Hi everyone!

I'm completely new to Hammer and Portal 2 modding, and this is my very first project.

My goal is to create a Portal 2 mod, but I'm still trying to understand the complete workflow. Would anyone be willing to explain it step by step?

I'm specifically looking for help with:

• Creating a test chamber in the simplified Portal 2 editor.
• Finding and extracting the correct files.
• Opening or converting the map for use in Hammer.
• Editing it in Hammer.
• Compiling/exporting the map correctly.
• Testing it in Portal 2.

If there are any important tools I should install, common beginner mistakes to avoid, or tutorials you personally recommend, I'd love to hear about them as well.

I'm eager to learn, so any advice is greatly appreciated.

Thank you very much!

Welcome to the community.
Making a mod is generally quite difficult and requires some built-up skills from working with Portal 2, so making a mod for your first project isn't recommended. You're better off improving your puzzle design skills in the in-game editor(also known as Puzzlemaker or PeTI), or learning how to use the Hammer editor and making some one-off maps with that.

You can look up Demon Arisen's "How To Make Great Test Chambers" series on YouTube to get started with the design philosophy of Portal 2 levels, and make some levels in the in-game editor. While you can export Puzzlemaker maps into Hammer, it's generally a bad idea since the maps aren't really laid out in a way that's easy for a human to work with, and the end product usually has obvious signs of it being an exported Puzzlemaker map anyway.

If you want to make levels in Hammer instead, most people suggest TopHATTwaffle's Hammer tutorials on YouTube, which are useful for all Source games. For Portal 2 specific guides, you can look up p0rtalmaster's guide series on the Steam Community guides page, which has guides for building all of the Portal 2 mechanics (fizzlers, glass and grating, etc.) in Hammer. The Valve Developer Community wiki also has game-specific guides for Hammer mapping in all Source games.

Neither Puzzlemaker nor Hammer are the "best" choice, they have strengths and weaknesses. Puzzlemaker is quick and easy to use, but you can pretty much only build testchamber-style puzzle levels in it. Hammer gives you the freedom to build anything you want, but it's more complex and it takes longer to build things. A lot of people say Hammer is really difficult but most people blow it way out of proportion, once you get a handle on the interface it's a pretty good editor despite its age.