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Level Designer
A story on how Anubis made it to the first place in the 2019 Exotic Mapcore Mapping contest & became a part of the official CS:GO map rotation
For this map, I have chosen the Ancient Egyptian theme, but with a modern touch to it to fit CS:GO. I already had experience with this theme for the PVKII mod I voluntarily worked on which gave me a lot of joy.
I started off by doing research on the theme and gathering reference pictures to come up with an idea for the layout and visual direction. Initially, I started this map on my own and therefore I focused not just on the gameplay vision, but also on the art vision early on.
My workflow differentiated a little bit from my normal workflow, where my focus was not purely focused on gameplay, but also on giving a strong identity to different areas on the map early on.
In this progress, I learned that focusing on an art vision helps with giving more defined shapes to a map and making areas more fleshed out, but can also be an extra weight during the Level Design progress.
However, I never felt too attached to a specific area where my map has seen a total of 15 - 20 playtests and quite some (perhaps too many) iterations. During the project, I had 'jakuza' joining me and creating the custom assets for me to use. Later on, also 'jd40 ' joined the team helping on dressing the biggest part of the map. This brought me more room to purely focus on the gameplay aspect and bring the layout forward.
For the layout, I wanted to create something different from the existing map pool, but stay true to the so-called (accepted) three-lane or four square layouts as it has proven to work in CS:GO. My goal was to create something simplistic, but dynamic at the same time. My biggest aim was the middle of the map where I made use of a bridge crossing a canal creating a lot of dynamics to the map, but also loads of risks in terms of Level Design.
It took me quite some iteration to get this area (and the balance with other areas) right and make it work, but I am glad I pushed it through. I have learned that feedback is really valuable, but that it is sometimes also good to hold on to your own vision for the map.
Close to the finalization of the map, it was played on the Mapcore Hub (community maps) on FaceIt (external matchmaker) where we received stats and feedback to work with. Based on this information I did several iterations on improving the map.
It was a long and difficult road to get to the map as it is today, but every change did something positive. Even though the balance shifted between the teams and a lot of feedback was contradicting, it all was little steps to the present version.
Halfway the development I decided to rework the entire map, get rid of the details and get back to simple geometry to work on the core layout of the map with the feedback I was given. It was a hard call, but a call you sometimes have to make as a Level Designer and I am glad I did it.
The bridge area has been the most complicated part of the map, but my persistence and the help of the playtesters made it work in the end. If I have to take anything from this experience I would say it is good to be flexible, but persistent and optimistic at the same time.
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Anubis has officially been added to the CS:GO Active Duty map pool on 18 November 2022
Mapcore FaceIt Mapping Contest 2020
Professional Highlights
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