City

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Overview

Gallery

City
General
Game(s)	(mod)
Creator(s)	Turtle Rock Studios (Chris Ashton)

City (zombie_city) was an experimental Counter-Strike: Source map for the Terror-Strike mod. Over time, this map evolves into the first chapter of Left 4 Dead - No Mercy.

Overview

The map centers around an empty city at night. Most of the map is minimalistic, almost entirely made of gray developer textures.

Terrorists appear on the edge of the map, and Counter-Terrorists appear in randomly selected locations. The map’s centerpiece is a single enterable building where Terrorists can plant a bomb.

Development

zombie_city was made by Chris Ashton in early 2005. It was designed for a mod where four players (i.e. Terrorists) had to navigate through streets infested with zombies (i.e. Counter-Terrorists armed only with knives) to reach a building with a bombsite. There, players would place a "zombie baiter" (i.e. C4) and fend off a horde of zombies (Counter-Terrorists would respawn after planting a bomb).

The mod received positive feedback, leading to the development of a more refined version of the map. This improved version featured detailed environments, ambient sounds, and Counter-Terrorists retextured as zombies. The enhanced map was presented to Valve, who approved it, turning the concept into a standalone project that eventually became Left 4 Dead.

In 2023, the Source developer asset repository was leaked, including numerous source files from Counter-Strike: Source. Among these were decompiled maps, including City. Later that year, as part of Half-Life 25th Anniversary update, a compiled version of the code for Terror-Strike mod was released, making the map fully playable.