Why did you get into mapping?
I've always love creating levels/maps for games I played, The first one that comes to mind is Little Big Planet for the PS3, Oh how I have spent many hours in create mode for that.
It was not until recently that I started PC gaming, It all started with a top 20 youtube video about the most innovative games of the last decade and then this game called portal came on the list and I was memorized by the first person puzzle game I never heard of before, It looked so interesting and I had to play it, immediately googling it I found out that it was on the PS3 in a bundle of games called The Orange Box.
Quickly I convinced my parents to take me to the nearest video game rental store and rent it,
As soon as I got home I put it in and started playing through portal,
I was in love with this game, The portals, The puzzles, The music, The turrets, And most importantly GLaDOS. I rented this game every weekend for the next 3 months, Playing it over and over again Finding cheats and glitches in this game that I could not put down, Then one weekend I though that I would try the other 4 games on the orange box, Starting with Half life 2 I played that all the way until ravenholm and then stoped (I think you know why) and then started on Team fortress 2 it was a good game but I did not have online at the time so I could not play it, And then I heard that there was a portal 2 being made and then I jumped in joy to know that my Favorite game was getting a sequel but then I saw that It was only coming to the xbox360 and PC, Infuriated I told myself that I would just watch a walkthough and be done with it, But thankfully E3 had a bit of a surprise in store for me, Now knowing that it was coming to PS3 I quickly preordered it from gamestop(Yes I have the rollcage skin).
So lets skip to portal 2's release date, Played it for 6 Hours straight only making it to the first wheatly level(I was stuck in the underground bts puzzles for way to long) After a week or so I had all the trophies and beat the single player and coop.
I wanted more and saw that you could make custom levels for portal 2 on PC,
And sense it came with a free copy of the PC version on the PS3 copy I had I though I would give it a shot, After watching a few tutorials (You have no idea how helpful your tutorials are topHATT) I made my fist map(It was crap) and then I found a site called thinkingwithportals and I started to learn how to make my maps better, harder, and more like portal 2 it self, And two years later I'm still making maps for portal 2, With over 50 maps made already made and two mods in the works I think that my journey from small game I heard about on a top ten list to creating maps for it's sequel Was "Worth the wait" 
[spoiler]My Steam Profile http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198027454516/ My YouTube Page http://www.youtube.com/user/GLaDOSCUBE?feature=watchMaps[/spoiler] Maps
[spoiler]SP Bounce http://forums.thinking.withportals.com/downloads.php?view=detail&df_id=1753SP The Part Where http://forums.thinking.withportals.com/downloads.php?view=detail&df_id=2287[/spoiler]
I guess my first case of mapping was back in Warcraft III however I was horrible at it since I was so young and clueless. Portal mapping began long after I finished the single player campaign and just after completing the cooperative campaign my friend and I moved onto the community maps, where we were amazed at the creativeness of some people. So both my friend and I decided to give the puzzle maker a try, however he did not remain as interested as I did.
I actually started mapping in LBP2 too. I made Portal 2 maps in it, and they looked awful. Around the same time, I downloaded the P2AT, opened it, and closed it about 30 seconds later. After about 2 months, I decided to open it up on <Holiday Name Here> Eve, and I made a big box with a button, some Wheatleys, and a sky_camera. (I thought it was the security camera) Thanks to some youtube tutorials and this wonderful community, I learned a lot about hammer.
Full Story of how I got into mapping, and a little more:
I loved Portal and Half Life 2. I tried mapping for HL2DM because I thought it was fantastic playing on custom servers, I sucked at it.
Then I tried mapping for Portal, I think I made a box room and stopped.
I went on for a year or two not doing any mapping, but I'm a Computer Science student, so I was learning a lot about programming and computer stuff.
Winter 2011 I tried doing my own video game programming using C# and XNA. I quickly realized that coding your own engine is time consuming and difficult for a novice.
Spring of 2011 Portal 2 was released, and I loved it!... I had pre-ordered way in advance, and finally played through it the day of release both single player and coop. (Coop I played through with my friend who is now my roomate 
)
Summer 2011 The Authoring tools were released, and I really wanted to try my hand at mapping again. Over the year+ of not mapping, the concepts had concreted themselves in my brain.
At the time I was dating a girl, and she had one of those condensed summer classes where she had to sit on the computer 8 hours a day 5 days a week for a month. So being the nice BF I am, I sat next to her every day all month, and I learned mapping.
Mapping came very easily to me at this point, all the computer classes, trying to build my own engine, and my previous little attempt at hammer had really cemented the concepts in my mind.
Even after my GFs class was over I kept mapping, and I wanted to make a mappack out of an idea that I had.
Here are some vids of those maps
My idea for gravity changing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2fMmzMR ... 7Ctu1Zm2Cw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wQrLisd ... 7Ctu1Zm2Cw
After a fall into old aperture:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRksZxXq ... 7Ctu1Zm2Cw
The mappack was going to be called Back-Stock, and it was going to be about going through the chambers GLaDOS had backstocked, like the ones she mentions stockpiling, and wheatey steals them, you know what I'm talking about... those.
But the story kept growing and it turned into the mod I'm working on now
January 2012... girl-friend leaves me (sorta?)... and I'm left with this awesome knowledge of the source engine, which I would not have developed if she hadn't taken that summer class
...lesson? ...Keep Modding
EDIT: This post is actually how I got into source modding.. I forgot I did a bit of Modding for The Sims 1 & 2 before source
http://www.thesimsresource.com/members/ ... ory/sims1/
I even made a tutorial on how to make new recolored items
http://wiki.thesimsresource.com/index.p ... _with_GIMP
...dont judge me, this stuff is old
Hey ben, did you ever play any of my HL2DM maps?
Hey, no... you should link me 
In 2006 or something I found this thing on Steam that apparently would let me make my own Counter-Strike: Source map, which sounded awesome ^^
So I opened it up and just pressed everything
So eventually I had a map with giant blocks(cause I didn't know how to lower the grid size) and sprites everywhere(cause I didn't know how to apply textures to the brushes). I'm surprised I actually got it to "work" in-game ^^
And eventually I found some tutorials and forums on the so-called internet, and so for years I continued making some random crap in the source engine just for fun.
And then I figured out that I could actually do this for a living and so I made my Portal 2 maps and now I am
The End.
"I hear voices. But I ignore them and I just carry on killing."
Is that possible? I mean you wouldn't make much money for the amount of time you put in.
Is that possible? I mean you wouldn't make much money for the amount of time you put in.
What do you mean?
What I mean is I got a job in the games industry as a level designer thanks to my portal maps.
"I hear voices. But I ignore them and I just carry on killing."