Lol no ****, PC editing has been around like what, as long as PC games have? That not the point, the op compared it to Halo3's forge, and thus I said "trying to follow the bandwagon success of forge", that was if it was a console based editor. Since nothing was really specified, I didn't know it was the PC only source editor. Point in being: people liked forges simplicity, thus screamed for a "more involved" editor they can't handle. Thus its become a gimick to sell to people, the same as anything else. I guess it was my mistake to include the "it might be a pc only thing" at the end of that, as no one would be stupid enough to say PC map editors are copying forge to appeal to bandwagon kids.
Your all retarded Text based editor? What the hell are you talking about. Do you live under a rock? Do you have and idea how ridiculously hard that would be to create a map using just text? Heres a snippet of just one block. We will call it a floor. versioninfo { "editorversion" "400" "editorbuild" "4037" "mapversion" "1" "formatversion" "100" "prefab" "0" } visgroups { } viewsettings { "bSnapToGrid" "1" "bShowGrid" "1" "bShowLogicalGrid" "0" "nGridSpacing" "64" "bShow3DGrid" "0" } world { "id" "1" "mapversion" "1" "classname" "worldspawn" "skyname" "sky_day01_01" "maxpropscreenwidth" "-1" "detailvbsp" "detail.vbsp" "detailmaterial" "detail/detailsprites" solid { "id" "2" side { "id" "1" "plane" "(-448 320 64) (512 320 64) (512 -320 64)" "material" "BRICK/BRICKFLOOR001A" "uaxis" "[1 0 0 0] 0.25" "vaxis" "[0 -1 0 0] 0.25" "rotation" "0" "lightmapscale" "16" "smoothing_groups" "0" } side { "id" "2" "plane" "(-448 -320 0) (512 -320 0) (512 320 0)" "material" "BRICK/BRICKFLOOR001A" "uaxis" "[1 0 0 0] 0.25" "vaxis" "[0 -1 0 0] 0.25" "rotation" "0" "lightmapscale" "16" "smoothing_groups" "0" } side { "id" "3" "plane" "(-448 320 64) (-448 -320 64) (-448 -320 0)" "material" "BRICK/BRICKFLOOR001A" "uaxis" "[0 1 0 0] 0.25" "vaxis" "[0 0 -1 0] 0.25" "rotation" "0" "lightmapscale" "16" "smoothing_groups" "0" } side { "id" "4" "plane" "(512 320 0) (512 -320 0) (512 -320 64)" "material" "BRICK/BRICKFLOOR001A" "uaxis" "[0 1 0 0] 0.25" "vaxis" "[0 0 -1 0] 0.25" "rotation" "0" "lightmapscale" "16" "smoothing_groups" "0" } side { "id" "5" "plane" "(512 320 64) (-448 320 64) (-448 320 0)" "material" "BRICK/BRICKFLOOR001A" "uaxis" "[1 0 0 0] 0.25" "vaxis" "[0 0 -1 0] 0.25" "rotation" "0" "lightmapscale" "16" "smoothing_groups" "0" } side { "id" "6" "plane" "(512 -320 0) (-448 -320 0) (-448 -320 64)" "material" "BRICK/BRICKFLOOR001A" "uaxis" "[1 0 0 0] 0.25" "vaxis" "[0 0 -1 0] 0.25" "rotation" "0" "lightmapscale" "16" "smoothing_groups" "0" } editor { "color" "0 112 253" "visgroupshown" "1" "visgroupautoshown" "1" } } } cameras { "activecamera" "-1" } cordon { "mins" "(-1024 -1024 -1024)" "maxs" "(1024 1024 1024)" "active" "0" } now think... thats just one block for a floor. Not to mention you would have to remember all of the coords for the placement of the blocks. The real map editor on PC only looks like this ImageShack - Image Hosting :: asdawdasdeb9.png at any rate i can make whatever i want in a map place what ever i want in my map and do it all from scratch. I can also take apart a valve map and and edit parts of it to add my own touch. and to the person who said there was going to be a flame thrower added dont you feel like a jack ass. There was probably like 5 people making l4d atleast 3 of which were the creators of counter-strike. Do your research before you go onto a forum site and start say your cousins dad or whatever works for valve, and said there was going to be a flamethrower.
Irandrew pretty much hit the nail on the head. The Source SDK is probably one of the easiest to use, and most feature filled map makers out there. The only ones I can think of from the top of my head is the Timesplitter's map maker for ease of use, and the UnrealEd for feature filled. I saw comments about this possibly being a Forge knockoff... Forge is the worst 'map maker' ever devised by man. Even with the massive warehouse level that you can delete everything in, Forge is bad even for a map EDITOR. For example, take Timesplitters 3. In that you could design your own levels from scratch out of premade blocks, put them all together to make a storyline if you so wanted and set little objectives for players to accomplish. And this was on the Playstation 2 (And Gamecube and Xbox) for crying out loud! Also, Forge is really just a Garry's Mod knockoff, which is something created for Source engine games. And Garry's Mod truly does pull off everything that Forge failed at, despite it being first made in 2005, and entirely by one person. Finally, those videos showed maps that were using developer's textures, simple textures to allow developers to test the physical design of maps before focusing on the aesthetics. Counter Strike Source, Half Life 2: Deathmatch and Team Fortress 2 have a lot of maps designed using those textures to create a bright, colourful yet simple theme for the map to take place in. I personally can't wait for a proper SDK release of Left 4 Dead. Knowing how to make them using the existing SDK would be good too, but whatever