Alrite. At the moment, everyone is a bit confused as to the differences between the fixes.

This is what i have understood

Tobel's fix will move all textures, models, materials into the SourceForts directory. This requires some manual work, but I am compiling my installer to work with this method, so it should be really easy.

Hicks/Carl's fix seems to be that you take more materials/models from .gcf files (ie mount them ingame). I have not seen any differences between the two of them, so both methods should work the same.

In the end the actual "difference" between them is that if HL2MP gets updated again, then its a risk that Hicks/Carl's fix will break, while Tobel's will not (since tobel's is "standalone"). On the other hand, any updates might also benefit Hicks/Carls fix, while not showing in Tobel's fix. (this is just a theory, any devs please correct my thinking if its wrong).

Also, yesterday Valve released an update to HL2MP. I believe this may have fixed animation issues, as today, i noticed everyone (both fixes) now see animations correctly, regardless of whetehr than extracted textures/materials from the gcf.

The one issue many people still have, including me, is that instead of kill icons in the top right corner, numbers appear. At the moment, i have asked several people. and there doesn't seem to be a valid fix. For some people it works normally, for others not at all.

If you have any better explanations, more thoughts, please post them here so we can all share our knowledge/improve our SF experience!