Trenchbroom is very good, but I still think, it's not the best possible map editor. It uses brush-based approach, which isn't the right way of designing maps for games in closed spaces (like Quake). Creating each room requires creating at least 6 brushes for its walls/floor/ceiling, which is way to much for such stuff. On the other hand Unreal Editor (for first Unreal and Unreal Tournament) supports creating rooms directly (as subtractive brushes), when two room primitive touch each other, they are automatically connected.

Cool article, never knew the actual history of how Trenchbroom got started! Have been using it very casually over the last decade or so. There are some incredible Quake mappers out there making things that would make your jaw drop if you haven't seen Quake in quite a while.

For example, Arcane Dimensions[0] or the Quake Brutalist Jam[1]

[0] https://www.moddb.com/mods/arcane-dimensions

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vquTPCYbOxk

Trenchbroom is legitimately among the best software I have ever used. I grew up using Hammer and this simply blows it out of the water.

One nice thing is that you can use it as a level editor for your own games in Godot with func_godot

It is neat all of these years later to see Qt pop up now and then, just chugging along with comments from users like the author saying "Yep, that was worth it.". Just doing its thing getting out of the way and letting users build what they want to do.

Trenchbroom is excellent and fun. Many game devs use it to block out levels or make entire games.