We finally know what CSGO will look like in Source 2

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players have been waiting a long time for Valve to move the beloved first-person shooter to the fabled Source 2 engine, and it turns out that the game’s models and textures might hold some hints on their progress.

When Valve started remaking the game’s classic maps several years ago, it suddenly shifted the way it named CSGO’s textures into a naming format used by Dota 2 and Half-Life: Alyx, seemingly to make it easier to import them into the Source 2 engine. WIN.gg brought several of CSGO’s assets into the engine, where it proceeded to import and render them almost automatically.

CSGO’s textures are ready for Source 2

Source 2 Workshop tools released soon after Half-Life: Alyx last year include a way to import older models, textures, and maps into the engine. Game textures are usually more than one image, with each model having a different image that gives them 3D effects, different colors, metallic shines, and shaders.

Prior to Valve’s release of the remade Dust 2, these textures had names that didn’t always line up with one another. Some ended in letters while others ended in numbers, and it was hard to tell which one of the files was a texture, a material, a normal map, or any of a model’s number of other options.

In December 2018, Valve unveiled the Danger Zone battle royale game mode to CSGO’s player base, but the real story was behind the scenes. Every prop that shipped with Danger Zone follows Source 2’s naming format as seen in both Dota 2 and Half-Life: Alyx. Valve has continued to do this with new content, with all of the game’s high-resolution textures included with Nuke, Dust 2, Vertigo, and every texture included in Operation Broken Fang also following Source 2’s naming rules. 

As always, it’s unclear when CSGO will make the full move to Source 2, but CSGO fans finally have something concrete to get excited about instead of just rumors and speculation.