   What do YOU use to create worlds/levels?
  Hiya,  I am curious to see how all of you current game designers are actually building your worlds and levels. I am mostly interested in larger-scale worlds (outdoor terrain, etc). I am aware that many companies today write their own world/level editors, but I am in no place to be doing that right now. ;) What programs can I use to place objects on the map, design entities, and the like? Or do you all just program them in manually (seems rather harsh)?  I've searched around for days now and can only come up with some alternatives, such as FreeWorld 3d, Caligari gameSpace, and WorldBuilder from Digital Element (I'm not sure if this is actually for building game worlds). What options do us smaller guys have?   
  it depends on the type of game.using a custom editor is often the best choice.if you use a third party engine you should probably use the editor that comes with the engine (if it has any).otherwise you should use an editor that can handle the level format you want to use. worldcraft is one decent editor ,it was used for quake, halflife and a few others. there are some tutorials avaliable online on the level format for those games aswell.so what you should do is try to find a game that has levels similar to the ones you intend to use. look up the level format and try to find an editor for that format. if you can't find a suitable format + editor you have to make your own format and your own editor. (this is generally easier than making the actual game anyway)   ;  if you freaked out from the above reply here is a solution:i use CC2 with GeoScape3D its not the best combination but it works for me but there is some other stuff you should put in mind what are you gonna need from the enviroment if you cant find a way to do it with your current resources then you will have to come up with stuff,BSP maps are great they have automated collison detection a loooooot of editors and they aint hard to use there is a lot of diffrent choices out there but if you want something special from your map/world you should think about making your own format there is a lot of books out there to teach you how to make your own map formats if you want to know some tell me and i l give you a list of the bestGood Luck :D   ;  I don't actually create game worlds but those on my team that do use our custom world editor that is created by our own programmers.   ;  Hey thanks for all of the replies. I know eventually I would love to create my own world builder, but for now I'd like to familiarie myself with someone else's to get an idea of what goes into it. As I said, I'm interested in primarily larger worlds, such as large outdoor terrains in games like Final Fantasy XI or Everquest (big dreams, I know ;-p). I am currently using Ogre as a 3d engine, and this does not include a world editor.Do any of you have any resources on learning how to create your own world editor or map formats?Thanks,Ryan   ;  You can use Deled. www.delgine.com It doesn't do terrain natively, but you can import various file types, and there is a plugin that makes terrain too. The deled files are easy to parse and render in whatever API you use.   ;  I'm programming a cellphone game and I use gameSpace as a positional editor(x,y,z and Orientation) with the objects loaded separately.I've built my own export plug-in.  Right now I'm trying to merge AABB info(for collision detection) from the Models with the positional info from the Level info.Fun stuff.   