Counter-Strike Building with Worldcraft

I admit it. Many times my imagination moved faster than I was able to optimize

Counter-Strike .. the demon for my time
Like thousands of gamers I was sucked into the Counter-Strike world for almost two years, starting from Beta 4 to 1.2 until I finally kicked the Counter-Strike nightly habit. Finally, in a bid to actually stop playing (RSI began curling my hand into a claw) I decided to spend time clip-brushing a map together with Worldcraft. I made three maps. The first one was an urban rooftop battle inspired by Daredevil comics and the rooftop chase in "Dirty Harry". It had rather high rspeeds at any outside part. I began to hate the Half-Life engine because all I could think about were outside scenarios.

CS_Salvador was my second map and my best one. However, it was so big and ambitious it could only be played with 32 players. Once half were killed (it was played for about a week with one clan before they ditched it) it began an extremely long round for those left trying to hunt the others. What I liked about it was that it had three non-standard avenues for long range battles (click the thumbnail graphics to see larger pictures). Based upon my recollections of the movies "Salvador" and "Under Fire", it took place in an imagined compound held by rebels in a Central American setting.

The CT side could enter one of three ways, which corresponded to the 3/4 major contact points (see how large it was?): an underwater canal, a garden, and over the walls and onto a rooftop. All three areas spilled into a courtyard which I built to not only be horizontal but vertical. Vertical because you could have players running along the roofs of the buildings bordering the courtyard, some trying to come up through a sewer at the bottom of the yard, and some entering through side entrances. The initial battle in the courtyard I thought was extremely fun because of the many fire lanes.

Yet another major contact point was a three level blockhouse that was a corner to the courtyard. If the Terrorists got there in time and managed to hold out, they were in a good position to stall the CT advance.

Using Worldcraft
I was learning Worldcraft 2.2 at the same time I was working on a contract where using 3DS Max r2 was required. It was extremely interesting seeing how similar the two programs were in philosophy and interface. Although placing clip brushes made a lot of sense because of the limitations of the Half-Life engine (building like lego), it also drove me crazy because of the leak issues. QERadiant (the carver) I liked better, but I had no interest in building Quake mod maps.