East Borough - Hostage Rescue
by Will2k

cs_east_borough is a hostage rescue map based on neighborhoods from The Bronx borough and Harlem neighborhood in New York City. This is not an accurate recreation as I took the creative freedom to merge several elements from real life counterparts into one neighborhood in the map. This map is a remastered version of my CSS map cs_east_borough (2011-12) with almost complete visual upgrade/overhaul from brushwork and models to textures and visual/lighting effects. It will be soon followed by a bomb/defuse sequel, de_brooktown, based on neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Manhattan boroughs in New York City.

The map is very realistic and authentic, and I tried to incorporate all the elements and details that make New York so unique: the buildings and facades, the storefronts and old shops, the street and road signs, the projects, the fire escapes and awnings, the graffiti and the list goes on. The details/textures are authentic from New York City: storefronts (with the exception of couple of them), road and traffic signs, sidewalks, manholes, buildings... were all taken from actual NYC photos and from Google street view.

The textures preparation took me a lot of time to do the research and prepare the reference photos; every texture you see, especially storefronts, signs and graffiti, is the result of 3-4 photos layered in Photoshop and meticulously (also painfully for the wrist and eyes :) retouched and edited to get the final visuals you see in the map. I relied heavily on Google photos/maps (street view) as well as on 2 amateur photography blogs that are dedicated to New York (and maintained by New Yorkers :)

To give you a small idea on the length I went into to be authentic in the recreation of New York, signs and sidewalks should  be good examples. The storefront signs are mostly from landmark stores in New York (brand names edited) and the traffic signs are taken from the Department of Transportation (DOT) and are specific to NYC (other cities have different format). I built the sidewalk, curbs and ramps according more or less to the specifications found in the road manual of the NYCDOT. Even the orange traffic lights and the famous orange NYC taxi have the RGB color values as in their real life counterparts :)
 
I also scattered some funny signs throughout the map mainly in the form of billboard, building and bus stop ads. Some ads are brands that I modified and parodied (Grey Van shades, Lesswiser beer, Redbook footwear,...) while others are my original idea/work that I designed and created from scratch (Crook law firm, LOL insurance, Family jewels,...). There are many others that you'll discover while roaming the streets.

The map is about street scenes in addition to some backalley and indoor action. The map offers access to some buildings for elevated heights and sniping opportunities. And for those of you wondering: yes, the basketball court is built to scale :)

The layout is very simple and easy to remember and provides instant action for both sides as well as ambush opportunities and surprise attacks.

Despite being an open-ended map, it is fully optimized with luxurious frame rate across all parts for a smooth gameplay experience. 

The map has:
- 64 spawn points (32 vs 32)
- Loading screen & 2 radars (1 grayscale radar for actual gameplay and 1 colored for spectating)
- 3D skybox
- Soundscapes and Particles
- custom textures
- Kv file (SWAT vs Professionals)
- HDR with tonemap control and color correction
- Manually-tuned Nav file with place names

All the custom resources (except the nav, kv and the loading screen) are embedded in the bsp.

For installation, simply extract the folders in the zip archive to your \Counter-Strike Global Offensive\csgo folder.

It was an exhausting month researching, preparing and recreating this project but I enjoyed every moment and I really hope you enjoy this map as much as I did creating and testing it.

Comments and constructive feedback are always welcome.

Will2k

June 8, 2013

