When it comes to online PC gaming, I tend to come back over and over to a single title despite my desire to always be trying the new stuff. That game is Counterstrike Source, and it's massive community has transformed the base game into a portal to countless mods, maps and game variants. I typically spend most of my time in Gun Game, a clever permutation that sees the terrorists and counter-terrorists fighting a team deathmatch battle where scoring a kill levels you up and provides you with a new weapon, until someone reaches the maximum level of twenty and then scores a knife kill (the knife being the level twenty weapon). The maps in circulation on most GG servers are aesthetically spartan; built entirely on the basis of accommodating fast, balanced gameplay. Seeing as how I have dabbled with level design and construction in the past, and that Gun Game maps do not require the great artistic skill that I lack, I decided to try my hand at crafting a GG arena. Thus, gg_icewave was born.
My initial challenge was to come up with a theme for the map, a central motif that would be uncommon to GG maps and provide me with a challenge I had not encountered before. As a starting point, I decided that the map would have an environmental hazard – players would have to watch their footing (though not to an intrusive degree) as well as their aim. This idea, coupled with the desire to create something utilizing source engine effects that I have not played around with, led to setting the map on an oil rig in the ocean. While the oil rig is a well-worn FPS setting, it provided the opportunity to dick around with water, lighting, fog, shaders, soundscapes, and all kinds of other toys as well as introducing the ocean as something to avoid.
The basic design is four-way symmetrical, with an open upper floor to provide verticality.
Next time, I will go into the challenges posed by effects implementation.
TREVOR
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