24/7 de_dust, AWP disabled

November 25, 2012 9:24 AM

The making of de_dust & de_dust2.
posted by Evernix (29 comments total)

I haven't played CS in probably a decade or so, but I guarantee I could draw you a precise replica of the first map from memory. So many fun hours...
posted by SomaSoda at 9:33 AM on November 25, 2012 [4 favorites]

de_dust is probably my fondest memory of all that is CS. I couldn't tell you if its the 'best' map or not but when de_dust2 started becoming more and more popular I didn't like it.
posted by Phantomx at 9:38 AM on November 25, 2012 [1 favorite]

At one point dust heavy servers proliferated till I was sick of the sight of the thing, but yeah, I could probably draw you a rough map of the layout and had hours of fun there.
posted by Artw at 9:40 AM on November 25, 2012

I guarantee I could draw you a precise replica of the first map from memory

You totally should! I might even get back to updating Mapstalgia. Though you wouldn't be the first.

Dust and Dust2 were so ubiquitous that, yeah, it was hard not to feel like you really, really knew them, love it or hate it, unless you made a pretty specific effort to avoid the maps entirely by being choosey about servers. All else aside they did have a reasonable amount of tactical balance and not a lot of stupid problems, though I was always more fond of the more degenerate standbys. I could camp and blind-fire an AK up into the airvents on Assault all fucking day; I knew it was dumb, but god I loved those cheapo jedi kills. And Siege! Siege was the terribest.
posted by cortex at 9:59 AM on November 25, 2012 [6 favorites]

I'll just be squatting on the ramp of this thread, shuffling side to side and making odd clicking noises.

I recall no greater thrill than nailing the foot or leg of one of those snipers camping. And no greater agony than when it was me wot got shot in the foot or the leg.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 9:59 AM on November 25, 2012 [3 favorites]

*static* Fire in the hole! *static* Fire in the hole! *static* Fire in the hole!
posted by infinitewindow at 10:03 AM on November 25, 2012 [4 favorites]

From the blog post it appears that he never actually got paid for creating one of the most popular FPS maps of all time. Good investment on Valve's part, I guess.
posted by codacorolla at 10:22 AM on November 25, 2012 [2 favorites]

I'm interested in level design but never played Counterstrike, so some of his references are foreign to me. I think I've identified the corridor where both teams would tend to meet.
posted by RobotHero at 10:35 AM on November 25, 2012

Good old counter-strike. Hours upon hours of flashbanging teammates, squatting in front of snipers to block their view, and alternately spamming the radio channel with "Get out of there, it's gonna blow!" and "Enemy down."
posted by anewnadir at 10:36 AM on November 25, 2012

dust was really good looking for its time, and crazy good compared to some of the bullshit maps you'd find on early CS servers, like that map that was just a flat field enclosed with chainlink fence, with a brick wall at each end. The more ambitious maps also tended to have some glaringly poor modeling, like the one in the airport.
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 10:42 AM on November 25, 2012

And no Counterstrike thread is complete without The Terrible Mr. Grimshaw (NSFW Language) which is exactly what you sound like when you play.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 10:46 AM on November 25, 2012 [1 favorite]

The underpass in de_dust was the perfect venue for perfecting my headshot technique with the MP5. My favorite map of all time though has to be cs_militia, precisely because of one quality it has that de_dust doesn't: relatively safe and dangerous zones. de_dust is small enough that the whole map is pretty much always in play, so any respite you get is extremely temporary, whereas cs_militia had skirmish zones that were well-separated from the spawn areas, which made the opposite team's spawn areas enticingly dangerous to the other team (at least from the CT point of view, I guess the terrorists have no real reason to try to get to the CT spawn area). Ah, memories.
posted by invitapriore at 10:51 AM on November 25, 2012 [1 favorite]

we should get a MeFi game of CS going playing classic rotation, dust/2, militia, office, 747, cbble, italy, vertigo, as_oilrig, etc.
posted by anewnadir at 11:04 AM on November 25, 2012 [1 favorite]

I might even get back to updating Mapstalgia.

That's awesome, Cortex! Had no idea that project was one of mefi's own.

As far as my own map, I gave it a shot, but due to my absolutely atrocious spacial perception and general lack of artistic ability, it didn't come out so hot. So I did the only reasonable thing and took a pic with my cat in it.
posted by SomaSoda at 11:07 AM on November 25, 2012

Another militia fan here - that one seemed to drop from rotations just as Dust became popular.
posted by Artw at 11:21 AM on November 25, 2012

During one of the early Counterstrike betas, the very first shot from an AK-47 was pinpoint-accurate; it went exactly where the cursor was. I was apparently one of the first people to figure this out, and for awhile, I was fairly godlike, especially in Dust. I'd bunnystrafe back and forth through the underpass, headshotting the snipers. There'd usually be 2 or 3 snipers, and it usually took 1 shot per sniper to clear the overpass. (hop/crouchland BANG hop/crouchland BANG hop/crouchland BANG) A headshot from an AK was 100% fatal, and with the perfect accuracy, I almost always got a headshot. (since that's all I could see, anyway). That was gleeful, ridiculous fun. The hardest part was getting to the point where I could see their heads; there was a covered approach on my left, their right, but they could AWP me right through the crate before I got a shot off, if they knew I was there.

Pesky game devs changed it in the next beta, though. Sucked. Improved the game a bunch, but bummed me out. I was so goddamn deadly with that thing.
posted by Malor at 11:59 AM on November 25, 2012

I never "got" dust, probably because my computer sucked too much in the days of 1.6 to play it so I was a TFC guy, and I only really got into CS after Source came out. Dust2 always felt way more dynamic and balanced and fluid to me than dust, which is essentially impossible for the T's to win, althuogh perhaps that is the point. But dust lacked all the multiple entry points and fun of cs_assault which is the analogous impossible for CT's to win map. It just felt like as a T it was impossible to run through the underpass since you'd get sniped, and it was also impossible to run through the tunnel since you had people camping on BOTH SIDES so everyone would just sort of crouch near the main T entrance to the tunnel spamming flashbangs and smoke grenades and the CT's would sort of dance back and forth inside the tunnel picking off any T who was retarded enough to run inside guns blazing. It just felt horribly unbalanced, static, and unfun and my guess is that people played dust mainly for nostalgia reasons since they played it back in the 1.6 days. Or, because it was an amazing accomplishment when the T's got their shit together and managed to win at DE_DUST.
posted by pravit at 12:34 PM on November 25, 2012

Pistols only for the rest of the thread!
posted by Artw at 1:08 PM on November 25, 2012 [3 favorites]

I would like to hear what dude has to say about CS:GO. It looks and sounds fantastic but the time for CS may have passed.
posted by infinitewindow at 1:12 PM on November 25, 2012

Great reading his thought processes as he balanced and weighed the map, it's easy to forget the amount of thought that goes into these things. And only 16 or 17! Amazing!
posted by Iteki at 1:21 PM on November 25, 2012

People in this thread are talking like there's a better mode than gungame. They are not correct.

Also cs_militia was always my favorite map and when I got CS:S the first thing I did was go see how good militia looked. It was lovely.
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:23 PM on November 25, 2012

In the dust2 article he says that at one point dust was the most played map in any game. I would not be surprised in the least if dust2 is now. A good four out of five games I play on Classic Competitive in CS:GO are on dust2. And dust has fallen by the wayside. No one wants to play it, and if it does come up and you're on T side first... Might as well forfeit and save the time.

And yeah, Gun Game is amazing. I'd always get stuck at grenade level though. Not sure if Arms Race (the new "official" Gun Game) is better or worse for not making you get a kill with a firecracker.
posted by clorox at 3:34 PM on November 25, 2012

Ahhh bringing back memories from 10+ years ago. CS is the only competitive online game I can brag that (after a year of playing) I became skilled enough that I'd get kicked from servers for "cheating" (WALL HAX) simply because mouse-muscle-memory would kick in around certain corners and choke points and I'd shoot some dudes dead before they even realized what was happening. I never really repeated that kind of "training" with any other game, probably because the majority of people playing on public servers are insufferable.

Secret best map: de_prodigy

also I had the best sprays
posted by palidor at 4:15 PM on November 25, 2012

I often wonder why I was able to get pretty good at TFC, but since then have never really managed to become skilled at an online FPS. I can think of two reasons:

1) I have a career and less time to practice online games and,
2) I can put up with idiots in text chat, but since most games have moved to voice chat I've lost that ability.
posted by codacorolla at 4:46 PM on November 25, 2012 [1 favorite]

Available time and tolerance for chat bullshit are the adulthood double whammy.
posted by Artw at 5:39 PM on November 25, 2012 [1 favorite]

Yeah I remember playing some HL2DM shortly after it came out and at least a couple years out from my CS experience (when I guess I was more desensitized to the obnoxiousness, and also younger and more obnoxious myself), and it was kind of shocking how much the teenage anger / every other word being a variation of a homophobic slur actually bothered me. I was around age 20, maybe? It was only a few matches but it pretty much caused me to swear off competitive online games forever. And save for Battlefield 2/142 I've basically stuck to that. And good thing I mostly dropped out of console gaming after the PS2 because I'd never be able to manage the modern voice chat stuff.

Also yes I suppose I know the solution is to find a group of friends to play with and ignore everyone else but WHY CAN'T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG!!!!
posted by palidor at 5:52 PM on November 25, 2012

I played mainly CS:S - too many kiddies on CS and endless ranting about how pure 1.6 was - bleh. But I gave up when the only lower ping servers were Dust and Dust2 only, each session lasting about 30 secs.

Now I only play on Steam servers with older players - like grandmothers!!! - one of the benefits of CS being so old - the orginal generation is still playing.

CS:GO is very pretty but it's not the same any more and the new modes are designed for short sessions with no strategy.
posted by arzakh at 6:11 PM on November 25, 2012

TFC didn't rely on pure twitch reflexes in the same way that CS and most current FPSes do. In CS it's all about shooting the other guy first. In TFC there was a much greater emphasis on movement - circle strafing, rocket jumping, conc jumping. Especially the conc jumping, that's what really made that game for me. Jumping out of the water in 2fort onto the battlements, drive by infecting the snipers, rushing down into the flag room, super nailgunning the SG, taking out the engi with a shotgun, grabbing the flag, conc jumping out the elevator shaft as the heavies close in...
posted by pravit at 6:42 PM on November 25, 2012 [1 favorite]

My first experience with mapping was a cs_assault map edit I made with my friend; we changed it to de_ and added a car and some other "cool shit", but my favorite part was the wall we replaced that required something like 10k points of damage dealt to it at which point it would explode and reveal a huge picture of a penis behind it
posted by MangyCarface at 12:27 PM on November 26, 2012 [2 favorites]