BSP editor, though I've never given it a try.

The modes in WC don't bother me tbh since there's the hotkeys... 

GTKRadiant:

http://qeradiant.com/cgi-bin/trac.cgi

NetRadiant:

http://dev.alientrap.org/wiki/netradiant

Shameless Plug:

http://kneedeepinthedoomed.wordpress.com/tutorials/ 

i could go with a dif editor like hammer if i knew how to set it up for quake :( some people said quark but they say itd be really hard to learn coming from only experience with hammer/worldcraft. they say its too different to learn once youve gotten to used to one or the other :(

yeah i wouldn't go with quark anyway; i'd stick with either the WC or radiant series. hammer could be worth a try if it's as simple to set up as alluded above but failing that, WC1.6 still works - i personally swear by it :) 

its funny you mention it. most of the download links to it are dead and i've been having a hard time trying to find a copy of wc 1.6a :P 

useful site. just tried the download on here and it works: http://www.quaketerminus.com/tools.shtml 

i have vista... wc 1.6a is not compatible for this OS :( and a virtual box wouldnt exactly be practical for mapping :( 

is that the program itself or just the installer? 

WC 3.3 with Vista no problem. I also had the dodgy 3D window issues until I found a patch - it was a .dll file that had to be dropped into the WC folder and then disable the texture filtering option...

Too tired to find the link just now but if you search in this thread it should be here somewhere. 

the patch. the dll file ur talking about, atioglxx.dll but it crashes worldcraft 3.3 on vista for me as soon as i open up a map or a new map window.... so i guess that fix doesnt work :( 

Sorry, can't help then... I'm on Vista and it runs fine, it was just the 3d window problem.

Stupid question - drivers up to date? 

i believe my drivers for my ATI video card are up to date, evne tho the card itself isnt the greatest but yeah. i even tried using hammer , and dragging the hammer 3.5 exe into the folder and running that. even it had the same issue.. :( 

I tried lots of editors and the easyest for me was Quark :\ but few people like this editor in here... 

Microsoft took it out of Vista and Windows7. I know because I had the same problem. I found a copy of this file somewhere and put it in the Worldcraft folder and the problem went away. It might work for you. The version of the .dll I have is dated ‎Monday, ‎July ‎14, ‎1997, ‏‎11:00:00 AM.

That said, I recommend trying gtkRadiant. It only took me a day of fooling around to get used to it.

http://kneedeepinthedoomed.wordpress.com/tutorials/ 

Would go away with an open source version of WC.

Once I've got modelling tasks out of the way I'll probably give BSP editor a proper try. 

Gets my vote and having used it for so long, I find it difficult to understand what it is about it that stops more people using it (Quake1SP)? 

No Undo function brakes it for me. Otherwise I found it very good. 

No Undo function O_O

for me, it's not so much that anything stops me from using bsp editor, but that i have sikkpin's qe3 which i already like.

but yeah, if i was changing now, the lack of an undo would probably make me not consider it too. :P 

Can you use the mouse or is it arrow keys only?

Ahem.

No undo isn't that bad, but its such a basic feature that if it's not there then there's most likely a load of other stuff that I'd want and isn't there either. 

not even dropping that d3d DLL file fixed the problem :( quake hates me right now 

Not sure if you are looking for multiple levels of undo but it certainly has CTRL+Z, and it has Save For Undo.

Without wishing to sound pompous (but it will do so never mind) I have never really found a need for undo except where I have moved several hundred brushes and then changed my mind (this is typicaly when handling large areas of terrain). If I think I am going into dodgy territory with something, I generally save a new version.

Have a look at http://www.bspquakeeditor.com/doc/ 

Yes, mouse driven. It is also very configurable all round e.g. for keyboard shortcuts.

For example: with mouse in right hand - select a brush's face in the 3D window with a left-click, select a texture in the texture window with a left-click, then with the left hand ALT + F to apply that texture to the face.

Then: left-click and hold + LSHIFT to stretch the texture or maybe CTRL+SHIFT and left mouse-click to rotate the texture. Perfect for aligning textures to angled trims. 

I'm not that good at making architecture so I often end up going back with what I have just changed. One level undo isn't enough then. I have learned how to use bspeditor some time ago and made few rooms with it. At the moment I'm using qe3 and hammer.
The point is people have made beautiful maps with all kinds of editors.

@Iluvquake - did you try to enable/disable the "Filter Textures" option in 3D View configuration tab in WC/Hammer? 

took a quick look at the link... the face extruding looks interesting. i've never seen that in a quake editor before.

also, Save For Undo sounds like 3ds max's hold/fetch command where you can save the file in the ram and then 'fetch'/load it later. 

That sounds ok. Face extruding sounds like an odd feature to have in a brush based editor since it would seemingly promote convex (illegal) brushes.

Something to look at since I doubt that's the case. 

Basically adds (extrudes) a new brush to the selected face, so nothing illegal. If you check out the link above, it explains it in pictures far better than I could in words. It works, so building fancy shapes is a doddle.