13 ms·

The legacy of fy_iceworld, Counter-Strike’s divisive, popular custom map (2020)

231 points by luu 4y ago

JoeyBananas 4y ago
In many games there is a "Final Destination effect" where the maps people end up playing are the most simple
kibwen 4y ago
Any given video game is more than just the game itself. A video game is a toolkit for making games. To say that a simple map like this isn't in the spirit of the game is missing that it's an entirely different game in its own right, merely built using the same toolkit.
jhatemyjob 4y ago
Offtopic but I'm convinced Minecraft was inspired by fy_breakfloor
- soupfordummies 4y ago
  Solid theory! Now we just gotta figure out what the Nipper maps led to :P
- endgame 4y ago
  Minecraft was inspired by Infiniminer: https://www.zachtronics.com/infiniminer/ https://www.zachtronics.com/infiniminer/
a_shovel 4y ago
> This is perhaps the central tragedy of fy_iceworld. The game industry benefits from its legacy, but the conditions that spurred its influence no longer exist. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2019 does not offer a freely downloadable level editor for players to make new custom maps, nor does it allow a decentralized network of player-managed multiplayer servers to distribute these custom maps. We can only play what someone else has decided for us. This climate change has ensured that there will never be another fy_iceworld. Couldn't agree more. I have a lot of fond memories of playing on stupid custom TF2 maps. In most ways, game development has gotten more accessible by miles over the last few decades, but this is one of a few ways it's gotten less accessible. It's easier than ever to make a full new game, but it's become impossible to make a single simplistic map for an existing shooter that your friends actually play.
- nerdponx 4y ago
  Urban Terror has a lot of custom maps, but there don't seem to be many players online at any given time, at least not where I have decent ping.
- hackernewds 4y ago
  Remember Counter Strike was not an independent game. It was a mod of Halo. Halo did not offer a downloaded level editor.
  - sayhello 4y ago
    Counter-Strike was a mod of Half Life, not Halo.
  - vlovich123 4y ago
    You mean half life right?
  - nomad_dude 4y ago
    Counter-strike was originally a Half-Life mod.
  - lagniappe 4y ago
    > Remember Counter Strike was not an independent game. It was a mod of Halo. Halo did not offer a downloaded level editor. I thought it was half life
    - dopidopHN 4y ago
      Because it was. I was playing ton of video game at that time and the mod community around half life was really fun and creative. Science and Industry was a fun mod as well. But yeah I also remember CS ad being at another level right away.
      - emsixteen 4y ago
        Do you remember Wanted? The wild west one? Good craic. Then there's Ricochet.. :')
fwlr 4y ago
Iceworld gave you a random weapon and you had to make do - that was a fun twist on the usual CS gameplay, and that’s all it took to be popular. Another genre in this style (possibly an evolution of iceworld itself) is “gun game”, where you all start with the weakest pistol and every kill changes you to the next weapon. This was popular for the same reason, it was a fun twist on the usual gameplay and you played with unfamiliar weapons.
- stephen_g 4y ago
  Yeah, I love gungame. It's deathmath style so you respawn pretty much immediately which makes it a lot more fast-paced and interesting instead of dying and having to wait out the round. There are still a decent number of people playing gungame in CS: Source around me (apparently it's not as good in the newer CS:GO but I don't have that one). It's also mostly people in their thirties so a bit better vibe than when there used to be a lot of annoying people who sound like they're twelve - they mostly seem to be on CS:GO now (not that all teenagers playing games are annoying, just mostly the ones who are on the voice chat a lot).
  - arvinsim 4y ago
    Gungame is just so much better to pick and play in public games. No waiting for teams to win, just shoot, die and respawn. Forcing players to a knife fight endgame is just so much fun.
- qup 4y ago
  We used to play one with respawns so there'd just be piles of guns everywhere (mainly the corner walls). I think we also had no money restrictions. You could buy whatever you wanted in the buy zone.
- ziml77 4y ago
  Gun game servers are where I encountered all sorts of custom maps, including fy_iceworld. I spent so many hours in high school and into college playing gun game in CS:S. It was very easy to just hop in and have fun. It was a nice alternative to the more serious, team objective oriented modes.
ezekg 4y ago
> Indeed, I argue that you can witness bits of fy_iceworld’s DNA everywhere, blasted and seeded across the entire landscape of the game industry, as long as you have the blacklight to trace its ropes of influence. Perhaps its most famous direct descendant is Shipment, an official multiplayer map for the original 2007 release (and 2019 remake) of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Today I learned that Shipment from COD is modeled after fy_iceworld! I can’t believe I never put 2 and 2 together. These types of small, hectic maps are always fun. Halo has Octagon variants, COD has Shipment and Nuke Town.
- emsixteen 4y ago
  I don't think it's necessarily modelled after it, moreso a direct consequence of that lineage.
  - ezekg 4y ago
    The layout is almost spot on. I think in the case of Shipment, it seems to be fy_iceworld modeled for COD.
    - emsixteen 4y ago
      Run about the two - the differences are much greater than what a birds-eye view would let on.
plaguepilled 4y ago
Custom maps, not arbitrated by the game company, were the best part of the FPS genre.
- nerdponx 4y ago
  And Starcraft!
  - feoren 4y ago
    The Tower Defense genre was invented in Starcraft custom maps, all the way back to the popular Starship Troopers maps, then Bunker Defense, and so on. MOBAs were invented in Warcraft 3 custom maps with the original DOTA. It's so clear how beneficial it is to any creative sphere to have those rapid development loops, where you can go from having a cool idea to having random strangers playing it within a few days. There was another really popular Starcraft custom map (genre, really) called "Commandos" where you had a constant spawn rate of marines and could upgrade them into various things; I always thought that was a super fun mode, but it never materialized into a larger genre like Tower Defense and MOBAs did. I wonder if there's a missed (latent) opportunity there?
    - robertlagrant 4y ago
      > The Tower Defense genre was invented in Starcraft custom maps Rampart[0] has entered the chat. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rampart_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rampart_(video_game)
    - AMerrit 4y ago
      I didn't do Starcraft, but remember "Footies" maps in WC3 which sounds exactly the same as "Commandos". It was insanely popular, but never lived on like DOTA did. It is sort of funny to think of it as a sort of evolutionary dead end, or maybe it lives on somewhere else?
    - ajkjk 4y ago
      I think there are a ton of SC (and other RTSes like AOE) mods which are just waiting to be made into standalone games. "Nexus Wars" comes to mind as a favorite. But there were so many, I wish I could remember them.
rvba 4y ago
In StarCraft Brood War there were normal maps, which were mostly played 1v1. That was the "true" game - it was fun but also quite difficult. Many players played for fun, so they would play team games e.g. 4v4 where skill still mattered but often the results depended more who you got on your team (I think that to a degree this is why MOBAs are so popular - in theory you get close to a 50-50 winrate, or at least win like 30% games even if you are bad). Some players enjoyed a map called "Big game hunters" (or BGH for short) where you didnt have to care much about resources - they were abundand in your starting location. So you didnt have to think about building new bases (big part of regular StarCraft gameplay). In fact even more simplified "fastest" maps were made, where resources were stacked near every player's starting point and the map was basically a square with some choke points. The layout was simplistic too. It could still be fun and better player wouod still win. But again most players played team games like 4v4 where you could always blame your loss on your team. Then the players played a map called "Blood bath" that was incredibly small - so games could be shorter (few minutes), since players would often "rush" (=attack quickly) each other to win or lose fast. Those simplifications that removed part of the main game loop were still fun. Often by making the game a bit easier. (Although I remember some challenge between "regular" players and "BGH" players wherr BGH players won, since they know how to play BGH and they were good enough to win on a regular map). Then StarCraft Brood War had thousands of custom games, which had deep ability yo customize the game and a primitive programming language - that allowed to completely change the way the game worked. MOBA genere, turret defence - all came from StarCraft Brood War custom games. I think that apart from Warcraft3 no other game allowed so much custom maps from the stock (without mods). In Starcraft 1 and Warcraft 3 you would just download the custom map and play it. Starcraft 2 never managed to get custom maps as popular due to Blizzard's mismanagment: no custom game list. Also Blizzard was probably trying to monetize custom games/maps but failed. Designers often ignore that (1) there are bad players that still want to win sometimes even due to sheer luck (2) some players want relatively braindead simplistic fun. I think in Fortnite they have a popular custom map that is a big square arena where both materials and ammo are infinite. Again a simplification, but at the same time a lot of the essence of the game is still there (shooting and building).
- soupfordummies 4y ago
  Oh man Warcraft 2 used to have BGH customs too! I also remember really enjoying these “Champions” customs where you had one strong unit that was modded to be even stronger and you had to progress through a map of obstacles and enemies. It totally took the resources/build part out of the equation and just focused on movement and combat. IIRC, the entire MOBA genre was actually spawned from a Warcraft 3 custom map (the original DOTA?) The bummer is, we can still play the single player campaigns of Star/Warcraft but those days of weirdo custom maps are likely gone for good.
jamesfinlayson 4y ago
I think fy_iceworld got mentioned recently when someone posted about the Counter-Strike in a browser project. Fun times anyway - I remember playing endless rounds on fy_iceworld during LAN parties in 2006 and 2007.
andrewmcwatters 4y ago
I wonder with all the people growing up, getting old, becoming game developers, do these people just not care about these old cool features that have gone away that entirely changed the gaming experience for kids? I remember making friends across multiple age groups in community servers that you could always come back to because someone was kind enough to lease a server for a few bucks a month. I remember young people creating levels ranging from totally silly to awe inspiring or a combination of both and more, and not to discount other modifications either. I can only imagine it must be product owners or IP managers somewhere in the org chart saying, "No, we should completely own the join server experience end-to-end," etc.
- rcme 4y ago
  Minecraft and Roblox both have creative / extensible outlets built in to them. Both are hugely popular with "the youth."
  - LeeroyWasHere 4y ago
    Exactly what came to mind, everyone in here is operating on old data. They haven't kept up with the current trends.
    - ziml77 4y ago
      Amazing that those are "current trends". Minecraft's first beta released 14 years ago (and it was super hyped right from the start). Roblox is even older at 17 years!
      - rcme 4y ago
        There’s a lot of competition for attention these days. It takes a long time to build a community. Also, someone else mentioned the age of Minecraft and Roblox as if it were a negative thing. But I’m impressed by the ability of these games to stay fresh and relevant literal decades later.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
qbasic_forever 4y ago
Glass floor was a worse (or more amazing depending on your view) version of this kind of map. As the name implies the entire floor was glass panels and suspended over a giant pit with a very ominous look. You could see and fire almost anywhere, including down on the glass as people ran towards you, shattering the panels and watching them drop to their death. But you had to move yourself because everyone else could see and fire on you and the floor under you too. It was a fun change of pace with a lot of anarchy.
- wuiheerfoj 4y ago
  Yes!! I loved this map. It had such a different strategy and metagame to normal CS - grenades and the m249 para became way more useful Edit: not that nades aren’t useful in vanilla cs, but they perform a different fucntuon
  - qbasic_forever 4y ago
    Hah that's right, I remember every start usually involved a big volley of grenades tossed out to randomly destroy parts of the floor and wreak havoc on strategy.
ihalip 4y ago
I fondly remember playing fy_iceworld and minor variations of it in netcafes 20 years ago. What made these maps special was that they 1) removed all game strategy - just walk 2 steps to pick up a gun and go fight the enemy, and 2) there were no hiding spots - so no more campers. For kids who could only afford 1 hour of computer time in a netcafe, fy_iceworld was the obvious choice.
- damagednoob 4y ago
  I think there are two other factors that people forget. 1) Most (if not all) FPSs at the time (Quake 3, Halflife etc.) had respawn times of around 10s after death. Counter-Strike introduced the idea of rounds which only ended when your whole team died. Scenarios would often play out with 8 players dead watching 2 players camping out the round. 2) IIRC, the default round timer was 5 minutes. This promoted conservative game play which slowed the pace of the game, especially for new players. I stopped playing CS for years but when I came to CS:GO, it was so refreshing that the round timer had been reduced to 3 mins. I spent countless hours being dead watching other people play out rounds.
forrestthewoods 4y ago
iceworld : Counter-Strike :: aram : MOBAs iceworld was great. Counter-Strike is a big game with lots of mechanics. Multi-round strategy. Sneaking. Shooting. Teamwork. Objectives. Etc. Iceworld takes all that and focuses on basically a single thing: peeking + shooting. It's great. I love the history of MOBAs. Warcraft 3 was a big RTS with hero units. Hero units are cool! What if a game focused on just them? This led to hero arenas and eventually DOTA. In Dota you only control the hero but there are still some automatic AI creeps. Dota is cool. It has lots of mechanics. Hero micro, map control, leveling, gear, solo fights, jungle, team fights, etc. What would be neat? What if there was a mode that focused just on team fights! Forget the first 20 minutes, all team fight all the time. Behold all-random all-mid (ARAM)! Counter-Strike and DOTA have extremely high skill ceilings. They're also very punishing games to poor players. iceworld and aram lower the stakes, increase variability, and decrease downtime. They're all action all the time. And even bad players can get some kills and have some fun. I love seeing how a game can produce a mod that becomes a full fledged game which becomes a bonafide subgenre... which gets its own mod and the cycle continues. Beautiful.
rcme 4y ago
In online games, there are generally two necessary aspects to "getting good": game knowledge and understanding your opponent. Game knowledge includes game mechanics, which are obviously necessary, but also includes esoteric knowledge like the specific areas in a map that can be exploited just so, or a complex combo with specific spacing in a fight game, etc. Personally, I don't want to spend my limited game time memorizing complex game knowledge. To me, the fun comes from understanding the opponent and using that understanding to beat them: what are their habits, how do they react, how can I trick them, etc. Levels like fy_iceworld are perfect in this regard.
- imiric 4y ago
  I generally agree, but the thing with these small maps is that you don't have time to "understand the opponent". Kill times are in the order of seconds, and death comes from every direction. There's no place to hide, strategize, and out think your opponent. In many cases, you can get away with aiming at the enemy's spawn point and rack up a dozen kills in a minute. At least some CoD maps like Shipment, Shoot House and Rust have a bit more complexity, places to maneuver, and, yes, even camp for a short while. The biggest thrill is always rushing to the top of the tower on Rust, where you feel you have a clear advantage, and conversely, taking revenge on that pesky tower camper. I haven't played fy_iceworld, but think that boiling that formula down to where there's absolutely no place to hide, removes any strategy at all, and staying alive becomes a matter of luck, rather than skill.
- skhr0680 4y ago
  CS struck a great balance between skill floor and skill ceiling, which is one of the reasons I think it was the first blockbuster multiplayer FPS: even if your opponent is a way better player and knows the map, it's still possible to get lucky and win. The same isn't true of games with a higher skill floor like Quake duels* *RA3, a Quake mod which came out around the same time as CS, lowered the skill floor by giving players a full loadout of weapons and maximum health on spawn. It was good!
- chaorace 4y ago
  > there are generally two necessary aspects to "getting good": game knowledge and understanding your opponent At the risk of overcomplicating an astute observation, I'd say that there are actually three aspects: game knowledge, maneuvering, and metagaming. That is to say that the ability to understand your opponent is fundamentally separate from one's ability to effectively foil them. Iceworld embodies the platonic ideal of a maneuvering test by massively compressesing the total number of possible gamestates into a 3x3 grid of sightlines. The map itself isn't exactly a masterstroke, but it's nonetheless extremely impressive in the way that it manages to avoid collapsing into degenerate gamestates after jettisoning so much complexity.
johnxie 4y ago
The custom mapping community of CS 1.6 was truly special, and it's incredible to see how much it has shaped the games we know and love today. Back in those days, community building was as simple as spinning up your own dedicated servers and hosting new maps that everyone could enjoy. I ran a few popular fun map servers, constantly experimenting with new mods, game/gravity settings, and rotating new maps based on community votes. There was a strong sense of excitement around testing out the latest custom maps, and even the quirky bugs added to the fun.
- jamesfinlayson 4y ago
  And it still is - the efforts people still go to to produce Counter-Strike maps, working around the quirks of the various game entities that don't properly reset at the end of a round and so on.
  - Galaco 4y ago
    In many cases, specifically working with those kinds of quirks. Being able to persist certain state between rounds in CS using these kinds of bugs has been a godsend for many custom game modes (for me personally, my work with Zombie Escape in CS:S and CS:GO)
hnick 4y ago
I also found the linked follow-up article interesting, where the writer tries to find the original author. Including an article comment at the end of the page by someone who claims it was them, with web archive links. Looks somewhat convincing but I doubt we can ever know for sure.
- jamesfinlayson 4y ago
  It's a shame that information is lost, given it wasn't even that long ago. Much like the original source files for most of Counter-Strike's old custom maps - most likely lost and gone forever.
- jamesfinlayson 4y ago
  Also, I think his note about all the .wad files is wrong - from memory, you list all the .wad files you want to use in Hammer's configuration menu somewhere and that entire list gets inserted into every map you make, regardless of whether you use it or not.
- eliangcs 4y ago
  I know the guy in person. I was going to send him the link and tell him "look, it's you!". But turns out he already knew and left that comment.
bitwize 4y ago
I'm reminded of Divekick, a 2D vs. fighting game that pares the genre down to its barest essentials. Instead of a joystick and six buttons, all movement, offense, and defense is performed with two buttons: Dive and Kick. This is a parody of the easy-to-spam aerial kick coming down on your opponent that is a staple in 2D fighting games (except in this one, it's your only offensive move, and one well-placed kick ends the match), and the whole game parodies other fighters and the FGC in general. But the simplicity of its control scheme admits surprising depth, and new players can learn the basics of fighting game strategy without a lot of distraction by playing it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divekick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divekick
gaucheries 4y ago
I loved this map. Hours and hours of fun. Also this article was published in 2020.
- gaucheries 4y ago
  Oh I guess someone with more karma than me didn't like my comment ;)
ziml77 4y ago
While trying to find one of the maps that I could quite vividly the layout of but wasn't recalling the name of, I found that someone has a massive archive of maps that I'm sure some people here will appreciate: https://ar.mevl2.duckdns.org/css/maps/ https://ar.mevl2.duckdns.org/css/maps/ From there I was able to find what I was looking for by browsing through all the ones with "texture" in their name. It was aim_ag_texture_jungle :) https://gamebanana.com/mods/105659 https://gamebanana.com/mods/105659
- wuiheerfoj 4y ago
  Ahh good memories - I played a lot to aim_ag_texture2 and it was a very similar layout. I liked that it was small and good for quick rounds or something practice , but not quite the carnagefest of fy_iceworld or aim_map
skhr0680 4y ago
Who decided that "fy_" stands for "fight yard"? Some random in the ingame chat or on AIM told me it stood for "fuck you", and considering the general demographics of people playing and modding CS circa 2002...
- retrofuturism 4y ago
  Check out part 2 of the article where that is discussed
evrimoztamur 4y ago
de_dust2 is chess with classical time controls, and fy_iceworld is 3+5 blitz. Both are played with the same game mechanics, but play very differently. In turn, both have a very large audience for different reasons.
Dachande663 4y ago
The creator of de_dust (amongst others), did some great write ups[0] on how and why he made maps like he did. It’s a lost art now everything is squeezed through playtesting and data analysis. https://www.johnsto.co.uk/design/making-dust2/ https://www.johnsto.co.uk/design/making-dust2/
- emsixteen 4y ago
  I've read this many times over the years. It's always a fascinating nostalgic read. I need to start backing up random pages like this.
- bigfoot675 4y ago
  Thanks for posting this, I had never even realized I should be looking for this blog
- metadat 4y ago
  Fantastic article, so interesting I chose to submit it (has not yet ever caught on for any HN discussion): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34926478 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34926478
WraithM 4y ago
One of the core skills of CS is peeking and spraying. fy_iceworld just decreases the iteration time while allowing you to chill and talk with friends and train basic skills.
vermaden 4y ago
Another less known (and very underrated one) but awesome CS 1.x map is cs_crackhouse. Spent a lot of time there ...
jl6 4y ago
> Andrew Yoder, an industry level designer who’s worked on Paladins and Warframe, thinks of fy_iceworld in such universal cosmic terms. “fy_iceworld feels like one of those ur-layouts”, says Yoder, “like Doom 2’s Dead Simple or Unreal Tournament's DM-Morbias -- like it came into being as a natural consequence of the game mechanics, inevitably.” In the same vein I would like to give a mention to the Mac game Marathon’s Waldo World Arena.
ZoomZoomZoom 4y ago
Never got the appeal and I always wondered why such engaging meatboxes as cs_mini_militia never really caught on (outside my bubble at the time), considering it provided extra dynamic gameplay and rich tactics both.
revskill 4y ago
Modern haftlife lacks real feeling of original CS. Which took me off the game.
thriftwy 4y ago
In many ways it reminds me of the notorious Jebus Cross[1] template for Heroes of Might and Magic 3 random map generator. It is also super simple, quick, considered unbalanced but occupies around 90% of all competitive HoMM3 streaming. 1. https://h3hota.com/en/templates#xl-u-templates/jebus-cross https://h3hota.com/en/templates#xl-u-templates/jebus-cross
shp0ngle 4y ago
btw there is a followup to this article, doing investigation of who was the author https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/who-made-fy_iceworld-a-forensic-investigation https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/who-made-fy_iceworld-a-fore... and most interestingly, there is a comment burried in the comments, admitting the he was the original author - and it checks out with the article. It was 15 year old Taiwanese guy. (Who is now a software engineer.) https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/community/profile/dmgkyd https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/community/profile/dmgkyd
- AMerrit 4y ago
  Wow, that comment and the archive.org link he posted seal it for me. I played fy_iceworld a bunch at my local lan cafe a lot 2002-2003 but never thought that it could be something escaped from the internet cafes of Taiwan made by a 15 year old.
Eumenes 4y ago
The way of nostalgia this produced made my head swim ...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bob1029 4y ago
These types of layouts always appealed to some fundamental part of my brain. The accessibility, repeatability, speed, etc. These experiences are the antithesis of a battle royale or other modern arena shooter. You can literally play for 3 minutes and complete 5-10 logical games. Its almost like a time machine for fun. I've been working on my own game based upon this style of simple map. I intend to feature this "4-box" layout as my primary competitive arena. I did come up with something even simpler - a single box in the middle with spawns on opposite corners. Sometimes iceworld is a bit too big... The only logical simplification beyond this would be an empty room with spawns on opposite sides. I am absolutely going to look into what this might play like as well. Hoping to have something to show HN later this year.
- archagon 4y ago
  Half-Life DM had custom “killbox” maps that were a more complex variant of this. They were tons of fun.
ohlookabird 4y ago
I was recently surprised to see CS 1.6 running in the browser: https://play-cs.com https://play-cs.com Makes it way to easy to get sucked into a game or two.
ActionHank 4y ago
Pool day is the undisputed king.
- lazyweb 4y ago
  HARD agree. Had a lot of fun going against 12 bots with 2-3 (human) friends, for hours.
INGSOCIALITE 4y ago
the 'shipyard' map in call of duty is REALLLLY close to this layout https://assets.rockpapershotgun.com/images/2020/04/yang_fy_iceworld07-shipment2019.jpg https://assets.rockpapershotgun.com/images/2020/04/yang_fy_i...
0cVlTeIATBs 4y ago
>fy_iceworld’s buyzone rests obliviously in the center of the map in a dangerously cramped no man’s land. >This placement makes it extremely difficult to spend any money, which basically blocks off Counter-Strike’s central progression and loadout system while creating this funny risky incentive to rush into the middle before the buytime closes. 95% of the time, you’ll just get gunned down from 3 different sides. But if you’re lucky, you can run in, buy a grenade, and toss it into the other team’s spawn, and it feels like you’ve gotten away with something. Not quite. You'd bind your buy script to a key, and after your team killed the last enemy you have a few seconds to run there and hit that key. You keep the grenades in your inventory for the next round.
- fps_doug 4y ago
  Didn't even need a macro or anything, hitting b+<num>+<num> was quite fast to pull off.
  - c-hendricks 4y ago
    My password years ago used to be my counter strike buy menu keys when on the T team.
showdeddd 4y ago
Fond memories of playing this map with surround sound headphones and knowing the exact location of each player. Could even get some kills with my eyes closed.
wwilim 4y ago
I'd love to read a similar article about the cultural phenomenon that is de_hoejhus in CS:Source
rozhok 4y ago
TIL I finally learned the meaning of "fy" prefix.
- pstorm 4y ago
  I always assumed it was "f*k you". But after a little digging, it turns out it's not "fight yard" either. According to this comment (https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/community/profile/dmgkyd https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/community/profile/dmgkyd), the map was created by a 15 year old boy, who called himself Fantasy > Why the map was prefixed with "fy_"? Because he didn't know how to put custom texture into maps, nor leave his signature. The only thing he could do was renaming "cs_iceworld" to "fy_iceworld". "fy" stood for "FantasY". He made a lot of maps prefixed with "fy_".

231 points by luu 4y ago

In many games there is a "Final Destination effect" where the maps people end up playing are the most simple

Any given video game is more than just the game itself. A video game is a toolkit for making games. To say that a simple map like this isn't in the spirit of the game is missing that it's an entirely different game in its own right, merely built using the same toolkit.

jhatemyjob 4y ago

Offtopic but I'm convinced Minecraft was inspired by fy_breakfloor

soupfordummies 4y ago
Solid theory! Now we just gotta figure out what the Nipper maps led to :P
endgame 4y ago
Minecraft was inspired by Infiniminer: https://www.zachtronics.com/infiniminer/ https://www.zachtronics.com/infiniminer/

a_shovel 4y ago

> This is perhaps the central tragedy of fy_iceworld. The game industry benefits from its legacy, but the conditions that spurred its influence no longer exist. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2019 does not offer a freely downloadable level editor for players to make new custom maps, nor does it allow a decentralized network of player-managed multiplayer servers to distribute these custom maps. We can only play what someone else has decided for us. This climate change has ensured that there will never be another fy_iceworld. Couldn't agree more. I have a lot of fond memories of playing on stupid custom TF2 maps. In most ways, game development has gotten more accessible by miles over the last few decades, but this is one of a few ways it's gotten less accessible. It's easier than ever to make a full new game, but it's become impossible to make a single simplistic map for an existing shooter that your friends actually play.

nerdponx 4y ago
Urban Terror has a lot of custom maps, but there don't seem to be many players online at any given time, at least not where I have decent ping.
hackernewds 4y ago
Remember Counter Strike was not an independent game. It was a mod of Halo. Halo did not offer a downloaded level editor.
- sayhello 4y ago
  Counter-Strike was a mod of Half Life, not Halo.
- vlovich123 4y ago
  You mean half life right?
- nomad_dude 4y ago
  Counter-strike was originally a Half-Life mod.
- lagniappe 4y ago
  > Remember Counter Strike was not an independent game. It was a mod of Halo. Halo did not offer a downloaded level editor. I thought it was half life
  - dopidopHN 4y ago
    Because it was. I was playing ton of video game at that time and the mod community around half life was really fun and creative. Science and Industry was a fun mod as well. But yeah I also remember CS ad being at another level right away.
    - emsixteen 4y ago
      Do you remember Wanted? The wild west one? Good craic. Then there's Ricochet.. :')

fwlr 4y ago

Iceworld gave you a random weapon and you had to make do - that was a fun twist on the usual CS gameplay, and that’s all it took to be popular. Another genre in this style (possibly an evolution of iceworld itself) is “gun game”, where you all start with the weakest pistol and every kill changes you to the next weapon. This was popular for the same reason, it was a fun twist on the usual gameplay and you played with unfamiliar weapons.

stephen_g 4y ago
Yeah, I love gungame. It's deathmath style so you respawn pretty much immediately which makes it a lot more fast-paced and interesting instead of dying and having to wait out the round. There are still a decent number of people playing gungame in CS: Source around me (apparently it's not as good in the newer CS:GO but I don't have that one). It's also mostly people in their thirties so a bit better vibe than when there used to be a lot of annoying people who sound like they're twelve - they mostly seem to be on CS:GO now (not that all teenagers playing games are annoying, just mostly the ones who are on the voice chat a lot).
- arvinsim 4y ago
  Gungame is just so much better to pick and play in public games. No waiting for teams to win, just shoot, die and respawn. Forcing players to a knife fight endgame is just so much fun.
qup 4y ago
We used to play one with respawns so there'd just be piles of guns everywhere (mainly the corner walls). I think we also had no money restrictions. You could buy whatever you wanted in the buy zone.
ziml77 4y ago
Gun game servers are where I encountered all sorts of custom maps, including fy_iceworld. I spent so many hours in high school and into college playing gun game in CS:S. It was very easy to just hop in and have fun. It was a nice alternative to the more serious, team objective oriented modes.

ezekg 4y ago

> Indeed, I argue that you can witness bits of fy_iceworld’s DNA everywhere, blasted and seeded across the entire landscape of the game industry, as long as you have the blacklight to trace its ropes of influence. Perhaps its most famous direct descendant is Shipment, an official multiplayer map for the original 2007 release (and 2019 remake) of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Today I learned that Shipment from COD is modeled after fy_iceworld! I can’t believe I never put 2 and 2 together. These types of small, hectic maps are always fun. Halo has Octagon variants, COD has Shipment and Nuke Town.

emsixteen 4y ago
I don't think it's necessarily modelled after it, moreso a direct consequence of that lineage.
- ezekg 4y ago
  The layout is almost spot on. I think in the case of Shipment, it seems to be fy_iceworld modeled for COD.
  - emsixteen 4y ago
    Run about the two - the differences are much greater than what a birds-eye view would let on.

plaguepilled 4y ago

Custom maps, not arbitrated by the game company, were the best part of the FPS genre.

nerdponx 4y ago
And Starcraft!
- feoren 4y ago
  The Tower Defense genre was invented in Starcraft custom maps, all the way back to the popular Starship Troopers maps, then Bunker Defense, and so on. MOBAs were invented in Warcraft 3 custom maps with the original DOTA. It's so clear how beneficial it is to any creative sphere to have those rapid development loops, where you can go from having a cool idea to having random strangers playing it within a few days. There was another really popular Starcraft custom map (genre, really) called "Commandos" where you had a constant spawn rate of marines and could upgrade them into various things; I always thought that was a super fun mode, but it never materialized into a larger genre like Tower Defense and MOBAs did. I wonder if there's a missed (latent) opportunity there?
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    > The Tower Defense genre was invented in Starcraft custom maps Rampart[0] has entered the chat. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rampart_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rampart_(video_game)
  - AMerrit 4y ago
    I didn't do Starcraft, but remember "Footies" maps in WC3 which sounds exactly the same as "Commandos". It was insanely popular, but never lived on like DOTA did. It is sort of funny to think of it as a sort of evolutionary dead end, or maybe it lives on somewhere else?
  - ajkjk 4y ago
    I think there are a ton of SC (and other RTSes like AOE) mods which are just waiting to be made into standalone games. "Nexus Wars" comes to mind as a favorite. But there were so many, I wish I could remember them.

rvba 4y ago

In StarCraft Brood War there were normal maps, which were mostly played 1v1. That was the "true" game - it was fun but also quite difficult. Many players played for fun, so they would play team games e.g. 4v4 where skill still mattered but often the results depended more who you got on your team (I think that to a degree this is why MOBAs are so popular - in theory you get close to a 50-50 winrate, or at least win like 30% games even if you are bad). Some players enjoyed a map called "Big game hunters" (or BGH for short) where you didnt have to care much about resources - they were abundand in your starting location. So you didnt have to think about building new bases (big part of regular StarCraft gameplay). In fact even more simplified "fastest" maps were made, where resources were stacked near every player's starting point and the map was basically a square with some choke points. The layout was simplistic too. It could still be fun and better player wouod still win. But again most players played team games like 4v4 where you could always blame your loss on your team. Then the players played a map called "Blood bath" that was incredibly small - so games could be shorter (few minutes), since players would often "rush" (=attack quickly) each other to win or lose fast. Those simplifications that removed part of the main game loop were still fun. Often by making the game a bit easier. (Although I remember some challenge between "regular" players and "BGH" players wherr BGH players won, since they know how to play BGH and they were good enough to win on a regular map). Then StarCraft Brood War had thousands of custom games, which had deep ability yo customize the game and a primitive programming language - that allowed to completely change the way the game worked. MOBA genere, turret defence - all came from StarCraft Brood War custom games. I think that apart from Warcraft3 no other game allowed so much custom maps from the stock (without mods). In Starcraft 1 and Warcraft 3 you would just download the custom map and play it. Starcraft 2 never managed to get custom maps as popular due to Blizzard's mismanagment: no custom game list. Also Blizzard was probably trying to monetize custom games/maps but failed. Designers often ignore that (1) there are bad players that still want to win sometimes even due to sheer luck (2) some players want relatively braindead simplistic fun. I think in Fortnite they have a popular custom map that is a big square arena where both materials and ammo are infinite. Again a simplification, but at the same time a lot of the essence of the game is still there (shooting and building).

soupfordummies 4y ago
Oh man Warcraft 2 used to have BGH customs too! I also remember really enjoying these “Champions” customs where you had one strong unit that was modded to be even stronger and you had to progress through a map of obstacles and enemies. It totally took the resources/build part out of the equation and just focused on movement and combat. IIRC, the entire MOBA genre was actually spawned from a Warcraft 3 custom map (the original DOTA?) The bummer is, we can still play the single player campaigns of Star/Warcraft but those days of weirdo custom maps are likely gone for good.

jamesfinlayson 4y ago

I think fy_iceworld got mentioned recently when someone posted about the Counter-Strike in a browser project. Fun times anyway - I remember playing endless rounds on fy_iceworld during LAN parties in 2006 and 2007.

andrewmcwatters 4y ago

I wonder with all the people growing up, getting old, becoming game developers, do these people just not care about these old cool features that have gone away that entirely changed the gaming experience for kids? I remember making friends across multiple age groups in community servers that you could always come back to because someone was kind enough to lease a server for a few bucks a month. I remember young people creating levels ranging from totally silly to awe inspiring or a combination of both and more, and not to discount other modifications either. I can only imagine it must be product owners or IP managers somewhere in the org chart saying, "No, we should completely own the join server experience end-to-end," etc.

rcme 4y ago
Minecraft and Roblox both have creative / extensible outlets built in to them. Both are hugely popular with "the youth."
- LeeroyWasHere 4y ago
  Exactly what came to mind, everyone in here is operating on old data. They haven't kept up with the current trends.
  - ziml77 4y ago
    Amazing that those are "current trends". Minecraft's first beta released 14 years ago (and it was super hyped right from the start). Roblox is even older at 17 years!
    - rcme 4y ago
      There’s a lot of competition for attention these days. It takes a long time to build a community. Also, someone else mentioned the age of Minecraft and Roblox as if it were a negative thing. But I’m impressed by the ability of these games to stay fresh and relevant literal decades later.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

qbasic_forever 4y ago

Glass floor was a worse (or more amazing depending on your view) version of this kind of map. As the name implies the entire floor was glass panels and suspended over a giant pit with a very ominous look. You could see and fire almost anywhere, including down on the glass as people ran towards you, shattering the panels and watching them drop to their death. But you had to move yourself because everyone else could see and fire on you and the floor under you too. It was a fun change of pace with a lot of anarchy.

wuiheerfoj 4y ago
Yes!! I loved this map. It had such a different strategy and metagame to normal CS - grenades and the m249 para became way more useful Edit: not that nades aren’t useful in vanilla cs, but they perform a different fucntuon
- qbasic_forever 4y ago
  Hah that's right, I remember every start usually involved a big volley of grenades tossed out to randomly destroy parts of the floor and wreak havoc on strategy.

ihalip 4y ago

I fondly remember playing fy_iceworld and minor variations of it in netcafes 20 years ago. What made these maps special was that they 1) removed all game strategy - just walk 2 steps to pick up a gun and go fight the enemy, and 2) there were no hiding spots - so no more campers. For kids who could only afford 1 hour of computer time in a netcafe, fy_iceworld was the obvious choice.

damagednoob 4y ago
I think there are two other factors that people forget. 1) Most (if not all) FPSs at the time (Quake 3, Halflife etc.) had respawn times of around 10s after death. Counter-Strike introduced the idea of rounds which only ended when your whole team died. Scenarios would often play out with 8 players dead watching 2 players camping out the round. 2) IIRC, the default round timer was 5 minutes. This promoted conservative game play which slowed the pace of the game, especially for new players. I stopped playing CS for years but when I came to CS:GO, it was so refreshing that the round timer had been reduced to 3 mins. I spent countless hours being dead watching other people play out rounds.

forrestthewoods 4y ago

iceworld : Counter-Strike :: aram : MOBAs iceworld was great. Counter-Strike is a big game with lots of mechanics. Multi-round strategy. Sneaking. Shooting. Teamwork. Objectives. Etc. Iceworld takes all that and focuses on basically a single thing: peeking + shooting. It's great. I love the history of MOBAs. Warcraft 3 was a big RTS with hero units. Hero units are cool! What if a game focused on just them? This led to hero arenas and eventually DOTA. In Dota you only control the hero but there are still some automatic AI creeps. Dota is cool. It has lots of mechanics. Hero micro, map control, leveling, gear, solo fights, jungle, team fights, etc. What would be neat? What if there was a mode that focused just on team fights! Forget the first 20 minutes, all team fight all the time. Behold all-random all-mid (ARAM)! Counter-Strike and DOTA have extremely high skill ceilings. They're also very punishing games to poor players. iceworld and aram lower the stakes, increase variability, and decrease downtime. They're all action all the time. And even bad players can get some kills and have some fun. I love seeing how a game can produce a mod that becomes a full fledged game which becomes a bonafide subgenre... which gets its own mod and the cycle continues. Beautiful.

rcme 4y ago

In online games, there are generally two necessary aspects to "getting good": game knowledge and understanding your opponent. Game knowledge includes game mechanics, which are obviously necessary, but also includes esoteric knowledge like the specific areas in a map that can be exploited just so, or a complex combo with specific spacing in a fight game, etc. Personally, I don't want to spend my limited game time memorizing complex game knowledge. To me, the fun comes from understanding the opponent and using that understanding to beat them: what are their habits, how do they react, how can I trick them, etc. Levels like fy_iceworld are perfect in this regard.

imiric 4y ago
I generally agree, but the thing with these small maps is that you don't have time to "understand the opponent". Kill times are in the order of seconds, and death comes from every direction. There's no place to hide, strategize, and out think your opponent. In many cases, you can get away with aiming at the enemy's spawn point and rack up a dozen kills in a minute. At least some CoD maps like Shipment, Shoot House and Rust have a bit more complexity, places to maneuver, and, yes, even camp for a short while. The biggest thrill is always rushing to the top of the tower on Rust, where you feel you have a clear advantage, and conversely, taking revenge on that pesky tower camper. I haven't played fy_iceworld, but think that boiling that formula down to where there's absolutely no place to hide, removes any strategy at all, and staying alive becomes a matter of luck, rather than skill.
skhr0680 4y ago
CS struck a great balance between skill floor and skill ceiling, which is one of the reasons I think it was the first blockbuster multiplayer FPS: even if your opponent is a way better player and knows the map, it's still possible to get lucky and win. The same isn't true of games with a higher skill floor like Quake duels* *RA3, a Quake mod which came out around the same time as CS, lowered the skill floor by giving players a full loadout of weapons and maximum health on spawn. It was good!
chaorace 4y ago
> there are generally two necessary aspects to "getting good": game knowledge and understanding your opponent At the risk of overcomplicating an astute observation, I'd say that there are actually three aspects: game knowledge, maneuvering, and metagaming. That is to say that the ability to understand your opponent is fundamentally separate from one's ability to effectively foil them. Iceworld embodies the platonic ideal of a maneuvering test by massively compressesing the total number of possible gamestates into a 3x3 grid of sightlines. The map itself isn't exactly a masterstroke, but it's nonetheless extremely impressive in the way that it manages to avoid collapsing into degenerate gamestates after jettisoning so much complexity.

johnxie 4y ago

The custom mapping community of CS 1.6 was truly special, and it's incredible to see how much it has shaped the games we know and love today. Back in those days, community building was as simple as spinning up your own dedicated servers and hosting new maps that everyone could enjoy. I ran a few popular fun map servers, constantly experimenting with new mods, game/gravity settings, and rotating new maps based on community votes. There was a strong sense of excitement around testing out the latest custom maps, and even the quirky bugs added to the fun.

jamesfinlayson 4y ago
And it still is - the efforts people still go to to produce Counter-Strike maps, working around the quirks of the various game entities that don't properly reset at the end of a round and so on.
- Galaco 4y ago
  In many cases, specifically working with those kinds of quirks. Being able to persist certain state between rounds in CS using these kinds of bugs has been a godsend for many custom game modes (for me personally, my work with Zombie Escape in CS:S and CS:GO)

hnick 4y ago

I also found the linked follow-up article interesting, where the writer tries to find the original author. Including an article comment at the end of the page by someone who claims it was them, with web archive links. Looks somewhat convincing but I doubt we can ever know for sure.

jamesfinlayson 4y ago
It's a shame that information is lost, given it wasn't even that long ago. Much like the original source files for most of Counter-Strike's old custom maps - most likely lost and gone forever.
jamesfinlayson 4y ago
Also, I think his note about all the .wad files is wrong - from memory, you list all the .wad files you want to use in Hammer's configuration menu somewhere and that entire list gets inserted into every map you make, regardless of whether you use it or not.
eliangcs 4y ago
I know the guy in person. I was going to send him the link and tell him "look, it's you!". But turns out he already knew and left that comment.

bitwize 4y ago

I'm reminded of Divekick, a 2D vs. fighting game that pares the genre down to its barest essentials. Instead of a joystick and six buttons, all movement, offense, and defense is performed with two buttons: Dive and Kick. This is a parody of the easy-to-spam aerial kick coming down on your opponent that is a staple in 2D fighting games (except in this one, it's your only offensive move, and one well-placed kick ends the match), and the whole game parodies other fighters and the FGC in general. But the simplicity of its control scheme admits surprising depth, and new players can learn the basics of fighting game strategy without a lot of distraction by playing it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divekick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divekick

gaucheries 4y ago

I loved this map. Hours and hours of fun. Also this article was published in 2020.

gaucheries 4y ago
Oh I guess someone with more karma than me didn't like my comment ;)

ziml77 4y ago

While trying to find one of the maps that I could quite vividly the layout of but wasn't recalling the name of, I found that someone has a massive archive of maps that I'm sure some people here will appreciate: https://ar.mevl2.duckdns.org/css/maps/ https://ar.mevl2.duckdns.org/css/maps/ From there I was able to find what I was looking for by browsing through all the ones with "texture" in their name. It was aim_ag_texture_jungle :) https://gamebanana.com/mods/105659 https://gamebanana.com/mods/105659

wuiheerfoj 4y ago
Ahh good memories - I played a lot to aim_ag_texture2 and it was a very similar layout. I liked that it was small and good for quick rounds or something practice , but not quite the carnagefest of fy_iceworld or aim_map

skhr0680 4y ago

Who decided that "fy_" stands for "fight yard"? Some random in the ingame chat or on AIM told me it stood for "fuck you", and considering the general demographics of people playing and modding CS circa 2002...

retrofuturism 4y ago
Check out part 2 of the article where that is discussed

evrimoztamur 4y ago

de_dust2 is chess with classical time controls, and fy_iceworld is 3+5 blitz. Both are played with the same game mechanics, but play very differently. In turn, both have a very large audience for different reasons.

Dachande663 4y ago

The creator of de_dust (amongst others), did some great write ups[0] on how and why he made maps like he did. It’s a lost art now everything is squeezed through playtesting and data analysis. https://www.johnsto.co.uk/design/making-dust2/ https://www.johnsto.co.uk/design/making-dust2/

emsixteen 4y ago
I've read this many times over the years. It's always a fascinating nostalgic read. I need to start backing up random pages like this.
bigfoot675 4y ago
Thanks for posting this, I had never even realized I should be looking for this blog
metadat 4y ago
Fantastic article, so interesting I chose to submit it (has not yet ever caught on for any HN discussion): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34926478 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34926478

WraithM 4y ago

One of the core skills of CS is peeking and spraying. fy_iceworld just decreases the iteration time while allowing you to chill and talk with friends and train basic skills.

vermaden 4y ago

Another less known (and very underrated one) but awesome CS 1.x map is cs_crackhouse. Spent a lot of time there ...

jl6 4y ago

> Andrew Yoder, an industry level designer who’s worked on Paladins and Warframe, thinks of fy_iceworld in such universal cosmic terms. “fy_iceworld feels like one of those ur-layouts”, says Yoder, “like Doom 2’s Dead Simple or Unreal Tournament's DM-Morbias -- like it came into being as a natural consequence of the game mechanics, inevitably.” In the same vein I would like to give a mention to the Mac game Marathon’s Waldo World Arena.

ZoomZoomZoom 4y ago

Never got the appeal and I always wondered why such engaging meatboxes as cs_mini_militia never really caught on (outside my bubble at the time), considering it provided extra dynamic gameplay and rich tactics both.

revskill 4y ago

Modern haftlife lacks real feeling of original CS. Which took me off the game.

thriftwy 4y ago

In many ways it reminds me of the notorious Jebus Cross[1] template for Heroes of Might and Magic 3 random map generator. It is also super simple, quick, considered unbalanced but occupies around 90% of all competitive HoMM3 streaming. 1. https://h3hota.com/en/templates#xl-u-templates/jebus-cross https://h3hota.com/en/templates#xl-u-templates/jebus-cross

shp0ngle 4y ago

btw there is a followup to this article, doing investigation of who was the author https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/who-made-fy_iceworld-a-forensic-investigation https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/who-made-fy_iceworld-a-fore... and most interestingly, there is a comment burried in the comments, admitting the he was the original author - and it checks out with the article. It was 15 year old Taiwanese guy. (Who is now a software engineer.) https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/community/profile/dmgkyd https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/community/profile/dmgkyd

AMerrit 4y ago
Wow, that comment and the archive.org link he posted seal it for me. I played fy_iceworld a bunch at my local lan cafe a lot 2002-2003 but never thought that it could be something escaped from the internet cafes of Taiwan made by a 15 year old.

Eumenes 4y ago

The way of nostalgia this produced made my head swim ...

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

bob1029 4y ago

These types of layouts always appealed to some fundamental part of my brain. The accessibility, repeatability, speed, etc. These experiences are the antithesis of a battle royale or other modern arena shooter. You can literally play for 3 minutes and complete 5-10 logical games. Its almost like a time machine for fun. I've been working on my own game based upon this style of simple map. I intend to feature this "4-box" layout as my primary competitive arena. I did come up with something even simpler - a single box in the middle with spawns on opposite corners. Sometimes iceworld is a bit too big... The only logical simplification beyond this would be an empty room with spawns on opposite sides. I am absolutely going to look into what this might play like as well. Hoping to have something to show HN later this year.

archagon 4y ago
Half-Life DM had custom “killbox” maps that were a more complex variant of this. They were tons of fun.

ohlookabird 4y ago

I was recently surprised to see CS 1.6 running in the browser: https://play-cs.com https://play-cs.com Makes it way to easy to get sucked into a game or two.

ActionHank 4y ago

Pool day is the undisputed king.

lazyweb 4y ago
HARD agree. Had a lot of fun going against 12 bots with 2-3 (human) friends, for hours.

INGSOCIALITE 4y ago

the 'shipyard' map in call of duty is REALLLLY close to this layout https://assets.rockpapershotgun.com/images/2020/04/yang_fy_iceworld07-shipment2019.jpg https://assets.rockpapershotgun.com/images/2020/04/yang_fy_i...

0cVlTeIATBs 4y ago

>fy_iceworld’s buyzone rests obliviously in the center of the map in a dangerously cramped no man’s land. >This placement makes it extremely difficult to spend any money, which basically blocks off Counter-Strike’s central progression and loadout system while creating this funny risky incentive to rush into the middle before the buytime closes. 95% of the time, you’ll just get gunned down from 3 different sides. But if you’re lucky, you can run in, buy a grenade, and toss it into the other team’s spawn, and it feels like you’ve gotten away with something. Not quite. You'd bind your buy script to a key, and after your team killed the last enemy you have a few seconds to run there and hit that key. You keep the grenades in your inventory for the next round.

fps_doug 4y ago
Didn't even need a macro or anything, hitting b+<num>+<num> was quite fast to pull off.
- c-hendricks 4y ago
  My password years ago used to be my counter strike buy menu keys when on the T team.

showdeddd 4y ago

Fond memories of playing this map with surround sound headphones and knowing the exact location of each player. Could even get some kills with my eyes closed.

wwilim 4y ago

I'd love to read a similar article about the cultural phenomenon that is de_hoejhus in CS:Source

rozhok 4y ago

TIL I finally learned the meaning of "fy" prefix.

pstorm 4y ago
I always assumed it was "f*k you". But after a little digging, it turns out it's not "fight yard" either. According to this comment (https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/community/profile/dmgkyd https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/community/profile/dmgkyd), the map was created by a 15 year old boy, who called himself Fantasy > Why the map was prefixed with "fy_"? Because he didn't know how to put custom texture into maps, nor leave his signature. The only thing he could do was renaming "cs_iceworld" to "fy_iceworld". "fy" stood for "FantasY". He made a lot of maps prefixed with "fy_".