Empires uses materials, sounds, and models from various Source games such as HL1, HL2, and HL Lost Coast. Everything was packed in a few neat large files called GCF's. Valve has recently upgraded all of the Source content to use VPK files now. Empires runs on old Source SDK 2007 which can not access VPK files(I don't know why they didn't update that). Those of you who can still play Empires, it is because you still have the old GCF files. If you were to fresh install Empires it WILL fail and throw errors at you. Please don't attempt to do a fresh install for the sake of testing it out. A fresh install will remove the files in the list below and you will have a broken Empires. Below is a list of files you will have to find from backups probably or from other people who still have them. The list also shows the error number it gives when Empires complains about the file being missing. The files need to be placed in SteamApps. You read the list as such... <Error code> = <needed file> 17741 Ver 0 = empires_content.gcf 17742 Ver 0 = empires_base.gcf 17743 Ver 0 = empires_scripts.gcf 206 Ver 8 = source materials.gcf 207 Ver 4 = source models.gcf 208 Ver 4 = source sounds.gcf 215 Ver 1 = source sdk base.gcf 216 Ver 82 = source 2007 binaries.gcf 305 Ver 5 = source 2007 shared materials.gcf 306 Ver 0 = source 2007 shared models.gcf 307 Ver 0 = source 2007 shared sounds.gcf 218 Ver 0 = source sdk base 2007.gcf Once you can find and place these files in SteamApps Empires will run like it used to. NOTE BY BEERDUDE26: If you can't get this to work, your best bet is to follow the workaround here.
