Today I have been working on a program which allows user to add custom maps to the Portal 2 Extras menu!

It is very easy to use: It will automatically get your portal2.exe path & map name in the folder where the patcher is. Just set the ID, title and subtitle. You can also set a picture for your map (not necessary). The map ID can be the same as map name (without any spaces!).

The program can save settings to an ini file to make patching even easier.

In future, I will add new features to the program, such as copying maps to the portal 2 maps folder.

The program is made using Visual C# 2010 Express so I guess it'll need the Visual Runtime to be installed.

Please post your comments & ideas to this topic! Thanks for reading & testing the program!

Download: http://haapavuo.hostcell.net/Portal2ExtrasPatcher.zip

Mirror #2: Portal 2 Extras Menu Patcher

Also, you may want to use the VGAME environment variable to get an initial value for the Portal 2 path.

Nightgunner5 wrote:
This looks like it would require either to be packed with map downloads or to have its configuration file modified by the end user for each map. Would it be possible to store the information other than the Portal 2 path in a different file that can be included with a map?

Also, you may want to use the VGAME environment variable to get an initial value for the Portal 2 path.

Thanks for your reply!

I was thinking that every map maker could put this program into the same package with their maps with a modified settings.ini. So the end user wouldn't have to change anything else than the Portal 2 executable path. I'll see if I can find the path somehow "automatically".

Haapavuo wrote:
Nightgunner5 wrote:

This looks like it would require either to be packed with map downloads or to have its configuration file modified by the end user for each map. Would it be possible to store the information other than the Portal 2 path in a different file that can be included with a map?

Also, you may want to use the VGAME environment variable to get an initial value for the Portal 2 path.

Thanks for your reply!

I was thinking that every map maker could put this program into the same package with their maps with a modified settings.ini. So the end user wouldn't have to change anything else than the Portal 2 executable path. I'll see if I can find the path somehow "automatically".

Packaging the program with every map would create the problem of every map having a different version of this program. When you release an update to this program, every map on the site will need to be updated.

Packaging just a configuration file would solve that problem, at least.

But unless this can 100% figure out the install path by itself I don't think it's gonna be of much use.

Player1 wrote:
But unless this can 100% figure out the install path by itself I don't think it's gonna be of much use.

I'm going to try to do this by getting the path from a running steam process. To my knowledge, Portal 2 is always installed in the steamapps\common folder.

Haapavuo wrote:
...To my knowledge, Portal 2 is always installed in the steamapps\common folder.

Yes, but what if someone didn't install steam to "Program Files"? It's better to check the steam install path first via the registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Valve\Steam, keyname: InstallPath.

Have a nice day,
~Sidneys1

Sidneys1 wrote:
Haapavuo wrote:

...To my knowledge, Portal 2 is always installed in the steamapps\common folder.

Yes, but what if someone didn't install steam to "Program Files"? It's better to check the steam install path first via the registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Valve\Steam, keyname: InstallPath.

Have a nice day,
~Sidneys1

I already said that I was going to check the path from the running steam process. But maybe the register is a better idea. Thanks!

I will also add radio buttons so user can select whether he wants the new item to be added on top or to the bottom of the menu.

I will soon release a "simpler" version which could be released with maps.

EDIT: I added the program to the database of this site.