Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The legacy of fy_iceworld, Counter-Strike’s divisive, popular custom map (2020)

rockpapershotgun.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 159 posts

Re: The legacy of fy_iceworld, Counter-Strike’s divisive, popular custom map (2020)

#41

Post by paczki »

a_shovel wrote: post #4

> This is perhaps the central tragedy of fy_iceworld. The game industry benefits from its legacy, but the conditions that spurred its influence no longer exist. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2019 does not offer a freely downloadable level editor for players to make new custom maps, nor does it allow a decentralized network of player-managed multiplayer servers to distribute these custom maps. We can only play what som…

Videogames largely moving away from mapping/modding in general has been such a disappointing thing to me for many years now. I'm still playing Doom and Quake mods to this day and some of the content people put out is incredible. Recently an episode 2 for the Quake mod DWELL released and is of unbelievable quality that we couldn't have even imagined playing back in the 90s.

Community servers on the other hand.. those have almost all but vanished completely. It's pretty much just Valve games as far as AAA goes, and even they do their best to hide their server browsers now.

Unfortunately, it just seems like you can't aggressively monetize free content so the industry in general has moved away from allowing it.

Re: The legacy of fy_iceworld, Counter-Strike’s divisive, popular custom map (2020)

#42

Post by jamesfinlayson »

johnxie wrote: post #39

The custom mapping community of CS 1.6 was truly special, and it's incredible to see how much it has shaped the games we know and love today. Back in those days, community building was as simple as spinning up your own dedicated servers and hosting new maps that everyone could enjoy. I ran a few popular fun map servers, constantly experimenting with new mods, game/gravity settings, and rotating new maps based on comm…

And it still is - the efforts people still go to to produce Counter-Strike maps, working around the quirks of the various game entities that don't properly reset at the end of a round and so on.

Re: The legacy of fy_iceworld, Counter-Strike’s divisive, popular custom map (2020)

#43

Post by bitwize »

I'm reminded of Divekick, a 2D vs. fighting game that pares the genre down to its barest essentials. Instead of a joystick and six buttons, all movement, offense, and defense is performed with two buttons: Dive and Kick. This is a parody of the easy-to-spam aerial kick coming down on your opponent that is a staple in 2D fighting games (except in this one, it's your only offensive move, and one well-placed kick ends the match), and the whole game parodies other fighters and the FGC in general. But the simplicity of its control scheme admits surprising depth, and new players can learn the basics of fighting game strategy without a lot of distraction by playing it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divekick

Re: The legacy of fy_iceworld, Counter-Strike’s divisive, popular custom map (2020)

#44

Post by rvba »

hnick wrote: post #34
rvba wrote: post #14

In StarCraft Brood War there were normal maps, which were mostly played 1v1. That was the "true" game - it was fun but also quite difficult. Many players played for fun, so they would play team games e.g. 4v4 where skill still mattered but often the results depended more who you got on your team (I think that to a degree this is why MOBAs are so popular - in theory you get close to a 50-50 winrate, or at least win li…

Two UMS ("use map settings" which is what we referred to custom maps as, named after the game settings) maps that I loved and were quite popular on aus-1 (our local non-battle.net server) were variants of "zergling blood" which was somewhat like a tower defence where you had to live against auto-waves of enemies, and various RPG-like games where you controlled one unit to go through a complex map and finish it while…

Most (if not all) UMS maps work in Starcraft 1 remaster. You can in fact play the version without improved graphics for free now.

Players still play custom games but it is harder to fill lobbies now.. especially if you need more than few.

I remember "zergling blood", samw for those RPG games or microcontrol maps.

There was a map called "The Unknown" which is the same idea as in Among Us game. It was so much fun.

Re: The legacy of fy_iceworld, Counter-Strike’s divisive, popular custom map (2020)

#45

Post by jamesfinlayson »

hnick wrote: post #40

I also found the linked follow-up article interesting, where the writer tries to find the original author. Including an article comment at the end of the page by someone who claims it was them, with web archive links. Looks somewhat convincing but I doubt we can ever know for sure.

It's a shame that information is lost, given it wasn't even that long ago.

Much like the original source files for most of Counter-Strike's old custom maps - most likely lost and gone forever.

Re: The legacy of fy_iceworld, Counter-Strike’s divisive, popular custom map (2020)

#46

Post by LeeroyWasHere »

rcme wrote: post #30
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #28

I wonder with all the people growing up, getting old, becoming game developers, do these people just not care about these old cool features that have gone away that entirely changed the gaming experience for kids? I remember making friends across multiple age groups in community servers that you could always come back to because someone was kind enough to lease a server for a few bucks a month. I remember young peopl…

Minecraft and Roblox both have creative / extensible outlets built in to them. Both are hugely popular with "the youth."

Exactly what came to mind, everyone in here is operating on old data. They haven't kept up with the current trends.

Re: The legacy of fy_iceworld, Counter-Strike’s divisive, popular custom map (2020)

#47

Post by Galaco »

jamesfinlayson wrote: post #42
johnxie wrote: post #39

The custom mapping community of CS 1.6 was truly special, and it's incredible to see how much it has shaped the games we know and love today. Back in those days, community building was as simple as spinning up your own dedicated servers and hosting new maps that everyone could enjoy. I ran a few popular fun map servers, constantly experimenting with new mods, game/gravity settings, and rotating new maps based on comm…

And it still is - the efforts people still go to to produce Counter-Strike maps, working around the quirks of the various game entities that don't properly reset at the end of a round and so on.

In many cases, specifically working with those kinds of quirks. Being able to persist certain state between rounds in CS using these kinds of bugs has been a godsend for many custom game modes (for me personally, my work with Zombie Escape in CS:S and CS:GO)

Re: The legacy of fy_iceworld, Counter-Strike’s divisive, popular custom map (2020)

#48

Post by f0e4c2f7 »

a_shovel wrote: post #4

> This is perhaps the central tragedy of fy_iceworld. The game industry benefits from its legacy, but the conditions that spurred its influence no longer exist. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2019 does not offer a freely downloadable level editor for players to make new custom maps, nor does it allow a decentralized network of player-managed multiplayer servers to distribute these custom maps. We can only play what som…

I have great news if you're willing to play VR games - PavlovVR is pretty much exactly what you're describing here. It has community servers and can be modded with anything you can put in an unreal engine level (so anything)

It's based on CS so it has all the same weapons and mechanics.

It has an active modding community that has added every map from every game you've ever played (including iceworld, but so many more)

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=11392...

I know something will replace it eventually but it has been my all time favorite game for the last 5 years or so.

Re: The legacy of fy_iceworld, Counter-Strike’s divisive, popular custom map (2020)

#50

Post by ziml77 »

While trying to find one of the maps that I could quite vividly the layout of but wasn't recalling the name of, I found that someone has a massive archive of maps that I'm sure some people here will appreciate: https://ar.mevl2.duckdns.org/css/maps/

From there I was able to find what I was looking for by browsing through all the ones with "texture" in their name. It was aim_ag_texture_jungle :) https://gamebanana.com/mods/105659

Post reply on HN