Location of Ep2 maps

[DEATH eVADER]

I need some inspiration when it comes to creating maps and I was thinking of looking at how Episode 2 maps are created. However other than having a bunch of example maps or HalfLife 2 maps that are accessable through the SDK anyway, I cannot for the life of me find the location of the Episode 2 content.

Does anybody know whereabouts they are located in my steam folder?

Also my skyboxes look a bit naff, whenever I apply a skybox texture, ingame it looks like only a 1/3 of the actual texture is able to fit, making the sky itself look lowres, does anybody know how to deal with this

 

[tschumann]

episode two maps.gcf is what you're looking for.

 

[Maturin]

I understand you have to decompile the maps, but how do you unpack/decompress the maps archive?

 

[huntingbear]

that's a very complicated process.

i believe this will be of some use

http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Main_Page

 

[tschumann]

I understand you have to decompile the maps, but how do you unpack/decompress the maps archive?

If you mean get them out of the .gcf, you'll need to download gcfscape.