BitSkins Exclusive: The Making of JETPACK JOYCHICKEN with Lillykyu

While Valve seems to have ghosted its Counter-Strike players, community members have stepped up to provide content—especially @Lillykyu, who consistently exceeds expectations with mind-blowing concepts for her community maps.

Previously, she took the community by storm with her Duck Hunt, de_nuke 45°, and CS PAINT maps, all of which were introduced during the CS2 content drought. These maps were warmly received by players and even featured in esports broadcasts.

Her most impressive work so far is JETPACK JOYCHICKEN, a recreation of the classic Jetpack Joyride game, with nearly 10,000 current subscribers on the Steam Workshop. Similar to the original game, players must dodge obstacles like lasers and missiles to achieve the highest possible scores as the speed and difficulty increase over time.

In an exclusive interview with BitSkins, Lillykyu revealed that her map ideas often emerge from experimenting with concepts, rather than having a fully laid-out plan from the beginning.

Honestly with most of my maps when I'm starting them I don't have a full idea of what I'm going to make, I will usually just mess around with a concept and eventually I'll get an idea to turn it into something else, like with my Jetpack Joyride map I just wanted to see if I could make some sort of 2D map and it evolved into that. – Lillykyu to BitSkins

Contrary to what you might think, turning concepts into a playable state is relatively easy for her. However, it's in the final steps—optimizing the map and adding extra features—where she encounters the most challenges, as these take the most time and effort.

Usually, it's pretty easy getting the concepts into a fun and playable state but it's when I'm trying to polish/optimize the map and maybe add some extra features in is where it ends up taking the most time and effort. – Lillykyu

Lillykyu explains that the hardest part of making the map was, in fact, the optimization, as Counter-Strike wasn't designed for such types of maps. This highlights her incredible talent in turning an FPS game into a 2D experience with plenty of features for optimal gameplay.

By far the hardest part of the map was the optimization, Counter-Strike is not designed to do anything like this and certain things that need to happen often on the map will create lag spikes, but I have been updating the map since it came out and although it's still not perfect performance it should be more than playable on the average players PC! – Lillykyu

How JETPACK JOYCHICKEN was made

The creation of JETPACK JOYCHICKEN shows a remarkable level of creativity and technical skill. Lillykyu faced the challenge of working within the limitations of current mapping tools yet managed to devise innovative solutions to bring her vision to life.

With how limited mapping is right now the mechanics of the map need to be made in very weird ways, there's no way to detect player inputs so what I did was use cl_lock_camera 0 and teleport the player far away in a box with a gun and I detected their shots to move the chicken with map entity logic. With the coins and counters luckily, there are some math logic entity to deal with counting and adding so that was very easy to do! – Lillykyu

Finally, during a period when Valve has left the community craving fresh content, creators like Lillykyu are helping to restore our excitement for the game. Be sure to support her by following her on the Steam Workshop and social media and consider dropping a tip or donation for early access to her future maps.