Look! Source 2 water ripples.
Don’t they look nice.
But are they all style over substance? Or is it possible
for water to make the gameplay better as well? Anyone who’s played a water-based Spyro level will
tell you no. But I say YES. It’s already a cool feature in CS:GO… but it could be even better,
and in this video I’ll be discussing ways in which water could add to Counter-Strike’s gameplay.
Some of these suggestions might be a little bit silly. Others,
very silly. But there might even be a few that competitive players might appreciate.
Maybe.
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Water. What is it good for?
SHIPS OBVIOUSLY.
But its usage in other types of games is typically a trade-off, sacrificing speed in exchange for an
extra degree of freedom, leaving you free to travel up or down as far as the environment
-and your breath bar- will let you. Problem is: it’s not very fun. It’s normally used to limit
your movement, rather than to expand it. I swear a lot of games feel obliged to add water mechanics,
even if they don’t have any plans to do anything good with it. I’m looking at YOU, 90’s platformer
games. And Deus Ex. And… Counter-Strike! You can’t even aim properly in that game.
…And in the water it gets even worse!
I can count on one hand the games where water is the preferred medium for navigation.
In Subnautica, the gameplay is all about launching expeditions from the surface and you’re rewarded
for delving more greedily and deeply, and it helps that the land controls feel so shonky
you actually WANT to get back in the water again. But unless it adds gameplay beyond being a cheap
gimmick, levels in Counter-Strike are probably better off coming up with a land-based alternative
instead. In Counter-Strike, would you rather spend 10 seconds swimming through an area,
or 10 seconds on good old fashioned, tried and tested land instead? Exactly.
Let’s see how water is used in Counter-Strike currently.
In older maps like Port and Seaside, water acts as instant death. It is something to
be avoided at all costs- and a cheap way of confining people to the playable space.
It’s sort of like the drop around Vertigo… but less fun.
But in maps Ancient and Overpass, the water isn’t quite so deadly.
Did you know that people can drown in as little as 5 cm of water?
Please don’t test that. But in Counter-Strike, it takes 47 units
of depth before it’s deep enough to drown in. That isn’t 5 cm- that’s more like 5 BANANAS,
strung together length-wise! …and even then, you’ll only drown if you’re crouching.
Which defuse map in Counter-Strike do you think has the deepest water?
Cos this surprised me. Overpass’s sludge-filled mess bottoms out at about 16 units in depth.
T spawn on Ancient is 23 units deep. And Canals… that’s got to be the deepest,
hasn’t it. It’s in the name! And yet… the water in that map is only 20 units deep.
Yeah! This really surprised me too. The water on ANCIENT is deeper! It’s probably cos you
can’t actually see through the water on Canals and it makes it look deeper than it really is.
Not that any of this matters, since none of them are even
half the depth that’s required to drown in. Indeed, we have to look elsewhere for that.
Lake has a drowny bit just here. And the dangerzone maps apparently have no problem
with drowny areas either. But should you venture into deep water, you’re in for a big surprise…
…Valve hasn’t put much effort into the swimming animations in this game. In fact,
‘effort’ might be a bit of an overstatement for what looks like default land animations
doing their best to interpret movements made underwater. I had no idea they were THIS bad!
Probably because swimming is SUCH an underused and infrequently seen ability in this game.
Even in maps which contain swimmable water. And if you think swimming is under-used, you
should see drowning! There have probably been more smoke grenade kills in this game than there have
been drownings. It doesn’t even have its own death icon. Let’s see what it takes to drown in CS:GO.
Your character can hold their breath for 12 seconds. Pathetic. After which,
the drowning begins, and you lose your health in abrupt, stabby-sounding amounts.
It takes 20 seconds to lose 100 health from drowning, making the entire process last
32 seconds! That’s a fairly large portion of a round right there.
Plus, escape the water before you die, and your health will start to heal back up to however much
you had before you started drowning. Wow, Valve really put a lot of thought into this mechanic!
Shame it’s virtually unused. I bet you didn’t even know anything about drowning
in CS:GO before this video. (Unless you saw my previous video on the topic).
But that’s how poorly used this mechanic in the game is!
Indeed, it would take a lot to incorporate this sort of thing into Counter-Strike’s gameplay.
But I’m going to try: Imagine there’s a really overpowered spot on the level,
but to reach it requires a 30 second under-water speed run, which you’d have
to navigate perfectly so as not to die on the way. But I’m going to warn you: 30 seconds is a long,
long time. That’s how long it takes to run from one end of Nuke, all the way to the other. Or
from CT spawn of Dust2, through to B, through to T spawn, and then to the entrance to long A again.
Any way. Let’s see how our guy’s doing on this map I’ve made where drowning is a gameplay
feature of sorts. He’s not going to die- but he will be reduced down to extremely low health.
‘What is happening’
But success! He’s reached the elusive, high-risk, high-reward spot,
and can breathe a sigh of relief. For he’s got an AWP for his troubles! …but it wouldn’t take
much to finish him off. Since it’ll now take him a while before he heals back to full health again,
in the mean-time he’ll be vulnerable to fluke wallbangs, and grenade blasts.
What a shame.
In my decades of experience of mapping for Counter-Strike, I have made MANY silly maps,
and I feel like, even if such a spot was made, and WORKED, it would likely be used twice,
by which point it would either be deemed not worth it, or overpowered.
At best, it’s deemed balanced, but it’s only used infrequently, and as a Hail-Mary. It just
wouldn’t be worth the space it takes up in a level. Obviously. I mean… who thought it would.
So let’s forget about deep water in Counter-Strike. But shallow water… that
could play an important role. In fact, it does already!
Landing in water stops falling damage. Don’t ask how, it just does. Even if it’s puddle-deep! It
was used on Canals to soften this fall from B site. It’s still found on dangerzone levels as
a safe place for jump-mine users to land. And it’s been widely used in surf maps to
stop people from splattering on the end platform when they eventually complete the course. I would
say that preventing falling damage is the most important use of water in the game, right now.
What a shame, given water’s audio and visual properties, which I believe could lead to some
really interesting situations. *SPLASH**SPLASH*
You hear that? That’s the sound of splashing. So when the enemy hears this sound,
they know I must be stood somewhere around this area.
Or indeed, inside the litter tray.
Shit I cracked it
Counter-Strike is all about locating your enemies and
figuring out how you’re going to outsmart them.
*Counter Terrorists win*
Sometimes, it can be hard to tell where footsteps are coming from- especially on
maps with lots of verticality, due to CS:GO’s questionable surround sound properties.
Nuke was notorious for this, especially when every surface on that map was made of concrete.
Luckily, through numerous improvements to the audio effects, and strategic placement of metal
in bits across that map to mix the footstep sounds up, it’s easier than ever before to tell where a
footstep is coming from. But it’s still a mess. But water could help! I never thought I’d say
this, but they should flood a bit of that nuclear reactor so that sounds made in that area are
easily distinguishable from the rest. It would take the weight off the other footstep sounds,
and would quickly get an affectionate and adorable sounding nickname, like ‘wet’ or ‘splashy’.
Now, this isn’t the best example because this water’s rubbish, BUT,
If I cover myself up with this… this blender, you won’t be able to see me any more. But you
still know that I’m here because you can see my reflection in the water.
…or you would if I had the latest DirectX.
The Source engine uses such an old method of reflections that they’ve gone from being good, to
bad, to actually being GOOD again! They go about it the brute-force way of literally rendering
the game again from the water’s perspective. So it sounds really bad, because… you know,
it’s drawing everything twice, which will slows PCs down. But Source is the perfect engine to do
this, since it’s good at ONLY drawing the areas that need to be seen, and not the rest of the
world as well. And so what if it draws this area twice? These days we all have more than
enough power to run Counter-Strike at hundreds of frames a second, even with these reflections.
DON’T we.
But not all of these reflections are equal. For each water surface reflects different properties.
This old example of Aztec doesn’t reflect ANYTHING from the scene,
beyond just approximate colours. But the ones found on Ancient and Sirocco reflect a lot more.
Somebody at Valve has actually gone about, picking which things should be drawn in these reflections.
And they’ve done a good job of this because most of you probably haven’t noticed a problem with
these reflections! I spend more time than most of you do, and I can see these limitations. How sad.
These days, modern games tend to use screen space reflections which gets what’s
drawn on-screen already and attempts to approximate how these things will
look in the reflections. Which is fine, as long as they’re already visible on-screen,
but they’ll disappear the moment that they aren’t. But Source’s reflections aren’t limited like this:
they’re perfectly happy to draw stuff that’s off the side of the screen and around corners.
Just like a reflection would in real life!
Here's a situation from Counter-Strike Source, where I can visibly see enemies that can’t
be seen any other way. ‘Where could they be?’
This water reflection technology is a powerful effect, and can be used by creative mappers
in other EVEN COOLER ways, like using it to display a TV screen that shows somewhere
else in the level. Or to use it to create the perfect mirror! And there you have it:
a way of peeking around corners, using the awesome power of Source-based reflections!
Like I said: Counter-Strike is about information. Most of the time it involves risking getting shot
in the face- but a mirror that lets you see but not directly SHOOT enemies could add a new
dynamic to it. And I’m SOOO going to add this to a map in a way that encourages everybody to
lob grenades over the top and or to wall bang through where they see the enemies.
If the idea of that doesn’t get you excited then just… unsubscribe. What are you even doing here.
What happens if you chuck a Molotov into the water? Answer:
probably the most boring thing that could happen. It acts like the water isn’t even there.
Imagine if there were spots in the map that you couldn’t Molotov BECAUSE they were covered in
water. Imagine if a Molotov, landing in water, simply floated there and let people pick it
up and reuse it. OR… have it set the water on fire, but then have that fire follow the water’s
currents downstream. Imagine having a moving wall of fire floating across the map! Valve,
please pick one of these alternatives; they’re so much better than what we currently have.
And before you say stuff like ‘flowing water is too difficult to do’, or
‘isn’t worth considering’, get this: IT’S ALREADY A FEATURE. Valve has already added
it to the Source engine! It was out as far back as games like Left 4 Dead and Portal 2. They had
this system that would paint the flow of water onto the surface to aid in showing players where
to go. Even over 10 years ago, and yet they thought it was worth doing for visual reasons.
And gameplay ones. How about that. But surely, they’re not talking
about having physically flowing objects on the surface, are they?
Oh how about that.
So I’m not even asking Valve for something new here. I’m asking for them to use something that
ALREADY EXISTS in the Source engine for this very purpose. In fact, look closely enough and you’ll
notice the water on maps like Canals and Ancient ALREADY FLOWS! Valve has done all the hard work:
groundwork is in place for water to influence the movement of stuff it touches.
All Valve needs to do now is to make it work! And I’m not just talking about Molotov flames
here. Have it so that dropped items also float downstream. Yes, you might have seen an enemy
with the bomb near A, but what you didn’t see was them dropping it into a drain that leads to B.
Next-gen strat and all that. Have water slow players down who run against it,
and speed them up when they run with it. Allow it to aid in track jumps to hard-to-reach places.
Use it to expand Counter-Strike’s movement skill system! To be honest, they don’t even need to
add a flow system. I managed it perfectly well already using invisible push blocks everywhere.
Look at that: perfectly realistic.
Now all it needs is for some maps to make the most of it.
So before you tell me water has no place in Counter-Strike, I’ll say to you:
it might, if people had more imagination. Have the negev fire up so much water
when fired into the stuff that it creates a temporary ‘smokescreen’.
Make it so the negev, fired into the water, creates a cloud comparable to a smoke grenade.
Have openable dams that flood areas of the map, or cause crates to float about, changing the
cover in that particular bit of the level. Allow pistols to fire underwater so that some routes are
pistol-only- that’ll shake up eco rounds! Please Valve, stop using water for all
the bits it’s bad at, and start playing to its strengths. Give it some new ones
…and give us driveable vehicles while you’re at it.