game editors

(Loffy) #1

Hi!
We use radiant for wolf (rtcw and et) and some other games (jedi knight, quake of course and soldier of fortune).
I am curious: What other game editors are there, “out there”?
I’ve tried Starcraft and Warcraft editors, and I’ve looked over the shoulder of my kid when she maps UT. And there must be an editor for UT2003 also, I guess (havent had a look at it yet though).
Other editors, for cool games?
And have you tried them? What are they like? Comments?
(Im also curious to who made radiant, and the hisstory behind this software - I cannot believe the luck/joy that it’s a freeware. But that is another question, perhaps for a future post.)
// Loffy

(Drakir) #2

Offcourse u have DCK (Doom Construction Kit) for your Doom editing pleasure. DCK was made by a guy named Ben Morrison, who later gave us “Worldcraft” for Quake and Quake2. Worldcraft was then bought by Valve to be used for HL.

There are alot of editors for HL and Quake, Like Thred, Quark and some more i cannot remember the names of.

Build for editing Duke3D. This was a great editor, all things where done in realtime and u could move around in the map before testing it. Placing items and other stuff was really easy. I remember i used to make suggested maps by friends in 5 mins when we where at LANs playing.

Worldcraft (Hammer) for Half-Life, will use same editor for Half-Life2. I really like Worldcraft, but thats mainly because it used windows standard in most ways of manipulating things. As i am used to vector based graphics i felt at home in Worldcraft from day1.

UnrealED for unreal. This is sort of Duke3D editing as you see most things likelightning as so already in the engine. I have never made a released map in UeD. Mainly because the interface is totally backwards to all editing programs i am used to. But its a very nice editor where u can make almost anything game related like coding and modelling in one and same editor.

(Loffy) #3

Ok, thx!
When Doom3 is released, will this DCK be the editor for that game? Is it a free editor?
(Which editor do you like the best? If you can’t name THE best, please name your 2-3 favorites.)
// L.

(zbeta) #4

MaxED for Maxpayne I & II

(Drakir) #5

I belive they will use a version of Radiant for Doom3.

3 favs:

#1. Worldcraft.
#2. Radiant.
#3. DCK.

(sock) #6

There seems to be roughly 2 types of editors, ones which create space out of void and ones which cut away from a solid. Both have various types of editors but basically they follow the same principles.

For example QER, GTK, Worldcraft, Quark and other variants are creating space out of the void and UnrealEd, SeriousEd, Unreal2 are carving space from a solid block.

Try this page for some more editor: http://www.fileplanet.com/section.aspx?s=78030

The editors given away with various games are usually in house productions. (Some are hybrids of original community editors like Worldcraft for example) Most editors have their rough edges but basically they do the required job, game content. Moving between different types of editors is frustrating and often feels like climbing a mountain backwards. If you are looking at learning different skills then I would personally recommend looking at various 3D modelling packages instead like Lightwave, Maya, 3DMax etc

Sock
:moo:

(hhhmmmmm) #7

I have been looking round for new creative editors too, i found max payne 2 (MaxEd) was rather hard in the fact i could only find 1 or 2 forums actualy for editing, and most of the post where the same, no support, and no tutorials out there :frowning:
Atm aswell as messing with Radient, i been playing with Armadillo which is the editor for motorcross madness 2 Anyone got the game i suggest getting armadillo as ts real easy to make dirt tracks/course’s mainly from .bmp (heightmaps) nd then drop in a few obj.
Anyone got any idea of a editor than can make beatem up levels?
I seen Darkbasic which says you can include radient maps into any game you wish to make, but have not got DB yet? has anyone else tried it?

(digibob) #8

The technical terms for these being Constructive Solid Geometry ( CSG ) ( Quake style ), and Destructive Solid Geometry ( UT style ).

(Machine for to kill) #9

I always wanted to try that morrowind editor. That game looked beautiful.

There’s a million other engines and editors out there. A good engine makes way more money than the game itself so every company out there right now tries to make their own stuff. Of course when the engine and associated editor do not become popular then the company goes banckrupt but oh well. Big players though are definately ID and Epic (Unreal). I think that that battlefield 1942 engine was good too. It could render massive environments with tons of people and vehicles and still keep good performance. It didn’t look as sharp as some other games but nevertheless it was some mayhem heaven.

I like that unreal editor, I’ve never used it but when I have opened it up it looks so much more professional and organized. It looks a lot more productive than Radiant that’s for sure. Piece of shit barely works.

(Drakir) #10

ID Software charges 250.000$ for using their engine, and also gets 5% of the wholesale of the finnished product. So i can understand why some companys tries to make their own engine.

But if it was me who was gonna develop a game, i would definilty go for a ready made great working engine like QuakeIII, instead of wasting 4 years of developing an engine inhouse. (Read Valve here)

(redfella) #11

cough cough

uggh, I can’t find any words…

:bash:

(Machine for to kill) #12

Come on…we all like to map sure, but we all know what we have to deal with.

:banghead: :frowning: :banghead: :clap: :???: :banghead: :angry: :banghead:

(chavo_one) #13

So, by that logic, you’d say that a piece of shit wrapped in silk and splashed with perfume is worth much more than a piece of shit on a paper plate?! :blah: Since when have “looks” been a gauge of productivity or usefulness?

As for radiant, I actually really like the program now that I have developed a system for using it. So, no, I don’t know what I have to deal with.

(SCDS_reyalP) #14

tribes 2 had pretty much the same capabilities, ran better, and had a built in editor. IMO, if they had licensed torque for BF1942 and concentrated on content, they could have had a far better game.

I like that unreal editor, I’ve never used it but when I have opened it up it looks so much more professional and organized. It looks a lot more productive than Radiant that’s for sure. Piece of shit barely works.

I suppose you also judge books by their covers too ?

Radiant is like vi. quirky, steep learning curve, unforgiving, but very powerful and efficient once you know it.

  • or to put it another way -
    Radiant is user friendly. It is just picky about who its friends are. :smiley:
(Machine for to kill) #15

Well i guess i should rephrase myself about the unreal thingy. I’ve never used it to make anything significant. I’ve tried a little bit just to see how it works and it is very nicely put together. yes I don’t have a lot of experience with it, but I have seen what other people have accomplished with it and I think overall it is very nice.

I don’t mean to sound ungratefull to the people that made radiant and ydnar for the compiler but radiant is what it is. It is definately not user friendly. I had far less trouble learning 3ds max than radiant which is just 1/1000 of it. Radiant has many bugs, many features that don’t work or are poorly implemented. A below average documentation (if it wasn’t for forums like these noone would know what the hell to do with it) and so on and so forth. If you do learn it inside out then yes I’m sure you have far less trouble with it than someone starting out. The fact that bothers me most though is that it’s been out for 4 years, and you think in that time someone would’ve fixed some of the biggest issues with it such as the problematic vertex tweaking and those duplicate plane issues. I do like the patch options though. But even patches seem to have some problems. A good piece of software is good from the moment you start it up. Not after years of learning how to deal with issues which should not have been there in the first place.

P.S.
I know radiant and 3dmax don’t really compare on account that radiant is free and 3dmax is $1000. But radiant is nevertheless a tool used to attract people to using the Quake engine. If radiant does its job right then ID does make money. It’s a give and take process.

(SCDS_reyalP) #16

I hadn’t noticed id lacking money recently :moo:

AFAIK, every official map for every q3 engine game was made using some version of radiant (most of them more buggy and less functional than the current gtkradiant). Based on the likes of Q3, RTCW, ET, Alice, JK2, MOH etc. I would say that, in capable hands, radiant does its job just fine.

id provides the editor they and their licensees use, along with the source and one person paid to work on it part time. Seems like a pretty good deal to me.

Of course, if the bugs really bother you, you are free to download the source and fix them.

(Machine for to kill) #17

Oh yeah…Well maybe I will. I’ve been know to dable a bit in programing in my time.

Let’s see…

if(bug == 1)
{
FixBug(bug);
}
else
Crash(reboot = 1);
return 0;

there… that should take care of it