cs_amal
Counter-Strike was the most popular competitive game among my high-school friends, along with Age of Empires II and DotA. We even had an official school tournament in 2005.
At one point, I got myself into map making, following online tutorials for Valve Hammer Editor. My first project was called “awp_duel”, a small symmetrical map with two buildings, Xena posters for distraction, and movable crates of various sizes.
My second project was… more ambitious: A map of my entire high school. I started drawing our classroom and school grounds on paper as reference:
You just can’t have a nice map without Simitçi Teyze and some fresh simit.
Creating the map required a lot of time, which I barely had due to exams and prep school, so I wasn’t able to get past modeling our classroom. Still, being there virtually and moving around was a nice feeling.
In retrospect, this wasn’t a brilliant idea and I’m glad I haven’t released the map publicly. That being said, expelling creative students just because they created a map for a video game is, perhaps, not the right solution to gun violence.