At the moment of writing this, the map currently has 152 subscribers! I can't believe it! :)

This map was made for a multitude of reasons. To start, it's what I decided to do for my MI 330 Honors Option. The idea of the honors option was to learn the mapping software Hammer for Source 2 and make a map for the newly released Counter Strike 2. I would then make a video showcasing what I learned. At the end of the Honors Option, I submitted a 46 minute long youtube video and 9 hours of narrated footage of me constantly talking about what I'm doing while making the map. This is one of the most fun projects I've done for any class in my entire life.

While making the map, I first had to do some preliminary research about what makes a Counter Strike map good. This research can be seen at the beginning of the video. In short, there's a lot to it and making a good Counter Strike map requires a lot more thinking and planning than you think. After doing my research, it was then time for me to start making the map in the new Hammer Editor for Source 2. I followed some tutorials to make a starter map and then I made a new file and hit record, that's when I started making the final map. I won't go into too much more detail about making the map as there was a lot to it and it's all explained in that video above. What I will say though is this: the new Hammer Editor is the best level designing software I've ever used and most likely will ever use. The brush based level design is infinitely better than meshes. Unity's ProBuilder and Unreal Engine's modelling tools are jokes compared to this. To provide a quick summary about why I love Hammer so much, think of it as Blender's 3D modelling tools but better and entirely focused on level design. There is no reason at all to leave the Hammer editor to make your final map. You can create materials, meshes, prefabs, e.t.c. entirely within the Hammer editor. All Counter Strike 2 maps were made entirely within Hammer and all geometry is entirely Hammer geo. That should show about how powerful this tool is and how experts can use it. In the future, I plan on making all of my levels for my games within either Hammer, because you can export the level meshes to other engines, or Trenchbroom, which is a software for Quake maps and is very similar to Hammer.

All in all, I loved making this Counter Strike 2 map and I highly recommend that you watch the video to learn more about how I made it and the decisions that affected its development. I also love the Hammer editor and will be using it for my future games.