[WIP] Rumble

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Last week I spent 3 days in Florence, collecting around 5000 reference photos (and a video) of a small area near the Ponte Vecchio and Uffizi Gallery.

My holidays will be turned into a defuse map called Rumble on which I will work with a close friend of mine, with its main features being that it's based off an entirely real place and features a horizontal Mid (between the sites, not spawns).

But at first, before going there I prepared everything in streetview and marked a few places in my notes that aren't so visible and made sure to take more photos of those particular photos in comparison to what's available online.

Along recording the notes I made a greybox of the map (Click if you dare for an absolute monstrosity) to see if it would fit in the game and the scale made it roughly the same size as DE_Seaside, quite a small map on its own.

The first day I parked my car late in the evening and I had to spend the time walking around the streets as most of my photos would turn out blurry without a tripod and I was pleasantly surprised how well it would work in CS:GO, with one exception of how high the buildings are (which would prevent a lot of smokes, but Nuke does just fine).

Next 2 days were spent eating out in the restaurants with my girlfriend (there was probably no other way I could convince her to bear with me spending hours in a tourist crowded spot, moving 5 meters in 20 mins at my fastest) and trying to spot things I would miss and regret not capturing when I'd be back at my computer, so I pretty much took pics of anything of reference.

I also tried to get as many interiors as I could in the area, I also paid for tickets into museums to gather a better understanding of the scale that 2D maps wouldn't really provide.

The only major discovery was that when I thought if there was a need to balance the map I'd have to resort to some underground caves or sewer areas but to my surprise almost entirety of the city area is actually raised and has basements that would suffice as ground floors by themselves and if needed, could be connected elsewhere (this should be fun).

For now, I'm doing a new complete greybox from the measurements I gathered in real life and the references for a short in game test and then it'll be exported to a 3D modelling program for a quicker detailing process but it'll all have to go back in for testing.

A snippet of current reference sorting process

Good luck to everyone else and I look forward to detailing out the process of making this map (and also a little bit of history of it in another post).

Didn't want to quite hit the 2 month mark since last "update" so here's a few pics of me testing the scale of the current graybox ingame.

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Disclaimer: You might end up seeing maybe 5% of entirety of this in the final version.

I will also not post a picture of the layout (not that you can't find it in google maps) as I've posted places only where floor already exists on the map.

Quote from MikeGon

5 hours ago, MikeGon said: Hey guys @Karthoum @Mega

Great progress. starting to look really nice!!

Hum... this raises concern, if I'm being honest. Be cautious of the "form before function" trap. The layout should always be solid, engaging and pretty much locked down before moving to environments, hell before even choosing what the theme will be. If you don't do that, your environment work will likely be undermined when you'll inevitably need to make structural changes down the road... ?

I recommend making your design decisions now and applying them, and then you guys can cruise control environment work the whole way through! ?

Otherwise keep it up guys, Can't wait to see where this one goes!!

You've clearly understood the main issue a map would have if it does take exact layout from real life (and sometimes even simply inspiration) and then just put straight up in to the game but this is just a small thing for us,

Spoiler

our first layout of this map was actually set in Venice and drawn in 2014 and I took it up to make a map with a horizontal mid (so it's inbetween the sites instead of spawns) work in CSGO. However several issues completely unrelated to the layout arose and we had to put it on hold/stop completely for another map and then Valve ended up releasing Canals which just made me personally not want to do anything with the map ever again as it was coincidentally be just a block away from where Canals is now set in real life.

I ended up looking for another location hoping to find some use for the old layout and rekindle the love letter to Italy we used to have, if not for making the best map ever then at least getting a solid thing done for once that people would enjoy to explore. I started looking at Naples as the time I spent there blew my mind, it's just nothing like the rest of the country but to no avail, it was just too big or the set pieces would never really require the map to be set in Italy, it would be just a dressing to the layout and not much more.

In the end I remembered Ponte Vecchio and I had been there a few years before and it surprised me that it wasn't in CSGO outside of some low quality maps (Don't even have to confirm that, I am pretty sure this is the case) and I just looked at it to figure out how to include it in the game, maybe design a new layout around it but then I saw the exact outlines of the map Mega drew 5 years ago, with probably more Counter Strike related feel than it originally would have been and it just blew my mind. Not by coincidence but the fact I even found it, next to one of most recognisable buildings ever.

So far my progress "designing" the layout is very specific to the way I do things I model in 3D, will the player see this, how will they pay attention to it or will it distract them too much but also completely constraining myself to how the layout is in reality.

I've had to look at cases (by cases I mean 5% pieces of the map separated from next one by walls or corners) in the layout and struggling to think how it would play out but then either something clicks in my head or Mega brings something up to me that I had never noticed before and it ends up solving itself.

In the original 2014 version of the layout I had one of bomb sites closer to T spawn and the mid was like Seaside, both which have been rectified in this version as neither sites were that defendable by CTs (the game was different back then) and now it's a impenetrable fortress/open field situation in A and B respectively. For the Mid it would have been fun in lower skill groups to have it being open and impossible to cross for one of the teams but it's kind of insane if you have to smoke it even in pistol rounds.

The main things that people definitely won't be used to is a completely new element that dynamically changes Terrorists' access to A site entrance in Middle and how high every single building is, blocking 80% of the map for long distance grenades but it's exotic map competition after all.

TL;DR

I've done this layout a half a decade before but never finished it and by luck managed to match it to a real place. I've also carefully thought out how to perfectly rip off Mirage/Overpass' (least and most favourite maps in the game) balancing of one site being completely open and the other tighly locked down.

After an insane amount of procrastinating (I will look back at this period and reminisce with sorrow because man, this map would be nearly done by now and playtested to near perfection)

I've finally gotten round to making the first radar for the map.

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Does anyone have access to Terri's Auto Radar that supports instances? My map is made out of 20-30 instances so I tried to compile the source code again from the GitHub but it wouldn't work..

I had to do it manually in the end, still pretty good if I keep an alternate version of the map just for the radar.

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On a side note, I'll be playtesting this map soon with a download in Steam Workshop if anyone cares.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/fi…/?id=1894082604(Have to wait until it's approved)

Edit: I'm struggling with making the overview match my radar coordinates, it just seems to be shrunken and you can walk out of the spot it shows on the radar

Map has been released, there already has been a playtest done by Raidboss community and I think it's pretty positive as the map played out exactly how I designed it to.

On to more important things, since this is an exotic map competition there are things I wanted to try in this map just for this kind of competition.

First thing would technically be the Mid being horizontal between sites instead of like it normally is between spawns, but it's not that important.

The main thing I want to show is

https://imgur.com/a/w6JcSXb

Fire Exit door, it can only open from inside the church, not the other way round.

It can only open once per round and only from one direction. If terrorists push up to it for A take, they can not do anything but go underground/mid as an alternate path or to B site instead.

Counter terrorists can open it if they're in A and need a surprise for Ts (so could be good for ecos) or need to rotate to B without taking the long path.

Hey guys, thanks for checking in again. Since the last time I've had major hurdles (not just procrastinating, that's just me by design) with my 17 year old dog passing away, moving to a different place and my car burning to crisp just before Christmas. It's fine though, the map is still coming along and I'll try my best to make it before the deadline.

I've cordoned off T-Spawn/A Long of the map in hammer to see how it looks in game, ignore weird props or bad lighting, I've done nothing about it before pressing compile.

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I also wanted to share this with you before but never got around to it.

If you want to see some of the progress in more of a instant update format, here's the link to our Trello. https://trello.com/b/D2MLQfbG/fiorentini

It's not updated for anyone except us to keep track of things we need to do and/or fix.

Hey guys, I'm going to have to throw in the towel and withdraw from the competition.

I can't get the map to work ingame properly and it's causing me a lot of grief, I've tried to turn functionally everything into displacements and using wallworm (in a way you'd be using propper) to no avail, it's just too much work. It'll take either 2 months to fix it or 3 months to remodel it all and I've not got enough time to make anything by the deadline.

Please accept these screenshots in hammer as something that could have been.

https://imgur.com/a/k0C0BHx

I wish good luck to everyone else and am looking forward to who comes out the winner and play the maps!

Thanks for following the thread