I once delved into Hammer with all the well meaning innocence of the canary in the coal mine and came out more than a little ruffled. As powerful a map building tool as Valve’s own level editor is, it’s more than a little counter intuitive for most users. That’s why I let out a sigh of relief when I saw the below video for Shootmania Storm’s map editor: a drag-and-drop, what-you-see-is-what-you-get sandbox funbag. It makes sense. It looks simple. It even looks a little fun. Check it. Check it right out.
The map editor’s simplicityshould come asno surprise.Shootmania comes from Nadeo, the people who made Trackmania and all of the lovely editor tools that came with that. But where Trackmania simply involvedlaying a bit oftrack on a surface, you’d imaginecreating a fun arena to shoot rockets at one another in would be a little more complicated. On the contrary, itturns out that it’s really just about putting down blocks and making everything look pretty.
In fact, getreally good at making levels in Shootmania, and some awful dubstep will kick in while everything starts going in fast forward. At least, that’s according to Nadeo’s map editor trailer below.It’s some kind of miracle.