CSGO mapper FMPONE and Rust devs rave about Source 2 tools

he co-creator of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive map Cache has been raving about Source 2’s mapmaking tool since late October.

There’s a ton going on in CSGO right now. Fans have enjoyed some impressive professional CSGO games over the past several weeks, with international competition resuming at esports events including IEM Beijing and FLASHPOINT 2. On top of that, CSGO players have also been glued to CSGO’s Twitter and official blog, praying for an update to come in that will bring a new operation to CSGO. But behind all of those things, some of the Steam Community’s most important figures have all be talking about one thing: Source 2.

CSGO map makers are flocking to Alyx’s workshop tools

It seems as though CSGO can’t go a single week without another story about Valve’s mysterious engine. It became much less mysterious Valve’s release of Half-Life: Ayx, but more importantly with the first round of the game’s Workshop Tools.

With the release of Half-Life Alyx came the release of a new version of the Source 2 editor allowing map makers and content creators to play around in the engine. Even though it wasn’t a release of Source 2’s full code, it was more than enough for the Steam Community to start playing around in Valve’s highly anticipated engine. In fact, the Steam workshop even has entire asset packs of CSGO characters and models that can be imported into the editor. 

Cache co-creator FMPONE has spent a serious amount of time with Alyx’s Source 2 workshop tools, posting screenshots on Twitter of his current projects. In the comments on those tweets, FMPONE said that he was currently focused on VR and Half-Life: Alyx, but the fact that CSGO’s modders and map makers are moving into using Alyx’s development tools is a massive step towards players finally getting their hands on whatever Source 2 ends up bringing to CSGO.

CSGO map maker catfood, who modeled both de_ruby and is currently working on a de_tuscan remake with original Tuscan modder Brute, hasn’t publically made the jump to the Alyx’s engine like FMPONE. But early protype screenshots look an awful lot like the Source 2 shots of imported and newly created Source 2 maps for Team Fortress 2. The difference is very noticeable in the map’s transitions between shadowed and unshadowed areas.