I was recently shooting the shit with Jeep Barnett, one of the Portal developers. He said some things that I want to pass on to the community.

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[. . .] I do have a general complaint for all the community sites I've seen. It seems that very few map creators are using the BMZ system that I set up ( http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Bonus_maps ). It was intended to making playing custom maps MUCH easier for non-technical people. Though it's our fault for not giving the details on how to create BMZs until long after the flood of custom maps had started, I wish that the community portals themselves would automate a system for packaging them this way.

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Thanks for the Community Spotlight link. I've passed all the Portal peoples so they can take a look. Thanks for trying to pimp the BMZ stuff. I have seen it used a few times, I'm just saying as a whole I think it's been ignored. The bugs with custom content does sound pretty bad though.

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I had hoped to do more post lauch support for the Portal community, but instead chose to work on other non-Portal projects such as Left 4 Dead almost immediately after Orange Box came out. But a lot of the original Portal team is still working on some cool new stuff for you guys and I'll be sure to point them to these bugs.

Here's hoping for a Portal update that fixes the problem with BMZ!

There have been some details about Portal 2 in the form of a Voice Acting call by Valve that was picked up by Kotaku. This really makes for some interesting possibilities for the storyline and setting for Portal 2!

Warning, there are story spoilers abound in this link! You have been notified, proceed at your own risk.

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Rejoice mod creators, for tonight's Orange Box update also brings about the release of the binaries for the particle editor, the commentary editor, and the materials editor. Mike Durand, via the HLDS mailing list, mentioned that he is "still working on an SDK update that includes a convenient way to
launch the tools as well as some example particles and commentary files."

For the time being, you can run any of the three games with the additional command line of '-tools' included in order to access the new tools.

Full documentation is also on the way. For the time being, have a read through of the CliffsNotes version of the changes.

• 1. These three tools run in the same process as the engine and you can switch between the tools.
• 1. The F10 button changes context between playing the game in the 'Engine Viewport' window and editing content via the current tool.
• 1. In the lower left corner is an input field that allows the user to dispatch console commands to the game while working with the tools.
• 1. Particle systems are defined in .pcf files that are located in the 'particles' subdirectory beneath the game directory. You should extract some of the TF2, Portal, or Ep2 particle files from the game caches if you would like to see some examples. The SDK update will include example particles.
• 1. Commentary node information is stored in text files in the games' 'maps' subdirectory and the established naming convention is _commentary.txt. Again, you can extract these files from our shipping games to check out the editor ahead of the SDK update and example nodes.
• 1. The material editor is a GUI front-end and preview tool that provides a more convenient way of tweaking materials settings. You can extract VMT files from our shipping games or those from your own mods to check it out.

So has anyone got the particle editor to work? I've heard reports of crashing upon saving and some people who can't run it at all. I myself get to the save part and then it crashes.

I'll be the first one to admit that I have been a part of a lot of community mapping projects before, and I can probably count on one hand the number of them that succeeded. Depending on the game or the engine, we either hit game limitations for entities or brushes or lights, or the guidelines for size or "scope" were too broad so once compiled it had the worst budget/FPS ever, or the theme was too open ended and so nothing really meshed that well.

Thankfully Portal really kind of solves that problem for us, since it's easy to say "okay your map must begin in an elevator shaft and end with a fizzler and an elevator shaft". Sure there are some more limitations but in the end, there is a clear start and finish.

So to that end, in lieu of another mapping contest, I am going to attempt to start a ThinkingWithPortals Community Pack. I don't have anything set in stone other than your map must start and end with an elevator, and can be as long or as short as you'd like.

Any ideas welcome.

I've updated the Community Spotlight to include the winning map for the April Mapping Contest, PMK4 by mazk1985. This map looks amazing and it showcases the Innovation Challenge of April's contest very well. Congratulations on the win, mazk!

Just one last bump for the Portal: Flash Version by Hen7, a great map pack inspired by the Flash Portal game. You can check it out here.

Who will our next spotlight be? Only time will tell - maybe it could be your map!