Where it stands
Episode Two lives in its own ep2 folder inside the Half-Life 2 install, and comes from the same pointer as Half-Life 2. It reads in the order its own gameinfo.txt lists, Episode Two over Episode One over Half-Life 2: their seven archives, then their loose files, a little over 45,000 files in 12 to 20 ms. That order matches the search paths the game itself prints when it runs.
Your copy is fingerprinted as three parts, ep2, episodic and hl2, the last two the very same parts Episode One and Half-Life 2 have. Steam installs the episode’s files through Half-Life 2’s own app, and every file in all three parts matched Steam’s checksums for them.
Known issues
gameinfo.txtnames voice archives that Steam doesn’t install. They’re noted on the mount and skipped.- One sound in Half-Life 2’s English voice archive fails its own checksum. Garry’s Mod’s copy of the same archive does too, so it’s read as Steam ships it.
Next up
- Hooking Source’s converters up to Episode Two, with a shader table from Half-Life 2’s own shaders.
- Garry’s Mod mounting the episode’s content from this mount, as part of Half-Life 2’s.