Bundled Level Editor

Tools sit in the menu beside the campaign. Players place platforms, enemies, items and exits on the same grid the shipped levels use, test immediately, and save the result. Because the editor writes the format the game reads, a player-made level is indistinguishable from an official one, and distribution becomes a matter of passing a file to somebody else by whatever means exist.

Douglas E. Smith included an editor with Lode Runner in 1983, when a level was a grid layout and the tool that produced the shipped levels had already been written. Home computers arrived with an expectation that owners would type and create rather than only consume. Shipping the editor therefore cost very little and converted a fixed set of a hundred and fifty levels into an open-ended one.

Players became designers without asking permission, and the pipeline from making levels to making games has run through this door ever since. Quality control and support are the costs, since most user levels are poor and the good ones need to be findable, which is why later systems added ratings and curation. Editors also constrain, because a level built from a game's pieces can only argue within them.