Valve has announced that PC and Mac users will finally be receiving those promised puzzle-creation tools for Portal 2 on May 8.

Entitled the “Perpetual Testing Initiative”, this new in-game puzzle-maker allows players to easily create, share, and play Portal 2 puzzles created by themselves, their friends, and the Steam community. This mode is built into the game, so you’ll never actually have to leave Portal 2 to work on your map. Think of Halo 3’s Forge, and you’ve got the right idea.

Once done with their creations, players can upload maps to Steam Workshop, where they can browse for and vote on other player-created puzzles. Any puzzles selected will be automatically downloaded and installed into the game for your convenience.

Though the ability to create custom content like new puzzles, labs, and objects in Portal 2 has existed for quite some time, the ease of use hasn’t. Users familiar with the Source engine and its software development kit have been creating maps for a number of months.

However, the implementation of easy-to-use creation tools will almost certainly bolster the amount of community created content we see out of Portal 2. And with the additional proprietary use of Steam workshop, the installation of these maps will be as seamless as mod installation for Skyrim.

Once again, it’s all free. You really couldn’t ask for much more from Valve.