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Alyx

Games w/ Level Editors

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Hello!

 

I've been listening to Idle Thumbs for a few years now, but haven't spent much time exploring its online community. I've been meaning to participate in the Game Development threads and thought I'd start with a question...

 

What are some games that have good level editors for anyone interested in experimenting with level design? I'm not looking for anything specific, just something to get my feet wet and keep me busy. I've been reading through Steve Gaynor's old design blog (as well as other design blogs like Radiator run by Robert Yang), which has been helpful, but thought I'd ask around online.

 

Thanks!

 

~ Alyx

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The Unreal engine started as a level editor and still functions as one! It's a pretty good place to start and has hella tutorials and a big community around it for learning.

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Knytt Stories

 

The Far Cry games usually have multiplayer map-editors.

 

I know that Shadowrun Returns has one, but I haven't played with it.

 

Kodu impressed me when I played around with it years ago.

 

If you want to make a simple, browser based pinball table you can use PlingPling.

 

If you want to make a point-and-click adventure that you can share with a generated weblink, I'd recommend giving FlickGame a try.

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The new Unreal Tournament game has a level editor. Well, basically the whole engine is free to use for anyone to play around with.

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Warcraft 3 map editor is an excellent place to start.  It's not the most powerful but it's very easy to churn something out if that camera/control scheme is something you are interested in working with.

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Unreal Tournament is not a bad place to start, it's free and well documented.

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I only messed around with it a bit, but StarCraft 2 has a pretty powerful level editor. Calling it a level editor might even be an understatement, people have used it to create third person games and all kinds of crazy stuff. Also Dragon Age Origins released their toolset way back when, and from what I understand has a pretty active mod community to this day. The best place to look is on steam, basically anything that supports steam workshop.

By the way, are you looking for something more for creating Scenarios with a set of mechanics or something closer to a game engine where you can define the mechanics?

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I chatted with the guy who made Rekoil and he got his start with the Battlefield (2?) level editor. While looking up to verify this, I found a list of level editors on wikipedia that might help you find the best one for you.

 

I like that Lode Runner is on that list since that's the first editor I ever used in about 1986.

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I was planning on saying "Lode Runner" as a half-joke but am glad to see it was mentioned already. =)

 

Age of Empires 2 had a pretty phenomenal RTS editor (and its trigger system was one of the first things I remember using that was sort-of-like-programming).

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I only messed around with it a bit, but StarCraft 2 has a pretty powerful level editor. Calling it a level editor might even be an understatement, people have used it to create third person games and all kinds of crazy stuff. 

 

I haven't used the SC2 editor at all, but thinking about it now the Warcraft 2 and Starcraft editors were probably my first exposure to makin' games. I think they've gotten waaay more complicated, but for me as a kid the SC editor was amazing because it didn't require any scripting for level logic, you just sorta picked event triggers from dropdowns and such. 

 

The Morrowind editor was also really cool; I haven't used the newer ones as much, but the Skyrim/Fallout editors seem really good, and their snap-together level prefabs are a really easy way to start blocking out levels and make good cohesive looking environments.

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Flywrench - a very simple game with a very simple level editor. It has surprising amount of depth hidden in its plainness and trying to create a level that is actually somewhat interesting or enjoyable to play is an intriguing challenge.

 

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Portal 2 has the best, most accessible, editor I've ever had the pleasure of working with. So simple and powerful, plus you can take your levels made with the in-game editor and polish them up after in Hammer.

 

Radiant is a great suite to learn and people always forget about it when recommending UE/Hammer. It's based off Doom 3 and is crazy powerful now (all COD games use some version of it). Brendon Chung of Blendo Games is using it to make Quadrilateral Cowboy and there's also a modified 'DarkRadiant' version for that remake of the original Thief. Maybe not as much community content as with UE/Hammer but there is some stuff and it might be even better for a resume/portfolio

 

Anyone mess around with the FarCry 4 editor? It has all the single-player features that FC3's lacked so I'm really curious about how powerful it is.

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