What’s your greatest accomplishment that you can’t bring up in normal conversation?
This was a question on Reddit that blew up a few months ago. 16th down the list, with
almost 18,000 points, was a man named Mariowned… who invented Counter-Strike surf maps.
His story’s here. But I also reached out to him to make this video.
Back in May 2004, before many of Counter-Strike’s current players were even born, Mariowned
was playing CS 1.6 when he made a knifing arena map called ka_killbox. It was huge,
filled with skateboards, machineguns and rooftops. I checked this map out and it brought back
many happy memories. I have never played this particular one before, but it’s a classic
example of custom content from that era- and something you wouldn’t see being made today.
Half Life 1 inspired many maps and mods to be developed purely for fun and for a sense
of adventure… a map like this shows it best. It’s probably not balanced. It doesn’t
even matter. I can imagine Mariowned and his friends playing on it, 15 years ago, and having
a great time as they skated down hills and pointed turrets at each other.
It was here, on this rooftop, when climbing one of these to reach a gun that his friend
fell off the side and slid to his death! And from this accident, surfing for Counter-Strike
was born! He repeated the mistake over and over again until he could reach a ladder on
an adjacent building. He then used that rooftop to create a new map from, based around the
concept of surfing. The very first of this type was Surf_the-gap.
Although early and basic, it established many of the rules that surf maps still follow to
this day- including the name of the gamemode! Both teams would spawn here and agree not
to kill each other until they left the platform. Following a quick slope down (Which looks
strangely like a rooftop!) you’d have to make a long jump to a tiny, far-off platform
coated in water to prevent players from sustaining fall damage. Here, they’d find a button
that would blow the map up. At the time of making this, Mariowned was 14.
He and his friends spent many happy hours on that map, surfing, shooting and blowing
each other up. He began to elaborate on the map. Surf_the_gap
went through several versions. A partition between the teams was sensibly added. And
guns were placed at the bottom to encourage players to traverse the map quickly.
All the while, the same original roof prefab was used as the basis of the maps- even up
to and including the famous surf_egypt… though you can see the roof texture was swapped
out for something more fitting each time! This here was the second map, made in July
and with a Christmas theme because why not. As you can see from this timeline, Mariowned
didn’t hang around. He got to work producing numerous surf maps and he and his friends
worked hard to get the mode played. It was a struggle at first. People didn’t understand
it, would join the server, fall to their deaths and ragequit. He and his buddy, Arcade, would
host servers on their computers, which they’d leave on overnight and while at school. They
kept at it, and very slowly the gamemode began to build a following.
Other maps began being made. Other servers sprung up, many hosting his maps but renamed
and with others taking the credit. Some even claimed to have come up with the gamemode
themselves! Source was released late in 2004 and it too started to gather a surfing community.
The gamemode had well and truly taken off. Mariowned continued to have success with his
own creations. Surf_egypt is now legendary, but other maps of his like the Water_run series
and Ninja also became popular. He’d design some maps from drawings by his friends- usually
done in Paint. As his maps grew increasingly elaborate, he ran into problems with the original
Counter-Strike engine. Surf_city2 in particular was delayed several times as he kept running
out of resources. He had to optimise the map and spent much longer than he had anticipated
on it… but eventually he got it out, and it too became a success.
Fun fact: all of his maps up to and including surf_city are possible with sv_airaccelerate
10. This was the default setting for the game, and he and his friend didn’t discover that
upping the value helped with surfing until sometime in 2005- after many of the surf maps
had already been made. Higher values let you turn faster in the air, and stick to the platforms
better. Anybody who’s tried both will know how much of a difference this makes! He says
that if anybody thinks they’re good at surfing then they should do Egypt on default settings.
It’s like trying to surf while wearing a 50lb vest. Airaccelerate has been in the game
for as long as he can remember, but when they finally discovered it it changed Surfing forever
and has led to wilder maps and better surfers than he could ever have imagined.
Despite all this, he doesn’t think he’s that good at surfing. He spends more time
mapping for it, but enjoys playing with fans and sometimes just sits and watches other
people playing on the gamemode. One of his biggest regrets is how he took
credit his maps… or rather, how he didn’t! He was always very good at featuring the names
of the people he worked with, but seldom made his own name known. His signature’s on Surf_egypt…
but he wouldn’t blame you if you never noticed it. It’s situated on the end of the first
ramp- not exactly a place you’d be looking if flying through the air at a hundred miles
an hour in the opposite direction! If you do see it, it still needs a bit of explaining.
The surrounding decoration is CJ- being Mariowned’s initials.
He got better as he went on, adding his AIM screen-name to city, and his steam ID to City2.
But he says one of his biggest regrets was not making his contribution to the gamemode
more apparent. He urges people to take credit for their own creations- and not to be a Mariowned!
His other regret is not doing more. Despite boasting an impressive list of maps, had he
known how big the mode would eventually become, he’d have done more. He didn’t realise
how big the surfing community was outside of the US- even to this day! And he feels
the surfing community in Source and CS:GO is bigger than it had ever been in 1.6.
But Surf isn’t just a gamemode. This became apparent when he made the reddit post. He
didn’t know how many people still cared about it until his post received a billion
responses and even rekindled his passion for it! Many of the responses he got made him
emotional. He can’t believe the impact it’s had on some peoples’ lives. He’s been
told by some that it might even have saved them, as a way of coping when they felt at
their lowest points. It's been such a crazy journey so far, and he feels like it's only
just begun. He truly loves what he does, and has made it his goal to respond to every comment
this video gets- within reason! And now he’s working on a new version of
surf_egypt, for CS:GO. But it’s had a few changes! It no longer
has floating ramps. And many of the surfaces don’t even look surfable. But they’ve
all been clipped, and play as you’d expect from a surfing map. It’s bigger than ever
and sports many easter-eggs and shortcuts that will reward fans for mastering the map.
He is streaming the whole thing, from the development of the map through to the playtesting
sessions on it that he hosts with his fans. I’ve linked his stream in this video’s
description. He is channelling all of his passion and experience into this project.
He wants it to be a map he can be proud of. As something that’s beautiful, and that
can be appreciated even by people from beyond the surfing community. This time, he might
even give himself credit for it. Oh and today is his 30th birthday. Wish him
a good one.