I have a question about the CS:GO levels.

    A long long time ago I was one of the main mappers for Condition zero and I also ported a lot of the original CS maps over to the XBox. This involved doing all kinds of stuff like visual updates and even changes to the levels in general. Most of the original maps were touched by me and the rest of the team at Ritual during this time.

    I decided to play CS:GO tonight just for fun and while playing I started having really strange flash backs. Are the CS:GO maps at all based on the XBox ports? It feels like a lot of the stuff I did is still in the maps, either that or I am going crazy or gas lighting myself. But it also feels like the maps have changed a lot since then too with both miner and large changes making it even harder to remember any details. It was such a long time ago. This goes for a lot of the maps that coworkers worked on too.


    I always figured all of the maps were remade from scratch by now, but they SEEM to be age old Frankensteins still containing a lot of stuff I have done to them.


    So anyway the question is, if I have actually put work into these maps where is the gray area for me to be able to say I worked on maps for the game? It would be awesome to have such a popular game in my portfolio and it makes me want to smack the shit out of myself for forgetting to keep track of stuff like this. Its just a weird realization in general and I am not sure if I am messing with myself or not.

    I guess if you can identify something specific with screenshots and show that they correlate to changes you made back in the day that would be a start. Having 'a feeling' probably isn't enough, as I guess when you work on any map you spend so much time in it that you develop all sorts of weird emotional and memory connections that will be triggered by anything slightly similar.


    I wouldn't be that surprised if Valve had just taken the most recent iteration of each map and paired them back down to gray-boxes before dressing them up in their fancy new clothes, but I guess that would eliminate any of the visual work you'd undertaken.


    I remember a couple of really cool maps from CZ that I'd like to find updated versions of. Do you happen to remember the names of the map where you walk through a crashed plane in a jungle, and the one with two giant round gas containers (again in a jungle I think)? Edit: Just answered my own question with some extensive googling. I was thinking of cs_downed and de_airstrip.

    You can always say you worked for the maps in CZ but i wouldn't say that applies to the current maps. Several people have propably touched these over the years including you. I don't think there is any log of which people have worked on map X or Y.


    As an example, when the maps, nuke, train, office, tides, inferno, assault and militia came to CS:S, they were remade by TurtleRock Studios. HPE (HiddenPath Entertainment)/Valve then used those maps as a base for CSGO, excluding tides of course. Dust2, Dust, Aztec, Assault and others were again remade to support visual style and playstyle of CSGO (more competitive).


    Still, legacy remains even though maps like Inferno layout-wise and visually looks pretty much the same as CS:S version. So does nuke & office too with minor changes and additions but the structure is the same. Maybe that's why you recognize something from older time, the remake is a remake, not a 100% new release.

    To me it's fairly black and white; you can't claim you worked on the CSGO maps as you didn't do any "hands-on" work with the levels themselves nor did you make any of the layouts (correct me if I'm wrong).

    Until recently Inferno didn't look any different than the Source version, and Nuke still doesn't. The maps have evolved in a pretty linear way, it's been a pretty bare-minimum style approach on a couple of different levels. It's a fair question how much credit the people who used to work on them deserve. I think the answer is, it boils down to the specifics.

    What puddy said (with all do respect).

    CS:S maps where evolution of CS1.6 according to the "Raising The Bar" artbook… and to me it looks like a CS:GO is an evolution of Source more than anything else.

    I wouldn't be surprised that stuff you è contributed is still in there, they must have looked at all CS versions!

    One memory I have is that we were able to get the source map for de_Dust I made a series of changes to the levels visual style including the hooking up of the skybox stuff. That blue trim you see in both dust maps for example was created during this time. I also have a pretty strong memory of not having access to the de_dust2 source map file and I had to decompile the bsp and clean up all of the brush work. Though its possible at some point we did end up getting the source file for that one. Believe it or not this work was done in UberRadiant instead of Worldcraft. I had no hand in the extra connection that was added to de_dust as I felt strongly to not modify the level.


    But yeah what Puddy says is likely true. This is actually my fault for not at least keeping track of things anyway. This is actually a really weird situation because I have worked on so many things sometimes I it comes back to haunt me. I will never work on something again without documenting it.


    edit: Inferno was a level that a guy named Chris was working on back in the day. We divided out the levels to each designer at the time. During this time Ritual experienced a mass layoff so I ended up with almost every map lol. That was !fun! haha

    Quote from text_fish

    I remember a couple of really cool maps from CZ that I'd like to find updated versions of. Do you happen to remember the names of the map where you walk through a crashed plane in a jungle, and the one with two giant round gas containers (again in a jungle I think)? Edit: Just answered my own question with some extensive googling. I was thinking of cs_downed and de_airstrip.


    cs_Downed was created in house at Ritual by Kiltron

    de_Airstrip was a map from Gearbox if I recall that we had to maintain and complete. I believe that was handled by Chris or MrClean, you may know his work in the quake 3 community. I ended up doing some basic stuff for game mode implementation at one point though.

    Little features you originally added may of been remodeled in later versions. Valve have rebuilt the maps in every iteration though rather than porting them.

    Ps: I remembered after posting: in the behind the scenes book I'm pretty sure they explain they also looked at some CZ maps for visual upgrades inspiration.

    Anyway that was a great experience, especially with that final workload.

    I think you can write down something like "worked on CZ blablabla some visual and layout upgrades I've contributed to are still traceable in the current version of the game".

    Quote from Castle

    de_Airstrip was a map from Gearbox if I recall that we had to maintain and complete. I believe that was handled by Chris or MrClean, you may know his work in the quake 3 community. I ended up doing some basic stuff for game mode implementation at one point though.


    Airstrip was originally made by Chris "narby" Auty.

    I don't think you can claim you worked on CSGO... if you haven't worked directly on the game. What changes did you make to the maps exactly? Sounds like you just did a bit of caretaking work on the maps rather than completely re-design anything.

    In the end. You know what you worked on. Working on CZ isn't really a piece I would put on my portfolio to show off. As work experience yes, but that would be buried in your resume.

    Quote from PogoP

    I don't think you can claim you worked on CSGO... if you haven't worked directly on the game. What changes did you make to the maps exactly? Sounds like you just did a bit of caretaking work on the maps rather than completely re-design anything.


    I was actually very against making big changes. I still to this day consider both of the dust maps to be remarkable works of art. It was mostly visual upgrades and small changes.

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