LambdaGeneration Community Join our new Community Platform — Share Half-Life news and community content. Built by fans, for fans.
We Are The Lambda Generation. LambdaGeneration is a website dedicated to the video game Half-Life. ( We're basically really passionate about crowbars, headcrabs and anyone who has goatee with a PhD in theoretical physics… )

The Evolution of Aztec

News & Rumors Other

Oh, Counter-Strike. We really do love you. Which is why we stalked you and took pictures of you while you aged! We’re a lot like paparazzi, except instead of selling the pictures, we just put them on YouTube. That way, everybody wins!

The Evolution of Aztec

At last, the fourth entry in our Evolution of Counter-Strike series is here. Preceded by the Evolution of Dust and Dust 2; the Evolution of Train; and the Evolution of Italy – we give you… the Evolution of DE_Aztec:

We wish we could have also included snaps from the earlier versions of Aztec, but that would have made the video even longer than it already is, so we decided to just stick with the 1.6 version. Despite some really awkward shots at the very beginning, we think it turned out pretty well. Might be our best. I know that’s what we said last time, but we do think we’re getting better at this. It’s sort of like a Bethesda RPG – every time you do something, you magically level up – so good. Let us know what you think!

18 Comments

  1. I’d like to ask, are these pictures taken on maximum quality settings?

  2. I’m shocked to see the direct comparison of CS:S and CS:CZ. It really looks like no effort went into the Source port at all.

  3. Commenter AvatarYours Truly Rene...April 23rd 2012 at 10:42am

    Hey guys! is this a map for BF3?

  4. Could you do “The Evolution of Office” next?

  5. Compared to the CS:S Aztec, this one is a freaking beauty.

  6. The evolution of C4 :D.

  7. I think the Source engine has been heavily modified since CSS.
    The new lighting, detail, and overall graphic are insanely far superior in CSGO.

    • The only thing that was added so far is the isometric shadowmap, something that Source mods have already accomplished.
      I wouldn’t call CS:GO’s branch of Source “Heavily Modified”.

      • No, David – What Sareth is saying is that in comparison with “Source 2004”, CS:GO features a ton of improvements and additions. And he’s definitely right.
        That said, CS:GO is, more or less, the same engine branch as Portal 2’s version of Source. The brand new real-time shadowing engine, as well as FXAA antialiasing both represent massive improvements (now all we need is real-time lighting), but otherwise, it really isn’t that different from what we played last year – there’s just a ton of post-processing.

        • Yeah, I thought Portal 2 was just as beautiful and graphical to look at as most games that came out in 2011.
          But not only the engine, it felt like the actual employees improved on producing better looking games. The power to produce higher quality games is becoming more accessible today but what does all that power mean if you don’t have the right artists and level designers to use it to its full potential?
          Knowing what color pallets to pick to give each map a distinctive theme and creating high resolution textures, using the lighting system just right to give off that correct looking brightens on the right surfaces, and the architectural detail on the levels is a far bigger step then CS 1.6 to CSS was in my opinion.

        • I would like to add that real-time lighting already exists in Source engine at least since HL2’s release, these are called dynamic lights or light_dynamic https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Light_dynamic

          They work with both Lightmaps and Vertex lighting methods on all surfaces including props. Since Source 14 ‘OB engine’ they are also reflected from materials with phong shading. however they do not cause objects to cast dynamic shadows.

  8. These videos are killing me. They remind me how much I need to wait for this game.

  9. Off-topic: Was “attack the primary target” voice command sound ever released in high quality?

Leave a reply


Sign in via Steam to skip spam and contact fields.