You need to own a Source game (which uses HL2 content) to use the SDK base, so it's fairly obvious that you'll have access to those materials. However, episode 2 content is not available unless you mount episode 2's GCF, which in turn requires everybody to have it installed and playable.
Yes I was thinking about mounting the ep2 fgd but obviously the map wouldnt work on a lot of computers. Is there any way I can map for empires in the ob engine? Become a tester maybe, I could finish this map and make it awesome. really
There is no way to make an Empires map using episode 2 files, mouting the episode 2 fgd won't change anything, except that it adds a whole lot of unusable entities.
Or you could just try to get more modelers and artists for the team to work on existing issues before making map-specific content.
Would it be possible for some maps to have the prefix Emp_Ep2_[MAPNAME] then only people with Ep2 can play on them, other people get kicked from the server.
No, you set the game to mount in the code, and in the gameinfo.txt file, there is no way to make it work with and without episode 2 content.
Mods like Synergy have mounted Episode 2 as an option. (That particular build isn't publically available yet... The OB SDK seems to have thrown most mods for a loop.) The latest available beta(?) of Synergy can load everything up to Episode 1.
I don't think so, you have to mount particular .fgd files in hammer at start in order to get any content. The SDK base is just the engine, which is why it lacks a .fgd file. Awesome map by the way. It'd be interesting to have a really long canyon map. With strategically placed cave networks of course.
Fgd files don't load the content, SteamAppId settings in gameinfo.txt load up the engine, and hardcoded mount settings load content. The fgd only loads entities, which can be modified in the fgd without actually changing them in code, it also has the ability to load models, sprites, and render coloured boxes in Hammer, but it will rely on the mount settings to actually access the content.
Yeah, the FGD doesn't actually contain the content, which is why there is content in the engine that isn't in the FGD and you can add things to the FGD that aren't in the engine. It's good in some ways, games like garrysmod for example can have FGDs for Lua scripted entities for you to use in hammer, and you can edit the descriptions of entities and their default values by yourself in the FGD which can be helpful for some people who have a particular mapping style. The downside is that you need to write an FGD for any entities you add, which can be problematic if you make mistakes.
Speaking of garrys mod, Gmod 9 allowed you to change what got mounted ingame. So it's definately possible.
There is a difference, Gmod doesn't relies on game content to have a playerbase, we do. If you start allowing level designers to add whatever official game content they want to their maps, you'll start to see complaints fairly soon.
