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A little wad (the story of cs_tire) (Mar 20, 2006)

A lot of people don't know this, but Dust wasn't my first Counter-Strike map. On the other hand, a lot of people do know this and are cursing me for suggesting otherwise. Either way, it's true and having now written a paragraph intro we can continue onto better things.

There was one thing that got me into CS mapping. I can still remember it - I was bored. I had been mapping using HL textures for ages and was bored sick of it. I'd been trying to play this new "Counter Strike" (beta 1) mod, but everytime I took damage it crashed on me so I wasn't too hot on that. Beta 2 changed that. But it wasn't necessarily the gameplay nor team behind it that got me CS mapping. It wasn't it's style, the background or even the subject matter. It wasn't the (tiny) community or the numerous bugs and exploits that were tremendous fun to play with. It wasn't even the cool webpage that cliffe (Jess Cliffe) changed every three weeks. It was a tiny little file of only a meg or two that some artist called 'MacMan' (Chris Ashton) had put together. It was a WAD full of textures. Boredom had a new enemy.

Half an hour later and I had a slither of a map. A tall 2-floor wall made of brick, and a couple windows at the bottom. A quick duplicate later and I had the same wall twice as long. A few more duplicates and I had a courtyard shape. A few weeks later and I had what could only be called 'cs_retire', although it couldn't be called that due to 8.3 filename limitations and became 'cs_tire' instead. A nice, fresh, battered War-Torn Retirement Home.

This rubbish title was where it all started.

(Yes, it really was that dark on everyones monitors except for mine.)

The next few steps were as such: register on CS forums. Post on CS forums. Post screenshots on CS forums. Read CS forums. Read post from cliffe. Send e-mail to cliffe. Receive e-mail from cliffe. Send map to cliffe. Recieve e-mail from cliffe. Send fixed map to cliffe. Send fixed map to cliffe again because I forgot to attach the file the first time. Download beta 3 and play my own map. Hooray!

Tire did of course get a lot of things right to get that far. It also did a lot of things wrong. For a start, before it even got into beta 3 it underwent some fundamental changes involving an entire route being removed going from the roof near the CT start all the way through to Colin's Tower (the big building with the spiral staircase named after my brother for some reason.) This gave CTs three routes to take immediately.

This was the first tip I recieved about mapping for Counter-Strike, and it came straight from cliffe himself: "do not split teams into more than a couple of routes at the start of a map" (paraphrased somewhat as that was from 6 or 7 years ago.) It's stuck with me ever since. He's right. It's common sense, isn't it? In a team game, keep the players together!

The route was removed. Both teams had only a couple of choices. The same rule was used in Dust... and Dust 2... and Cobble... and it always worked.

Up until that point I had never thought about mapping so much, but suddenly there was theory. Thought. Sensible logic and reasoning. All of a sudden, mapping wasn't just about making something look pretty and giving the player a chute to follow. It was about controlling the player and obeying certain sensible restrictions. It was about engineering within limits, limits that existed purely to make the game fun.

Tire was also very educational. A few months later when I went back to fix bugs (which included giving it sunlight that wasn't near pitch-black for people with sensible gamma settings) I saw problems. High r_speeds. Bad texture scaling. A weird lift/elevator I still can't remember making. My favourite room (if only for the lighting). There were of course bigger problems (like the insane scale and repetitive texture choice) but suddenly improving the gameplay was all I cared about.

Still, there are some aspects of Tire that I think worked well. The balcony (above) was one - nothing spectacular (in fact it was closed off in the last release) but balconies like that appeal to me for some reason. The sense of scale was another. The underground sewers I was very proud of (they weren't just square, wet, boxy concrete corridors like in every other map at the time.) Looking back at it today, I can see how the fundamentals were slowly being learnt.

Alas, come beta 5, Tire was gone; out of the official map rotation. By then however, Hell was already freezing over: the success of Tire had got cliffe to unite myself and MacMan for the purpose of creating a new defusion map. Dust was already in its second revision.

Of course, a simple little WAD wasn't the only thing that ended up with me doing what I do today, but without it Dust may never have happened (and a different, better and more popular map made by someone else would have taken its place...) Either way, that one tip from cliffe was possibly one of the most important lessons I ever learnt.

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user comments

FMPONE at 01:31 on Mar 21, 2006

Personally I enjoy these little stories of yours far more than anything else you do. Dust may not be a worldchanging thing, but to every CS player it means something, and to learn more about the person who made it is so unusual. Each little corner of that map takes on a whole new meaning because you feel like you understand the person who made it. I haven't played tire, but I think your commenting on each little area is fascinating.

Do more, more often please :)

Chris Brooker at 15:34 on Mar 21, 2006

Yeah, totally agree with FMPONE.

It's great to hear this stuff. You go through its creation in such detail that we can almost imagine constructing it ourselves, learning from mistakes you've made and picking up advice from the one and only Cliffe.

The advise Cliffe gave you holds true to is usually best when creating DM maps, and thats to keep it simple. Like he said, why intoduce a heap of routes in a team based game? - players will only get lost and eventually lose interest.

I will admit now, that I was one of those who thought de_dust was your first map. But now I know Iwill surely sleep better tonight...

Chuck Wilson at 16:09 on Mar 21, 2006

Very nice Dave, it's realyl cool to see your CS roots, I didn't know this was your first map for CS.

It is also really cool how you were focusing on fixing gameplay, this is why I love the dev textures of hl2 so I can focus on gameplay.

Gregor at 06:55 on Mar 22, 2006

Very nice, Dave! :D I love your blogs/articles, they're really helpful and interesting.

And @ Chuck Wilson, I have never really used the dev textures; I can never picture the map if all I see are boxes of orange and white lines everywhere :P

Chris Brooker at 15:45 on Mar 22, 2006

Yeah, I find it difficult to use the Dev textures too. What I tend to do is use a really bland texture for everything, or create seperate similar textures for each element - like pathways, walls, doors etc. That way you can easily see whats what with it looking like the whole level's been 'Tangoed'

Chris Brooker at 15:46 on Mar 22, 2006

Oops, "withOUT it looking like the whole level's been 'Tangoed'"

Atrocity at 03:43 on Mar 24, 2006

It's not ment to see the final product in, it's ment to perfect gameplay. You see these textures all over the place, and you think ewww, but then you can see real game play and not be worried about the final visuals.

furrisch at 20:13 on Mar 24, 2006

/downloads cstle and tire

Personally i use both dev textures and regular ones when working on areas. it is alot easier to spot basic gameflow/brushwork problems with dev textures, but i never really get a feel for the area if its only covered in gray and orange.

furrisch at 20:18 on Mar 24, 2006

example of how a wip of mine can look:
http://img477.imageshack.us/img477/5307/ex14ol.png
(too bad theres no edit button :p )

PhilipK at 14:31 on Apr 10, 2006

Woah I sure had some fun time on this map.

Remember the night version too.

Very fun map indeed :)