{"slug": "trenchbroom", "name": "TrenchBroom", "category": "editors", "category_name": "Editors and IDEs", "description": "", "recommenders": 3, "commenters": 5, "warners": 1, "score": 1.583, "rising": 3.0, "first": "2026-09-01", "latest": "2026-10-24", "why": "Compared to q3radiant that I used back in the day, Trenchbroom is just so much more pleasant to work with.", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 1, "compare": 0, "warn": 1}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 3], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "Compared to q3radiant that I used back in the day, Trenchbroom is just so much more pleasant to work with.", "kind": "", "icon": true, "domain": null, "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://trenchbroom.github.io/", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["TrenchBroom"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 803578976, "item_id": 50223686, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50223686", "by": "Sajarin", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Trenchboom is great!", "excerpt": "Trenchboom is great! Shameless plug but I ended up making this q3 map using a custom Trenchboom MCP: https://sajarin.com/q3inc", "context": "", "use_case": "Quake map editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Quake Fan who built the map editor everybody uses"}, {"id": 803504352, "item_id": 50219022, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50219022", "by": "phoboslab", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Compared to q3radiant that I used back in the day, Trenchbroom is just so much more pleasant to work with.", "excerpt": "Agreed! I used it to build the maps for my 13kb Quake demake[1]. Compared to q3radiant that I used back in the day, Trenchbroom is just so much more pleasant to work with. In hindsight it seems totally obvious that _this_ is the way a map editor should work. [1] https://phoboslab.org/log/2021/09/q1k3-making-of", "context": "built a 13kb Quake demake", "use_case": "Quake map editing", "switched_from": "q3radiant", "story": "The Quake Fan who built the map editor everybody uses"}, {"id": 803499665, "item_id": 50218729, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50218729", "by": "paczki", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "you really can do 90% of your work in trenchbroom. It's awesome for prototyping!", "excerpt": "func_godot works better than I expected it to the first time I used it, properly imports and compiles triggers, lights, materials, sounds, etc straight from trenchbroom so you really can do 90% of your work in trenchbroom. It's awesome for prototyping!", "context": "", "use_case": "level editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Quake Fan who built the map editor everybody uses"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 803513104, "item_id": 50219569, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50219569", "by": "RunSet", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "warn", "quote": "a community fork of Trenchbroom[2] that exists because Trenchbroom includes slop", "excerpt": "> I grew up using Hammer and this simply blows it out of the water. Strange to read \"I grew up using Hammer.\" when I still see Hammer as a newfangled update to Worldcraft. No Quake map editor will let you do anything the Quake engine can't, of course. If you draw your maps on paper first, as id Software did[0], then the editor you use doesn't matter so much. J.A.C.K.[1] is the current torchbearer for the Hammer linea", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Quake Fan who built the map editor everybody uses"}]}], "who": [{"by": "phoboslab", "context": "built a 13kb Quake demake", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50219022", "date": "2026-10-24"}, {"by": "andrewf", "context": "retrocomputing hobbyist", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49519228", "date": "2026-09-01"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["quake map editing", "level editing"], "compared": [], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50193677", "title": "The Quake Fan who built the map editor everybody uses", "mentions": 5}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49424322", "title": "Claude \u00d7 retrocomputing: emulating a QIC-117 tape drive", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-10": {"recommend": 3, "warn": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 803578976, "item_id": 50223686, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50223686", "by": "Sajarin", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Trenchboom is great!", "excerpt": "Trenchboom is great! Shameless plug but I ended up making this q3 map using a custom Trenchboom MCP: https://sajarin.com/q3inc", "context": "", "use_case": "Quake map editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Quake Fan who built the map editor everybody uses"}, {"id": 803513104, "item_id": 50219569, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50219569", "by": "RunSet", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "warn", "quote": "a community fork of Trenchbroom[2] that exists because Trenchbroom includes slop", "excerpt": "> I grew up using Hammer and this simply blows it out of the water. Strange to read \"I grew up using Hammer.\" when I still see Hammer as a newfangled update to Worldcraft. No Quake map editor will let you do anything the Quake engine can't, of course. If you draw your maps on paper first, as id Software did[0], then the editor you use doesn't matter so much. J.A.C.K.[1] is the current torchbearer for the Hammer linea", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Quake Fan who built the map editor everybody uses"}, {"id": 803504352, "item_id": 50219022, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50219022", "by": "phoboslab", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Compared to q3radiant that I used back in the day, Trenchbroom is just so much more pleasant to work with.", "excerpt": "Agreed! I used it to build the maps for my 13kb Quake demake[1]. Compared to q3radiant that I used back in the day, Trenchbroom is just so much more pleasant to work with. In hindsight it seems totally obvious that _this_ is the way a map editor should work. [1] https://phoboslab.org/log/2021/09/q1k3-making-of", "context": "built a 13kb Quake demake", "use_case": "Quake map editing", "switched_from": "q3radiant", "story": "The Quake Fan who built the map editor everybody uses"}, {"id": 803500592, "item_id": 50218787, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50218787", "by": "paczki", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Have been using it very casually over the last decade or so.", "excerpt": "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/watc", "context": "", "use_case": "Quake map editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Quake Fan who built the map editor everybody uses"}, {"id": 803499665, "item_id": 50218729, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50218729", "by": "paczki", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "you really can do 90% of your work in trenchbroom. It's awesome for prototyping!", "excerpt": "func_godot works better than I expected it to the first time I used it, properly imports and compiles triggers, lights, materials, sounds, etc straight from trenchbroom so you really can do 90% of your work in trenchbroom. It's awesome for prototyping!", "context": "", "use_case": "level editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Quake Fan who built the map editor everybody uses"}, {"id": 792307649, "item_id": 49519228, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49519228", "by": "andrewf", "date": "2026-09-01", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I'm using a newer Quake editor (Trenchbroom, 2013)", "excerpt": "I've a retrocomputing project which has been gathering dust since before I used an LLM. The idea is to render an isometric view with Quake-style lightmaps; if scrolling is slow enough I only need to render a small slice of the screen each time. I got as far as a proof of concept on a simulated 286 which indicates the pixels-per-second I can achieve is fast enough. Testing on a real 286 would be the next step. All the", "context": "retrocomputing hobbyist", "use_case": "Quake map editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Claude \u00d7 retrocomputing: emulating a QIC-117 tape drive"}]}