Counter-Strike has been stuck on the Source engine for over 16 years,
but that hasn’t stopped the graphical standards from advancing in that time. Dramatically so!
One of the biggest leaps was when CS:GO came out, which supported real-time lighting from the sun.
I can’t emphasise how big of a game-changer this was. This made maps look better,
but also helped reduce filesize and compile times. Because before this point, all lighting had to
be pre-calculated. If this was to look as accurate as CS:GO’s realtime lighting then
every map would have taken forever to compile, and would have become tens of gigabytes in size.
Of course, this isn’t viable, so that’s why shadows are so low-resolution,
blocky and blurry in Counter-Strike Source maps. I think that CS:GO went backwards in some ways,
though. I always preferred the more pronounced water reflections from Source.
Global Offensive’s could easily be better if it wanted to. The water animation is smoother,
has support for fancy flow effects and I like how shadows are cast over the surface, but it’s ruined
for me because for some reason they keep the look of the reflections so toned down and washed out…
so to speak. So visually, I prefer how some of the water surfaces in older CS:S maps look.
Plus, back then these kinds of shaders were state of the art. I’m a sucker for reflections.
Rant over. But something that’s made a greater change than
either of these things has been the ever-improving skill of the people making the maps. It’s easy
to take for granted just how much love, time and effort goes into the maps seen in the game today.
The quality of modern maps is sky-high, well above anything we had 10 -or even 5- years ago. I’ve
already covered Valve’s latest map, Ancient, and how it relies so heavily on 3D models and details.
Back in Source, a model was considered a luxury! So today I’m going to revisit the maps that made
the biggest impression on me, back in the day. Speaking of which, this video is sponsored by
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I’m always surprised by the stuff I find on this site, and the reasons for doing so- why watch
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still fun to look up a guide on it to appreciate the intricacies of the one on the wall downstairs.
I looked up colour grading, expecting it to be all about adjusting colours and contrast.
Yet I ended up learning about the history of film grain and how it’s made of particles of silver.
And I hoped to learn a thing or two from seeing behind the scenes of MKBHD’s youtube channel,
but ended up learning dozens and was left motivated by his passion for what he does and how
he so eloquently conveys his thoughts and lessons. The site has a number of free classes, but for $15
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of unlimited learning and creative exploration. So! CS:S maps. Let’s start with some
officially-made maps from around that time. Some of these maps were developed by Valve,
others, by Turtlerock. The prettiest ones were done by Turtlerock and usually sported
more custom models than the blockier, presumably Valve-made maps for the game. For instance, Dust2!
I think you’ll agree that looks flat and blocky. I still think it’s got a charm to it,
but you can’t imagine a real place looking like this- it feels more like a low quality set of
some sort. So this is what early, official maps for Counter-Strike Source looked like.
They got better as time went on, and the last map to be released for the game was Militia,
coming out in early 2006. It still suffers from blocky shadows, but the quality of the
landscape has been greatly increased, as has the number of props used to decorate
it. It has a gorgeous custom texture that’s been used for the distant hills and fields.
And to hide the transition to the skybox is several layers of trees,
each less detailed than the last. Visually, this would be deemed one of the best
looking official maps for Counter-Strike: Source. Now let’s look at what the community managed!
This is losttemple, a map released in 2005. So it might not look like anything incredible by
today’s standards, you’ve got to remember that this was only 9 months after the game
first came out. The source engine was new at this time, and very few people knew how to map for it
well. Most maps out at this time were tiny aim maps with the orange textures,
or extremely basic, boring, blocky looking maps, often without any lighting at all.
So for losttemple to come out, with its own art style, custom textures, working radar and
functional defuse layout, was a really big deal for me. This was the first community-made map that
I played that made me realise that the community WAS capable of producing high-quality maps. After
this one, I couldn’t wait to play on other custom maps, or indeed to make my own! Before this,
I assumed that only Valve had the knowledge and manpower to create a good looking defuse map. What
a crazy mindset to have, when these days we have more user-made maps than we know what to do with.
It’s worth mentioning the sequel, losttemple2, which is even prettier, though it came out
in 2008, a bit after I had moved on from Source. This one has quite a weird layout,
featuring bombsites down the middle of the map and lots of courtyards around the outside.
Noir! This black and white map also came out early on, in 2005. If you’re looking at this and
thinking ‘what’s so special about this one’ …yeah, I agree with you now. It doesn’t look that great,
and it doesn’t play that well. But it’s black and white! It’s probably the first map I remember
seeing that used colour correction in this way, and as a novice mapper at the time, who didn’t
know how to do this to my own maps, I saw the maker of this map as a mapping genius. Because
he made it all black and white! The take-away from this map is simple: IF you get there first, it’s
much easier to impress people. Simply by being BLACK AND WHITE, not only do I still remember this
rather sub-par map 16 years after I played it, but I also remembered its name. And I suck with names.
So thank you Alex for making this map. While you were probably unaware that this map left
an impression on anybody, just know that I admired it. Because it was black and white.
CPL_Mill – Players these days will know this map as being Tuscan, but I knew it as CPL Mill,
which I think is the same map, with possibly a few differences to its layout. I acknowledge
this as being one of the first competitively viable custom maps that I ever played on.
I was never too impressed its visuals. I admit, I never liked the layout too much either. But this
was the map I associated good players with. It was the map that all the pros played on, all day long.
So I’d play on it occasionally, just to feel like I was part of something bigger.
All the while, wishing that I had made this map, because I could have made it so much prettier,
and being so popular, people would have noticed, and appreciated it. Maybe. Of course,
there was nothing stopping me from editing it. Nor was there anything stopping me from
making my own map, with prettier graphics. Yet I never did. So that’s why I treasure CPL_Mill- it
felt like the gateway to something greater than myself. And lead to so many grandiose daydreams.
Plus there was that awesome easter-egg that I’d try my best to activate every round.
All of Nipper’s maps were as creepy as hell. His name is well known, yet nothing much is known
about the guy other than that his maps contain dozens of weird songs and bizarre references to
things. And secrets that I will never find in a million years. He is the David Firth of the
mapping scene. And Blahhh in particular is a map that makes me feel uncomfortable. Not even
noclip godmode can make me feel safe from the terrors lurking within. I first heard of this
map from a friend, who bigged this map up as being something scary. I wanted to see it for myself,
but was too scared to do it alone so we gathered a few brave teammates together and ventured about
its many grotesque corridors in search of that BABY HEAD. I couldn’t find it this time, but I
swear at one point, this map had one of those things floating about the place. You’d hear it
approaching and then BOOM it’s right there, coming towards you as you’re frozen in terror. It was
horrible at the time, but 10 years I’ve come to realise that was a highpoint of my teenage years.
Check out Wanda! I remember marvelling at this map, thinking that I’d never manage
something as beautiful as this. My PC at the time could only manage about 10 FPS on this map.
I was so used to associating this map with lag that I was almost surprised when I booted it up on
my Geforce 3080 today and found it to be buttery smooth! Wanda is, by far, the best looking map I
played in my Source days. It felt like the product of several insanely talented people, showing off
for the hell of it. I would stare out at that 3D skybox and think that this was perfection.
And in the middle of it all was a museum, sporting two battling giants. Massive, detailed,
custom models. Now they’re just showing off. And the floor was all shiny and cubemapped, too.
All round, a spectacular map that might have been the reason I made this video in the first place.
Maps these days have surpassed Wanda’s beauty, yet there’s something about this map’s cartoonish,
playful and VERTICAL nature that retains the heart and soul of the Counter-Strike
Source era for me. It just came out too early. Had they ported this to CS:GO 6 years later
then I believe it would still have had what it took to appear in one of the first operations.
De_forest! This is a map that looks great in screenshots, but that falls utterly flat
gameplay-wise. It’s a mess of foliage and poor visibility. This is a Counter-Strike map, made
by somebody who’s trying not to make a map for Counter-Strike. So why am I showing it? Firstly,
because it was unusual to see such dense foliage in the Source engine… and secondly, because this
map’s maker then went on to do the beautiful remake of Dear Esther just a few years later.
And the last one from my time with Counter-Strike is Suburbs.
And this one really requires explanation into what makes it special to me. This is not a map to be
played competitively. It’s not about chokepoints and masterful flick-shots. This was one of those
maps that would lead to every player on the server putting their guns down and exploring,
for the fun of it. People would head-stack to try and reach a high-up area, or would play
hide and seek around the house. This was the sort of brilliant map that let everyone’s imaginations
run wild. And I fear it’s one of the casualties of the game’s more recent, hyper-competitive focus.
I’m guilty of this as well- I can’t get this excited about maps these days. Yet I can still
remember, and feel, what made this map special back then. It felt like a real, lived in place.
A beautiful house that you’d want to live in, or to invite your friend over to for a
LAN or something. It inspired me to make my own maps, with railings and clean looking décor.
The map itself was developed by DNv Cross, who also worked on CPL Mill, so a good bit of talent
went into making it. But guess what: this map was actually based on a real place! Venomfang
gets credit for this, being based on his house. Here are some pictures of it, irl. And I have a
bit more to add to this story! Back in the EARLY days of CS:GO- we’re talking 2013 here- I reached
out to the makers of this map and asked if I could port it to CS:GO. And I was provided with all of
the records that remained for this project. Apparently he was about to move house and
its legacy was kind of preserved through this mapping project. V15 had been publicly released,
but V16 saw a lot of improvements and additions, both inside and outside…
but had never been completely finished. I tried my best to get it working in CS:GO
in 2013, but it proved to be too difficult for me at the time. But the other day, I returned to the
challenge and managed it, combining V15 and V16 together in the best way I could. I had to delete
the gman easter-egg which was causing the map to instantly crash, and a few error codes remain
in the console. But I’m pretty happy with it… though I say it myself! There you go, Venomfang
and DNV Cross- I may be 8 years late, but I did finally got around to porting it to CS:GO.
The other night, I set aside 15 minutes or so just to walk about the map and to
soak up the atmosphere. This place has HISTORY! It’s based on a real place,
though the people who lived there have now moved on. It was ported to a game by somebody who, I
like to think, was inspired to build his friend’s house in Counter-Strike. Because we all have fond
memories of friend’s houses. And on top of all this, I have my own memories from those crazy
servers I used to play this map on. And by porting it to CS:GO, it lives on for more people to enjoy,
and hopefully to make new memories of as they shoot it up and shoot the hostages trapped inside!
If they knew, I reckon whoever bought this house would be horrified.
So those are the maps which meant something to me. Maps which deserve honourable mentions include the
RATS maps- these were always great fun to play on and always contained all sorts of custom details
and fun little easter-eggs. I just can’t think of one in particular that stands out to me right now.
They all blended together in my mind, but I was repeatedly impressed by their high quality.
Surf maps were also fun, but I’ll consider them their own entity to be covered some other time.
The one I’m playing on here is surf_leet,
a terrible map in every way but one that I still had hours of fun on.
And honourable mention to Corse and Meridian, which are both excellent looking maps that
I’d have no doubt enjoyed had I played them at the time. But alas, I didn’t.
So these are a few of the maps which existed before many of CS:GO’s players were even born.