Anubis creator explains how CS:GO's newest active duty map was designed

We spoke to Anubis' creator and level designer, Roald van der Scheur, to get a breakdown on what went into creating the latest map to be added to the competitive CS:GO map pool.

Creating maps for Counter-Strike is a laborious affair. Just to make a basic map it takes battling with the outdated Hammer editor, piecing together an image of what you'd like the map to look like, playtesting it repeatedly, and polishing it off by creating custom textures, models, and environment art. Making well-designed custom maps very much comes from a place of love and passion due to the amount of time required, but most importantly, competitively viable maps in CS:GO need knowledgeable and skillful level design with lengthy refinement and reworks. That was the process that Roald van der Scheur began to undertake when the idea for Anubis took hold in 2019.

"It started with the Mapcore mapping contest," the Dutch level designer told HLTV. "I was planning on doing it kind of on my own, but I'm a level designer, not an artist, and making a map takes a lot of time. I used to work on this Source mod called Pirates, Vikings, & Knights II, which is a game in which three teams fight each other in medieval settings, and I actually built a map set in Ancient Egypt. I decided to use this theme for CS:GO in a more modern jacket. It was actually the first time I experimented with arting a map and it was a lot of fun to do so, so I decided to use it for this CS:GO mapping contest because it wasn't really used in CS:GO before."

Mapcore is a game development community and forum that ran a $15,000 "exotic places" contest in 2019, encouraging level designers and artists to collaborate and create their own custom 5vs5 defusal or hostage map for CS:GO. One of the Cache designers, Shawn "FMPONE" Snelling, headed up the list of judges for the contest, with various familiar names from the community also part of the panel, including Anders "⁠Anders⁠" Blume, Mohan "⁠launders⁠" Govindasamy, and Jason "⁠moses⁠" O'Toole.

Van der Scheur had a small head start in the contest since he recycled some assets and mood-boarding that he already completed for a level he based in Ancient Egypt. He drew inspiration from images he had already pulled out about the location and quickly moved on to the next step in his mapping process, which was to draw a layout out on paper and decide what elements he could add to the map and where.

The whole process of creating the initial layout and deciding where exactly the elements might fit was much quicker than one might expect, as it took van der Scheur only a day to complete. The image of a bridge over a canal became a key focus and element of the design very early on, a unique feature that remains in the map to this day.

"It was the first strong inspiration of the environment. Then I see how I can put those elements in the map in an interesting way that's following the meta, because that is something we should respect as designers. The game works in a certain way, so how can we bring those two elements together?"

When asked whether having something original or different from other maps in Counter-Strike is important, van der Scheur stated that there are different approaches to level design. He said that while some of his colleagues are more static and solid in their designs, offering Ancient as an example and saying it had few changes and a safe approach, he prefers to experiment with crazy ideas and take the time to iterate on them to make them work.

"That [mid area] was decided during the sketch because… I'm a CS:GO player, my aim is shit, and I like to outsmart players in a way and have something dynamic where I can do some mind tricks. I like to focus on this as well. For example, I like Overpass. It's my favorite map because there's a lot of dynamic things you can do in terms of rotating, but also pushing, playing passively, and so on.

"What I wanted to do in this map, when I saw the reference of the bridge, was having this as well so you could drop down and completely, directly switch the tactic and move to either bombsite. In the initial sketch it was a bit less strong in terms of how fast you could switch bombsites, but it was the general idea I wanted. It would also be a bit more of a risk to jump down; you make a sound cue, you can't go back, but if you do it successfully you could be rewarded with a quick rotation or outplaying the enemy.

"It didn't work out during playtesting, though, because as you can see in the first graybox image there is this open bridge with just a small railing. It basically meant that if CTs would push on here they could get too much map control, or if Ts push up there and they could get flanked, so there's no safety for them at all and they could be shot from any angle. The bridge's position, but also its openness, was something I struggled with for six, seven, or eight playtests maybe, but it was something I wanted to get in there and get working. In the end, thanks to feedback, it worked out where it just ended up with one small window you can peek from."

Early ideas of layouts were explored through grayboxing, a process where the raw level is created in the Hammer editor in an untextured and plain environment. The 3D layout allows van der Scheur to test the map on his own to explore timings, how cover works, how utility works, and how it could be used on the map. From there, further iterating was done as other players and Mapcore community members playtested the map, giving data and feedback for level designers to look back at.

The bombsite and cover layouts are also adjusted during this process, but with attempts to keep the central theme that van der Scheur had when initially creating the location. Not everything has a perfectly laid plan, nor had an idea behind it, however. The design and layout of the B bombsite was unclear for lengthy parts of the design process and only came together through months of playtesting and tweaking.

"[Laying out bombsites] comes a little bit down to theming and references. What I found in references is like, for example with bombsite A — which we can all agree should be bombsite B [laughs] —, the bathhouse is a theme I had in mind. For this you need certain elements, like a pool, maybe some stairs, a waterfall, or something that would fit in there and make it a little interesting. The B bombsite was pretty much unclear all over, the progress wasn't really defined and more came along during the process of iterating on the map. The bombsite changed a lot, if you go through this topic on the Anubis Mapcore creation thread you will see how different it looked during different periods in time.

"What I personally like is to design bombsites with some kind of teamwork in mind, where two players could have some crossfires, could cover each other, could help each other out, and can rely on each other. Maybe I do this a little bit too much for the more general player, and that is kind of a risk of my designs, but I think it also provides a little bit more depth, maybe, if you know and figure out how it works and can get some teamwork going on.

"That is the main focus for me when designing bombsites, creating crossfires and figuring out how utility comes into play. It's not that I really start designing a bombsite like, 'oh, it should have this and this element,' it's just more of a gut feeling and experience that says that 'okay, this could probably work.' Then we do some playtesting and I see 'this is way too hard for CTs, how can I help them a little bit and give them a bit stronger or more favored position' or whatever. It's more of an iterative process, which I kind of did way too much of on this map in the end, it was actually a lot of iterating, too much I would say, but it worked out."

When asked about what he meant regarding doing too much on the map and iterating too much, van der Scheur explained that playtesters give a lot of feedback when testing maps, but that feedback is quite subjective. When designing the map, he was sensitive to that feedback and wanted to make everyone happy with his updates, and in attempting to implement some of those changes, he lost some of the vision for the map in the process. The back-and-forth resulted in the map switching from being CT-sided to T-sided and back, over and over, until at some point the Dutchman got frustrated and reworked almost the entire map.

Feedback still influenced the design, but van der Scheur was more cautious in implementing changes, weighing whether something was truly an issue or was only being brought up because the player didn't know how to react to something or was in an unfamiliar situation. He also pointed towards a difficulty in balancing maps for casuals, amateurs, and professional players, stating that he designs maps with pro teams in mind but can't focus his design solely on that side as it would increase the barrier for the casual player by too much. He contacted pro players and teams for feedback in 2020 as part of his efforts to tweak the map and make it viable at a top level, but only heard back from a player on Ninjas in Pyjamas, although that player gave some advice on how certain parts of the map were hard to take control of and influenced change to A main.

Balancing the map from that point came largely down to playtesting, something which van der Scheur credited the Mapcore FACEIT hub, and a website that collected stats and heatmaps on various utility usage, heatmaps, kill distributions, and other helpful statistics. More iterations and refinements were done to the map and when design elements were finalized the lengthy and grueling task of texturing began. Michael "Jakuza" Jako and "jd_40" were brought on board to handle the lion's share of that effort and the three of them combined efforts to handle various areas of the map.

"Actually, they did most of the work. Hammer is old and it's really shit to do art so you have to use a lot of external programs. We had Jakuza making other materials, other models, and then we had jd_40 who did all the art dressing, like making everything on the map pretty. Then we also divided some areas where we started arting, like I did T spawn and the canal area for example, then Jakuza did A site and jd_40 did the rest, basically, and also improved our work at the end. We had a different task for each of us. My main responsibility was the level design, but I think they actually spent a lot more hours on the map than I did because it takes a lot more time. But yeah, we all had our own expertise in this map that made the map as it is today, so we thought, or at least I think, it was equal in that regard."

The trio of creators eventually won the Mapcore mapping contest and in April 2020 Anubis was added to CS:GO. It was initially added in scrimmage mode before being moved to the competitive mode. The map being in the game didn't alleviate any burden from van der Scheur as Valve remained hands off, however, leaving updates and bug fixes in the hands of the original map developers. Even requests for data from the map's implementation in the game fell largely on deaf ears, with the Dutchman stating that Valve provided CT and T-side winrates per rank on one occasion, but didn't offer any additional data such as heatmaps for updates or changes to be made.

Additional tweaks and changes were made to the map in December 2020 by van der Scheur and the map remained in the game until May of the following year, when it was removed. Valve reached out to the three creators over a year later and offered to purchase ownership of the map in order to add it to the active duty pool.

"[My co-creators] were pretty easy going with it," van der Scheur said of the offer. "I think I was the only one having a few doubts because I was thinking maybe we can get more out of it. It's a nice extra to get but it is not that great, especially because you have to divide it by three people, and these days making a map just requires a lot of people because the standards are so high.

"I was thinking it's not that much if you look at it and also if you compare it to what people get paid for skins and stuff right, and how much work goes in there. But on the other hand if you have to choose between this deal and nothing, then this deal is a great deal [laughs]. Because you don't know what happens if you would even negotiate, you don't know if it would stay in the game if you would not accept this deal, so there's so much uncertainty that you kind of feel like you should accept."

When asked whether the pride of having a map in the competitive rotation of the game factored into the decision, van der Scheur said it did. "That's a really big factor, actually. Money is just money, and this is something nice and kind of a dream to reach this goal. In that regard I see it as a win anyway, whatever the deal, so that made me really fast respond like, 'let's do it.' I think I wrote them the same day. It was not that big of a hesitation."

The Dutch level designer did not want to share specifics on what the exact figures were in the deal that was made with Valve, but gave a small hint as to what the general range of the buyout was — one you could likely only understand if you are a map maker who has previously had a map in the game already. Van der Scheur stated that every day that a map is in the game, Valve gives the creators a certain amount of money, and that the amount they were given for the sale of Anubis equates, roughly, to having a map in the regular pool for two years. When contacted by HLTV in regards to what Valve pays per day for a map being in the pool, another CS:GO map designer declined to comment, stating that the information was covered by a non-disclosure agreement.

Relinquishing control of his creation came with a sense of relief, but also some difficulty. Now when he sees something is wrong on the map, van der Scheur still has an itch to fix it. He also hopes that Valve doesn't break his vision of the map that he so lovingly crafted, but he has faith in the developer to make good changes and stay true to the spirit of the design.

"All of us are pretty much done with the map. It took us so much time and energy that at some point, you're just done. Then it helps to have some fresh eyes to make bigger decisions, like if they even want to do bigger changes, then it could help to have fresh eyes and energy. When it was back in the game again, I actually opened up Hammer to see if I could change or improve some stuff with a fresh eye, but even then it was like, no… I'm just empty. I actually hope they will make some changes, I'm really curious."