
or below. You can see all weapons here, courtesy of Slothsquadron and Black Retina’s excellent
weapon spreadsheet, link in the video’s description.
Thanks to the fog you can see just under half way across the map. This, combined with your
limited field of view, means that any given time you can only see a fraction of what’s
in the map. How fair is this fog? I tested maximum and
minimum details and it seems like no matter what your graphics settings are on, it remains
the same- so this is good, since it doesn’t give people with powerful PCs an advantage
or anything. There used to be a bug where you could see further if scoped in, or viewing
things out of the corner of the screen. Valve improved this long ago, back when Hunger-Games
style maps were popular. But this problem still remains a BIT. Take this lighthouse,
for instance. If stood here, it’s not rendered at all. But if you move it to the corner of
your screen, it appears again. If you want to see as far as possible, don’t look directly
at things. All this fog makes me wonder.
Is it also the reason the map feels so big? Back before Skyrim- back before Oblivion,
even, there was Morrowind. And that game had a lot of fog. It made the world feel much
bigger than it really was. Once removed, you realised how close everything was to everything
else and the illusion was ruined. Perhaps the same is true with Blacksite! This is what
it looks like with it disabled. Decide for yourself.
But with all this fog and fading out and stuff, how can you still see distant mountains? This
is the 3D skybox. It’s a miniature model that’s blown up to look much bigger than
it actually is. If I cheat and fly down through the earth I can find it. People used to have
a lot of fun with this back in the day with gmod, creating gigantic chickens and gmen.
But for this map it is being used properly, and all carefully matched up so you can’t
see where the map ends and this skybox begins. Well I say that, but I can still see it because
I’m great. In fact it’s pretty obvious because the sea texture isn’t the same size.
It’s even worse under the water, where the land suddenly gives way to the blue expanse
beyond! This isn’t even hard to spot. Simply go to some body-deep water, crouch and it’ll
be staring you in the face! Valve have done 2 things to try and hide this- the first is
a brand-new, screen-wide distortion effect that makes everything look super ripple-y.
And the second is to make your character as buoyant as a balloon, floating him to the
surface almost immediately. This is only in this particular gamemode: you can still sink
in other gamemodes. But I like to think that making you a living life-jacket was a desperate
measure to hide this GLARING flaw in the graphics… but it’s more likely to stop players from
drowning themselves. Oh and there’s a push block surrounding the island to stop you from
getting too close to the map’s edge. At least they’ve toned their approach down
a bit. Try swimming in Half Life 2 and, not only are you dive-bombed by antlions, but
you quickly get eaten by leeches. Valve, you need to chill.
Also found within the 3D skybox is the radio and water tower! But these are already found
in the level. Why are 2 copies needed? You know earlier when I was talking about the
fog and things fading out? The exceptions to this are these 2 towers. Valve must have
decided that these were important enough to be visible from everywhere, no matter how
far away from them you might be. Here I’ve disabled fog and have made the
skybox black. Rather than disappearing like the rest of the scenery, they instead go black,
showing that only the skybox version remains. Returning to how the map looks normally, what
happens if a player is on this water tower at a distance? Simple- the player disappears,
but the water tower remains visible. I don’t know why I felt I had to test this. But I
did.
Despite all these game breaking ways in which the map is completely broken…
I think Valve must be very proud of Blacksite. Despite being stuck with the Source engine,
they’ve always dabbled with open environments. Half Life 2’s coastal levels were beautiful
at the time. This bit in particular wowed me with its scale and detail… though by
modern standards, it now looks painfully sparse. What details there are have been aggressively
optimised. And yes, the blacking out of windows was used here as well. Who’d have thought
we’d still be using the same engine and techniques 15 years later.
Valve continued to improve for Half Life 2: Episode 2, which ended on a much more detailed,
open environment. There were rumours going around that they wanted to go bigger still,
filling levels like these with quests and stuff! Maybe the Source engine wasn’t up
to the task, and that’s why we never got Episode 3! We will never know.
But they’ve outdone themselves again with Blacksite. It’s not as big, or as detailed
as other battle royale maps are. But it’s proof that, with enough tricks and shortcuts,
Source can still do it- if only just! But if you want to go any bigger Valve, it might
be time for Source 2.
And Half Life 3.