There's this deep temptation that most game programmers feel at some point in the game development cycle where you start to think to yourself "You know, if I add just a few features to the game I could set up a mode where the game is a scene editor and layout tool".
Don't do it.
Games work best with a set of highly baked assets that are in a rigid and predictable format. This makes the assets fast to load and utilize. Editors work best with a set of easily modifiable assets that maximize flexibility.
That, and your editor needs to be working at the start of the production cycle and will probably have a couple dozen hacky features that should be walled off from your game by being in a different codebase.
Posted by matt at February 3, 2004 01:05 PM