

game "|gameinfo_path|././Half-Life 2/lostcoast/lostcoast_pak.vpk" Game "|gameinfo_path|././Half-Life 2/episodic/ep1_pak.vpk" Game "|gameinfo_path|././Half-Life 2/hl2" Platform "|gameinfo_path|././Half-Life 2/platform" Game "|gameinfo_path|././Half-Life 2/hl2/hl2_textures.vpk" Game "|gameinfo_path|././Half-Life 2/hl2/hl2_sound_vo_english.vpk" Game "|gameinfo_path|././Half-Life 2/hl2/hl2_sound_misc.vpk" Game "|gameinfo_path|././Half-Life 2/hl2/hl2_misc.vpk" Platform "|gameinfo_path|././Half-Life 2/platform/platform_misc.vpk" If you edit this for a non-default install location, please keep a backup of your changes for this file may update again. These are relative paths from this file (gameinfo.txt), to the required files. Required Half-Life 2 content (assumes default install locaton, this section needs to be edited otherwise) I suppose I could be nitpicking but I am genuinely curious about why we've ended up with 5 instances of Half-Life 2 resources. In many environments an extra 10GB of disk usage isn't really a problem, but it seems odd that the otherwise streamlined SteamPipe migration has given way to this little inefficiency.

Secondly, could SteamPipe/Source allow for shared resources like this? Could we actually install Portal and others as HL2 mods like Episode One and Two are (SteamApps/common/Half-Life 2/portal)? First of all, does Portal need those VPKs in the first place? I mean, they contain audio files of Eli talking about Dr Breen. I suppose this gives rise to a few questions. The same is observed in Day of Defeat, Counter-Strike and HL2DM with a space save totalling just under 9GB. Steam doesn't overwrite them on cache verification and the game works perfectly fine. In my experience, deleting the VPKs from Portal and symlinking them from Half-Life 2's own installation folder works a treat. This is a little inefficient, isn't it? I understand that when we used the GCF format, these games did share resources but SteamPipe's greater streamlining of game packaging and distribution has given way to an additional 3GB on the download of HL2 engine games.

These VPKs in each game's hl2 directory has the same checksum and thus content. At the moment, Half-Life 2, Portal, HL2DM, Day of Defeat and Counter-Strike all have a directory named hl2 containing identical VPK files for a total of just under 3GB.
