In the spring of 2020, I returned to Counter-Strike. And after redescavering the hammer, I started mapping. This is how de_under was born. The general idea for the map was to have a bombsite where you could plant a bomb on the upper or lower level. The map is under the castle, with leftover walls of fortifications being renovated on the map. With bridges and overpasses and lots of drop-downs, some ladders and doors. As my two favourite maps were and still are: de_cache and de_nuke. You can clearly see where the inspiration came from.
View from the back of the bombsite A.
The designing or building process started with Bombsita A. As is often the case with CS maps, you will start from bombsites, because they are the key piece on which most of the game will take place. The site had everything I planned for it: two levels on which the bomb can be planted, a ladder and drop-downs. There were boxes scattered around, which provided cover. The ramp allowed for quick traversal between levels of the site, as did the ladder in the hut beside the site. But the problem with the site was which til the end was not fixed until the end, was that it had too broad/long site lines from the platform until the end, which was not fixed until the end. Which in turn made the site hard to attack for terrorists or retaking the site for the counter terrorists. Side tunnel and walls added later were a partial fix for it. But in the end, fighting on the site was fun, and I remember it fondly. There were still problems.
View towards the bombsite A from T spawn.
Bombsite A, being the main focus of the map have taken something away from the other parts of the map. The other parts of the map had their own ladders drop downs and doors. Places that had ideas for themselves, but that was it. There were ideas without a purpose, something placed to be there rather than to enrich the area itself or gameplay. And this is most apparent in bombsite B and the T side of the map. There are a lot of empty spaces on that side of the map and connectios felling punishing to take them. Like, the top right side of the map was just too long to go through. There was not much of a purpose to it other then delayed B rush from Ts.
Mini-map of De_under, left side is CT spawn, and on the bottom bombsite A and bombsite B on top, T spawn on the right.
Writing of bombsite B. At the start, I hada general Idea for the site, but the idea was not great. The site was made around the main pillar in a quite small room with only two entrances. Placed to the side of the map, far from easy access for the Terrorists. With little to no places to hide. It was the closest to the other bombsite, which made rotates quicke, and gave the rotating Counter Terrorists great sightlines into the bomb site. Can you see where the problem is? It was too often too much of a hassle for T’s to attack, gave advantages for retaking CT’s and was unworthy to defend for them.
Bombsite B
There was also a middle, which was mostly used for passing through. This was the area where the “I had an Idea so I put it here” took reign. Double doors: check, Bridge over middle: check. Non-double doors: check. Drop-downs: check. Ladder: check. Boxes: check. Some of those were fine additions to the area by themselves. But some of them stuck out and could be implemented in a smarter way. It made for an interesting place to fight in, but not much else, other than bots getting stuck in doors.
Middle of de under seen from double doors from bombsite A.
Generally CT were too mobile, free and could apply more pressure, while T where cramped, concentrated and forced into certain places. The far sightlines of A site were a nightmare for the attacking team. While the short-range combat was quite fun, the long-range combat became pop-and-shoot. The map becaues of those reasons become heavily CT-sided. At the time to fix some of the map’s problems i realigned its purpose, rather than it being a classic 5v5 mode, I updated it for a 2v2 wingman game mode. Which worked as most of the boring places were cut. But this solution, while clever, did not fix inherent problems with the map. I tried moving bombsite B to the middle, but it gave more problems than it solved.
So how do you fix those issues? I have some ideas, but they will need to wait. In the meantime, you can check out the map page on Steam workshop