One of three talks Valve delivered at the Game Developers Conference last week was Building the Content that Drives the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Economy, a session by Technical Artist Bronwen Grimes. Grimes presentation mainly focused on how Valve developed its method for mostly-automating the creation of new weapon skins that roll out regularly in updates like Operation Phoenix and Winter Offensive.

Late into the talk, though, Grimes brought up data from Steam Graph as a way of measuring the impact of CS:GO s content updates on its it s popularity, which is high enough lately to make it the second most-played game on Steam. I ve duplicated Grimes graph here with some additional annotations of my own.

Click for a larger version.

As the graph indicates, free CS:GO weekends doubled the game s peak concurrent users in November 2012 and May 2013. The launch of an item economy through the Arms Race update in August 2013 had a significant . As Grimes put it during her talk: After our economy launched, we had a pretty dramatic increase in peak player numbers, bringing us to regular highs that we d only achieved previously by making the game temporarily free.

Tournaments, though, have produced the most substantial upticks in concurrent users, presumably due to the fact that CS:GO allows players to watch competitive matches in the game client in real-time. This last spike here is Dreamhack. It s a big tournament for CS:GO with a high viewership, said Grimes at GDC. Our game was also on sale during this time period and that caused a huge player spike, nearly doubling our player count. There was a large influx of new players at this time, and they stuck around at a really high rate. In fact they stuck around at a much higher rate than players from previous sales. And so we can see that not only are our player numbers up, but our player retention is up.

The recent EMS One Katowice tourney seemed to skyrocket CS:GO s peak concurrent users by 50 or 60,000. Without access to numbers for Battlefield 4 and other games, we re left to assume that CS:GO s 2.2 million monthly unique players are enough to make it the most popular multiplayer shooter on PC.

Building Crown is a three part series from mapmaker Shawn "FMPONE Snelling and pro Counter-Strike player/mapmaker Sal "VOLCANO" Garozzo, revealing the inspiration and building process for their upcoming map Crown. Their goal with Crown is simple: build the best competitive Counter-Strike map ever. In part two, Snelling breaks down Crown s level design and the tools used to build map geometry and textures.

The first step in making a multiplayer map is creating a layout. But what is a layout? For level designers, a layout is the floor-plan of a level lurking in their brain, which they often draw out as a blueprint and then sculpt into a 3D grey box representation in-game. For everyday players, a layout is how they visualize a level s available paths and make strategic decisions.

We spent nine months refining Crown s layout into the final map it is today. And now Crown is ready for the public. It s available today. You can download the map right now  on the Steam Workshop and play it in Counter-Strike: GO. Read on to learn how we built it.

A top-down view of Crown's layout.

The sheer number of revisions Crown has gone through over the course of nine months reveals the enormous challenge of mapping an environment from your imagination. Grey boxing is very much like sprouting a new world out of thin air like a creative big bang and for that reason it is a frustrating, difficult stage of a map s development that many people never get past.

Volcano and I spent countless hours pondering layout details both in our grey-boxed version of Crown, and once the map evolved into a more visually detailed environment. I think almost every level designer in the world recognizes that no matter how well thought-out, a level will always go through a maturation process once it becomes a playable space. Thankfully, Crown s earliest stages are well documented, allowing us to show screenshots of Crown in its infancy.



Above: an early image of Crown as a grey box. Below: finalized version of the same part of the map. Can you spot the subtle changes in geometry?


The right path
Our primary goals with Crown s grey boxed layout was to maintain the spacious, open feeling of Dust2, without losing sight of the precise efficiency of Inferno s layout. It's also about the size of Dust2, making it a fairly small map. For this reason, Volcano and I decided to make the map s geometry imposing and impressive.

To focus on one area which evolved during our discussions, this path outside of CT spawn, for example, would become the focus of continued revision throughout Crown s development.

Another grey box shot of Crown featuring a fountain "prop."

The fountain is removed as final geometry begins to shape up.

To further highlight Crown s evolution, the window pictured in this (near) final image has since been removed.

Volcano s goal with this epic walkway was to include elements of verticality similar to a map like Nuke verticality which extends all the way into the B bombsite without creating awkward firefights where players are forced to look straight up at the sky. The path leading up to this vertical terrace was a challenge: although we wanted verticality, one consequence of creating higher ground is that it can make surrounding areas obsolete. Our perch needed to have drawbacks and limitations which would make the lower path viable. Over time, we added a slot above the terrorist entrance leading into this route which would allow an attacking team to coordinate smoke and flash grenades to block visibility along this long sight-line.

Much later in the development process, we added a route into the area commonly referred to as armory. We observed players having difficulty retaking the bombsite due to limited entry points and the additional route alleviated the issue and made the armory a crucial area to control in the bombsite.
The editor
 

The view from the Valve Hammer Editor

Counter-Strike: GO maps are made with Hammer, an aging tool which isn t easy to use. In Hammer, geometry is mostly composed of brushes, a fancy word for cubes, and mapping resembles playing with LEGO.

Walls or other flat surfaces can be brushwork. Other intricate elements you might see in a level such as a chair, a light fixture or an ornamental doorway, are props models imported from programs like Maya or 3DSMAX. Here you can see editor screenshots of Crown s brushwork, as well as flat screenshots which place emphasis on Crown s total geometry (brushwork + props).

Clockwise: Wireframe view, flat-lighting view, differentiating between props and brushwork, final lighting

Source unfortunately hits a brush limit fast. It would be difficult to make 1/4th of Crown with brushes alone; we needed to convert much of the brushwork of the map into models in order for the map to compile. Compiling is a process which converts the map into a file readable by the Source engine. In practice, compiling means sitting around at your computer for an hour and a half while lighting is baked. Every time you make a change in your level and want to see those changes in-game, a new compile is required.

Behind every map ever made for Counter-Strike, Half-Life, or Day of Defeat, was a level designer staring blankly at this screen. A level designer most likely staring, snoring, or eating.
Textures: the lifeblood of a map
Textures really are the lifeblood of a map. Simple geometry is nice, but a texture controls so much about the color of a map, the feel of surfaces, and the way our eyes process an environment.

Here you can see an excellent example of a common texture used throughout Crown, made by the artist PenE (from Crytek Germany), which I made some minor alterations to for the sake of color.



While I did make a few textures, most of Crown s textures are made as a favor by my friends. When texture re-use or borrowing isn t an option, I tend to ask myself what do I actually need to match what I see in a photographic reference?

In the case of this eagle plaque, I grabbed an open-source image of the Spanish army flag. I liked this image of an eagle because it conveyed the strong, resonant power Volcano and I wanted to echo throughout Crown. I then overlayed that eagle onto a marble texture used frequently throughout the map, on loan from the brilliant artist Kikette from Arkane (the developers who made Dishonored). From that point on, I focused on building a convincing diffuse map by painting on staining, highlighting, and other details. Although making custom assets is time consuming and difficult, I try not to make sacrifices in my own vision of an area, simply because GO s default assets don t resemble what I need.

The Crown eagle plaque, based on a Spanish army emblem
The fun part
Contending with Hammer is tough, but seeing your work come alive is a thrill. And thanks to GO s updated lighting engine, level geometry is lit so beautifully and naturalistically.

Here you can observe the way geometry, lighting, and texturing come together over time compared with our real-world reference.



Photo via Expedia.com

Above: Pathway to Crown's bombsite B and a reference photo from Barcelona. Below: Crown's Terrorist spawn and a Barcelona reference photo.



Photo via Tabitha and Dave's European Adventures blog
Gameplay, gameplay, gameplay
In summation, Crown went through several distinct creative processes. First, imaginary geometry was transferred from Volcano s brain, to paper, to the editor. Secondly, we refined our basic grey box map into something which reflected not just our initial visions of Crown, but also a practical map because you always notice things about a grey box you hadn t considered before actually making it. Thirdly, we tested this grey box. Fourthly, we tried to meld our grey box into a plausible approximation of Barcelona, Spain by using default assets or by creating what was needed. Finally, we tested and refined some more.

Then we had a map. Then we had Crown the real, playable level. You can download it on the Steam Workshop and play it now, and you can read about the inspiration for Crown's design in part one of Building Crown.

In the final article of this series, we will explore professional play testing, and the iterative process that happens when Volcano and I walk around our map. We will examine our approach to playtests, the expectations we have, and how we talk through changes to the map. Our goal is to give you insight into each step of the creative process of making a Counter-Strike map.

Sometimes you have to watch the professionals at work to appreciate how brilliant a game is. After watching some of the highlights from this weekend s 2014 EMS One Katowice Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Championship, I was reminded how tense and thrilling Counter-Strike can get. Here are some of the best moments from the event in Poland, from some of the best players in the world.
My favorite video by far is of Janusz sNax Pogorzleski from Virtus.Pro (the team that also won the championship) silently taking down three NiP members. The restraint he demonstrates here, waiting for the perfect moment, is unbelievable:



From markeloff vs. Titan, a completely different, chaotic moment. Cornered and almost out of ammo, markeloff pulls through:


Four shots with the AWP, four kills. Brutal:

More incredible AWP skills:

And finally, here s Virtus.Pro winning the championship. Listen to that crowd!


In addition to a giant trophy, Virtus.Pro also won $100,000 of the $250,000 community-funded prize pool.

Building Crown is a three part series from mapmaker Shawn "FMPONE Snelling and pro Counter-Strike player/mapmaker Sal "VOLCANO" Garozzo, revealing the inspiration and building process for their upcoming map Crown. Their goal with Crown is simple: build the best competitive Counter-Strike map ever. In part one, Snelling dives into the inspiration for Crown's design and the essence of a great competitive map.

This is Crown: a new map for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive nine months in the making. After over 100 substantial revisions across those nine months, Crown is nearly finished. It was designed with two goals: to make CS:GO s hardcore fans happy while disrupting GO s stagnant competitive map pool. It s inspired by classic maps like Dust2 and Inferno. But it s built to be even better. Just as CS:GO is a new evolution for the Counter-Strike franchise, Crown is a map which seeks to learn from the best and build upon the principles that have kept Dust2 and Inferno in competitive play for more than a decade.
Before Crown: rebuilding Cache
At heart, a map is an idea. Great maps conjure singular, iconic images in our minds. Dust2: the sandy desert village. Inferno: a labyrinth of grainy alleyways. Nuke: a towering facility. These places do not exist except in-game and in our collective consciousness.

Real-world inspiration for de_inferno

One map, Cache, only recently entered that collective consciousness. Cache was originally designed by Sal Volcano Garozzo for Counter-Strike: Source in Spring 2010. When CS:GO was released, Cache was ported to the Steam Workshop, where it became a staple of professional competitive leagues. After I created two GO maps of my own, I took a look at Cache and was impressed with what I saw. Maps like Cache have a unity to them a clean, simple flow. I wasn t surprised to learn that Volcano was originally a professional CS player, and a legend in the scene. What was surprising was that Cache was the very first map he ever made. This was someone I had to work with.

Before we tackled building a new map, we set about modernizing Cache. Cache has since been featured in two of CS:GO s Operation map-promotions, included in many of the game's most prestigious tournaments, and is played by thousands of players for more than 11,000 hours every day.

Even before our work on Cache was complete, though, Volcano and I were imagining that new, original project we had put on hold the map which would become Crown.



Dreaming up Crown: level design fundamentals
When Volcano and I were brainstorming a new map, we broke down what we liked and didn t like about the existing map pool. I have a confession to make: other than Cache, it's rare to see me playing any map other than Dust2. Just talking about Dust2 transforms into Captain Ahab from Moby Dick: the old sailor who got his leg bitten off by that white whale and forever-afterwards harbored a maniacal, obsessive grudge against it. I want to make a map better than Dust2 almost more than I want to breathe.

And then I talked to Volcano, and he actually prefers Inferno!

A timeless view of de_dust2's spaciousness

Volcano and I have slightly different perspectives. I dig Dust2 because it s easy to play, is spacious, and has a warm-feeling aesthetic. Volcano likes Inferno because its layout is probably the best in the game for competitive play: teams have a large number of different strategic choices, and they never feel predictable.

To boil it down, I was thinking sort of abstractly about visceral things how the map would feel to play while Volcano s emphasis was first and foremost on making a layout for competitive play. We both recognized, however, that a great map must have both of those elements.

de_inferno's pristine layout

Cache also influenced Crown substantially, but not how you might expect. Because Cache places so much emphasis on its middle area, Volcano told me that he wanted to create a map that went in the opposite direction completely: a map without a traditional middle.

This made me nervous. When Terrorists plant the bomb in one of two bombsites, any Counter-Terrorists on the other side of the map have to either rotate to that bombsite or flank around and kill any Terrorists in the area, while the bomb is still ticking, before they can try to defuse it. A map without a middle means there is no central path allowing the CTs to get to the ticking bomb more quickly.

Cache's infamously dangerous middle

Rotating on Crown is a special, stressful challenge. Entire Terrorist teams will have to either barge into one bombsite, or split up to create confusing diversions in both. Counter-Terrorists will need to predict the Terrorists' intent, or rotating will be down-to-the-wire or futile.

No other map used in competitive play will place as much emphasis on rotation, and I think the consequence of this will be game-defining sieges or Alamo-style defenses. It s going to be do-or-die from start to finish, and individual players will need to come up big for their team. Or their team will lose. For these reasons, we are confident Crown will place equal emphasis on skill and strategic play.
Eye on the Crown: back to the visceral
Many Counter-Strike purists are skeptical of maps with good graphics. I can't blame them. Nice-looking maps are often poorly optimized, which is an absolute game-breaker for competitive play. Nice looking maps are also often superficially designed they rarely take into account all of the layout features that make a league map actually work. Even if a nice looking map runs well and has a nice layout, it generally makes sacrifices in readability (the ease of seeing other players in a sea of detail).

Valve designed its TF2 characters around the readability of their silhouettes

Great graphics are not negotiable, though, especially if mappers are trying to get their map promoted in a Valve Operation. But because Volcano and I are so focused on league play in addition to promotion in an Operation, Crown is designed to maintain a high frame rate and be readable.

Crown sets out to please competitive players by choosing a setting which naturally defuses their concerns about readability. Barcelona, Spain has beautiful, classical architecture with smooth, clean surfaces. This provides a perfect back-drop for the easy identification of enemies. Much like the orange walls of Dust, the smooth, beige surfaces of Crown create a warm, welcoming and satisfying space for players.



Above: Classical architecture in Barcelona, Spain. Below: Crown.



This visceral pleasantness is one of the less-obvious aspects of aesthetics I learned from Volcano when working on Cache. During that project, Volcano talked a lot about how surrounding players in a lively, upbeat environment would associate our map with positive emotions over time.

Our discussions about mood ultimately made Cache a less grim environment. While Cache still takes place in a somewhat grungy Soviet facility, areas of vegetation and overgrowth make it more satisfying to play.
Breaking ground: ready to build
With a setting established and our perspectives joined in a coherent philosophy, Volcano and I set to work on Crown with a distinct purpose. This new map had to echo with ambition. It had to be presumptuous not to politely ask to be considered alongside Dust2 or Inferno, but to boldly shoulder into them like an NFL linebacker, recover the fumble, score the touchdown and then spike the football. It had to be loud and self-evidently great hence the name Crown.

But that's just talk for now. Empty words until you play the map for yourself.



This was our vision. In the coming weeks, we'll show you exactly how a map like Crown is made. We'll dig into the nitty-gritty details in the next article, discussing 3D map tools, texture work, and the mechanics of level design. In part three, we'll dive into the feedback and iteration process that takes place over nine months of daily hard work. We'll also present a video tour of the finished map.

And then you'll be able to play it for yourself: Crown will be released on March 18th, two days after the conclusion of CS:GO s $250,000 EMS One Katowice tournament.

Valve have released a new CS:GO 'Operation' pack, bringing unlimited official server access to a selection of community made maps. For Operation Phoenix, the maps were chosen by popular vote - and as such, round up some of the best battlegrounds featured in previous operations. Although, if you're anything like me, the quality is less important than the variety. When you're inevitably killed in the first few seconds of the round, it's important to have some nice level design to enjoy through the death camera.

The returning eight maps are Cache, Motel, Seaside, Downtown, Thunder, Ali, Favela and Agency. All will be available to play in Casual, Competitive and Deathmatch modes, ensuring a busy few months of battle in the constant war between terrorism and not terrorism.

Purchase of the $3 access pack also provides buyers with a Coin, which can be upgraded through playtime and wins. The Phoenix Coin is also a scorecard - giving players a complete run down of their stats across the included maps. Throughout the event, chests containing a selection of new weapon finishes will also drop.

Head over to the CS:GO blog for a statistical rundown of each map. Operation Phoenix will run until June 4th.

If you know your eSports, you may have heard of Gfinity, who run tournaments for pro players and amateurs alike. Up until now they've been mainly concerned with Call of Duty, but they've recently announced their roster for 2014, which includes tourneys for DOTA 2, Counter-Strike GO and StarCraft 2 across February and March. There are cash prizes on offer for teams that wish to enter, and you don't have to pay anything for the privilege - but signups do close Monday at 17:00 GMT, so if you're interested in participating you'll need to get a wriggle on. The rest of us will be able to watch the events on their Twitch channel. Details below.

As noted below, you'll need to form at least a five-person team to be able to enter any of these, or at the very least be able to split yourself into a minimum of five clones, a little like the dude out of Misfits. There are a number of competitions, starting the 24th of Feb and running through to the end of March.

DOTA 2
Pro League
$7500 prize pot between x6 teams
Open tournaments (newcomers)
X5 weekly cups have been arranged starting from 24th February
Each tournament consists of a $500 prize pot

CS: GO
Pro League
Features x6 of the top EU teams from the Alienware Pro League who will compete for a $7,500 prize pot
Open Tournaments (newcomers)
Registered teams will be ranked into divisions (ensuring teams of equal ability are competing together) and will play on a fixed night each week for x5 weeks for the chance to win a share in a $2,500 prize pot

StarCraft II
Elite Division
Top x6 players will complete for a share of the $3000 prize pot
Open 1:1 Leagues (newcomers)
Registered players will compete for the chance to win a share of the $2,500 prize pot

Once again, the deadline for entry closes tomorrow at 5PM. If you're interested, the Gfinity site is the place to sign up for the various events.

If gaming can sometimes seem like a solitary experience, Spela Modigt // Play Bravely shows what happens when a group of players finds the chemistry and will to succeed as a unit. The new documentary follows professional Counter-Strike: GO player Jonatan "Devilwalk" Lundberg and his Fnatic team as it attempts to win the Dreamhack Winter 2013 tournament.

A support player in the Fnatic Counter-Strike squad, Lundberg likens himself to a psychologist or "shrink," as he puts it, in that a big part of achieving any goal is keeping people together and focused on a single objective.

"We are a team that doesn't really change," Lundberg says in the film. "We've had the same core players since the start of the year and that's really, really unique. People quit, people change lineups because they get in fights, can't resolve their issues. So they just start over, which is the wrong way to go I think."

As well as offering polished insight into some of the personalities behind a top eSports team, director Zacharias Dyrborg's film features some great play-by-play action of competitive Counter-Strike and works to explain the mindset of the Fnatic team before and after each match. For me, it showed that while skill will almost always show itself in highly stressful situations, success can also depend just as much on understanding how to take advantage of the emotional side of competition.

There's been a new update for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, which, according to Steam's not at all ridiculous new tagging system, is a Competitive Tactical Multiplayer Shooter. And a CoD-Like. Whatever Steam users think about the game, the community now has access to a new weapon type. Alongisde highly important features like "added diagnostic info to debug video config reset", the most recent patch has introduced the CZ75-Auto, a fully automatic pistol.

"When you load CS:GO today, you ll get a new stock weapon in your inventory," write Valve. "The fully-automatic CZ75-Auto is available for both teams, and can be equipped as a loadout alternative to the P250.

"An inexpensive option against armored opponents, the CZ s stats are identical to the P250 with two important exceptions: the pistol is fully-automatic, and comes with far less ammo. Accurate and deadly, the CZ75-Auto demands precise timing and trigger discipline."

That pistol can also be skinned in a variety of ways through the finishes contained in the new CSGO Weapons Case 3. That case is now dropping in-game because, as the tags themselves say, "Marketable Items".

Valve's official Operations for CS:GO have proven to be remarkably popular among CT's and T's alike. Naturally, Valve are readying for the game's third major Operation, and have been holding a vote to determine which community maps would get the official server treatment. While, according to Valve, those votes are still being counted (what, are they doing it by hand?), some maps have proved popular enough to have already secured a place. In a post on the CS:GO blog, Cache is announced as the operation's first confirmed battleground.

Cache is a bomb defusal map, set in Chernobyl of all places. Unlike other video game representations of the city, this one isn't inhabited by mutants, but instead by terrorists who are attempting to destroy a weapons cache. It's already available through the Steam Workshop, albeit not on the pristine pings of an official Valve server.

If there was any doubt about the popularity of the map, an infographic accompanying the post reveals that 11,753 hours are played in Cache every day. That and other incidental facts can be found over at the CS:GO blog.

Evan surprises the group with a game of tabletop Counter-Strike can the crack team of podcasting terrorists successfully plant the bomb, or will they all roll 1s and throw their guns at the other team? The shocking conclusion to Table Offensive is followed up with some critical talk about two giant MMOs, starting with The Elder Scrolls Online, which Cory and Evan spent the weekend with, followed by EverQuest Next Landmark, which is Tyler's first MMO obsession since the original EverQuest, despite being nothing like it. Later, Wes gives us his take on The Wolf Among Us Episode Two and the group discusses episodic storytelling games, and everyone wants to play Jazzpunk.

Roll a 20 for initiative and click the link to listen to PC Gamer Podcast #371 - Roll for Headshot.

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