http://www.celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=22547 

The first entry in the thread you have linked to is almost exactly the same, must be a recurring topic...

I suppose things move on in time, people might have changed their views in the last three-odd years or new software has come out or been improved on. 

I'm still using WC 1.6a, I tried 3.3 but the limit on wad size was an annoyance - it's maps also aren't compatible with 1.6a.

I'm thinking I'll move to the BSP editor soon, it seems to be highly rated.

In WC 1.6a the texture alignment problems are irritating, also alot of the general geometry errors that creep in when making complicated stuff from lots of triangles, though I'm not sure how much of that is down to the compile tools or just the ancient editor.

Also, metslime, would it be possible to link add a couple of the older threads to the sticky's? Namely 'Teaching old progs dat new tricks' and maybe 'when hard is too hard'.

I mean those threads that are generally useful and anyone new to the forum won't know about immediately. Just a thought. 

Quark, because it is not only map editor.

1)It can open all sort of quake related files
2)Has a cool texture browser
3)can extract textures from bsps
4)can open bsps!
5)It is going to be a model-editor too somewhen in the future, at the moment it's more a model viewer
6)real-time lightning!
7)and a lot of other things I forgot to mention

At the moment I try to understand BSP a bit, but It's hard to switch, because the editors are so diverse

Worldcraft: Tried it, crashed all the time :( 

Also: make the #tf drama threads sticky 

BSP to be utter shit when I looked it back in the early days. It's completely inflexible and downright anachronistic and 2D in style.

Maybe it's got different options today but the old 2d and isometric views and the height bar were horrible horrible ideas and make me think it was just a quick hack from some Doom map editor or so...

Worldcraft was completely intuitive and made sense from the start. Three 2D views and a 3D view.
Haven't tried quark, maybe it is good as well.

GTKRadiant 1.4 isn't compatible with Quake (requires some elaborate hacks) and in 1.5 you can't shear brushes. Otherwise it could be great.

But that's just me, listen to the real mappers. Like czg. He uses Worldcraft 1.6. 

but I found sometimes if you have brushes at wierd angles, textures might look aligned in Worldcraft 3d view, but when you go to run the map in Quake the textures are missaligned. I was having this problem with the map I'm working on now, thought it might have been a problem related to Qbsp, but when I upgraded to 3.3 I loaded and ran the same map, un-changed and when I ran the map the problems were fixed.

I find in 1.6 that if you have a complex group of brushes with diagonals etc, if you rotate the group the textures will be missaligned. 3.3 fixes that too! Also having OpenGL 3D view is much faster and gives a much more accurate projection of the map. With Sickbase I didnt use any visgroups and I found towards the end that the 3D view was drawing at less than 1 fps, very frustrating. I loaded the map in 3.3 and whad'ya know... Eeess goooood! 

Best editor ever. I had to write my own map exporter for the new version though. 

I recommend switching to TxQBSP or add the -oldaxis option to TreeQBSP if you're using WC 1.6. This should cure the 45 degree tex errors. 

1. None of the editors I've tried deserve this spot because they are all more or less horrible.

2. Ogier

3. Radiant. 

I thought I had tried all editors, will need to check that one out. For me, it's all about BSP, and I was really looking forward to Quake 3 support, but now according to the latest news post that will most likely never happen :(

Well well, that's life I guess. I still use it for Q3 mapping, it'd be cool to have proper support for it though, so I don't have to make .wals of all the textures I use for in-editor viewing (I make the maps in Q2 mode, and compile with q3map2). ASE support would be neat too. Don't even need patches, cause they're evil anyway.

bambuz: You can rearrange the windows the way you like. There's even some default window layout schemes in one of the menus, don't remember which one. The 3 2d window + 1 3d window layout is there. 

Has support for glass in func_walls, attenuation on lights automated.

Does anybody else use it, if so, do you know how to increase the brightness of the textures? Thats my only qualm. :( 

In tools/options texture tab. There should be a slider darker / brighter if I remember rightly. 

There deffo was in 1.6, but I'm sure I've looked in 3.3 and couldnt find! 

Hmm, weird that they'd include support for Quake, guess they're old fans or something. But Starbreeze are cool, so it's all okay :) 

I have the same brightness problem with 3.3. I used to just turn the screen brightness up in NVidia's control panel, but they made the latest version of that really shit so now I close the curtains and map in a darkened room. I suppose that makes it more atmospheric. 

Im kinda having to do similar things, or just squinting a lot. Typical that the program is 100% except for one nigling issue like that! 

Everyone has different tastes when it comes to what editor they prefer to use. Me, I use WC 1.6 because I am most comfortable with it.

I have tried Quark before and did not care for it. That does not mean it isn't good, it more than likely is, but I just don't care for it.

Saying that an editor sucks just because you think it does, doesn't make it so. Each have their own strengths and weaknesses.

But what it really comes down to is what you can make with it. As long as you create great Q1 maps, then it doesn't matter to me what editor you use, whether it be WC, Quark, Radient, BSP or something entirely different. All that matters is how you use the editor you use, to make some stunning creations. 

Who was it that was using a text editor to write a map - sure I remember hearing something about this. 

I had to write my own map exporter for the new version though.

For Q3? 

The Q1 support that comes with it has been deteriorating for the last few versions, so I found it better to write a converter from XMP to Q1 so I get all the benefits of the XMP (Grouping, layers, hiding, excluding) 

ok 

What does it lool like if you open .map in Wordpad? Who in their right mind could make head nor tale of it (I dunno, I have never seen .map code)

Interesting. I'm gonna go and have a look at one. 

I used TextPad to fix up sickbase and many other maps ...

You can setup a custom syntax colour file for TextPad to make it a bit easier to read. Same for qconsole.log files, QC and anything else you want to improve readability for. 

opened a map file on txt and its actually neatly organized :)

there should be a speedmap with nothing but notepad created levels.


anyway, i use wolrdcraft v1.6. always have. the 1st ever editor i ever used was quoole and remember doing a small room for quake2 with some crates and it sucked because i think (though i might be way off) you had to click on a button to move up and down, then another to move right and left. dunno if it was like this...

always wanted to learn qradiant, but it always crashed for me! so i gave up many years ago. dunno why it never opened... :-(