Particle editor, Commentary node adder and material editor!
YAYAYAYAY
*goes to make some leet particle effects for portal*
Something I made for one of the custom elements currently in ts13, they rush upwards and fade away whilst sprialing slightly inwards. looks pretty cool imho
How did you get it to work without the -tools? I have been trying to get it to work but it won't D:
extract the particles_manifest.txt and put it in your particles folder, add a line that has the name of your pcf in, sorted.
That looks awesome Youme! But how did you create your own effect rather than just changing values on some thing such as a portal fizzler?
file>new
then in the bigest dark area, click create.
You need to add an emitter, a renderer, and in the properties change the sprite at very minimum, then what else you do depends on the effect you want. I'm really begining to get my head around this, its great fun
i'm not sure how to view the new particle system in the game, I made one and in the view on the bottom right where it shows just the partices (and axis) it is working fine, I saved and have a pcf file but I don't know how to load it in game (with hammer or any other way)
info_particle_system entity
then it's effect name is the name of the effect you made (not the name of the pcf)
Then either send it an output activating it or set it to start active.
my saying of "going to make some leet particle effects for portal" was slightly delayed, but when i got around to it, i found out i still couldnt save!
do i need to create all the things youme said before saving? 
edit: weird, now it saves fine
edit2: how do i make a thing fade out?
P.S. sorry for the bump
I'm still very confused, confused enough not to go back and even try making custom particles. The best I've done is making a red portal cleanser. Your guide doesn't really explain how to make a particle effect. Pictures would be extremely helpful. If you could show us how to make some thing simple like some of those ones on that TF2 forum I guess we could try making our own.