For someone just getting into level design, I would recommend Hammer, hands down. And I say this being a huge fan of Unreal tech.

There are several reasons I could list, but the biggest and most important one, to me, is one that you discuss right in the article; that UnrealEd pretty much requires you to learn a new 3D application in order to really create anything original, as they’ve moved almost entirely away from use of BSP geometry, and most everything is done via poly-soup models.

While you do explain that entire environments are created in a 3rd party app, you don’t really indicate all of what goes into getting to that point. For one, you have to not only learn the ins-and-outs of the Unreal Editor, which is an absolute beast by itself, you also have to acquire and then learn a 3D app, which can take some time to become proficient enough at to produce anything optimized and useful in a real-time setting.

Speaking of acquiring a 3D app, if someone wants to learn one of the “industry standard” apps, like Maya or 3DSMax, or even Silo, it can cost them anywhere from ~$1,000 to ~$3,000 to get a fully licensed copy, unless they want to do it the illegal way, which I do not support nor condone.

The learning curve to get to the point of making even a functional level in UnrealEd is quite steep, and potentially very expensive; two things that can be quite prohibitive to a new level maker.

Looking at Hammer, on the other hand, you can create an entire map, including boulders and natural looking terrain, in a fraction of the time and can see your results much more rapidly. Hammer allows you to create most anything you would need to right inside the editor, via BSP, brush clipping, Displacement meshes (a brilliant and powerful feature by itself) and other methods. It has a very straight-forward approach to editing, texturing, tweaking, etc. Everything is very “hands on” and direct. Placing entities is a breeze, setting up interactions is very straight-forward, etc.

Another thing people should remember is, for someone brand-new to level creation for real time games, there’s a whole lot of design theory, level flow, risk-versus-reward, composition, scale, and so forth that they will be learning as well. Those are things that apply to all level design, across all games.

For that reason, as well, I feel Hammer is the better solution, as it tends to “stay out of the way” more, by allowing you to accomplish even many uncommon tasks with little hassle.

UnrealEd, by comparison, is a much more complex and complicated tool to use and I could imagine someone easily getting so caught up in just learning, understanding and remembering how everything is done in UEd, along with whatever 3D app they’re using, that they could well completely miss out on learning the “what’s and why’s” of level design itself.

For the purpose of learning, I would say Hammer, along with any Source-based game is the way to go.

You don’t have the real-time in-editor previews like Unreal has, and yes, it can still be slow to compile and see your changes in action (though Hammer has a “cordon” feature that allows you to isolate only sections of a map you want to see updates for, which greatly speeds up the compile times).

And of course, a much bigger user base spread across a good variety of games.

As for the remark from AntoxaGray that Hammer is stuck in 1998 while UEd is evolving. That is a rather dubious remark, in my opinion.

For one thing, there is a lot more functionality built into Hammer now than there was in 1998. Hammer is the editor used by Valve and other companies to create their games and I believe those results speak for themselves. The Source engine used in Portal 2 or Left 4 Dead 2 is not the same engine used in Half Life 1. Look at shots of either of those games, and the results speak for themselves.

In my opinion, I think UEd for Unreal Engines 1 and 2 was a far more elegant and easier editor to work with. Sure they’re adding all these great new editing features and are swapping out “older” tech with newer tech… but I feel it’s at the expense of sacrificing elegance, intuitiveness and “immediacy” of using their engine. With every new system they implement, or overhaul, they increase the learning curve that much more just to become *capable* with the tech.

With Hammer editor, I would be surprised if it takes the average person more than 30-60 minutes of watching a few tutorial vids before they’re able to jump right in and create something good looking. It’s that straight-forward. With UnrealEd, I would tell the average person to expect at least a few days to get down the basics, give or take.

Oh, and for what it’s worth… While they aren’t working on a Source 2 engine (yet), VALVe has been working internally on a new set of tools, so we’re likely to see some of the things holding Hammer back replaced by faster and more efficient features.