The user experience of Level Editors

Don't get me wrong, I get the theory, I've just observed very differently in my career. No, I'm not suggesting people stop trying to improve tools, I use very good tools every day ... I'm saying ... I give up, theirs no way to not offend people in these discussions hehe, this is why developers don't like to talk about this stuff ... It's just, a tool. (this is my own opinion of course!) tools don't make games, people do.

FYI - tools are usually made to speed things up, to save time, to save money (and often peoples sanity) they might, depending on the tool in question, make the game better, but not always.

I'm not offended at all, just somewhat flabbergasted. Please stay and discuss!

I've seen good developers spending all their efforts on trying to improve tools and somewhat forgetting about the game, this is why usually you have technical roles for people who enjoy this type of work (and it's very important) but one must not lose sight of the game in the act of trying to make a perfect workflow, the workflow will mature over time, this is why sequels usually get developed faster each time. As the very wise Buddy Rich once said, "Don't think about it, just do it" It's very easy to overthink something, we are level designers, responsible for communicating and envisioning an experience for players, this has been masterfully accomplished on some of the worst tools you could possibly imagine. I;m starting to sound like an old fart here, but it works for me since I don't feel bad using any tools I've come across, there are always limitations, always problems you have to solve, that will never change no matter how good the tool If you think it;s bad now, wait until you've used some of the "best" tools, then join another developer and go back in time, you'll feel even worse so don't sweat it, think about the game and players experience as much as you can.

That's pretty much what's happened. I've used Hammer, and then picked up UE4 and had to go twenty years back in time to the last time ya'll touched your BSP tools.

Well I can say we are actively working on new geometry tools, just don't hold your breath. I agree hammers geometry tools are great, unfortunately just about everything else is dated, with the exception of the physics and how they are integrated, very nice, still the best I've seen.

Agreed all round. Good to hear stuff is happening on the geo tools front

Wow this discussion flourished, I have a lot of catching up to do

Quote from Tyker

On ‎8‎/‎5‎/‎2016 at 7:13 PM, Tyker said: Sorry! I already had to cut so much good stuff ... with those cuts, and talking super fast, I barely made it into 50 minutes. Please let me know what was erroneous though! I am not perfect, I do not know everything, and I'm always willing to learn.

I understood that time constraints limited the talk. And, again, I enjoyed the talk.

I wrote a very long response but deleted it. I think direct answers will best be served with actual video demonstrations rather than words, which I will try to get to when time opens. But the real gist of what I have to share with the Source LD community is that if you think Hammer is the best tool for A/B/C, there is a very good chance that your experience in Hammer itself has conditioned you to think that (in other words, you have picked up design strategies from the limitations of Hammer and let those limitations turn into "workflows" or "matters of importance").

The problem with Hammer (I'm talking of Source Hammer, not S2 Hammer) is that it spent ~20 years with almost zero innovation and stagnated the design strategies of the would-be level designers. So even if it has a few good things--it's general lack of innovation is a disservice to the design community that becomes "faithful" to it.

I cannot speak for the Creation Kit, but 3ds Max, UE4 and Unity have evolved with the design community. And any little aspect of Hammer you want, it's pretty much trivial for any team to add into Max any day of the week (3ds Max is just the ultimate design tool that you can morph into whatever you need it to do, and almost every Hammer function is included in Wall Worm). In fact, many of the tools for Source in 3ds Max result from me just saying to myself, "Wouldn't it be so much easier to..." The same cannot be said of the Hammer that most people are using. Of course, Dota's Hammer is a different story... but it wasn't a part of that discussion.

Please understand that none of this is critical of you and that most of the principles of your talk align with my own views. I'll possibly share specific cases about factual errors in a video at some point.

I'm not sure anyone who has used all the tools mentioned in the video could make a valid argument that Hammer is better than any of the others mentioned. It does have some aspects that are better than in other editors, but they pale in comparison to all the drawbacks Hammer and the source pipeline. I could list maybe 5 or 6 things hammer does better than other editors, but write entire essays on its drawbacks.

Max, as powerful as it is, suffers purely from the fact it is not an engine level design editor but a 3rd party tool that is designed to cover many facets within many industries and skills. Sure with a programmer designing some tools to fit your project can make things a lot easier, but it still keeps the very steep learning curve and prevents people who may not work with the design tools every day from doing simple tasks to test their work. Issues such as an audio guy wanting to test and make alterations to their sounds suddenly becomes a much more difficult task because the tools are more complex, and the tools are separated from the engine.

Unity I think is the shining example of a quality toolset and one that has adapted over time to fit its users needs. What he does at timestamp 51.28 (editing the game while its running) looks kind of small and is glossed over, but as a level designer this is such a huge thing that I could write pages and pages about its usefulness. Something that cannot be achieved in an editor like max because of the separation between tools and engine.

Basically what I am trying to get at is that as great as some tools may be, Having an editor that runs the engine real time cannot be underestimated and is probably the greatest time saver for anyone that ever needs to use the tools. And can save an insane amount of time during all stages of development for multiple departments, not just the level designers.

Quote from Tyker

2 minutes ago, Tyker said: Did that part feel like it was glossed over? I hoped with the words I used and the inflection of my voice to really set straight that this 'pause-edit' system was absolutely amazing and that any editor benefits from such a system, regardless of team size or game genre. Please let me know if I did not make that clear enough!

Well, glossed over in the sense that you are discussing such a complex topic in a one hour segment. So a little hard to understand just how much value each individual aspect has if unfamiliar with any of the tools. I personally believe that being able to run the game and editor in tandem and make real time changes is possibly the most powerful feature an editor can have.

Quote from shawnolson

6 hours ago, shawnolson said:

By the way thanks for wall worm, it's awesome from the few things I played with in it so far.

However, the issue with it may be the setup part. It's the part where you have to install everything do prop models appear correctly as well as textures and so on. It did put me a bit at the beginning. That's a part of the UX which is often overlooked in my opinion.

Unity has some issues with that when you want someone to access and retake the project. While it should've been really easy, I had to explain for 5 to 10 min the logic behind how it's done and why it's done like that, which isn't good for newbies wanting to learn the tool.

@Tyker No, I wasn't talking specifically about you at that point I know you went into that in the video some.

@Skybex Agreed about an editor that runs an engine is best for many reasons. That you can run engines in newer editors makes it unlikely that any serious new projects will start in Source. When your design tools more deeply immerse you into your world (which such newer editors do), the more you get to immediately bring your vision to life. When talking about Source specifically, there is no option (at least publicly) to do that--and Hammer is pretty much the least immersive editor there is. Using Max for Source brings Source level design a lot closer to an immersive workflow--despite not being able to make the jump into full immersion. The next game I work on will not likely be Source, and I probably won't be pushing Max so much then as a level editor; at the same time, I won't be using Hammer for any pet projects that are still in Source.

EDIT:

@laminutederire I hear you. That was never a focus for me early on as I was making WW to build new environments with new props. A lack of other needs in mind makes reusing existing assets clunky--pointing to a validation of this thread where the UI fails because it was not designed with a certain workflow/need in mind. That is actually changing in WW soon; Dave Brennan donated a code project that fellow Black Mesa developer Chetan Jaggi is helping me integrate into WW in the near future.

@shawnolson, that's good news You take feedback into account and that's probably the only way UX can improve in a software.