[CS:GO] De_Backlot

De_Backlot is set in a Hollywood studio back-lot, featuring multiple film sets in a variety of “locations”. Whether it be the streets of York, England in Mid, Old timey’ Mexico on Bombsite B, or an indoor sitcom film set on Bombsite A, Backlot’s goal is to provide diverse game-play and visual experiences across the multiple areas.

Hey everyone, here i'm just going to be posting progress updates for my map de_backlot. This map is inspired by theme parks such as Hollywood Studios (USA) and Movieworld (AUS), that provide a wide variety of simulated environments in a very small area.

This is my both my first time using Hammer seriously, and designing a Counter-strike map, and as such has been a real crash course in the whole process. The general layout has now been iterated on enough to where i'm happy with it, so i'm moving onto play-testing very soon to get some much needed feedback from competitive players. Hope you guys can follow along the wild ride with me!

Any feedback is much appreciated!

Radar

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Bombsite B

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Bombsite A

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Mid

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Hey Everyone!

So I had my first 5v5 competitive play-test yesterday, and it was a complete blast! General feedback for the map was excellent, although there were a few problem areas that now need to be addressed. The main area of concern for the map is now the mid + second mid entrances on the T-side. CT's were able to reach the T second mid entrances up to 3 seconds earlier then the T's could even reach the choke-point. This gave way for some degenerate game-play patterns for CT's, and made T's life on the left side of the map a living nightmare.

My plan now is to address some of the core timing issues in mid, while also giving some alternate paths around certain choke-points that were problematic during the play-test. Attached is a rough mock-up of the changes that i'm going to make before the next play-test. My next post will likely be once i'm done and happy with the changes outlined here.

Update time!

Map screenshots album - https://imgur.com/a/dnNOMyC

Worked pretty hard this past week to get the map ready for a second play-test yesterday with all the feedback in mind from my last session. From my last post it was obvious that some timings were just plain wrong, due to this the mid/second mid area needed some major adjustments. Main points of change were; Moved mid + second mid entrance back towards T spawn to adjust timings, T entrance to second mid is now connected via the studio arch (rather then A site directly), Added a secondary path to mid so T's could peak from left side of Mid without crossing from the right, Added a secondary path into second mid that is only accessible from T side. Many other changes were made for this play-test but they are better seen in the images in the imgur link above, just so this post doesn't just ramble on.

Now moving onto how the play-test session went. The general play-test feedback was extremely positive, people were having fun, and many of the existing issues from last play-test had been addressed from the layout changes. The main point of interest which was criticised was the A bombsite, both for pushing and re-taking from the T-side. Another point was that mid now feels a lot more cluttered, and the gun fights now felt a lot more random because CT's could peak and hide between many of the points of cover (initially meant for T's to help give some cover to push through the much larger mid now).

My main plan before the next play-test is to address these layout issues, and finalise the basic geometry + some basic props for theming the whole map.