The latest update of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has made changes to its two newest maps Swamp and Mutiny, and has also fixed several bugs on Cache.
Swamp
The improvements to Swamp see the developers focusing on improving performance and overall gameplay flow. Swamp was the focus of the update, with a brand new radar texture and an additional path that players can use to quickly move from the middle area to its raised center bridge area.
Headshot angles that made it difficult to see players behind the map’s many boats also saw changes. Raising the terrain under the boats in question has the players’ heads easily seen from the map’s green backgrounds.
Swamp also had some bug fixes. Since the maps debut, splash sprites would occasionally not display when a player walked through the wet and swampy parts. After the update, they display correctly.
The developers also lowered the sound of its background noise substantially. At its previous volume, the croaking frogs and various the background sounds that were loud enough to cover the enemy’s footsteps and CSGO’s distinctive grenade sounds.
This change has the largest impact on how the map is played. With sound effects like pulling the pin from a grenade now clearly audible, players should be caught off guard less often.
Mutiny
Mutiny was released with Swamp in the July update, and it also saw several changes. The developers have made adjustments focusing particularly on the map’s readability. The color scheme and lighting of Mutiny made enemy players with Agent skins hard to make out against the vibrant backgrounds. To fix this, the lighting was slightly altered to help players make out friend from foe.
Vines and foliage were also removed from the wall on A site. Characters now stand out clearly against the wall instead of blending in and the angle and height of the wall were changed to make engaging enemies around it easier.
The largest change was shifting T spawn further away from the bombsites. Before this, engagements between players happened faster. This often put the CT side at a disadvantage because they had less time to set up site defenses compared to other maps.
With the new position of T spawn, CTs have some precious extra moments before a site takeover happens. There is also some newly added cover to some areas and some removed, mixing up the established positions.
The update also included a reduction to the damage done through wall bangs at B door and bomb respawn spots for ones that find their way outside the map. A’s rock formation also saw changes that allow more grenade options.
Cache
Now for the changes done to Cache. The list of tweaks for the popular map is small, it includes fixes for two game-breaking bugs players experienced on the map. The first finally fixed player models appearing through textures when standing in the dark in a Molotov.
Players could sometimes be seen through walls because of the interaction between shadows and Molotov flames, especially in the cubby under T boost. Now the Molotov should function as intended and not as a wallhack.
The second fix targets an issue where players could get stuck in A site’s door, unable to move or interact to free themselves. This is a bug dating back to the Counter-Strike’s early days, made famous by this video. Headphone users, it is loud.
Cache’s navigation mesh(used by bots to move around the map) was also updated along with the soundscapes being re-enabled after being turned off for an undisclosed reason.
