Level Editors Suck

In the past, level editors were simple.  Open it, make a new map, design the map, script anything that needs scripting if the level editor had support for it, then save and play.  That was it.

Warcraft 2's level editor was like this.  It was really simple to use, you just drew the terrain with your mouse, added trees, water, dirt that couldn't be built on, gold mines, and start locations for each player.  That was it.

Starcraft's was basically that, but with triggers that let you script things.  Sure, they took a little bit to learn, but the design process was simple enough and triggers weren't absolutely required, so the editor still had the same accessibility.

Descent and Descent 2 both used the same editor, which was fairly complex, but the average user could still make a map with only a minor bit of effort.  This is important because these are the first 3D games I've mentioned thus far.

Also 3D, but going back to the RTS, Warcraft 3's editor looked absolutely amazing at first.  You can mess with all sorts of terrain things and design a landscape with hills, valleys, rivers, etc.  Placing start locations and other level essentials is still simple.  They upgraded the trigger system massively from the one used in Starcraft, and it shows since any trigger set can be converted into some random scripting language.  What language is this, what is its syntax like, what are the predefined objects, methods, and properties, etc.?  So I go into the help file.  Or, so I think.  Selecting Help just opens a web page in my browser that basically says that the world editor is not supported by Blizzard.  Okay, that's fine, but how about some fucking documentation?  Why leave documenting your editor to the third party hacking community?  Why not lay everything bare and say "look, here's how to use everything".  Starcraft's help file did that.  It was by no means a complete trigger tutorial, but it at the very least got you started.

Why isn't it that FPSes and other modern games have the same simplicity in their editors that older games did?

Open up Unreal Editor and churn out a simple deathmatch level in five minutes without having to first research the bare essentials of how to use the editor.  I dare you.  I made one CTF map in it, that took approximately four hours (after reading documentation, and with further documentation lookups during creation) just to get the bare basics in the level so it was playable.  You know, the layout, the flags, ammo pickups, spawn locations, etc.  It looked like shit, but that's to be expected of a first level.  When I fired it up, I discovered that the bots wouldn't move.  You have to litter your level with what it calls PathNodes so that the bots can find their way around the level.  This is eased somewhat by the fact that all pickups, flags, etc. contain a PathNode, but if the distance between them is too far, the bots won't know what to do.  Really?

Alien Swarm, an otherwise great game, was advertised as having an "easy-to-use tile-based level editor".  Upon installing the game and its SDK, I was confused.  Starting up the editor started up Hammer, which looks a lot like Unreal Editor.  Where was this "easy-to-use tile-based level editor" the game was supposed to come with?  I found out via a thread on Steam's forums that contained some of the more useful console commands that in order to get to it, you need to type a console command in-game.  That, and you have to enable cheats.  The "easy-to-use tile-based level editor" is a cheat.

So, whatever, I open up the console and type in "sv_cheats 1; asw_tilegen" and get the editor up.  It's got tiles for rooms with various configurations of doors and so forth, so I happily went about constructing a small network of hallways.  I saved it, then told it to generate the level and play it.  Upon entering the level, I see nothing but white except for my yellow player name.  My marine can fire guns and do all the emotes, but I don't get the feeling that I can move anywhere.  It's just white.  A little more inspection of the editor shows that you can make your own custom room types and save them, and they automatically get added to the tile list so you can place them.  So I make a room based on one of the preset rooms, but it lost the background graphic and was just the small graphic indicating a door to the north.  Hmm.

Also, I noted that if I right click, a weird green symbol appears in the level precisely one tile below the tile I right click on, that I can't move anywhere after that.  Apparently this is the start location.  Why didn't the level editor bitch at me when I went to build the level without a start location?  Why doesn't it appear in the tile you click on, and why can't it be moved after that?  And furthermore, why is nothing else placeable in this editor?

Apparently, Hammer is still required to actually finish the job.  In that case, why does the in-game editor have the option to save and play, and doubly, why doesn't the editor bitch at me about the level being incomplete when I go to build it?

I loaded up Hammer and tried to use it, just by feeling around in the dark hoping to find something, anything that could be used to light the way, metaphorically speaking.  Somehow I managed to create a cube and texture it, but I think it wasn't a room because weird things happened when I tried to move the camera inside it.  So basically, your guess is as good as mine on how to use this thing.  Which kind of sucks, because I was looking forward to making some levels.  Why is it that you pretty much need knowledge of 3D modelling to make levels?  Haven't they heard of providing prefabricated level elements to get people like me started?  Can't they make a level editor that's intuitive to use and that gets the job done without requiring other tools?  Sure, the quality of a quickly made level is going to be low, but at the very least LET ME MAKE A SHITTY LEVEL EASILY SO I CAN LEARN HOW TO MAKE BETTER ONES OVER TIME.

Fuck.  You'd think that with the huge community that's popped up around modifying and creating custom content for games, that there would be an intuitive editor to get people started that haven't done any of this before.  As far as documentation goes, at least Valve has an official wiki with a Getting Started tutorial.  I can work with that.