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The Source engine is incredibly versatile, making it ripe for modification. Garry’s Mod led to an incessant stream of ideas from the community, some of which were compelling enough that they became full-on products, sold through Valve’s own Steam service. Yet, despite the large community of talented individuals ready and willing to build new content for Valve’s first person puzzler, Portal, and its sequel, the only tool ever released to do so was unintuitive and didn’t do anything to make the fruits of gamers’ labors readily accessible to the rest of the community. That’s changing now, with the release of Portal 2’s latest DLC, the Perpetual Testing Initiative. This is a graphical map editor that allows interested parties to, quickly and intuitively, build rooms ranging from the simple to the complex using the game’s existing retinue of puzzling tools and environment types. From within the editor, would-be designers can modify their maps, save them, test them out first-hand, and even publish them directly to the Steam Workshop, where others can download and experience it as well as rate it and comment upon it. 
By Shelby Reiches |