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

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

#61
post #36

In online games, there are generally two necessary aspects to "getting good": game knowledge and understanding your opponent. Game knowledge includes game mechanics, which are obviously necessary, but also includes esoteric knowledge like the specific areas in a map that can be exploited just so, or a complex combo with specific spacing in a fight game, etc. Personally, I don't want to spend my limited game time memo…

CS struck a great balance between skill floor and skill ceiling, which is one of the reasons I think it was the first blockbuster multiplayer FPS: even if your opponent is a way better player and knows the map, it's still possible to get lucky and win. The same isn't true of games with a higher skill floor like Quake duels*

*RA3, a Quake mod which came out around the same time as CS, lowered the skill floor by giving players a full loadout of weapons and maximum health on spawn. It was good!

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

#62
post #30

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."

[deleted]

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

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Remember Counter Strike was not an independent game. It was a mod of Halo. Halo did not offer a downloaded level editor. I thought it was half life

Because it was. I was playing ton of video game at that time and the mod community around half life was really fun and creative. Science and Industry was a fun mod as well. But yeah I also remember CS ad being at another level right away.

Do you remember Wanted? The wild west one? Good craic.

Then there's Ricochet.. :')

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

#64

The creator of de_dust (amongst others), did some great write ups[0] on how and why he made maps like he did. It’s a lost art now everything is squeezed through playtesting and data analysis. https://www.johnsto.co.uk/design/making-dust2/

I've read this many times over the years. It's always a fascinating nostalgic read.

I need to start backing up random pages like this.

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

#65
post #7

> Indeed, I argue that you can witness bits of fy_iceworld’s DNA everywhere, blasted and seeded across the entire landscape of the game industry, as long as you have the blacklight to trace its ropes of influence. Perhaps its most famous direct descendant is Shipment, an official multiplayer map for the original 2007 release (and 2019 remake) of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Today I learned that Shipment from COD is…

I don't think it's necessarily modelled after it, moreso a direct consequence of that lineage.

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

#66

The creator of de_dust (amongst others), did some great write ups[0] on how and why he made maps like he did. It’s a lost art now everything is squeezed through playtesting and data analysis. https://www.johnsto.co.uk/design/making-dust2/

Thanks for posting this, I had never even realized I should be looking for this blog

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

#67
post #30

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."

> Minecraft and Roblox both have creative / extensible outlets built in to them

Not at all the same thing as the community-created content of old.

Roblox is an entirely microtransaction-driven experience, you create games and publish them on the developer's platform so you can charge players for things and make money, not because you simply want to create something for people to enjoy. The developer is in full control at all times and can decide to remove your content at any time.

Minecraft is fundamentally a sandbox game but that's also not really the same thing. You can still run your own servers with your own mods on the original edition but that's just a remnant of the past and Microsoft wants to get rid of that as soon as possible so they can force you to play their version of the game where you pay microtransactions for servers, skins, maps, etc. And besides, most popular java servers have their own set of microtransactions, and there's no server list, so generally you either host your own server for a group of friends only or join a large existing server.

Compare all of this to the classic Valve game concept of loading up a level or script editor because you have an idea and want to make it a reality so other people can enjoy it, not because you think "I can make money out of this". You release your content on the internet for free, others download it, load it up on their servers, and it's now playable by anyone in a few clicks. Players open up a server browser, scroll through a list of servers, pick one they like and join, and suddenly they're playing a player-created map, on a player-hosted server, with player-created plugins providing gameplay and general quality-of-life features, together with other like-minded players. The developers had basically no control over this entire process beyond hosting the server list. No (alive) game released in the past decade replicates this experience because it's simply not as profitable as having full control of the game.

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

#68
post #67
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Minecraft and Roblox both have creative / extensible outlets built in to them Not at all the same thing as the community-created content of old. Roblox is an entirely microtransaction-driven experience, you create games and publish them on the developer's platform so you can charge players for things and make money, not because you simply want to create something for people to enjoy. The developer is in full contro…

> Roblox is an entirely microtransaction-driven experience, you create games and publish them on the developer's platform so you can charge players for things and make money, not because you simply want to create something for people to enjoy. The developer is in full control at all times and can decide to remove your content at any time.

Well people can treat Roblox like this, they don't have to. My children are part of several gaming communities on discord that share and tweak their games 3d models and lua source... There's a ton of people developing just for fun and growing communities on these platforms.

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

#69
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'm holding out for s&box hopefully being a return to community driven gaming. Garry has a proven track record of shipping games with big audiences (I've personally sunk way too many hours into both Gmod & Rust), and with source 2 as the engine it's looking pretty graphically stunning.

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

#70
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The absolute best gaming I've ever done has been on custom servers with highly invested well run admin culture. It is sad to see that gone. This generation has much better single player experiences though, in a insane variety of aesthetics, so maybe that trade off is acceptable.

> This generation has much better single player experiences though, in a insane variety of aesthetics, so maybe that trade off is acceptable.

I wouldn't generalize it like that

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