“While I think I'd call it a 'gimmick' map by virtue of eschewing the normal rules of CS level design, it's evidently managed to find a degree of fun that regular, more complex maps can't provide, whilst also seemingly offering just enough depth and replayability to gather such a strong following.”īut where exactly is that supposed depth and replayability, asks FMPONE. “My impression is that its wide appeal is courtesy of its extreme simplicity and the degree of escapism it provides versus, for example, another round of Inferno or Dust,” says Johnston. Back to basics.ĭavid Johnston, designer of some of Counter-Strike’s most iconic maps like de_dust and de_dust2, agrees that focus on the basics is exactly why it works.
![counter strike hide and seek counter strike hide and seek](https://www.gamersdecide.com/sites/default/files/authors/u151310/prison.jpg)
![counter strike hide and seek counter strike hide and seek](https://www.gamersdecide.com/sites/default/files/styles/news_images/public/hsmi.jpg)
“Pick up a gun,” instructs the readme file, “And don’t die.” That’s it. Instead the map is prefixed with FY_, commonly interpreted as “fight yard.” It’s a plain old team deathmatch gun game format that discards much of Counter-Strike’s team-based gameplay, and to detractors, it seems to dumb down what’s otherwise a complex strategic game. Unlike the official Counter-Strike map cycle, fy_iceworld has no overarching hostage rescue (CS_) or bomb defusal objective (DE_).
![counter strike hide and seek counter strike hide and seek](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/cso/images/4/4e/Dust2_02.jpg)
“It has all the fun micro gameplay moments of Counter-Strike, but in a quicker succession than ‘normal’ maps.” “I remember being at LAN parties and playing it for hours on end,” says Bram Eulaers, an environment artist at Valve. Either way, rounds are often over in less than a minute. Sometimes you have terrible luck and you’ll die within seconds. So based on your randomly assigned spawn point, you will either start in instantaneous danger or brief safety, with either a pistol, SMG, or rifle at your feet. In a radical departure from the typical gameplay of Counter-Strike, players often have direct line of sight into the other team’s spawn area from the very start, and there’s a different gun under each player start. The Counter-Terrorist (CT) team spawns on the blue side of the map and the other Terrorist (T) team starts on the red side. It takes approximately 10 seconds to traverse and memorize the entire map. fy_iceworld is basically a small cold square, cut symmetrically into a simple four block grid pattern. In part one, we're exploring the level's popularity and influence, and in part two we investigate who originally made the map. It showed me that at least some people are pretty easily entertained.” This is part one of a two-part feature about fy_iceworld. “I just didn’t get it,” says Shawn “FMPONE” Snelling, co-designer of the popular and critically acclaimed map de_cache for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
![counter strike hide and seek counter strike hide and seek](https://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/28/27009/thumb_620x2000/Screenshot_67.png)
To properly gauge fy_iceworld’s influence and legacy, I asked several working level designers for their takes.
#Counter strike hide and seek Pc
Similar conversations played out across countless clan servers, cyber cafes, PC bangs, and LAN parties around the entire world. I tried to convince my friends to vote against fy_iceworld on our local internet cafe’s CS server, but they argued that I was just salty about being bad at it (which was partly true) and they forced the mapchange anyway. It was a small simple grey killbox of a map that virtually anyone could’ve made within the first few hours of downloading the editor tools.įy_iceworld quickly became one of the most popular and divisive CS maps at my school. I remember playing a Counter-Strike map in 2001 called fy_iceworld.