Starting Off...

1 - Where do I begin?

here.

2 - How much programming experience is necessary?

none.

3 - What kinds of map editors do professional game designers use? Are these the same tools I would use?

i think mostly hammer or unreal editor. possibly. but this depends per game engine.

4 - What is a good game/engine to design a map for? (Consider that I am starting off)

HL2. its very moddable and has a relatively low learning curve + lots of tutorials = win.

disregarding killertomato's post:

1.

i have been around too long to remember any good sites, but you would want to find some place with alot of tutorials for starters, and that would be either snarkpit.com or interlopers.net, for the source engine. for any other engine, i havent really checked into sites, though i reckon there will be a few within a google search.

2.

there will be absolutely no hard code programming involved in level design. what you will encounter, however, is scripting of one sort or another. scripting will take place between different entities and will generally be substitute coding. still, don't fret as most of it is simply logic, and you will learn it as you go.

3.

professional level designers tend to use whatever program specified for them, under unreal licensing it would be unrealEd, under source licensing it would be hammer etc. as long as you have a game, you will most likely have an editor; though some of them will probably be less known and thus have smaller or fewer communities.

4.

if you are aiming for learning an editor for professional use, i would suggest you familiarize yourself with the unreal editor. there is a good amount of games out there using unreal engines of different kinds, and it is quite versatile and easy to learn. you will however have to find communities on your own -- see point 1. if you're just in it for a laugh and want to try it casually, i suggest the source engine/hammer. it's easy to learn above all, and even though it lacks features that unrealEd has, chances are you will have a better time familiarizing yourself with it. there are also other alternatives to editors, like the cryengine's editor (that crysis was made with) among others; however your best bet is probably sticking with one of the aforementioned in terms of communities and easy of learning.

that is all.

First of all you gotta choose the engine which you'll be making level design for, I'd say Source engine, Unreal Engine 3 or CryENGINE2 are the way to go nowadays! There's tons of other engine though, but I highly suggest you choose one of this three since there's alot of tutorials, guides, communities and people willing to help you out.

Lots of links in this sticky.

Not so much Deathmatch Multiplayer but Arena for Sin Episodes

http://steampowered.com/v/index.php?are ... lish&cc=US