Spiral Staircase on Dust II
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About
Spiral Staircase on Dust II refers to memes and copypastas about the design of the spiral staircase located on the Counter-Strike map Dust II (de_dust2), and a video by YouTuber 3klikphilip about the staircase in particular. In May 2020, memes that used clips from the video as a non-sequitur punchline gained popularity online.
Origin
On March 13th, 2001, Counter-Strike 1.1 was released with the map Dust II (de_dust2), designed by David Johnson.[1] The map appeared in every game of the series, being added to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive on release.
The map features a spiral staircase leading from the middle portion of the map to bombsite B. The staircase had been a subject of discussions in the game's community due to a vision "jolting" issue in all versions of the game which could not be resolved in the same way as for other staircases in the game due to its spiral design.
On August 2nd, 2016, YouTuber[2] 3kliksphilip posted a video in which he reviewed Valve's work on fixing the issue with staircases in the game, pointing out the issues spiral staircases on maps Cobblestone and Dust II. The video received over 1.3 million views in five years (seen below).
On the same day, Redditor _Rf_ proposed a solution for the issue in the /r/GlobalOffensive subreddit,[3] with their comment gaining over 120 upvotes.
On October 11th, 2017, Valve released a beta remake of the map, implementing _Rf_'s solution for the staircase on October 12th, 2017.[4] On October 17th, 2017, 3kliksphilip released a video titled "The Spiral Staircase Saga" in which he talked about the story of the Dust II Spiral Staircase. The video received over 1.3 million views in four years (shown below).
Spread
On July 16th, 2019, Redditor robinnhugill posted the earliest meme referencing the video, a photograph of an unusual spiral staircase titled "How it feels to go up spiral stairs on Dust2." The post (shown below) gained over 290 upvotes in the /r/3kliksphilip[5] subreddit.
On May 11th, 2020, Twitter[6] user @M0nkena posted the first viral meme about the Dust II's spiral staircase, an ironic Western Character Design meme that used a clip from 3kliksphilip's video and gained over 3,100 retweets and 13,900 likes in one year (shown below).
Boggles me everytime… pic.twitter.com/R8mQd6Th9J
— Mon (@M0nkena) May 11, 2020
On May 12th, 2020, Redditor[7] jansonfanson3 reposted the meme to the /r/3kliksphilip subreddit. In the following weeks, several posts containing a copypasta based on 3kliksphilip's narration in his 2017 video were posted to the /r/copypasta[8][9] subreddit.
The spiral stairs in Dust2 are no strangers to my videos. I attacked them in my 'New Dust2' one just the other day for having the same dodgy clipping as the older map did, and also covered them in length the other year as part of my sprawling epic stair clipping video which I suggest everybody checks out as soon as possible. To recap, they clipped the top and bottom stairs, allowing for smooth navigation, but left the middle ones bare, causing one’s vision to viciously vibrate as one ascends or descends the said stairs. No doubt they had tried to clip them, but quickly ran into a limitation with Source. The engine CS:GO is based on really doesn’t like the shape made by trying to smoothly clip the area between stairs. You can do it in the editor, but it won’t work in-game and reloading the map will reset the clips to different, inadequate shapes. Source requires each side of a shape to be flat, and a ramp that goes around corners like this curves one of the faces in some grotesque way. Using 2 clips per stair instead of 1 avoids this problem and although the result isn’t a perfect ramp, it’s certainly smoother than no clipping at all. Problem is, if the step is narrow enough then it results in a ramp that’s steeper than 45 degrees. It’s at this point that a ramp becomes a slope that’s steep enough to stop players from running up. This is what happened to the inner edge of the spiral staircase on Dust2. Approach it too close to this side and you’ll come to a dead stop, only able to move backwards or sideways to shallower ground. Indeed, Valve attempted this method but chose not to use it because of this trade-off. This 45 degree angle isn’t a problem with stairs. So long as stairs are no taller than 18 units each, you can have them as narrow as you like. Which itself leads to some weird situations that wouldn’t work in reality where players can ascend entire floors almost instantly. Getting down again, although almost as fast, isn’t recommended.
In the following year, several viral memes that used clips from 3klikphilip's video as an ironic punchline were posted online. For example, on February 25th, 2021, Twitter[10] user @TwashTheMan posted a Smile, Sweet, Sister, Sadistic meme that received nearly 100 retweets and 320 likes in five months.
Various Examples
— Twash (@TwashTheMan) February 26, 2021
Which way western man? https://t.co/KYvn8sgaJb pic.twitter.com/BwyDxPgGmb
— Mon (@M0nkena) July 9, 2021
Search Interest
External References
[2] YouTube – Stair Clipping in Counter Strike
[3] Reddit – Counter Strike's Stair Clipping History
[4] Reddit – Counter-Strike: Global Offensive PRERELEASE update for late 10/12/17
[5] Reddit – How it feels to go up spiral stairs on Dust2
[7] Reddit – An interesting Title
[8] Reddit – The spiral stairs on Dust2 are no strangers to my videos.
[9] Reddit – The Spiral Stairs In Dust2
[10] Twitter – @TwashTheMan
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