why dont modern games include a map editor any more?
why dont modern games include a map editor any more?
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modern games rarely ever use purpose built map editors, they make levels in blender.
This. Some old games used 3ds max for the levels, so they don't have dedicated level editors, like halo ce.
>they make levels in blender.
Wait what? They don't place assets in unity or UE or something? I thought 90% of the time that's what it is.
They construct the scene in their engine, yes. Don't know what that anon is smoking, Blender would just be used for creating the props to export to the engine. Not worth the time to build a scene in Blender and then having to write some script to port it all over 1:1 to the engine and praying no issues crop up in the process.
yeah, the point is they use general-purpose tools because with today's powerful hardware, all the game-specific optimizations requiring purpose built engines and corresponding editor tools, like the visibility volumes in Source Engine, are no longer crucial to have the game run reasonably well.
>why is your game 20TB?
>oh, well our world has 20,000 of the same park bench in it
>we use blender 🙂
No you're right, that guy is so fucking retarded it defies belief. No dev has made levels within a DCC software in decades
not entirely true. I know several that use Maya to place level geometry and have exporters chop them up into chunks during a build process. This is usually for proprietary engines though. You don't need this for Unreal or Unity.
Play Zoo Tycoon. You are now a level designer using assets built by the modellers and the customers approval is just like the team leads criticism to QA.
That guy is a retard, making assets is not making a game.
That is correct. An engine like unity is a program that "accepts" and deals with assets (text, models, sounds). Assets themselves are made in other programs
nobody makes levels in blender... they make them in software for making levels. blender won't optimize it... unity, unreal, hammer, etc etc and proprietary shit.
>they make levels in blender.
Please tell me this is a shitpost. Nobody on Ganker can be this stupid, right?
that's probably just old console games like GTA.
Most engines just place models in the engine.
Thankfully Source 2 is based and has a proper level editor with editable meshes
It is impossible to give players that without your source code getting reverse engineered
wrong
if you aren't a complete retard, at best they can reverse engineer your map format
absolute moron
>Posts game that got reverse engineered
thanks for proving my point i guess
i don't understand how are you able to breath if you are this fucking retarded
Where's the Little Big Planet source code smart guy?
What are you smoking? How can you reverse engineer the whole entire game based on the map creator alone, and who would do that when modding is more than accessible using that program?
Because most games are already made with high-level engines like Unreal or Unity, meaning modding isn't as popular anymore since:
1. Amateurs can create their own game with their own ideas and creative freedom
2. Devs generally don't want to give; players this amount of freedom anymore to modify their games since most of them are SaaS or have a lot of content pushed as microtransactions, meaning that mods (which are usually free) would be more popular.
>what is Hammer/Jackhammer
>what is Source Development Kit
Many great mods came out of those.
Actually retarded slopchugging poster.
If you code can be reverse engineered or data mined then that's on you for making shit code
literal technological moron
This. It is better for business to give as little tools as possible to the players, especially when you use mtx/cosmetic stuff as your income.
If OW2 had a map maker tools, it would shine light on how poor the devs are at making proper maps, which in turn would make people play them more or demand better from devs. It is just a losing situation.
Better to have control over every aspect of the game, give only tools that can turn the game more "silly" but not more balanced or construct mechanics. Otherwise you are fighting against mass of a community who does stuff out of passion and not for profit. People would make cosmetic mods to unlock stuff they want, you can't trade them around so they don't have even the little value of TF2/CS:GO items.
Control over YOUR PRODUCT(It's not the customer's product. You own it, they don't) is extremely profitable amd smart as a business. You can dripfeed dev time and if you make it into brand war thing, the customers you treat like shit will fight for you on the internet.
There's a second side to this coin, though.
You don't have to actually make a game or balance it or pay developers if you can get your community to do it all for free.
Look at TF2 and CSGO. A majority of the content in those games are just community/workshop assets flipped into being official.
Or anything from Bethesda. Why bother with QA or UI design when modders will Day 1 patch your game for you?
The most-played map on Starcraft 2 is Direct Strike, a user-made map which Blizzard put microtransactions into.
well a lot of them don't make their own engine for one. Those map editors were probably a byproduct of the fact they had to make all this shit themselves, as opposed to just putting it together in unreal or unity
This is a stupid fucking idea for a thread because it was immediately answered by . Instead, I want to know: What modern games do you think NEED a map editor?
how about all unreal and unity games?
Trying to make a map editor that ports maps to a videogame you made using unreal not a map editor sounds like a real dickache.
for both unreal and unity you dont have to provide a separate map editor. they can just release a SDK with locked down source code
for example Squad and ravenfield provide SDKs
Overwatch
Any game that has maps or levels? Custom quests / missions is always good
Hitman
Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children. If the devs ever totally kill their dream of a games-as-a-service game and release modding tools it would easily be one of the best moddable SRPGs of all time. Right now everything's so locked down that the game's content directory is encrypted.
Oh man, I can't wait to play anon's map with over 100 Monkey Kings around you!
I cant wait for a map where I can romance bestgirl
Nioh (incl 2)
The combat is great and all but the maps are fucking dogshit I bet average anons here can design better levels.
Holy hell yes. Like, not all of the maps were bad and most of them were cool for the first time, but they're just not good enough for repeated runs. Game could profit so much from custom levels. Hell, honestly, most games could.
Your idea for a thread is not much better in all honesty because custom levels almost always benefit games.
All of them. Modern games suck and this is one of the reasons.
>What modern games do you think NEED a map editor?
Battle Brothers
While they're right about the makers having all the tools, the reason they've stopped is that it has become much easier for a publisher to monetize assets.
Why let the community make maps when you can sell them 3 more for a quarter the price of the full game every few months?
Especially when, even if the average map the community makes is garbage, some number of them will be better than anything your paid people could make.
>publishers don't like modding anymore because it interferes with their heccin' live service profiterinos!!11! xDDD
this excuse comes up every time the subject of modern vidya and modding is mentioned, and it's funny because it's fucking bullshit if you aren't a shareholder or a faceless executive, and everyone knows it. sure, devs can spend a decade cranking out hundreds of half-baked, overpriced dlcs and cosmetics for one game, but they only do it so they can milk consoomers, once the publisher doesn't see a financial incentive to keep the game alive, they'll reassign those devs to another project, tell everyone to move onto [next product] and kill that game's servers for good a few years later. corporations only cared about modding when they could take advantage of it financially, valve snatching up counter-strike, team fortress and dota is probably the best example
meanwhile, i genuinely can't think of a single example of a game becoming objectively worse because of mods, romhacking or the engine being open-sourced. name a pc game from the 90s or 2000s - doom, quake, duke3d, stalker, thief, unreal, half-life, simcity, the sims, rct, warcraft, nwn, fallout, vtmb, morrowind, oblivion, all of them benefitted from having modding support and i'm only scratching the surface. there are so many games that are still relevant today partially because of the modding community. say what you will about modders themselves, but the industry is fucking insane for not realizing this. where's carmack when you actually need him
quake (and id tech 3/goldsrc/etc.) mapping is hard compared to doom, sure, especially if you're trying to make something that looks like the average arcane dimensions map, but if you keep your trim fetish in check then it really isn't that bad, trenchbroom and ericw's compilers have made it easier, for better or worse. i personally think it's more appealing than the level design process for basically every aaa game i've ever seen
Nah, it's because most consumers don't have the knowledge to make a map that compares to a AAA studio's billion dollar/ thousand pajeet workforce making maps, so why would anyone bother? Now if more games utilized procedural tools for level editing, for example the designer lays out the general skeleton of the map and then has volumes that fill in the details, it would be more attractive to your standard lazy weirdo who wants to make a custom map.
most of them don't, but SOME of them do, and i think cucking that smaller, talented demographic of hobbyist developers just because normies are retarded is fucking bullshit. it's actually even MORE bullshit once you realize that at least a few of those normalfags are actually interested in learning the craft, except they can't do it with modern vidya because map editors are anathema to triple a publishers now for some reason. your argument is absolutely fucking asinine
also, a lot of senior level designers who ended up getting jobs in the industry (dario casali and iikka keranen from valve, for example) got their start in the modding community, this was common practice back when executives actually gave a shit about mods. this happens way less often now and it's bullshit although it's probably a good thing, fuck the aaa industry, i hope it collapses in the most spectacularly violent way possible. arkane is the only triple a dev i know of that still hires hobbyist level designers, but they fucking suck too so whatever
i became familiar with half-life and quake mapping first and i think that's the case for a lot of people, so ue1 (and i think ue2? idk) using solid/subtractive csg brushes always felt fucking weird to me and that's part of the reason why i never bothered learning it
Earth defense force
Why let players make free content when we can charge for all content?
This is it. Nowadays, they charge for announcer packs and whatnot in SC2, in Broodwar you merely had to replace a few .wav files.
They even wanted to monetize custom games in SC2.
>They even wanted to monetize custom games in SC2.
Valve and Dota scared the living shit out of them. They never wanted to pass up another possible gem like that, and unkowingly killed the ability to make one with their retarded rules.
It's funny in a kind of tragic way how they seem to have made every wrong decision you can possibly make in that regard.
They let Dota 2 slip away, nipped the custom game scene for SC2 in the bud, and HotS was too little, too late.
Blizzard are comically inept.
It's funny, but it's also tragic because if they weren't we'd really have some great things.
they also ruined optimization at some point too
>play SC2 custom game
>get to end game with 200 supply and 100's of units on the map doing things
>runs silky smooth 60fps no lag
>modern day, literally the exact same custom game but end game becomes a slideshow instead for some reason
no clue what caused it, i guess the heart of the swarm update?
>no clue what caused it, i guess the heart of the swarm update?
I think that was when the rig I used at the time started having more trouble running the game. That might have been it.
myself and one of my college profs both ran WoL fine but couldn't run HotS on launch
What kind of toasters did you guys have? I'm pretty sure I used to have a gtx780 when hots beta started.
They changed the physics engine. Are you running it with physics set to high/ultra/whatever?
I’ll never forgive Blizzard for abandoning HotS, was the only good thing they made since wc3.
apparently some people have remade hots in sc2 map editor and have been adding new heroes/maps but i refuse to install any blizz software on my machine so i can't actually verify it
There’s only like 6 heroes and one of them is from league. Blizzard just needs to release the HotS editor and steal.. I mean implement what the community makes with a little credit applied somewhere. There’s some great content out there from skins to map concepts to heroes.
Don't hurt me with those wonderful views into a better timeline than our own.
I hurt myself with them everyday. It’s lonely here, come join me, tell me what you want let me commiserate
Well Blizzard was too proud and retarded back then. I remember everyone was clamoring for an official Dota Blizzard game but they were making so much money from WoW that they didn't care until League came along.
As much as they fucked up with DotA, they fucked up even more with the new draconian EULA. Even below-room-temperature IQ mouth-breathing subhumans aka blizzdrones that would literally eat shit if you ask them had enough brain to stop making custom maps for garden gnomezard. Like, really. I can't wait for them to shut down for good.
Hard to use map editors on consoles.
Then we wouldn't have Minecraft or Terraria on consoles.
How are they going to sell you DLC if you can just make your own?
This.
Just as bad is the opposite extreme, where they sell you the bones of a game with no content, expecting users to make it all for them for free.
The opposite extreme is way better anon what the fuck are you smoking. Only one of these two things involves you getting garden gnomeed. Modders can turn a turd into a diamond, it's bullshit that the dev will profit from their work but as a consumer why should I care? I still get a good game.
I certainly feel plenty garden gnomeed having bought bonelab.
>css
>can mod in any skin for anything you want
>csgo
>have to buy sprays, skins, gun skins, knife skins
>b...but le Gabe is le good guy
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. I can't believe pc gaming did sink so low as to adopt steam.
Stop using this abomination and move to GOG.
what's funny is, csgo has a skin editor, you can make your own, publish it to workshop, but you can't use it.
No one really uses them. Lots of games marketed "make your own maps and share with your friends" that ultimately lead to nothing because who does that? Shortly after they close the service down.
Only two games managed to make it work. Mario Maker and Megaman Powered up, which is still running somehow.
>Only two games managed to make it work
Starcraft
Warcraft 3
AoE 2 has run on custom maps for 20 years
Never played those, but I forgot to say minecraft.
My point is that it rarely catches on. Especially on console.
I'd argue that starcraft and warcraft 3 having a strong custom game scene helped build up to wow having such a strong release. it built a culture around playing blizzard games alongside diablo 2 that helped spread word and get people excited.
>on console
genuinely the heart of why console was such casual shit 20 years ago when so many multiplayer games on pc just had custom maps by default but as consoles became bigger pc games started copying them and gave less tools.
Don't forget neverwinter nights
What did I miss out on with AoE 2 custom maps?
Starcraft 1 maps were pretty primitive, but had a lot of insane shit created due to its limitations like Cat N Mouse, Desert Strike, Income Wars, Siege Dyne, Pirate Dyne, Death Knights 3, etc.
As if, you mongoloid, play a pc game for once. Source games alone all live by that shit. Even Halo
The entire Combat Mission series is still going strong and they have metric fucktons of custom maps, plus you can still make more yourself
Fuck you i EXCLUSIVELY played the custom maps of WC3 online and it spawned atleast two different game genres
>MOBAs
>Tower Defense
Holy zoom-zoom and/xor console pleb.
Bro, you are actually retarded, entire game genre's got invented due to starcraft and warcraft 3's map editor
Halo 3's forge was one of the most beloved features in all of gaming
Fuck you, I spent my entire childhood making custom maps on AoK
Nintendo players literally ONLY know Nintendo. They have no other point of reference. It's sad.
Starcraft, warcraft 3, neverwinter nights
You have forgotten a pretty popular game, anon.
I hate consoletards so much
You ever read an opinion like this, one so incredibly wrong, that you wonder what the poster is like in real life?
Like are they this wrong about everything? Or is this particular topic somehow an exception and they are otherwise a normal person?
The more you learn about the world, the worse this gets. And you'll soon realise you have committed this sin yourself many times in your life. It's best to just not be overconfident in your opinions. Being wrong, even spectacularly, is okay, being smug cunt about it is not.
>mario maker
lol. lmao
bethesda could be nuked off the face of the earth tomorrow and i wouldn't give a shit, but todd going out of his way to release the construction set alongside morrowind and turning it into a long-running tradition is one of the only unequivocally good things he's ever done tbh
snapmap was absolutely fucking pathetic compared to hammer/radiant/trenchbroom/literally any id tech level editing software that existed prior to nudoom. fuck bethesda for going against carmack and making id tech closed source, holy fucking shit i despise them with every fibre of my being. doom eternal doesn't even have a goddamn level editor at all, why does it even exist
>snapmap was absolutely fucking pathetic compared to hammer/radiant/trenchbroom/literally any id tech level editing software that existed prior to nudoom.
youre right, never said it was better or even as good. i just said i liked it. limitation can breed creativity sometimes, it sucked but i think it was underrated
you're not wrong about limitation fostering creativity, HOWEVER that's why i and pretty much everyone who still cares about quake, doom and other old shooters recommend modding those games to people, editors like trenchbroom strike a perfect balance between flexibility and ease of use, there are some engine limitations you have to watch out for, but the overall mapping process is way more fun than being some underpaid aaa level designer who gets paid to add triggers and shit to some soulless 500 billion polygon maya mesh.
i hate snapmap because it was so dumbed down that it spat in the face of its predecessors, if we're still around in 100 years i guarantee at least a few autists will still be working on doom source ports and wads while snapmap will have been completely forgotten. that's what happens when you treat modders and level designers like fucking toddlers. also i don't really like nudoom much in the first place, so i might just be horrendously biased
Quake maps are hard to make. Ordinary people can manage with Doom mapping, but Quake took it to the next level, where only dedicated 3d art hobbyists can get somewhere.
What? I made my first Quake 2 map when I was in third grade with zero experience in 3d modeling. Mapping for Quake has basically zero to do with 3d art, you're mostly plopping blocks around.
You are wrong and imagining things. Decent Quake map that isn't just a corridor and boxes takes a lot of knowledge and toil.
No, it really doesn't. Next to Doom, it's the easiest thing to map for ever made. Just because you can't picture something in 3d in your mind's eye doesn't mean everyone else is just as retarded.
> go through door
> a small black cat with green eyes starts stumbling around
>makes the most awful fucking sound (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8gMmrkG3Dk)
>can't be killed
>follows you
The SDK for source-games resulted in L4D.
Why do you mental midgets always end up talking about shit you clearly know nothing about.
most retarded post of 2023 right there.
TF2? You fucking retard. TF2 custom maps became so popular they started making them official.
>mario maker
if this was bait, masterfully done
>give players a map editor
>they make whole campaings with it
>forcing your team into having to come up with something better than whatever they create.
garden gnomes.
And even then mods still exist, so.
The harsh truth is that if someone were to go back and play old Quake 1 mods and TC's (X-Men, Malice, AirQuake, TFC, Raven Keep, literally anything from Quaddicted lmao) they'd quickly notice that modern gaming is the most gnomish and backwards thing to ever exist.
Don't even get me started on Quake 2 >_>
Yeah, Todd fixed this by making mods paid content.
You know, developers could just do expansion packs that add REAL content to the game...but I guess that's in the past too.
Roblox, tf2, gmod, wc3, elder scrolls, etc. These are the games that will still have anons making new and unique content in 20, 30, 50 years. Literally no downsides to releasing tools for the players to use. They will work for free and love doing it.
too much soul involved in map making. modern games are explicitly designed to be anti soul
Because garden gnomes can't sell maps. Same reason of why lot of games dont even offer basic ass modding sdk.
They do
because money
why make a fully functional game engine with heaps of free assets available and bundled with a videogame you are selling?
why go out of your way to make that useable for people that aren't your devs for absolutely free?
who should profit off of user created content?
if people keep playing your game because it has an editor, who will buy your new games?
Good games retain their value for decades. In fact, physical copies of old good games increase in value. Furthermore, people fall in love with games they really like and that is the best kind of marketing any business could ever dream of. The BG series is a great example of this. Even today, developers are milking the "successor of BG2" and that game came out some 23 years ago. If you take the time and effort to make a quality game that will be loved and adored, you will be able to sell that game at full price for the entirety of its existence. Which is basically forever or as long as your company survives or until someone else buys the rights to your game to keep selling it. You aren't giving away free stuff, anon. You're putting in hard work for a big payout.
No one interested in decades of value anymore. It's pump and dump and then pump a sequel and then another and then a remake and then dump everything ad infinitum. You will NEVER get Map Editors in new games. Enjoy what you had.
>tfw your wc3 maps folder from 2005 died with your external harddrive
You should create a torrent for that
Someone already did, and that's where I got most of them rutracker
Execs are physically incapable of planning ahead further than 5 years and comprehending human emotions since they themselves don't have souls.
Because greed.
I like making adventures in the NWN editor
The devs / publishers don't want people keep their old games alive. They want you to consoom, ditch, and then get hyped for the next game / sequel / remaster. Plus buy more DLC.
They don't even include basic cheat codes.
Because companies are not selling game-play anymore. They sell content. Easily generated movie scripts on copy-pasting existing tech. Can't allow community take that bread away. Game updates used to come with new mechanics, units, classes or even whole separate game modes or spin-off games - like HL -> blue shift, CS.
Now updates, new series or expansions barely include any cosmetic re-skins and just add more mo-capped movie statics.
Pic. rel. modern gameplay in essence.
Games should allow us to go to skip, fast-forward, and rewind at-will. I paid money, let me view all the content freely.
also with the advancements in debuggers and engines devs now debug the games directly from their IDE or from integrated consoles, making cheat codes obsolete
what if some games still have cheat codes in the past 10 years but no one actually trys finding them?
same thing with movie codes, used to beable to find deleted scenes or trailers before, doubt they do that anymore, even if they did no one bothers to try
>Because companies are not selling game-play anymore. They sell content
Thank you, this is my problem with the industry today. It's all about how much your game has rather than it being fun to play. You could have a game with basic level editor, have a bench recolored 20,000 times over and some retard will say it's packed with content. That word lost its meaning years ago.
Everyone uses unreal/unity instead of custom engines.
For a brief period in the 2000s we god mod tools to make our own maps and mods.
Pic-related is Star Wars Battlefront 2's mod editor released around 2005-2006.
Damn I had no idea since I only played Battlefront 2 on my playstation.
Played a lot of mods to Battlefield 2 with my friends at school though.
are there any games made after sc2 that have a map editor?
Didn't Doom 4 have one?
I mean, in a technical sense you're correct. But it was fucking awful and nothing good came out of it
dota 2
Doom (2016)
Forgotten near instantly, never used for anything
Here's your case for not wasting time and effort on a map editor
Snapmap is a joke. Even DOOM 3's level editor was more feature rich and that was a game people dropped immediately after playing.
It's the same issue Gran Turismo 5 & 6 had. Hype up a track creator, and then oops it's just drawing squiggles like a toddler.
>Hype up a track creator, and then oops it's just drawing squiggles
Is there more to racing game maps?
I mean those "realistic" racing games, that only take place on tracks
Yes. Slight inclines, curb markings, optional layouts, basic scenery beyond trees and billboards, variations in lane width, not to mention actual landmarks like the Ferris Wheel at Suzuka or the blind chicane at Laguna Sega. Real race courses aren't just flat nonsense, even Tsukuba has a lot going on that most people won't
immediately notice.
Everytime I see shit like this in car games I just ant to hop out of whatever vehicle I am on and explore the area instead
I might be retarded
Tracks in modern racing games are laser scanned so devs can replicate elevations, bumps and areas with low traction. Editors are useless in sims because 99% of the time someone has already modeled the track you're interested in 15 years ago. Now driving simulators like OMSI have an extensive map editor.
It's still funny to me that Assetto Corsa's free Shutoko mod gives you more of the Tokyo highway to race on than GT7, or really any modern racing game.
LBP karting and Modnation racers showed how to do it right.
you're grotesquely disingenuous, nobody used it because it's a dogshit tool designed for consoles with absurdly tight limits and nowhere near enough freedom to create anything other than the exact same fucking corridors and wave attacks in locked rooms as the base game
my first thought too
level editors in modern games make me sad because they will never be used ever
i feel like the reason behind this is because anyone who's actually interested in making or editing games would be already making mods or making small games since all the tools are easily accessible
tbh i really liked snapmap. there were a few really creative things done with it
never forget
Prodeus and Super Mario Maker and that's literally it
>Super Mario Maker
doesn't really count if the editor is the game
Ultrakill and Teardown
CS:GO, dota 2, Portal 2... Pretty much every Valve game
Metro exodus
Many recent games have level editors. They range from engine-level stuff to simplified editors made exclusively for players.
By the way "includes level editor" is one of the official tags on Steam and you can search for games using that.
Trials always has one—who else is going to make the autistic ninja maps but the autists themselves?
Halo Reach & 4 got SDKs released within the past couple years.
they do
look at the credits of a modern AAA game. 98% of the 400 people are artists and mappers.
Halo Infinite easily has the best map editor/maker in years.
Too bad it was in such a shit game. Well at least the mods will be fun.
Creative mode in Fortnite is neat, but very limited and netcode is shit. Probably easily fixed with dedicated servers, but that won't net Timmy billions to waste on EGS exclusives.
i recall some playstation games even having map editors but being pretty limited on what you could place. its ~~*laziness*~~
You're supposed to buy the official map packs
>Releases four maps and never touches the game again
because most games are made in pre-packaged engines like UE and Unity. just download those if you want a "map editor".
I wish there was like a super cool clone of Hammer.
Imagine CS Source maps, but Hammer for maps is as Spine is for it's nice gui...and how easy it is to use.
Spine just feels so good to use.
Because no one wants the DOTA situation where someone makes a map/level that outshines the actual game itself to the point where it's the only reason why people play the game anymore. They also don't want something like that to escape from their hands and into another company what with DOTA 2, so they put in a buncha EULA bullshit where whatever you make they own, so whatever original creative shit people wanted to do the company automatically owns.
this is why SCII's mapping scene is tame and basic, no one wants to make original content that automatically gets stolen.
Dota and Dota 2 was Blizzard being retarded. Nobody is against another Dota situation. Helle even fucking ubisoft wizld have instantly hired Eul the moment allstars took off, if Warcraft were a Ubisoft game.
Blizzard was just lazy, arrogant and told Icefrog, the last dev for the allstarsmap: "make dota in sc2 engine for free, lol."
They did fuck all else with the plethora of good custom maps for war3 turning into fully fledged games, like parasite inspiring among us. Or tower defense. Fucking tower defense.
Blizzard missed the train on mobas, indyshit and other stuff so hard, they could have made battle.net a true steam competitor if they hadn't had their heads up their own arses.
>like parasite inspiring among us
Werewolf is older than electricity
Games went from nerds wanting to have fun online to a business where everything was monetized. If you want this bullshit to end you simply have to go back to traditional gaming.
>mod of game becomes more popular than original
>blizzdrones eternally seething
>why dont modern games include a map editor any more?
Because DotA and League happened. Unironically.
Map makers and such used to be seen as a great thing that prolonged the longevity of the game and promoted more people to play and try their game.
But today things like this are seen as a parasitic element to your actual product, competing for your player's time and their potential to spend money. Especially when you start taking sequels and such into consideration further down the line.
Blizzard absolutely hated how people were still playing WC3 when they were trying to push SC2.
>b-but the elder scrolls and mods!
It is no coincidence that the Construction Set for these games have grown more and more restrictive with each new iteration. And they tried to pull the whole paid mods bullshit too, over and over at that.
Modern devs and publishers see extensive user creative content as competition.
>Modern devs and publishers see extensive user creative content as competition.
It reminds me of how iphones have multiple features making repair difficult/impossible. They are designing things to be hostile to the consumer/hobbyist.
>competing for your player's time and their potential to spend money
games as a live service was a mistake because of this. this is why gameplay mechanics are shallow shit with poorly designed stats littered everywhere where you need to grind to improve them (waste time) or skip. it's why you can't have fun things in the game without being charged for it. it's fucking disgusting if you think about how much it actually has affected.
Aren't there like a million custom games in DotA2? It even birthed an (admittedly shitty) subgenre; auto-chess (which Riot shamelessly copied and monetized).
yes
its pretty great, especially since wc3 refunded happened
Because they use in-engine/editor tools and not their own solution
>most games run on Unity/UE which has its own scene compositor
>majority of the mesh assets are made in professional tools like Maya/Cinema4D
It does make one miss the days of sector or brush-based map building like BUILD/GoldSrc era titles.
build was so fucking kino
I swear every kid who grew up with it made their house in it
Post the most based map/scenario/module editors. This was Neverwinter Nights. It allowed you to do some really powerful shit if you bothered to learn the programming language.
I don't think anything beats NWN's editor. Closest I can think of is StarEdit for StarCraft, which also had comprehensive scripting tools.
WC3 editor was insane. So good it spawned countless standalone games like DotA and tower defense games.
Starcraft 1 had no scripting in the editor. You are mistaken.
This thing was incredible. You could muddle through just by clicking on stuff to make something cool, but it was at the same time capable of making professional grade shit if you knew what you were doing. I've played actual videogames with worse difficulty curves.
that underwater area map in tf2? I made the first shit version for a fun map. it was remade for saxton hale
Dungeon Keeper 2 editor
War of the underworld had a built in map editor
I spent countless hours in that program. I would do anything to go back. I'll never forgive them for reforged.
whats wrong with the reforged editor?
Bannerlord has a decent map editor and isn't that old. Skylines 2 is going to launch with one.
>bannerlord has a decent map editor
its crash all the time
also
>poolord having decent anything
Early 2000s AoE eye candy contests. Shit was cash.
A lot of Iso engines trip me up where they have no concept of elevation, and it's just visual trickery. As far as the engine in that screenshot is concerned, that whole section of water is on the same 2d plane.
Cossacks does have the concept of elevation despite having an isometric engine. Elevation affects how your units shoot and gives better defence.
The same happens in AoE2 with hill/cliff bonus but it's still not real elevation, just visual trickery.
Yes, visual trickery is how most games work.
Are there any image collections available? I'd like to check it out
Nowadays game engines use a shitton of middleware. They'd need to pay extra $$ to get the right license to release a level editor
warcraft 3 shows why
>people make maps that are just excuses to look at porn, racism or are full of copywritten anime characters
>people make stuff like dota or gem TD that go on to become their own distinct games meaning blizzard basically let someone else make a game using their assets and they could do nothing about it
fast forward to starcraft 2 and activison blizzard decides they own everything made with the map maker, and as a result they had to handicap the entire system (they can't own a map called Revenge Of The morons or DBZ Tribute) all so they can ensure they make money off the next dota, but obviously because they stifled all creativity in the map maker nobody mdde the next dota and instead the entire thing died out unused
TLDR: greed and it looking bad for the company in a social media cancel culture world if people are given the freedom to make what they want with your product
You say this like I can't play all sorts of fun shit in DOTA2
SC2's problems were more with the editor being a leap up from WC3's in basic complexity and the awful custom game lobby at launch. Otherwise they didn't do anything to stop DBZ games or whatever you will, there's been a ton of custom maps made and custom games are still active to this day even if it's not like the WC3 golden age. Dota 2's in the same boat, those times will just never return.
You can’t import 3rd party models I think
>greed and it looking bad for the company in a social media cancel culture world
t. Redpilled matrix evader Tate enjoyer
>why dont modern games include a map editor any more?
Fallout 4, Halo Infinite, Starcraft 2, Arma 3...
because newer releases don't need it anymore
For me, it's the Scenario Editor
can't sell you new maps if you can just make them GOY
One of the currently most popular games being played, Fortnite, has an extensive map maker.
Is it good though? I hate the BR, would I be able to have fun just playing little Timmy's obstacle courses?
There's dozens of game modes in the creative tab. Obstacle courses, RPGs, RPs, random shooter game modes like Gun Game or TDM, etc. It's not QUITE as extensive as WC3s map maker but it's not that far off.
They've been advertising a replacement system that's basically just cut down UE tools to come out Any Day Now, because if you actually play them you'll quickly realize there are only about ~20 distinct gamemodes endlessly copypasted due to the limitations of the original game mechanics. They really badly want to play catch up with Roblox.
Map editors are amazing
The Source 2 update for Dota 2 added some nice capabilites to make custom modes and maps, but all the community plays is the same 3 modes like turbo and IMBA
The funny thing is I actually played some custom maps for dota 2 that were just dota but on a different map and they were a lot of fun.
Demigod had multiple maps and despite failing financially it was a great game. I don't know why dota players are so allergic to the idea of new maps, it's fun.
>Autochess
>Custom Hero Chaos and it's chink copy Clash
>Dota 1x6
They are all fun, unique and alive with huge player bases.
The only issue is that Valve almost never advertises custom games.
the issue is the chinks that make these games slap battlepasses and p2w shit on them all the time. There's some pretty cool stuff on there.
Mario Kart would benefit from a track editor + maps you share and play online.
games dont have that kind of longevity or community engagement anymore. And everything is online based now, so everything you make will eventually be shut down never to return.
Back in the day there were "usual suspects" on top of xfire charts, cs1.6, wow, but also wc3, starcraft brood war, etc These games were played extensively, often exclusively every day by a fuckton of people. It's impossible to describe the soul of the custom map scene of wc3 or scbw to a zoomer, they just don't understand you can like and play just one game for a long time. There was a time when you didn't have to fucking consoom and consoom. That's why map editors will never return
I disagree. You don't need longevity or engagement to sustain a mod community, just *people.* If there are enough users willing to engage with the tools and make shit, you can have infinite replayability.
Pic related is a perfect example. It's a mod of a mod of a source port, and only like 15 people are playing it at any given time on the current build. Still has enough content to play for hundreds of hours so long as you have *people* to do it with.
anon Im not saying map editors dont have a right to exist because people dont care. Im saying no studio in their right mind will invest time and money into creating a map editor, when every game out there is live service scheduled to go down within 6 years of release.
I think stormgate wants to come out with a map editor but thats basically starcraft 3 so trash moronclick
and because zoomers must consume a new game every month/week/day because... they just do ok? playing one game is cringe and for boomers
But most zoomers literally just play one game and don't even play it with mods or anything.
>Im saying no studio in their right mind will invest time and money into creating a map editor,
They don't even need to invest money/time, they can just release the tools used by the devs, like Croteam did with Serious Sam 4 (2020) and Serious Sam Siberian Mayhem (2022).
There are other shooters released recently that also bet on editors to try to create a community, like Prodeus (2022) that integrates the editor into the game itself, you don't even need to run separate software. Turok remasters (2017?) also offer level editors made for players.
BeamNG and Assetto Corsa are racing games with world/track editors.
Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal have editors, although it's oversimplified.
Practically every city builder/tycoon game has a relatively powerful editor built into the game like Cities Skylines, Transport Fever, A-Train. By the way map editors are expected by players as part of the experience in these cases.
There are also games that are actually editors like Mario Maker 2 and Level Head.
No one nowadays underestimates the power of mods, so there are countless games that don't even look like it, but offer tools for the player to modify the experience, which includes building levels. A Hat in Time for example is a game that I only found out that it had a level editor after I had 100% on it.
Kids today are playing Roblox which is pretty much what you were talking about in terms of player created content but raised to the tenth power.
Seriously, Roblox makes the whole old scene look microscopic. No wonder the devhouse of that shit is among the most profitable companies in the video game business, dwarfing a bunch of giants in the industry.
Solasta does.
Modern games are made to drain money, not to let you truley be creative
User-made content is antithetical to season-passes and DLC.
Fortnite has a map editor.
Does it have a server browser that lets you play full games on those maps populated by tens of thousands (if not more) of players?
Take her a bit further, lad.
>implying
Map Editor doesn't matter if there is no way to make use of it.
Neverwinter Nights spiritual successor when?
isn't that BG3?
Does BG3 have a DM client and multiplayer with up to 96 people per server?
I honestly don't know but if it's not BG3, then don't expect any spiritual successor to NWN ever.
I don't understand why that is, but for some reason making BG3 has taken them enormous amounts of time and money. Surely it can't just be the voiceovers? Surely they're not making unique assets for each location in the game... so what gives? Why was it possible to make NWN1, 2, all the expansions in 200ish with gargantuan amounts of content? and nowadays it's this fucking herculean task that requires 600 developers and 3 corporations to release a competent RPG?
From what I recall, NWN1 had virtually no content on launch. It was more like an engine and world editor with a barebones single-player storyline attached. Probably to act as a demo / template for the world editor. I had no interest in multiplayer gaming at that time, so it was the second greatest gaming purchase regret of my life. Didn't fulfill my expectations after the Infinity Engine games whatsoever.
The NWN campaign isn't as bad as everyone says. If you look at reviews after the game's release, they're very positive. Sure, there were some boring fetch quests, but it was pretty engaging overall.
That said, both expansions had far better campaigns.
This. Only the first act was mediocre. The rest is better than modern rpgs.
It was a good time. You could share your scenarios or recorded games with ease. Today some MBA from some Ivy league globo homo school would halt this and demand it be removed and repackaged as DLCs they can charge money for.
>photoshop cs
soul
AoE4 does
They can't sell you as much shitty DLC if you can just make it yourself.
source engine 2 has a map editor on any of their games and any games released using source 2 if they will ever release the fuckin engine
MONEY
Warcraft 3 was the last good blizzard game.
>thread makes me want to fire up WC3 and play some iconic customs
>remember that I cant anymore
higher knowedge
Some do but devs stopped bothering once they understood they can't artificially force a modding scene a la TES. You still have some hilarious cases like Larian modding tools.
Stormgate will have a map editor, so you're basically just gonna be waiting for that
why do that when we can make the maps for them, sell it to them, and have complete control over the thing
there is no financial incentive to give players that much control of their game anymore.
>PLEASE PLEASE MAKE THE NEXT DOTA OR CSGO FOR US PLEASE ONE OF YOU RETARDS PUT TOGETHER SOMETHING WE CAN STEAL AND ROB FROM YOU
Then they'd have to allow you to host your own servers, and then they couldn't shut the game down when they're ready for a new money funnel.
People kept making things that were more fun than the actual game using them.
>Valve tried to do a custom map editor like WC3
>every update broke the shit out of every game there
>source 2.0 just fucked things up even more scaring away all the god creators
If only Valve wasn't so incompetent
Map editors only work on games that are complete. Trackmania Nations Forever being the best example. Beat Saber is good since the game stays the same but periodically fucking up mods and lighting system has hurt lighting art a lot.
It's a fucking headache now to deal with.
Before 2008 you didn't really have to worry about copyright. Someone could make a game in an editor that closely resembled a real game out at market and it wasn't really seen as a 'threat' to the real product so it was ignored. That's no longer the case.
Some game engines now require a separate and costly license to be bought as well if you make a game editor, so it's an extra expense some companies would have to account for.
Multiplayer moderation is also now required; players like to be sneaky and put in porn or other inappropriate things that could be shared to other players and that's now an issue of contention on if that should even be moderated.
Greed: If you make the next flappy bird on a game's editor, the chances are -very- good that you don't actually own it and will be counter-sued if you try to profit. Most agreements when using a game editor state you don't own shit which discourages most players from wanting to create something (even thought most will never profit from it anyway)
Game longevity is dangerous as well. No company wants to support a 5+ year old game that has an editor because the community will keep that game alive. The point is to force communities to move on to the next game, not keep the current one alive as the company doesn't make money.
There are many reasons we don't see them now. Mostly the same reasons why we don't have control of our multiplayer servers either.
I wonder why Blizzard's script language in WC3 has such terrible syntax and why they wrote all the campaign triggers in GUI. Even if your levels designers are codelets it's easier to teach them how to write simple statements, expressions and calls than to create the graphical framework for this. Which is still still much less efficient to use than plain coding.
Thar reminds when I was a kid I was trying to create a map with a generated maze. But I was filtered by the trigger syntax and didn't know there were extensions that can make it look a lot like C for example. So I decided to write the simple generation algorithm on GUI. It was really not worth it. GUI is good for simple things like create unit, issue command, etc., but terrible for actual coding.
Also during my childhood days I wondered what map editors can do in the future. Like having more integration with the OS, where you can freely use bash during to interact with the game, with other popular languages and inherit their basic functionality and libraries. Like file I/O, something http related would be even better when you do something from in-game and your webpage updates accordingly. Oh well.
I hope Baldur's Gate 3 gets a map editor.
How do you sell dlcs? How do you force the consumer to move to the next entry if you make a game with a lot of community made content? Look at doom 2, the perfect game: still being played. Still getting wads and megawads.
This is the nightmare of shareholders.
Mediocre quickly consumable and equally quickly forgotten gameslops are what the market wants.
Thanks capitalism.
i dunno if you noticed but the big thing in games nowadays is games as a service. you make one game that's probably F2P and then nickel and dime people forever. the EA sports trick of annualized, full price entries is games is a bit of an old hat that only strongly established series do, mostly japanese ones.
Timesplitters series had elaborate creation modes down to being able to create single player missions
The new TimeSplitters supposedly going to have a HUGE map editor, and it's one of the primary reasons it's taking so long.
Making a level is too involved nowdays. It used to be you could just place textured brushes down in radiant/hammer and have a presentable level. Now you need a team of environment artists making unique meshes for it to not just look like a copy paste job.
map editors are made for internal use by level designers that don't know how to program. they create a purpose built scripting language typically that is reinterpreted to c# for unity games or whatever the engine is using. level designers usually can program now, or someone who has no business designing levels does it.
we're lucky the wc3 map editor was released publicly.
>map editors are made for internal use by level designers that don't know how to program. they create a purpose built scripting language typically that is reinterpreted to c# for unity games or whatever the engine is using. level designers usually can program now, or someone who has no business designing levels does it.
Yes and no. They are usable by people who don't know how to program, but they're a godsend even if you do. Nobody wants to hand write 30,000 lines of JSON or whatever format you're using for your level when you could spend a week to make a proper editor that just lets you dragon drop.
If you're dragging and dropping components instead of programming new level features as you design then now you know why people complain that each level feels copy pasta.
Yeah, WC3 maps really feel copy paste anon
>If you're dragging and dropping components instead of programming new level features as you design
If you're designing new features all the time instead of setting rules and planning ahead and at best iterating in development you're awful at managing a creative process.
people are too stupid plus devs are stupid too
They can't replicate the kino that was Ultimate DBZ (still have it btw).
Nintendo made two whole Mario games out of this premise. With Minecraft being what it is, surely there's a demand for this kinda thing, no?
A Hat in Time
Didn't even later far cry games used to have pretty powerful editors? BubI guess no one used them
modern studio pipelines are extremely complicated, and they have no budget or manpower to implement a map editor too, because it's largely not how modern games are made.
the last game i played with a map editor was toki tori. It was kinda hard to use.
Devs don't respect gamers' intelligence nor creativity. Also devs are lazy morons
90% of all games use the same game engine that doesn't support or ship with any sort of editor.
The ones that care about the players do.
Thats why Bethesda is still kino.
We wait 6-8 years+ for a new kino from the because they care about the players. We're guaranteed to be able to shape the world to our desire.
Shiettt they even added a smaller version ingame itself with the settlements.
When was the last time a new game had tools readily available for players to fuck around with?
>includes level editor
>is first back up ram game released in the US beating Zelda by days
>leaves
Penguin chads rise up
I don't know, I do know that I'm working on a level editor for my game though
just don't fall into the trap of the Overgrowth devs, spending all your time on perfecting the dev and creation tools and never getting around to creating anything.
This is already more polished than what Valve used up to Portal 2 / CS:GO
Blizzard deeply regretted that decision later on when they lost their souls
what is baba is you
what is golfit
what is hotline miami 2 (yes 10 yo is modern)
>inb4 >indie
die
For me it's KODO TAG
They do, they're just a bit more strict about it these days because devs (well actually the publishers) are sick of modders making their own gamemodes which then lead onto them making their own game, likely a competitor of whatever game they based off in the first place. And THEN having to deal with lawsuit nuclear fallout (See Warcraft 3 - Dota - League shenanigans for more)
how will you sell DLCs if the goyim can create better content than you
Map editors are offensive.
Because anons made money grinding missions in new asscreed and EA got pissy because they deliberately made money grinding pain in the ass in hopes you buy some with your dollaroos.
Reminder that Auto Chess was a custom game made for DotA 2 that blew up for a year.
I always wanted a WC3 type editor for an FPS game.
Barrier to entry means less 'mod' saturation and a healthier mod environment. There's a sweet spot between 'effort' and 'being a dev'. You don't want retards making bullshit to clog up the place but you don't want the filter so fine that you filter out the creative dorks that will shill your shit for free. If modding is a huge effort you have nothing or, if you game is good, you may have a handful of hyper autists.
built-in map editors are lame make it a separate tool with a bunch of extraneous features 90% of modders are never gonna use
Juggling between making something in NWN editor or trying my hand at RPGmaker. How is RPGmaker? Is it easy to pick up for a total novice?
I fucking love map editors. Even on NES I played a lot of Wrecking Crew, Excitebike and even forced myself to play Mach Rider just because I could create my own track
What's more shocking to me is how people still haven't gotten most of the classic custom maps from WC3 and Brood War/SC2 and made standalone versions of them.
Brood War singlehandedly spawned the tower defense, moba, and autobattler genres. You'd think someone would have gotten a hint and made more.
Meet your maker is a cool game with map editing at its core design. Beta was neat.
Because it's important to keep your company image clean, especially with all of the scandals in gaming in regards to racism and bro culture. That means companies have to prevent (you) from drawing dicks in their games.
it increases a game's lifespan reducing the number of immediate sales for any sequels, and you can't sell dlc for exorbitant prices when the players can make maps and release them for free
I wish they'd make a map editor for wow
Of all the map editors I've used for Doom, Quake 3, Half-life 2, MoH:AA, Re-Volt, Red Alert 2, C&C Generals, GameMaker, Blupi, and a fuckton of 2D stuff, the most difficult one was that esoteric shit Unreal Tournament 1999 required.
Unreal was just the opposite of Quake - subtract instead of add. What's so hard about that? The software was shittier than the Quake editors available at the time though.
Lawsuits over mods. Like with Dota 2
You can't sell user made content
Not with that attitude