Late last year, the Warowl and FMPone both released new maps. These are not what you’d
consider ‘finished’. Their layouts are functional, but visually they’re still in
a primitive, dev-textured state. They have a lot of similarities: both were
developed by high-profile people from within the CS:GO community. Both were ‘done’
in just a few days. And both projects were made for ‘fun’. Because the last thing
you want is to be tied to a commitment that people will pester you about forever.
You can download both from the workshop and play them for yourself. I don’t know anything
about FMPone’s map that can’t be gathered from stalking him on Twitter- seems he wanted
to focus on experimenting with unique bombsites, and he started the design with this sketch
on a piece of paper. Being a highly experienced mapper, I think he just wanted a judgement-free
way of experimenting with some fun mapping ideas he’s had, without the usual worries
of how competitively viable it is, or how literally unplayable a corridor would be if
a pro-player was to lock it down. The result of however he made it is a small
map- taking just seconds to go from one site to the other. And a lot of it’s set at slightly
off, or 45 degree angles- which can be quite disorienting at first if you’re used to
CS:GO’s typical square designs. A lot of what makes this map unique will be how those
sections join with the standard segments. The shortest way between the bombsites is
to traverse this water-logged room. No doubt your footsteps will give away your position,
but in an unusual twist, he’s added a narrow ledge around the sides so with some clever
movement it might be possible to pass this region quietly! I also notice a lot of verticality,
with plenty of windows and platforms to jump off from. On the B side of the map you can
make it quite a long way if you nail the first jump from the ledge. And players are even
encouraged to stand on top of bombsite A- I’ve not been such a rebel since Compound!
Since this map’s release he’s updated it quite a few times now and it’s beginning
to get some basic textures. From my experience, I like how maps look before
they’re textured. I see he’s used light grey and white colours which reflect a lot
of light- giving the environments a warm, friendly glow and good visibility. I find
it hard to keep this simplicity in my maps when I begin detailing and often prefer how
they looked before I started trying to make them look like a real place. Inevitably it
must be done but it can take a lot of messing about before it looks as visually pleasing
as it did before it was textured. Often, I’d feel I had done a good job, but booting up
an earlier version would remind me of how hard it is to one-up a simple, untextured
map! Anyway, best of luck to FMPone with whatever
he chooses to do with this- if anything. Now onto Warowl’s, which is probably more
interesting to cover because he’s shared a lot more of its development with us in the
form of a youtube video. In it he says he made the map because he wanted to be creative,
and to make something fun for competitive 5v5. Both good reasons if you ask me.
He went about developing his map’s layout in an unusual way- he traced a few of the
existing maps that he thinks play well, then from this designed his own in the form of
an overhead map layout. He seemed to really enjoy it and it’s always great to see somebody
enjoying something creative like this! I personally have never developed a map layout
this way- or at least, never got far with any that I planned like this. Over the years,
I have been sent many map overviews, usually drawn on paper, and have been asked to say
how they’ll play. But I can’t do this! In my opinion, most CS:GO maps look quite
similar from the overhead view. If I told you to think of your favourite Counter-Strike
map, I could impress you with my psychic abilities by drawing the CT spawn here, the T spawn
here, one bombsite here and the other here, some kind of mid route and then by connecting
them all with lots of corridors like this and there you have it: any 3-lane map from
the game! Judging a map from an overview is like judging a movie from a summary. You can
probably tell if it’s going to be bad or if there’s something glaringly wrong with
it. But you can’t distinguish between an okay one and the BEST EVER! That comes from
the execution, and from the details that aren’t visible from that summary.
In Counter-Strike’s case, height makes a large difference to how a map plays and is
something you can’t get a feel for from a radar overview. Not even from a detailed
one. There’s never a substitute to being there
in-game to study the locations and angles. I would always develop my map layouts in 3D.
Preferably with walls, since where they are and how tall they are also impact how the
map feels. The War Owl got his 2D design, made it in
the editor and then varied the heights of the different areas, added the walls and began
the playtesting. When should you start playtesting a level?
The answer is: the sooner the better! And for him to get to that stage within a single
day is good. You don’t want to get too attached to what you’ve already made. You should
have no loyalty to it until you know how it feels to play it in-game. By all means plan
it, but judge it only after playtesting. And you can’t just perfect one bit of the
level before moving onto the next. Change one area and it changes how the rest of the
map plays, so be ready to go back and forth between parts in one of the longest games
of whack-a-mole you’ve ever played. Parts which used to be okay may now need changing.
In particular, the bombsites on my maps would go through large adjustments, or even total
redesigns, before I was happy with them. As hated as they may be… I like playtesting
with bots. They are, after all, how most community-made maps will be played. Bots are good for getting
a feel for where the teams will meet, and I will often learn a lot from how they play,
especially when they catch me out with their odd positioning and timing. For each major
version my maps go through, I use bots to polish off the rough edges, but then move
to actual people for the ‘real experience’. It’s easier said than done, though- it’s
difficult to get enough people together on a custom map for a match to be played!
But the War Owl managed this in his first match on his new map, drew on both teams-
which bodes well for the map’s balance. But before he can be sure, he will need to
play many, many more games on it. He will need to know how it feels to draw on it, to
win on it, and, perhaps most importantly, what it’s like to be utterly defeated! Is
his map still enjoyable when he’s dying every round? Desperate games lead to desperate
strategies and ridiculous plays. Most will fail. But it’s at times like this that overpowered
strategies emerge and the map might require adjustments to balance for them.
And if it’s hard enough to get a server full of people, it’s harder still to get
a server full of people already familiar with playing your map! It’s harder than you might
think to playtest your map in a competitive setting.
You can see Mirage’s influence in middle. It’s got a window for CTs to use, boxes
for terrorists to hide behind, a route leading off to A and a raised half going to B. It
doesn’t have the underpass though. Bombsite A has a raised platform to indicate where
the bomb should be planted and has a high-up indoor approach that Terrorists will come
from. I get a feeling that Mirage might be the Warowl’s favourite map. There’s no
overwhelmingly well-covered spot to plant at. You’ll really need situational awareness
of which routes the enemies could be coming from to survive the plant.
Bombsite B is set in some kind of ruins- which when used in conjunction with a spot of parkour
lets you reach this crows nest. CT’s have this powerful indoor room to defend it, but
terrorists have 3 separate entrances to attack it from. I’m always sad when CT spawn gets
neglected after the round begins, but in this map it serves as the safest route between
the sites so will probably see a lot of use. A bit of the video that stood out to me was
when he said:
‘THIS IS NOT HOW YOU MAKE A MAP. I ACTUALLY DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M DOING. I’M JUST
HAVING FUN’.
Which is funny to me, cos he’s made a map that people are playing on. If that doesn’t
count then what does? I hope he said it as a joke, and not because he’s afraid that
if he doesn’t put himself down, then other mappers will feel the need to do so.
Because any mapper worth listening to will know that there’s more than one way to make
a map. If somebody does something and it produces a good map then good for them. I know I’ve
criticised the 2D-overview-sketch method of planning a map. It’s not to say that a good
map couldn’t be made from that method. It’s just not enough information to judge a map
from. In fact, many of Counter-Strike’s official maps were made within days, from
mappers who probably had weeks of experience with the game. Dust 2 was made without even
knowing where the bombsites were going to be! At one point there was a bombsite in a
cave in MIDDLE! So you’re wrong, Warowl. You HAVE made a
map. It isn’t how I’d have done it… but so what. Plus FMPone starts with a 2D
sketch as well. If you’re watching this video, hoping to
learn how to make a good, balanced map, I hope you walk away from here LESS confident
than you started. ‘Balanced’ doesn’t exist. It’s an illusion. A bourgeois construct!
A map’s balance will always vary, depending on the players, the teams and what they’ve
had to eat that day and what their favourite colour is and so on. The best you can hope
for is to develop a map that has one-sided games… for both sides. You want it to sometimes
be CT-sided, and other times, T-sided. Even decades after its release, Dust2’s balance
is still changing as strategies, weapon balance and metas develop.
So don’t trust ANY ONE who can confidently state how good a map is. There will be people
who will judge the map’s quality after a single game. Others, a single round. I’ve
seen people join the server, get killed, moan about how one-sided the map is and then leave
again. And if you’re unlucky enough to have a famous do this to your map… you’re doomed!
People like confidence, even misplaced confidence, and a bad word from the wrong person could
doom your map forever, through no fault of your own. I’ve only gotten less confident
about my own ability to judge a map as I’ve learned more- though I still make the mistake
of assuming confident people know something I don’t.
It’s one of those things that, as a map maker, you’ve got to be careful of. Even
when I had invested hundreds of hours into it, a passing comment from a player would
make me question my decisions and the quality of my work. With hindsight, I think I was
in a better position to judge it than anybody else was. As well as having played so much
on my own map across so many iterations, I was also passionate, excited and enthusiastic
about it. I don’t think you can ask more than this from a map maker.
So my advice to the Warowl is to play his map, as much as he can. To listen to feedback,
to consider changes, but to always weigh it up against what he wants from his level. I
find my maps eventually developed a ‘feel’ to them- kind of like a personality that I
could use to quickly measure new ideas up against to see if they fitted. It served as
a useful filter to the suggestions my map received. It’s hard to describe what I mean,
but it was as though my map boiled down to a few key parts that I would refuse to change-
I just didn’t know what they were until I got a suggestion to change them. Don’t
mistake that for me being stubborn! Because there were some people who I swear
‘shared my vision’ for my map. They’d suggest big changes that I had never even
considered, but when I heard them I immediately thought ‘yes, that sounds good’- as though
they were solutions to problems I didn’t even know my map had!
You might as well be open to experimentation- the only way to know for sure if something
else is better is to try it- and you can always revert it if it doesn’t work. But whatever
happens to the Warowl’s map, he has to have the final say. It’s his map, after all.
And I respect that. Who would I be to try and change it to mine?
A mapper must also know when to stop. A map is never finished- merely iterated on until
the developer moves on for whatever reason. There’s this idea that if you keep working
on a map that it’ll get better and better, as though it’s somehow approaching perfection.
But I’ll tell you now, I don’t think there is a perfect layout (apart from Dust2). If
your map is fun, and its layout is interesting, maybe it’s best to leave it at that and
to start on another one. When I used to make music I could work on the same track for months.
It would change and change, I’d think it was getting better, but when I looked back
at older versions I’d realise there were bits that they did better, and that the newer
versions weren’t improving- they were simply different. From the effort that I had invested
into that one song, I could have made several different songs of the same quality.
One of the reasons I’ve made this video is because a lot of you have contacted me,
telling me I should collaborate with the Warowl to make his map better. NO! I’m not going
to do that. Because it’s a big undertaking, and I prefer working on my own and having
control of everything. But also because I think Warowl has done what he set out to do.
Hopefully he’s caught the mapping bug and will want to develop more in the future! And
if he wants advice, I’ll happily give it to him. But once he’s happy with his map’s
layout, the next step will be to detail it- and I personally hate detailing maps. It’s
by far the most time-intensive part of the process… and it achieves the least. I want
to make a map that people enjoy playing on! That’s what got me into it in the first
place. In the time it takes to create a 3D model of a chair, I could have beautifully
decorated a room from pre-made assets. And in the time it takes for me to do that, I
could have developed a complete, untextured map. Guess which of these 3 things yields
the most gameplay. And yet, when mapping, I find that most of
my time is spent bogged down in adding trims and props and optimising everything to keep
framerates acceptable. At no point is any of this necessary for the map to be fun. It
just gets in the way of the process for me. People take a good map for granted, but it
takes so much time and effort, so many iterations to make even a small section look good. And
even when you do, people will only hunt out and talk about its flaws. It’s thankless.
That’s not to say you can’t enjoy detailing a map- a good looking map is something to
be proud of- but to make mapping about the superficial is to miss the heart of what mapping
is. Unfortunately, that’s what the reality is.
There’s so much competition these days that you HAVE to spend months detailing your map
to even hope to get people to play it. Even then I suspect many will rate a map from the
screenshots (or map overview!), without ever setting foot on it. These days, the standard
of mapping is so high that you need custom assets and a team of talented people to even
hope of producing a map worthy of being included in the game.
And even then… is it worth it? From my years of hosting community maps, the toughest bit
of it was getting people to play on them. I couldn’t believe it! Back in Counter-Strike
Source, my favourite thing to do was to hop on a community server, to download a custom
map and to explore it with friends. But I think that in recent years, Counter-Strike
has become increasingly professional. It’s more about winning and being the best than
about messing about. And people would rather perfect their skills on an existing map than
to ‘waste’ their time exploring a new one. Even when a map is included in the game,
only a fraction remain there for more than a couple of months.
If you want to map, don’t do it expecting fame or glory. Do it for fun, for the thrill
of learning something new and to gain an appreciation for what goes into the maps you’ve spent
all those years watching and playing. Do what Warowl and FMPone have done with these maps.
There’s so much enjoyment to be had from making a map. If you’re keen to give it
a go then check out my tutorials which will teach you the basics.