I myself had been working on a concept map, which essentially dropped the player into a large desert area and tasking him with tracking down fallen pieces of a Combine transport vessel that had exploded in the air and crashed to the ground in pieces scattered everywhere. It was to be a bit more stealth oriented, such as hiding in water oasis areas to escape the notice of nearby patrols, tracking down weapons, and most importantly using a neural interface to hack into the fallen pieces of the Combine transport to gain information about it's purpose and cargo.
However, the mapping file managed to get corrupted so I can no longer develop the map. I suppose since I was using game_text to make the NI (initially named "Delator" after the Roman term for "informant") forcibly decode the text of each computer node, (by forcing the player to look at the console for a few seconds to begin the decoding process.) the text characters that I used crashed the map compile and corrupted the data for the vmf. I can only speculate that Adam made the map texts for Minerva's dialog in some other fashion. I used to have the map sources for Metastasis 1 and 2 (included in a previous release), and it seemed that he managed to store the text files independently of the main Hammer .vmf, instead stowing it possibly within the game .cfg or someplace else. (No pun intended.)
In any case, since I couldn't get the map idea to work, Adam or anyone else who enjoys mapping can try making a mod or map along these lines.
Now most of the above text was besides the point. In any case, I'd say that making a non-linear Half Life 2 map would fall into the Episode Two code, but we'd have to wait a good long time (possibly double the time of the previous one map per year output rate) for Adam to finish the first Chronoclasm (or whatever he decides to call it, I personally prefer that name), since in the Valve commentaries for the big end battle of Episode Two it took them many months to play test and develop the map. Valve likely had a team of designers for that map, while Adam is working all by himself and only has a few playtesters.
So we may have to wait two years for the next level, even if he started right now. Might want to stock up on coffee and donuts while we're waiting, and go buy Assassin's Creed and BioShock to keep us tied over, because we may have to wait a while.
(P.S.: I suddenly feel like I have far too much time on my hands to be writing such a huge post.)
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