Valve picks new Portal 2 PC maps
Summer contest winners announced.
PC owners of physics-based first-person platformer Portal 2 can now download Valve's pick of the best community-made maps.
The Summer Mapping Initiative tasked players with creating the cream of custom test chambers using Valve's freely available Source dev kit.
"Patent Pending", a map by user "ebola", took top honours. It's a 30 minute beast with hard light surfaces, discouragement beams and excursion funnels - features found late in the main Portal 2 game.
Second place went to the level "Infinifling", invented by user MrTwoVideoCards. Its focus lies in mid-air portaling techniques over vertiginous drops.
Commendations also to close third-place finisher "Edifice", by user Omnicoder. It's a "medium hard, fairly long" map set in a destroyed section of Aperture Science.
Valve showered the above winners with Portal 2 gear - including "real" Aperture Science gels - and has promised more prizes for the winner of its ongoing contest to manufacture a music video for in-game track "Exile, Vilify" - details here.
The top three entries - and plenty of runners up - are now available to nab from community site ThinkingWithPortals.
Chose Portal 2 on console? Valve is prepping new levels for Xbox 360 and PS3 owners, too. Portal 2 DLC is coming "this summer" and will include new test chambers, leaderboards, a challenge mode for single and multiplayer "and more". Better still, it's free.