COD/Radiant last time I was focussed on in 2011. It wasnt the easiest tool to work with. I had some areas that needed to be fixed and with Covid I thought I could do it. I still had the HDD with Windows and COD Radiant installed. My step son told me why not use Unreal Engine 4 since its for free to use personally. COD Radiant was mainly for creating maps. If I remember correctly, as well for modding and custom models. The UE4 is much more cleaner and more logical the interface. Though one thing that Radiant was pretty ok with, was the error codes and being able to pinpoint where the problem is. I got stuck with lightening building. Posted in forum. Last time I checked there were no replies. I started a new projects. I have redone some models more than 2 times each at least. I did get some castle church asset, but now Ive been able to create it myself. Well, not fully finished yet.
IW unfortunately changed not to release any new version of Radiant for not exactly the correct given reasons. As well they removed LAN option since COD6. I still play with my friends CoD1,CoD2 or COD4 LAN when we meet up. Ive seen blueprints for LAN, NET, game modes in Marketplace. At some point when everything is ready, Ill get to it. 3 or 4 maps playable till Xmas I would be extremely happy.
Ive just finished this course from Udemy Learn Displacement and Parallax Mapping for Unreal 4. This was the best one of all related to this topic. Course teacher explains bump, parallel occlusion and tesselation the best way and shows how to create those materials in blueprint.
My disadvantage is that I still learning Blender 2.8x, but Im getting slowly there. The good thing is marketplace to get all sorts of assets I would want to create by myself. As well Megascans to get textures for free.
The passion to create a game I think is the most important aspect. If the passion and will is there to create a game, there are only a few hurdles to get through them. I think its a lot easier now than compared to 5 or 10 years ago.