What has ever happened to making custom maps?
I wish there were more custom maps in Portal than there were in Portal 2, because Portal 2 has a lot more detail and uses the Steam Workshop for custom maps. I don't even have Portal 2, and I am not a good map maker, so, I wonder when the next Portal map is coming out...
Portal 1 mapping is more difficult, due to certain objects not being designed to work the same way as Portal 2 objects within the game system. Also, the P1 community is near dead. It's an old game which is also very glitchy up to this day and making maps for it isn't worth it for most of the mapping community.
Let alone the Portal 2 mappers that have been around for a while but have moved on since or are busy working on a massive project, which will probably be their last for a while. Most of them were on this site and nobody hears from them anymore. This site has also been offline for a while. P2 is an old game too. Almost 8 years as of today. P1 is 12 years old. Unless P3 comes up or Valve adds something to P2, which I doubt they will at this point, it's over.
You might as well look at the existing Portal maps. I don't believe you have played all of the good ones already.
Oh, look at all those maps, they look gooooooood. I like them. And very original. Even some playground maps lurk around, and I am trying to make a map, they look super good.
One day I am going to sign a petition to make Portal 2 free.
Portal 2 has often been $10 in numerous sales and cheaper if you buy off a key site. Actually wouldn't be surprised if that's the price now seeing as $14 AUD is around $10 USD.
I'm currently working on a big Portal 1 mappack. Making maps for Portal 1 is not as hard as you think, all you have to do is decompile all of the official maps (I use bsprc) and study them to see how everything is executed. However, I have yet to actually publish any, so I don't know how hard that step is (I know it involves some sort of bonus map file). By the way, can mappacks be posted on this site?