Some day I got a stupid idea to learn how to use Hammer. At start I was just goofing around, but then I accidentally made something worthwhile. That would be a rough idea of the CT spawn area of this map. Making it was painfully slow, since I was learning on the job, but also very rewarding to see that hard work pay off. Overall it took 54 hours over the course of two weeks to make. My first ever playable map.
And here’s the file, including a .nav file for bots.
The map consists of two outside areas (spawn areas for CT&T) that are outlined by walls and fences. These areas are directly connected by a tunnel, that has the bomb target for the terrorists. From the spawn areas you have access to the office complex of the map. That area has two floors. From the second floor you can also get to an airduct, but that doesn’t have much serving purpose when I decided to add a corridor into the map. The airduct took so much time for some reason for me to make, that I didn’t feel like leaving that out. Based on comments made by my friends, I made the enviromental light more daylight’ish, and added lights to the tunnel. It’s still a bit shadowy, but you can see better now.
Criticism appreciated (that doesn’t mean that it has to be negative 
).
Screens:
Looks nice in general IMO, got a few suggestions though.
I’m not a CS player so I don’t really know how the dynamics work, but it looks to me like there could be more cover around the place - things like aircon units or electric cabinets in the tunnels, overturned filing cabinets etc in the office, and maybe cars or crates in the outdoor areas. This would also make things like the checkerboard tiled corridor look less bare.
From a purely cosmetic point of view, the tunnel walls etc look a bit bare. Maybe some pipes going along the sides, or hanging wiring running along the top, between the lights? Something to break up the ceiling would be good too, maybe vents or something.
If you’re looking for a purpose for your airduct, you could make it an alternative, sneaky route to the bombsite (again, I don’t know CS, so I’m not sure exactly how this would work). Obviously you’d need to make it a risky option somehow, to keep things balanced.
Good show, old chap.
Pro tip: you should make the fog colour the same as the (general) skybox colour… it makes it look much more natural.
If you’ve used light values from Valve Developer Wiki’s Sky List then, you should find the ‘ideal ambience’ value is usually great for fog colour of that sky box.
What you’ve got there is pretty good. As a criticism I have to say that the office room looks very small and cluttered, particularly in comparrison to the large and empty corridors.
DL’d it, thought it could use some polishing up:
-The driveway bombsite with the truck was too open for snipers
-Door opening noises drove me insane
-Hallways and stairwells were very cramped, and became chokepoints of death
-Cover is a lttle sparse
-I don’t want to even know what those stains on the floor are
But it is a solid map
The corridor areas are fine the way they are now, gameplay wise. You want to have free space in CSS, considering you can’t walk through player models. There is some cover in the actual corridors, but the rooms next to them serve as the main cover area in a firefight.
The tunnel might need some cosmetic static props. I’ll think about it.
I did make an unbreakable vent through which you can see the corridor which I made as a replacement. Thus, it has ambush value. Well not really, but kinda :|.
Thanks, didn’t know there was a list of ideal lighting for sky textures.
I might make the office a tad bigger. Didn’t have any problems when I played it with my friends, but indeed it is very small.
The map has different possible playstyles that you can use. On one hand you can just rush the bomb site and win the game in a minute, or you can hold back and snipe if you like to.
I didn’t make the doors myself, so I didn’t pay much attention into the noise they made. I’m on that.
I assume you were using bots? There’s your problem with the crampness mate 
. Maybe my friends are better than the norm, but that didn’t happen with real players to me.
Consider the stains as oil/beverage spills. Just decoration decals, no thoughtful purpose.
From the pictures, it looks like there’s a lot of open space. Good maps generally involve choke points, where lots of action plays out. Take TF2 for example, on CP and PL maps there are points where lots of fighting happens and progress is slowed. Those are solid choke points, but in your maps it’s wide open, and there are no small areas that you have to maneuver through.
Where’s the name derived from?
De_Challenge?
Du_Hast?
No no matey haaste=challenge
lrn2finnish
I DID FINISH!
It’s hard to tell from those specific pictures exactly what the map is like. I didn’t really think of creating these so called choke points when I was making the map, but now that I think of it there is a good few of them. If I make a new map I’ll keep this in mind.
It’s derived from Haastemies, a nickname of mine.
Challenge Man? Yeah I go by the name Toimintamies from time to time too, but Haastemies?
Moar like Mentalhaastemies amirite?
Nice map. Fog is always a good thing to have.
[offtopic]More like process server or summoner than challengeman. But the latter works better in English. In Finnish it don’t matter which one you mean.[/offtopic]
What?
Meh, fog’s that small detail you put in, like enviromental light.
You can’t tell me fog is not kick ass.