Counter-Strike: Global Offensive started the year with record numbers and expanding community prize pools, and has trundled on ever since to become a firm fixture of Steam’s upper-most-played list.
Some classic CS maps have aged in the meantime – but luckily, the track’s turned out to be one of those oval playset ones and we’ve come back around to Train. Valve have rebuild the memorable map to ensure it remains pretty and competitive in one of the best first-person shooters on PC.
Both bombsites have seen major adjustments, and the rest of the map has been tweaked in innumerable ways that’ll affect the way matches play out.
“The map has been rebuilt from the ground up,” say the dev team, “and we look forward to seeing how players approach these gameplay changes over time. With these changes, we’re excited to see Train once again become a mainstay map in Counter-Strike.”
Watch Valve cycle through iterations of familiar areas in the video below. It’s like being sat in their Bellevue offices, only the tables don’t keep rolling away toward other cabals.
Even the aesthetic changes perform very specific functions. All textures used in the new Train have been “hand-authored” to make sure pixel density remains the same across the map. Apparently, that’ll reduce the effect of changing graphics settings on play.
“We also made the choice early on to improve silhouette read by increasing the model fidelity to help with our goal of modernizing train,” said Valve. “This helps us on several fronts including distance readability, graphical consistency and allows our community map makers to utilize newer content.”
Hooray, map making! Did you know? The ongoing Operation Vanguard celebrates a handful of community-made maps with paid-for dedicated servers and proceeds apportioned to the creators. That’s nice, isn’t it?