Dev Insights: de_dust2

Remaking a classic map in Halo Infinite for a purpose.

de_dust2 in Halo Infinite is a remake of the beloved and legendary map "de_dust2", originally made in Counter-Strike 1.1–1.6. The remake accuracy geometry-wise is nearly 100% as the shapes are simple, and they have been perfectly recreated using a Blender-to-Forge workflow.

This article will explore the process I went through when creating the map, from why I wanted to make the map, to how I implemented it.

Idea

On Feb 28, 2025, Halo Studios announced a new mode "S&D Extraction" coming to Halo Infinite later in the year. With the full name "Seek and Deploy Extraction", the flow of the mode is similar to that of Counter-Strike's bomb defusal mode. Along with the announcement of the mode, came an announcement for a map-making contest with the goal of designing a map for the mode with a prize pool of $20000.

Soon after the announcement was made, forgers in the Halo Infinite community started discussing the mapping contest attached to the new mode. Designing a map for a mode foreign to Halo's gameplay would be a difficult challenge, and there were no maps to reference for their design within Halo Infinite. The map shown in the announcement video—while made by a forger they hired on—was not available to the public.

Why de_dust2?

I always try to work on things that would make others' workflows easier and allow them to produce content to their best ability without any bottlenecks or technical limitations. I saw the issue of a lack of reference map for the new mode as an opportunity for me to have some fun and remake de_dust2 from Counter Strike in Halo Infinite. It could help the forgers look for some scaling and design reference when doing research for how to design for the new mode.

Working in Blender

As de_dust2 is one of the most known multiplayer maps in existence, it was quite trivial to find a .obj model of the map, which I could then import into Blender. I loaded the map geometry in Blender and did some adjusting to scale it close to a Halo Infinite map's scale. I quickly realized that the scale I almost settled on was very close to a perfect 2x grid snap, so I adjusted the scale slightly to make it happen. Most of the boxes for example were 8x8x8 units and I later on discovered that even the mesh faces making up the ground and walls were on a perfect 2x grid. Not that it mattered, but a nice coincidence after realizing it.

The process for getting this map into Halo Infinite would use a workflow known as "Blender to Forge", where ripped Halo Infinite level editor "forge" assets are used in Blender to trace over the desired geometry. Later those placed assets are exported as a positional data text file which is read by a program that translates those object IDs and positional data into keystrokes to place the objects in Halo Infinite in a lenghty process.

Simple to block out

As the original de_dust2 was first released in 2001, the geometry of the map was very simple and easy to block out. I started by blocking out all of the boxes on the map to quickly get some easy work done. I then scanned the map for modular pieces that I could create templates for, and I realized that a lot of the doorways fit this category. I blocked out four separate doorway pieces that were used on the map, which I could just copy and paste in the correct areas.

After the boxes and doorways were in place, I traced the entire ground geo, which was simple, as this old map had only straight shapes even in the terrain. The last remaining parts were the walls surrounding the map. These took the longest, but were for the most part straight shapes once again.

The part that took me the longest was the rock formation around B-site, for which I used a "Mesh to Triangles" script, written by a community member for the Blender to Forge workflow. It detects all triangular faces of a mesh, and maps triangular Halo Infinite assets to them, essentially perfectly recreating the mesh. This is a very expensive way to recreate a mesh though, but I saw it as the most efficient way to accurately recreate the rock formation.

Getting the map to Halo Infinite

With the assets traced out in Blender, it was time to "print" the map into Halo Infinite. The total object count was 1339, and took about two hours to print in Halo Infinite with the Blender to Forge Printer (B2FP). I initially thought I'd just leave the map with some white and orange blockout colors, but quickly realized that the time and effort spent into coloring the blockout to look more like the original map would be worth it for the visual part of the remake.

I recolored all the objects on the map with the closest looking materials I found, and adjusted the sky colors to somewhat match what I saw in de_dust2 screenshots. I didn't bother spending any extra effort on making the map look better than just a colored blockout, as the whole map idea was to just provide a rough map design reference for forgers, and to possibly act as a fun party map.

Skybox

For the skybox of the map, I mimicked the 2D skybox texture seen on the original map by placing some largely scaled rock pieces on the very edge of the object placement limits. As the rock objects are nearly 20000 units away from the map, they look stationary, just like a 2D skybox.

Mode setup

After spending about 12 hours on the map after downloading the model, I had now colored the blockout and wanted to test it out with random players. I installed my Warzone Fiesta mode on it and started an open lobby, which quite quickly gathered a sizeable lobby of randoms.

After getting some fun out of the map I had built in one long sitting, it was time to finish it up and do a generic gameplay setup on it like any other Halo Infinite map. I set up generic spawning, sandbox, nav mesh and player containment on the map as well as equipped it with a suite of 10 supported modes that I saw fitting:

• Warzone Fiesta
• Arena CTF
• Extraction
• KOTH
• Headhunter
• Strongholds
• Attrition
• Elimination
• Oddball
• Land Grab

While I did create player containment for the upper bounds of the map, I moved these high up in the sky for the final release of the map as I thought it made the map more fun to have no restrictions for going outside the bounds. Falling off the map into the void would result in a death anyways.

S&D Extraction variant

With the map being pretty much ready for release, I finally made a variant of the map for the S&D Extraction mode, which meant cutting out all the sandbox, spawning, and mode support to make the singular new mode work correctly. That should give you an idea to just how foreign this mode is to Halo, when you need to not only design a map for this specific mode, but you can't support any other modes on the map at the same time, due to how highly bespoke the mode is.

For the S&D Extraction variant, I added the upper limit player containment back in so the map couldn't be exploited, and the competitive integrity would stay true to the original. With all the work done that I was looking to invest in this project, it was time to publish the map and let my forger friends know about it.

Map Trailer

I had played some Warzone Fiesta on the map with RedGear and thought I could use some cool shots from those games for a low effort map trailer. The aim of this trailer would be a quick showcase of the map along with how it can be played in fun ways.

The music

All my map trailers start from the music. It's very integral to the map trailer experience I want to craft, and it sets the vibe for how the trailer should make the viewer feel. For the trailer of de_dust2, I wanted that vibe to be playful and happy, instead of more serious like most of my other trailers. I also didn't want to use the Halo soundtrack as this map was very foreign to Halo.

I settled on the song "A Tiny Spaceship's Final Mission" by FantomenK, which evoked the aforementioned vibes in me due to some history I've had with this artist's work. That song, to me, is a reference to a series of videos by a Finnish YouTuber Failu, who is known for his CS:GO videos about trolling low-ranking teammates in matchmaking. Failu uses multiple songs by FantomenK in his videos, including the one I ended up using, in one of his most popular videos "CS:GO - Blyatstorm IV: Justice Zeus, Shady Vladimir & FRAGS!".

I had to cut down the song to less than half its length so it would fall under the 2-minute mark, which seems to be a sweet spot for map trailers from my experience. I didn't purposefully cut it to be just under 2 minutes, it just fell nicely into place after I cut down the song in parts I felt connected well. I like how the song has a change of pace at one point, which allowed me to do some different kind of shots based on the music.

Cut idea

When I mainly played CS:GO during 2015–2019, watching Failu's content was commonplace for me, and so I associated the songs by FantomenK with Failu's hilarous trolling videos. When brainstorming how I would create the trailer for de_dust2, I thought of including some sort of angry teammates talking nonsense in the beginning, as was common with Failu's videos for comedic effect, but I felt it didn't fix the context for the map trailer at all, and that many people wouldn't realize the joke's reference.

Telling a story

The gameplay shots in the map trailer somewhat tell a story of me vs RedGear battling it out, as him and I were the players I followed for most of the shots since I knew at least us two had some good gameplay moments during the games we played. I leaned into that slight bit of storytelling with the shots and the music, and the small number of lyrics in the song at 0:59 imply that RedGear is some hero the Earth is counting on, but it's then followed by clips of him losing in battles which I though was pretty funny.

Thoughts

This map project was a way for me to see how fast I could block out a simple map with the Blender to Forge workflow, and to provide a reference map for the Seek and Destroy Extraction mode for forgers at the same time. After getting the map into Infinite, I realized it would also double as a map to play whacky gamemodes on and have some fun with friends. I'm now very familiar with the layout of de_dust2 to say the least.

This is also my first attempt at making a map project and producing all the forms of content from it that I'd want to do with all my projects: The map, marketing in video-form (trailer), marketing in text-form (social media posts), a blog post, and a short portfolio piece write-up.