Last night, CS:GO got another update. But it’s boring. So today I’ll study the map
changes from last weekend! Starting with the least interesting: TRAIN.
The big news is that the pigeons at Ivy have been moved so they no longer give away to
the CT’s that a terrorist is close by. They have been moved from the floor just here…
to outside the level, on the top of a train carriage here. The days when you could ride
these things to escape the map are long gone. Valve pls fix.
This ladder on B has been improved. To be fair, it seemed fairly good to me already,
but I did find that if you looked directly down and climbed up while holding the walk
button, you’d bounce about once you reached the top. But this no longer happens. Valve
did fix. And at the base of the ladder, this wall has
gotten brighter, with a splattering of white paint over what’s clearly a temporary structure.
And the reel above it has been made bigger so it no longer has to be propped up on an
ugly block of wood. And, just like with Overpass, this dumpster
model has been updated to make its lighting better. Interestingly, its clipping has remained
the same.
CHLORINE Chlorine next, and they’ve gone and made
a lot of the wall textures brighter. I guess because of the shallow angle of the lighting,
it felt a bit like the whole map was in the shade before. So this should make it a more
cheery place to be. And I have no idea what happened at CT spawn
here, but there was a stone square floating above the ground, which has since been removed.
ANUBIS ANU5TART has had its props’ draw distances
along this water section extended. You can see that from near B, the other end of the
level would fade out too soon, revealing the skybox beyond. It looks like they also added
trims to the bottoms of these windows. And they’ve widened the entrance.
I saw a few lighting fixes- or at least, changes, to how the props at bombsite A are lit.
The banners on the pillars here have been removed.
Other than that I only found minor changes to prop placement and clip brushes. I’ll
show comparisons in the background while I talk about the other changes to the map- the
bomb explosion radius has been upped from 400 to 450, so you’ll take more damage and
from further away than before. The radar now shows the correct spawn coordinates, and bots
have been improved so they can now use drop-down areas.
JUNGLE
It looks to me as though Jungle has changed in many ways. It looks darker, the props more
shaded and shadows being cast from the larger trees. And there are various minor changes
to the prop placements. You can see what I mean in these comparisons. More loot crates
have been added to a few of the regions in the map, wooden fences have been reworked
to no longer have lots of holes in. And the collision mesh on the solar battery has been
mended. The two BIG things are: This ladder bug has finally been fixed! This
is something I’ve been pointed to time and time again since the map came out and I was
never able to see it for myself. But since it’s been removed, I’ve been able to when
revisiting older map versions. This floating ladder couldn’t be climbed, and wasn’t
solid. It’s all a bit of a mystery. And now it’s gone completely. Spooky.
Oh and a hut has been added to the foot of the large tower. Before it was just a large
open area of hills and trees, so the hut and its surrounding fences will provide more cover.
I ran through it before and after in this video comparison here.
VERTIGO And last, we get to Vertigo. This map has
had large gameplay and visual changes, best demonstrated with these comparison shots.
Many of the metal props have been made brighter. A lot of the concrete textures have been remade.
At bombsite A, this wooden wall has been switched for a metal one, which will be harder to wallbang.
I could penetrate it with any of the rifles, but you can forget about pistols and SMGs.
I also noticed changes to the skybox. The old drawn-on clouds have been swapped for
moving ones. But they’ve done away with that pretty, distant haze so you can see where
the clouds suddenly disappear beyond the edges of the city. It wouldn’t take much effort
to make it into a positive change, but for now I’ve got mixed feelings about it.
Bombsite B has changed the most. Starting in middle, you can no longer hop through a
gap in the wall into the site. This whole area has been made into a much simpler corridor
route towards CT spawn. What you have instead is a stack you can climb
over just before you reach CT spawn. Standing on the top of it you have a nice view into
the site. The only routes to the site are the terrorist stairs, and THIS spot here,
which the CTs can approach from 3 slightly different angles.
The site itself has been totally reworked and dropped 32 units. These comparison shots
will show how much it’s changed. If you didn’t like this site before, it doesn’t
matter because it’s no longer that site any more.
Like I said earlier, there’s no hole in the wall from middle any more, so this stairwell
down to pit is the main route for terrorists now. I wonder if the 32 unit drop was done
to get rid of falling damage, since it’s now possible to fall from the site to pit
without sustaining any damage at all. Again, the props and textures here have been reworked,
but a picture is worth a thousand words so have a few pictures.
And check out this! Even the terrorists’ second approach to bombsite B has been changed,
which this video comparison will show nicely. This will make it easier to defend against
attackers from the base of the stairs, since you no longer have to worry about attackers
coming from the left. All in all, lots of changes. Yeah.