Counter-Strike Maps Go Isometric in Fan Re-imaginigs

[StewShearerOld]

Counter-Strike Maps Go Isometric in Fan Re-imaginigs

<a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/tag/view/counter-strike>Imgur user gzaloprgm recently expressed their love of Counter-Strike by recreating some of the game's environments as isometric maps.

In the pantheon of first-person shooters, it'd be hard to find many games more influential than <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/reviews/6259-Counter-Strike-Global-Offensive-Review>Counter-Strike. One of the most popular and long-lived multiplayer shooters in existence, its fan base is, to this day, large and wide-reaching. It's also occasionally prone to the creation of awesome tributes that just make you appreciate the game all over again. Case in point, one of the game's fans recently released an entire gallery of images re-imagining its first-person environments as nifty isometric maps.

The images, released yesterday by Imgur <a href=http://imgur.com/a/40J7N#0>user gzaloprgm, were built using the <a href=https://github.com/gzalo/HalfMapper>HalfMapper program and recreate a total of ten maps from the game's version 1.6. We have no word on how long these maps took to make, but you'd be hard-pressed to deny how neat they are. Likewise, just looking at them brings to mind some potentially awesome possibilities for Counter-Strike spin-offs. Go ahead and tell me that you wouldn't love a Counter-Strike turn-based tactics title based in maps like these.

The big question on our minds after seeing these is, naturally, what maps you'd like to see given this treatment. Counter-Strike, across all of its renditions, has produced plenty of candidates, all of which could certainly benefit from a bit of friendly, isometric translation. Take a look at gzaloprg's finished pictures and let us know which ones you'd like to see recreated in a similar fashion.

[gallery=3735]

Source: <a href=http://imgur.com/a/40J7N#0>Imgur


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[Pyrian]

Okay... I played Counter-Strike back around 1.3 or something. I recognize a bunch of those maps. But... What's up with those maps set mouse-sized in a full-sized bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen?

 

[Vigormortis]

snip

Gzalo didn't actually build the maps. He designed and coded a tool he called HalfMapper to capture images of maps that utilize the GoldSrc engine.

His project started out as an attempt to render the entirety of Black Mesa as one continuous map. He built the HalfMapper toolset and UI from the ground up, allowing him to increase the draw distance of the engine and give him access to several methods of rendering and capturing the resulting map mashups. After he'd revealed his results, he was flooded with requests for the toolset. He then improved the UI and other features within the toolset and released it all on GitHub.

Here's a brief article on his initial project - http://www.valvetime.net/threads/halfmapper-a-tool-for-capturing-unique-views-of-black-mesa.245689/

And here's his GitHub page for the toolset - https://github.com/gzalo/HalfMapper/blob/master/README.md

It's a really cool project and gzalo deserves some serious kudos for doing it on his own.

And as to your question:

Go ahead and tell me that you wouldn't love a Counter-Strike-themed turn-based tactics title based in maps like these.

Spoiler

Okay... I played Counter-Strike back around 1.3 or something. I recognize a bunch of those maps. But... What's up with those maps set mouse-sized in a full-sized bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen?

They were called Rat Maps. And some were quite fantastic.[footnote]But many more were not.[/footnote]

They're a recurring thing in the custom mapping community. I vividly recall some Rat maps in Team Fortress Classic that made for some of the most fun and frantic LAN games I've ever played.

 

[J.McMillen]

Go ahead and tell me that you wouldn't love a Counter-Strike-themed turn-based tactics title based in maps like these.

Are we talking computer or tabletop game? I'm sure I'm not that only one that would love to see Counter-Strike mini's.

 

[Setch Dreskar]

Would have to agree with Vigormortis though would also suggest that the article be re-written as really its completely wrong and misleading, it also doesn't give credit to the original mappers as they did the work and Gzalo just built a program to capture their work from a different perspective. So really the final part of the article is also pointless as it could be done on any map someone slots into the program.

Really more research should have been done into this, rather then just assuming based off the screenshots alone.

 

[Grumman]

Agreed - it's a cool project, but the article makes the program sound like an isometric map creation tool, which is even more interesting in some ways than an importer.

 

[JenSeven]

I wouldn't mind seeing those in some sort of Shadowrun mod or something.
This is quite cool, and has some nice possibilities!

 

[fix-the-spade]

Oh man, I can't see pics of Assault without getting flashbacks to a guy on the roof with an AWP.

MoD_TomWolf you colossal pain in the ass!

 

[DoctorM]

I'd swear you can do the same thing by using noclip and flying upwards.

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

I always thought Jagged Alliance 2 was a fantastic turn-based tactical game that would do awesome in the maps depicted above, especially tight ones like cs_office where there were some crazy lines of sight and many corners to ambush people. I don't know what's the closest thing these days, already playing XCOM and it's extra content.