Hey there I was just wondering about the content that comes with the HL2 SDK, is it any diffrent than the stuff in the HL2 models and materials .gcfs? I'm just wondering if I need to extract the files out of the gcf to get more models, or did the SDK installer already do that?

don't quote me on this, but I'm pretty sure that the new sdk actually reads the gcf's, so what you see in the editor is whats in the gcf.

I don't think it works that way, I can see all the sample content through explorer. But that'd make a lot more sense... why did they even bother having unextracted gcf files? quicker loading? Maybe its so you can map and have HL2 running at the same time without read errors.

The GCF files are a more convienient way to update, maintain and secure game content than individual files.

You only need to have one checksum to make sure that the GCF isn't corrupt rather than checking each file, plus its easier to update. In a sense, their no worse than PAK files, just a lot larger.

As for SDK content, the extracted content is just sample stuff. You can either create your own new stuff from scratch or extract whichever elements you need from the GCF. Any local files override those in the GCF.