For those not content with simply playing through the various puzzles in Portal 2 crafted by Valve, you're about to get a piece of news that should make you squeal with girlish glee.

Valve today announced a new piece of DLC coming to Portal 2 on May 8, one designed to let players craft their own puzzles. The Perpetual Testing Initiative is a "simplified" puzzle maker that allows players to create their own puzzles and directly publish them to the Steam Workshop, where other players can download and rate them.

The DLC will be a free download for PC and Mac users. Unfortunately, it doesn't look as though console players will be getting this content, though based on previous history, that's not too surprising.

While I haven't touched Portal 2 since the last DLC came and went, I have to admit the possibility of downloading some new user-made puzzles has me itching to fire the game back up again. And I'm sure once the whole thing degenerates into people making nothing but cake-related joke levels, I'll stop again. But the time in-between should be fantastic.

For those not content with simply playing through the various puzzles in Portal 2 crafted by Valve, you're about to get a piece of news that should make you squeal with girlish glee.

Valve today announced a new piece of DLC coming to Portal 2 on May 8, one designed to let players craft their own puzzles. The Perpetual Testing Initiative is a "simplified" puzzle maker that allows players to create their own puzzles and directly publish them to the Steam Workshop, where other players can download and rate them.

The DLC will be a free download for PC and Mac users. Unfortunately, it doesn't look as though console players will be getting this content, though based on previous history, that's not too surprising.

While I haven't touched Portal 2 since the last DLC came and went, I have to admit the possibility of downloading some new user-made puzzles has me itching to fire the game back up again. And I'm sure once the whole thing degenerates into people making nothing but cake-related joke levels, I'll stop again. But the time in-between should be fantastic.

nice

The king of thing I'll check out every few months to see what the latest, craziest maps are.

Yeah, May 8... sure it is......

Can't wait to design my own Porzal puttle.

Cool. I was hoping for more co-op DLC, but maybe that'll come soon!

I downloaded nearly 100 mods for Skyrim from the workshop which I would never had done without it. It improved my experience with Skyrim several fold. Can't wait to download levels for Portal 2!

MOARRR SCIENCE!!

Hell yeah, this sounds awesome, free DLC is always nice these days.

Considering their history? Can we make an exception since the only dlc to come out for Portal 2 made it to consoles.

So no cross-platform play for any potential user created co-op chambers? Huh.

I'll just drop these here then...

“With the release of the first Portal 2 DLC people will really see the value of Sony allowing Steam to be released on their system,” Newell said.

“I think you’ll see us pushing very hard in increasing the overall play value of Portal 2...”

http://www.develop-online.net/news/38486/Valve-We-need-to-reward-Sony-for-opening-PS3

Great stuff on Valve's part but it's a real shame this won't be available on consoles.

If they didn't bring this out for PS3 (as in, let us play the maps, even if they don't port the editor) I'd be pretty disappointed, wasn't relative parity with the PC what the whole 'Steam on PS3' thing was supposed to be about? I don't think there's a technical reason why they can't, as I recall Unreal Tournament 3 allowed user created maps that had been made on PC to be played on the PS3 version of the game.

So no cross-platform play for any potential user created co-op chambers? Huh.

I'll just drop these here then...

“With the release of the first Portal 2 DLC people will really see the value of Sony allowing Steam to be released on their system,” Newell said.

“I think you’ll see us pushing very hard in increasing the overall play value of Portal 2...”

http://www.develop-online.net/news/38486/Valve-We-need-to-reward-Sony-for-opening-PS3

I just wanted to say that making a joke about people making cake-related jokes and how terrible it is is probably as bad as making a cake-related joke in and of itself. Still love what you do, though.

@mewarmo990: Maybe they won't include the editing tools, but will provide access to the user-created content, similar to how Sony let Epic do the same thing with Unreal Tournament III.

@MEATBALL said:

I just wanted to say that making a joke about people making cake-related jokes and how terrible it is is probably as bad as making a cake-related joke in and of itself.

Yup.

It's the same thing you criticize developers for when they have a joke in the game about how bad a particular game mechanic is.

The usermade puzzles will probably have some super hard stuff. Given my skill level at games, this sounds very appealing.

@mewarmo990: Yeah I'm under a similar impression as well. It's possible that Valve were feeling lucky and tried squeezing in their 'Robot Enrichment Center' feature which might have soured Sony, so they scrapped the whole deal...

They least they could do is clarify the situation, I mean what is the point of Steam on PS3 if they couldn't perpetuate it's necessity?

But... there are already tools to make puzzles and a TON of user-made puzzles. I don't think the bottleneck here was the lack of a super-easy editor. Slightly more difficult tools generally just weeds out the wheat from the chaff.

That's fantastic! 
 
Edit: Oh, too bad it probably won't come to consoles... I missed that part.

Can't wait for this! More Portal is always good and more co-op levels is even better :)

Well that was a disappointment and a half. PC exclusive.

Why'd it come out so late after the release of Portal 2? Seems odd to me.

Wow, an actual headline. On topic: looking forward to getting back into Portal 2 with this.

If anyone has the urge to play custom Portal 2 maps, check out http://www.thinkingwithportals.com/

I hope there is a good level selector for the user maps. Especially ones made with Hammer and not the WYSIWYG editor.

This sounds like a great idea!

Only one question: why the fuck didn't this happen with the release of Portal 2?

This seems like, literally, the most obvious thing to add to a sequel after Portal 1, since pretty much the only thing that game could be said to be missing is MORE CONTENT.

So why did they wait until people aren't really thinking about Portal anymore?

@Goldanas: While that's an interesting thought, the article did say that custom maps would be downloadable through Steam Workshop. Unless that's making its way onto PS3 Steam as well, I don't know...

Damn. So no new levels on PS3. I was happy when I saw the headline, sad when I read the rest.

fantastic. Can't wait for this!

Looking forward to this.

Cool. Looking forward to stressing myself out on some fanmade puzzles.

Not gonna be made available for consoles? So this is barely news, then...

I cant wait!

More Portal 2? Yes please!

No consoles? I am disappoint

Okay this sounds like a lot of fun both to play and to make! :)

I suppose this could be interesting, even though people have been releasing their own maps since the game came out.

Whatever, I might even reinstall Portal to give it a try.

I think Portal 2 is [Redacted] a great game and [Redacted] I'm [Redacted] looking forward [Redacted] to more testing.

That editor is amazing.

This is going to be interesting. Valve already lampooned shit fan-made levels in the main game when Wheatley made his own chambers, complete with "made by Wheatley" printed in textures on the side of the chamber. So either everyone will look at it and say, "okay, that's how not to do it! Thanks Valve!" Or they'll say "if it's good enough for Wheatley"...

...also worth pointing out the SDK has been out for a long time and user-made maps have been circulating for a long time (Valve even sponsored a competition for making fan-made maps at one point!), this will only make distribution easier for everybody, and making maps easier for those idiots who can't navigate the SDK. ...I mean Source SDK is sooo user friendly and totally not cumbersome or dated at all!

(Oh, Valve should release a similar editor for Alien Swarm while they're at it because the Source SDK is cumbersome and dated)

Bummer there's no news about console support. I'd like to play some of the user-generated stuff.

Fantastic. I will definitely create some levels, which will no doubt be crappy and filled with easy shortcuts. But I look forward to good levels designed by other people.

Always Be Testing!

Finally! Can't wait!

@Homelessbird said:

This sounds like a great idea!

Only one question: why the fuck didn't this happen with the release of Portal 2?

This seems like, literally, the most obvious thing to add to a sequel after Portal 1, since pretty much the only thing that game could be said to be missing is MORE CONTENT.

So why did they wait until people aren't really thinking about Portal anymore?

To get people back into it.

All over it like a rash!

I can see the content creator not making it to consoles, but with a patch they should be able to let consoles (at least the ps3) download and play user made levels LittleBigPlanet style, or at least i hope so.

I can't wait to play 1-1 in Portal 2.

sweet! mac support not being left in the dust is never a bad thing. wait....yeah...

This add-on will be awesome! When they release the map maker, I will be the first one to download it hahahaha! :D