Developers in need of level design tech, take heart: Sony has released a standalone level editor that developers can download and use for free under the terms of the Apache 2.0 open source license.
The editor purports to be compatible with any game engine via its API suite, and offers a WYSIWYG interface and tools written in a mixture of C# and C++. It's designed to render in 3D using DirectX 11, and supports simultaneous use by multiple developers.
The editor was built using Sony's
Authoring Tools Framework, a game development toolset that was released to the public as open source software earlier this year. Presumably, the company is hoping to drum up goodwill among developers and attract more independent talent to its platforms.
The ATF itself a set of software components, written in C#, that has been used to build tools for a variety of Sony first-party games, including Naughty Dog's
Last Of Us level editor and the sequence editor Guerrilla Games used to build multiple
Killzone games.
You can download the Level Editor and the ATF toolset right now from Sony's
GitHub page.
