The creator of the Anubis map, which has been used in tournaments since late last year, is levell designer Roald van den Scheer. In his recent interview he talked about what the process is like, how long it takes and what he pays attention to first.
Creating maps for CS:GO – is not an easy task in itself. To do this, you will need to learn how to work in a special level editor, pick up or make yourself a lot of textures and three-dimensional models, as well as spend a lot of time testing the map to understand how players can act on it.
Design Development
Scheir got involved with Anubis 2019 when he decided to enter the Mapcore competition as an experiment. Before that he was creating mods on Source engine, but he had no experience with content for CS:GO , however he decided to try something new. Mapcore – is a community of developers, which in 2019 held a contest with a prize fund of 15 thousand dollars, where level designers and artists had to create maps for CS:GO on the theme «exotic places».
Sheir took as a basis some textures and visuals that he had left from a previous project, and quickly realized what elements should appear on the map. He notes that map design for CS:GO can be approached in many different ways. While many developers favor a conservative approach, he tried to experiment more to give players opportunities for out-of-the-box solutions. As an example of another map made using this approach, he cites Overpass, which allows opponents to build dynamics differently. The result Anubis is a bridge over the canal that allows both sides to use unexpected tactics. Scheir notes that making this section of the map interesting was far from the first playtest due to the fact that the bridge represents an open space in which the player is too vulnerable.
Fine Tuning
Initially, the map is created without textures, in the form of simple objects placed on it – . This allows early testing of how players move, how grenades can be used and where the best places to plant bombs are. Scheir tried to make the latter ones so that they would provide opportunities for players to interact on defense or offense. The desire to give players the most interesting experience was so great that the developer realized at some point that he was making too many changes: responding to feedback from playtesters, he constantly added improvements, and eventually redesigned almost the entire map compared to the original version.
Shayre also wanted to get feedback from professional teams, but only one of the Ninjas in Pyjamas players responded, on whose advice the designer changed some details. After the map structure was finalized, two more participants, jd_40 and Jakuza, joined the project to take care of the visual component. Anubis was eventually added to the game in April 2020, so we can say that her story in CS:GO is just beginning.