‘I’m going to be AFK between the 2nd-21st of June. You can thank me later.
Thank me later. Later. Later later later
YES. The day I touched down in Japan, Counter Strike 2 got its first major update,
being to swap out the old buy menu system for a pick-and-choose weapon selection, it released its
map editor AND had Dust2 swapped out for Mirage. Which is the bit I’ll be covering in this video.
Now Mirage’s Source 2 overhaul, just like Dust2’s, is what Valve deems to be a ‘touchstone’ revision,
being the least changed kind of map. But Source 2’s lighting changes on this map will likely be
among the most noticeable the game will get. Because unlike most maps in CS:GO,
which received a full makeover at some point during the game’s lifetime, Mirage did not.
Sure, it got a 2018 semi make-over to replace some of the worst-looking props and textures,
but its lighting remained changed- unlike with most other proper defuse maps, which at some
point during CS:GO’s lifetime received an overhaul that made them a lot brighter and more colourful.
So consider this new Source 2 version to also double up as being Mirage’s
lighting overhaul that it DIDN’T get in the last game. WHICH I KNOW some of you
will dislike! Many of you complain that Source 2 makes its levels look
too bright and colourful, and this change will have affected Mirage more than most.
Now I said how the new Overpass version contains some props seen in Left 4 Dead from 2009, but
Mirage contains ones that are even older still! Here, is Counter-Strike Source, from 2004.
This is the Italy map. You see these food crates? Yup, featured in this new Source 2 version of
Mirage. And these floor tiles? Yup, 2004 Italy again. If it aint broke, don’t fix it I guess.
But you know what WAS broken? THIS corner of Mirage, which Valve stubbornly refused
to fix for nearly a decade. And indeed, it has -finally- been fixed.
It’s worth saying that another time: the hole in kitchen has been FIXED!
But this near-by fan has sort of been broken. Indeed, all of the spinning fans on this map
seem to cast ambient-occlusion-y, indirect shadows onto their surroundings. Which is very
interesting indeed! It seems like it’s not only players who cast these kinds of things in Source
2. But it feels like it’s casting shadows just because the blades are pointing at these walls,
without accounting for where the light is actually being blocked from? I don’t know,
I can’t say it’s wrong, but it feels a bit approximate. You don’t care. Let’s move on.
If you’re looking for gameplay changes, you’re not going to find many, because Valve deems this
map to have solid foundations already. The best gameplay changes you’re going to find here is
improved visibility thanks to how everything now looks so bright and colourful. The floor
in B seems a bit flatter, the walls, less stained and more readable, this hole in kitchen has been
closed up, and it seems like many small props that were previously floating ever so slightly above
the ground have been lowered. The dust motes here have gone which may improve visibility as well,
and the ugly building trims around CT spawn have been removed which may make it easier to throw
grenades over them at the start of the round. All very minor things, but if you’re expecting changes
then cling onto these because you’re expecting changes cos you’re not going to find much else.
But graphically, there have been a few nice changes. Most noticeably, this hole
in kitchen has been sealed up. But another great improvement is to reflective surfaces. Check out
this reflection in the guard box’s glass window. It goes to show how low-resolution it used to be
in CS:GO- whereas CS2’s reflection is clear enough for you to make out all the flaws with it, like
how these palm trees appear to stretch weirdly. Another amusingly wrong-looking reflection can
be seen in these windows at bombsite B. Wrong, yes, but at least now it’s wrong in high-res.
Now you know how much clearer the reflections in Source 2 can be, let’s move on over to Palace for
the BEST example of parallax-corrected cubemaps so far. These, unlike the fixed ones in CS:GO, can
move and update as you change position, which when into a cube-shaped room properly, can be virtually
identical-looking to full-blown raytracing. But this ISN’T a simple cube room. It has
stuff in the middle, which could mess the cubemap reflections up,
IF not done properly. But some mapper at Valve has had great fun experimenting with different cubemap
placements until they found the best setup. And it seems like many different cubemaps have been
used in this single room. If you look closely, you’ll see that when you’re stood either side
of these pillars, the reflections show the gap between the pillars as being a drawn-on wall.
So what they’ve done is to use multiple cubemaps in this one room- there will be at LEAST 1 running
along the length of the room, either side of these columns, then another between each of
the columns which the game blends between and can display multiple simultaneously in some
way that I can’t even get my head around, but it’s wonderfully done. Most players won’t even realise
that they’re just basic cubemaps and not something far more framerate demanding like… raytracing! But
again, most players probably don’t care. A few of the textures have been updated,
like the ground on Bombsite A, in this shop just here, and these aren’t even new textures, they’ve
just shrunk the existing ones to make them appear higher in resolution. And it works, I guess!
But the bricks here look new and improved, with Valve continuing to locate and to swap
out the most offensively low quality assets. The arrow that was below the sign to B has
been removed which seems like a bit of an oversight when the arrow is used everywhere
else. Wall-mounted lights have been added to this connector to justify why it now looks so bright
and glowy, and it seems like the skybox has been redone to look less dreadful. Gone are the fake,
low-resolution, painted-on distant buildings: we now get proper 3D ones everywhere instead! Well,
more of them than before. I also notice more greenery around the map, which is always welcome.
The lights in palace LOOK bright now, rather than just a light model with a glow sprite
placed in the middle of them. And it looks like capslock got stuck on for this sign right here.
And the vast improvement to the shadow definition is much appreciated. You can see the shadows from
various directions mixing and blurring in exotic ways on the floor in underpass,
but the improvement to shadows can be seen everywhere. The shadow resolution is so high
that even individual bits of debris on the ground now cast their own shadows. I love
the way these pillows cast shadows onto the sofa behind, and how the interiors of
these tins and the undersides of the bottles here are darker than the rest of the scene,
or how the subtle shadows behind everything on this wall helps make the whole thing look more 3D
somehow. It just gels everything together a lot more realistically. And the brilliant thing is:
none of this required much effort from Valve! …presumably just hours and hours and hours of
sitting around, waiting for it to render. And stuff looks much more grounded in the
level where previously it appeared to have been drawn in, or floating in some way or whatever.
Everything’s just much better shaded now, especially down thin cracks between objects.
And of course, brightly coloured things now cast those colours onto the surrounding areas
a lot more. You’ll see it with the green and red tarpaulins on bombsite B, but I was most impressed
with it in Jungle- it even got me to look up and to appreciate these decorative hanging red rags
which looked so ugly previously I tried to avoid looking at them! Just like the hole in kitchen.
But as Jesus once said: God doesn’t close up kitchen without opening up under window,
and as you can see here, this gap behind the bench has been made even WIDER in CS2! Valve, pls fix.
STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP