The creator of the map Anubis, which has been used in tournaments since the end of last year, is level designer Roald van den Scheir. In his recent interview, he talked about what this process is, how long it takes and what he pays attention to first.
Creating maps for CS:GO – is not an easy task in itself. To do this, you will need to learn how to work in a special level editor, select or make yourself many textures and three-dimensional models, and also spend a lot of time testing the map to understand how players can act on it.
Development design
Share got involved in Anubis 2019 when he decided to participate in the Mapcore competition as an experiment. Before that, he was creating a mod on the Source engine, but he had no experience with content for CS:GO , but he decided to try something. new. Mapcore – is a community of developers that in 2019 held a competition with a prize fund of 15 thousand dollars, where level designers and artists had to create maps for CS:GO on the theme of “exotic places”.
Share took as a basis several textures and visual images that remained from him from a previous project, and pretty quickly understood what elements should appear on the map. He notes that map design for CS:GO can be approached in different ways. While many developers prefer a conservative approach, he tried to experiment more to give players opportunities for creative solutions. As an example of another map made using this approach, he cites Overpass, which allows opponents to build dynamics in different ways. As a result, Anubis has a bridge over the canal, allowing both sides to use unexpected tactics. Sheir notes that it was not possible to make this section of the map interesting from the first playtest due to the fact that the bridge represents an open space in which the player is too vulnerable. alt="Image looks like text, internal Automatically generated description" class="fr-fic fr-dii">
Fine tuning
Initially, the map is created without textures, in the form of simple objects placed on it - this allows you to test at an early stage how players move, how grenades can be used and where it is best to place bomb sites. The latter, Sheir tried to make such that they provide the opportunity for interaction between players in defense or attack. The desire to give the players The most interesting experience was so great that the developer at some point realized that he was making too many changes: responding to feedback from playtesters, he constantly added improvements, and eventually redesigned almost the entire map compared to the original version. In addition, Sheir wanted to get feedback from professional teams, but only one of the Ninjas in Pajamas players responded, on whose advice the designer changed some details. The project was joined by two more participants, jd_40 and Jakuza, who took on the visual component. As a result, Anubis was added to the game in April 2020, so we can say that her story in CS:GO is just beginning.
