De_tuscan: the story of map creation

In more than twenty years of history in the Counter-Strike community, the developers have done many maps. Some of them became legendary players. Today Cyber-sport.io will talk about such a legendary map – de_tuscan. We will tell you this map's complex and intricate history and why it is not in the map pool CS:GO. To describe this fascinating story, our authors need to go back to the days of CS:1.6. 

CS:1.6 and de_mill

At that time, finding good organizers of professional matches took a lot of work. The biggest and almost the most famous was cpl. They held huge events. At the time, any pro would have thought that winning this tournament would be the pinnacle of their career. The guys were so huge that they were cramped within the standard map pool, and they started to create their maps. Teams that wanted to participate in cpl had to play them. One of the first was a map called de_cpl_mill. It would seem that dull gray textures and narrow corridors are what's so legendary here, but it's simple, easy gameplay and strife tactics. 

Cyber athletes loved it with dozens of points of shooting, planting, and other tactical advantages. Simple players could master the map in 30 minutes because it was easy to learn and enter epic battles. The mill's success was enormous, but the exclusive rights to this map belonged to cpl. 

Professionals and spectators who participated and watched other tournaments asked the organizers to do something with it. In 2005, Cpl decided to remake the map. Earlier, they had held a competition among mapmakers,s which Colin Brutt won with his map de_russka. It was decided that the winners would help make a legal replacement for the mill. And so, de_tuscan was born.

Map redesign

The creator redesigned the map's structure, removed the underground passages, and changed the textures. However, any player who has ever played mill will recognize it in Tuscan. The map has retained its variability and simplicity. Due to the high demand, the map was firmly entrenched in competitive map pools within a few months. And in 2008, cpl stopped its existence, along with its disappearing mill. Tuscan started to shine in all its power. 

There wasn't a single major championship that didn't use Tuscan in its map pool. Right up until the end of the CS:1.6 tournaments. Users loved it even more than the original. Naturally, Tuscan firmly lodged in their hearts among the ordinary players. Everyone wanted to feel closer to the pro arena. 

CS Source

With the release of CS Source, Brutt recreated Tuscan on a new engine. As it turned out later, it was not the engine's fault. Tuscan faced the misfortune of the new engine, like many other maps. Completely redesigned physics changed the tactical games, and the map no longer felt as good as the original and had more problems. Nevertheless, Tuscan still appeared in their map pool tournaments much less frequently.

Release of CS:GO in 2012 

For many, it marked the rebirth of the old cards: Nuke, Mirage, and others found a second breath. But this did not happen with Tuscan. In 2014, the creator of Tuscan posted a map in the workshop, but it was baggy and underdone. Uneven textures, shots in unexpected places, and added Molotov cocktails which, if thrown correctly, could close all the positions on the points and completely ruin the gameplay. In a nutshell, the map was not ready for the new realities, and cybersport even more so. 

Soon developers stopped making Tuscan updates. At serious tournaments, the map appeared only in the NA region. The map appeared in show matches. During the pandemic in 2021, NaVi played CS 1.6 on Tuscan with streamers. Version 1.6 also provided entertainment for the audience. And Ukrainians gained a solid victory. Then, out of the blue, mapmaker catfood published a screenshot of the new map last September. 

At ESL Pro League 13, the players staged a small show match on Tuscan that pleased many spectators. A little later, Tuscan appeared on Faceit as a temporary event. The prize pool was 100,000 points, which spurred the players to rebirth their favorite map. A year later, on May 16, the whole map was shown at the workshop. Beta test, and then it finally returned to the game.

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