Hey everyone,
Me and a group of digital investigators are on the hunt for the original author of scoutzknivez. The original map that was released sometime in 2002~ we believe.
Does anyone know who made the original scoutzknivez.bsp for Counter-Strike 1.5?
Interestingly there is no mention of the author's name in the map. As far as we know there was never a .txt included with the map either. It was likely distributed through server hosts and its grass roots explosion in popularity in 2003 happened during a time when user creations were more-or-less word of mouth.
Lot's of people think the Impulse TFC clan user Paranoidkirb created the level because they made a cheeky scoutzknivez map for TFC, but this was probably piggy backing off of the success from CS. They probably borrowed the level's name to garner some easy downloads. The TFC version is nothing like the original CS version.
http://420.esclan.net/tfc/maps/scoutzknivez.txt
Some people think Matt Heero made the original, as they made scoutzknivez2, but this is also a stretch because tons of users were gunning for the defacto successor to the original. Matt Heero's version is not designed with the same care and attention to detail as the original. The brush work looks like the carve tool was tastelessly used.
https://www.17buddies.rocks/17b2/View/Map/518/scoutzknivez2.html
MapCore forums claim "RD" or "RealDespair" and "PIT" made the map. Those guy's created fy_rambohulk, and supposedly "fy_iceworld", but that was a lie. RD pranked the CS community for years claiming they were the original author when instead a 15 year old Taiwanese kid named "FantasY" created fy_iceworld. Hence the prefix for the map is "FY" aka "FantasY". So I don't believe RD created it as his website doesn't even allude to it as a part of his mapping repertoire:
https://web.archive.org/web/20050212195447/http://www.pitrd.com/
https://www.mapcore.org/topic/26776-cs-16-who-created-scoutzknivez-counter-strikes-legendary-mystery/
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/who-made-fy_iceworld-a-forensic-investigation
A Reddit user claimed that a guy named "Wout" made the level, but we didn't find anything outside of a level named de_aimcenter. The creator is named Wouter, but they did not make scoutzknivez. I confirmed it.
https://www.17buddies.rocks/17b2/View/Map/218/de_aimcenter.html
I've asked SimianCage the author of the CSS version of scoutzknivez and they did not create the original. I confirmed it.
https://gamebanana.com/mods/121221
Other users I've talked to said that scoutzknivez wasn't the original version too. There were older versions of the map that had trucks in it and different naming conventions. Does anyone know any of these older scout/sniper maps?
Thought you guys might know as you guys are one of the oldest running Gold Source forums out there. Any clues?
TL;DR: Does anyone know who made the original scoutzknivez.bsp for CS 1.5 in 2002?
Video on the subject:
Sick vid
Thanks for taking the time to read all this.