By now we’ve all listened to “Still Alive” a bajillion times, and we’ve mastered the Demoman class. Now, we just need to expand our Orange Box experience. But how could that be possible? After all, Valve is a developer and they must have a vice grip on their engine code. Wait a moment, isn’t Valve the company that lays its own games open for the community to tweak and mod? Today Valve announced that nothing is changing, and a new Source SDK is going out via Steam.

The updated Source SDK (software development kit) will allow crafty users to create content for Orange Box games, as well as HL2: Ep One and Counterstrike: Source. Now, as some of us sit around waiting for the holidays to arrive with copious amounts of new games we can enjoy even more Portal. Hell, from the day of release the entire community has been clamoring for more of this phenomenal game. Hopefully some enterprising folks out there, who are clearly smarter than me, can satiate my desire for physics based puzzles.

Here is what is included in the Source SDK:

• The Hammer World Editor, which provides the capability of creating custom levels for Sourceengine-based games
• Valve's custom Faceposer tool that allows users to produce choreographed sequences in the Source engine
• A model viewer that allows artists to preview models and their animations quickly and easily
• Source code that allows mod makers to create their own game based on Half-Life 2 or Half-Life 2:Deathmatch
• All of the tools required to make build custom textures and models for Source engine games

You can download the SDK now via Steam.