DE_MPC is a small project that I have been working on my spare time. It's a Counter Strike Global Offensive 5v5 competitive map, where my main focus was the balance and the exploration of CS:GO mechanics, that's why I choose to work with simple textures and no clear thematic for it.
It took me 2 months to finish it, and here I'll share a little about my design thoughts and process, from macro CS things, such as the map format, to micro, like smoke grenades spaces and walking sound. DE_MPC is my first Level Design project.
First of all, some explanation on game mechanics for those who don't know: Most of CS:GO competitive maps are based on bomb plant mechanics. One team play as the Terrorist Team (TR), and for them to win they must: A. Plant the bomb on one of the two bomb sites and defend it until it explodes, or B. Kill all the Counter-Terrorist (CT) team. For the other team, the CT, they must protect the bomb sites. They only win if: A. Timer runs out before TR plant the bomb, or B. Defuse the bomb after the TR plant, or even C. Kill all the TR team before they plant the bomb. CS:GO is a very asymmetrical game and this affect the Level Design a lot.
The map is designed to have safe paths for both bombs, and 2 conflict paths, where players might encounter an enemy. In the animation below, you can see TR path as the orange lines and CT paths as the blue ones. Those are important to create mind games situations and path choices for the players.
In CS:GO, Spawn area to Bomb site distance is a very important variable, since CT must arrive much faster, so they can position themselves in a good spot. Also, there must be enough time for grenade setup (throwing smoke grenades to block other team vision, incendiary grenades to block rush and flash bangs to blind them). In the video below you can check how much time it takes to go to each bomb taking the safe paths.
Below there's a clean version of the map. It's easier to see how the underground area connects with the rest of the map. (I want to thank my friend Victor Moura for helping me out rotating this model on blender, follow his work, he's amazing!)
One of the most important thing that I've learned to do in this project is that sound might be a problem. After all the blockage, I did a first play test with some friends, and one of the main problems that I've noticed was how the sound might affect game play. This map has an underground section right under the main conflict zone, so it was easy to notice that many times players were confused by where the sound came from (from next to them or from below them?).
To fix this problem I could probably change the map architecture, but it would be a lot of rework, so I managed to work around with some different sound ideas. Since there are three floor layers (Main Area, Underground Area, and a small bridge section between them), I've added 3 different sounds for footsteps. The main area is the normal type of footstep sound, the underground area I filled with water, so there's shallow water sound. The small bridge section has a nice wood-like sound. The video below show all these different sounds.
I recorded some videos, showing a little bit of how some areas connect with the map and how some grenades can be used to change the approach. Yet, CS:GO is a free to play game now and anyone can download it, to really feel how the map works, I highly recommend downloading it on the link at the end of the page!
Thanks a lot to my friends, who helped me on play testing, the iteration on this map only could be done because of you guys! (And a special thanks to Arthur Bobany, for having taught me some tricks, both from Level Design and from the Engine itself)
And thanks to you who is reading this, I hope you'd like it. If you have any feedback, please comment it below, I would love to hear it :D
