Garry's Mod
| Garry's Mod | |
|---|---|
 Garry's Mod Logo | |
| Developer(s) | Team Garry |
| Publisher(s) | Valve Corporation |
| Designer(s) | Garry Newman |
| Engine | Source |
| Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows |
| Release | 2005 (original release) November 29, 2006 (Steam release) |
| Genre(s) | Physics sandbox |
| Mode(s) | Single-player, multiplayer |
Garry's Mod or GMod is a modification for the Source engine. It is a physics sandbox game that allows the player to manipulate objects and experiment with physics.[1]
Garry's Mod requires the user to own one Source engine based game (games including Source SDK), such as Half-Life 2 or Team Fortress 2, and that the Source game has been used at least once. This ensures that the necessary program files are provided to Garry's Mod. The game can be bought in a pack bundled with other Source games or purchased over Steam for $10.
Overview
Garry's Mod was created in 2005 by Garry Newman. It started out as a mod that allowed users to rope things to go together, and it made the pistol shoot out manhacks. Since then, the game has gone through eleven versions, adding more and more features until it became the established community-based sandbox game it is today. With the tenth version of Garry's Mod, the version numbers were dropped, and it has now become simply Garry's Mod.
The current version of Garry's Mod receives regular updates via Valve's Steam service. Garry's Mod has been available for purchase on Steam since November 29, 2006.[2] It is also now referred to as a "game" by Steam itself, rather than a "mod".
There is also a free version, called Garry's Mod 9, now obsolete. It lacks many of the new features in the commercial Garry's Mod, but is still heavily populated and has a large community. While the latest Garry's Mod Lua programming language system is both server-side and client-side, the Garry's Mod 9 Lua system is only server-side. This creates difficulties, such as the inability to render heads-up displays reliably.
Gameplay
Garry's Mod allows players to manipulate props from any Source engine game installed on their computer (or ones created by the community) using the Physics Gun, or Physgun, a blue version of Half-Life 2's Gravity Gun (Which is really the same model as the super gravity gun at the end of HL2) that allows objects to be picked up from any distance, adjusted in mid-air and frozen in place. A second, multi-purpose gun called the Tool Gun can perform many tasks such as weld objects together or rope them together with ropes or controllable winches, plus hanging lights and lamps, doors and buttons, or whatever the community is able to code it to perform.
Engine Switch
On January 15, 2008, Garry's Mod switched from the Half Life 2 Engine to the Source 2007 Orange Box Engine. This update, dubbed the 2008 Update, brought new menu systems and more advanced physics simulations to Garry's Mod. It also caused a large number of User Created Modifications to stop working. The change to the new engine allowed Garry's Mod to spread to new lengths due to the amount of new material and enhanced graphics brought in with the new engine. The engine change also added support for the Orange Box content, allowing maps and Items from any Orange Box game to be used in Garry's Mod (as long as the required GCF's are unlocked to the users Steam Account).
User-created content
Garry's Mod features an implementation of the Lua programming language, which allows users to create their own weapons, entities, game modes and other modifications. Such game modes can completely change the genre of the game. Some popular examples are Roleplay, Stranded, SpaceBuild, Melonracer and Zombie Survival. Game servers for Garry's Mod will automatically attempt to send any custom content running on them to the client when they connect. [3] The game has an official website for these community creations. If a file is impractically large to transmit from the server, the server refuses to send it and the user must download the file from the aforementioned website.
Another example of a mod for Garry's Mod is Wiremod, an add-on implemented in the physics sandbox as objects and components which can be used to add increased functionality to existing contraptions and objects built within the game. The components range from simple buttons and lamps to expression gates, CPUs, hydraulics and many others. An example of a contraption built using Wiremod would be a smooth elevator (one that does not move so fast the player is thrown about) or a drivable car which does not require use of the numpad. Advanced contraptions like autopiloting aircraft or laser-guided rockets and even fully-functioning computers are also possible, with the player only being limited by his/her knowledge of wire itself. Wire is almost universally accepted as a component of GMod and most established servers have it installed.
The Phoenix-Storms Model Pack, often referred to as simply PHX, is a model pack which includes many geometric objects (such as cylinders, cuboids and plane parts) and other miscellaneous objects to allow more precise building. The PHX pack includes materials such as metal, tile, and wood.
The appearance of SpaceBuild brought the advent of crude space-faring contraptions. To this end, the SpaceBuild Model Pack was created to make building these contraptions easier. The pack included a wide range of modular props designed specially for ship construction. Recently, the creators renamed the addon to SpaceBuild Enhancement Project, adding content like ship weaponry working in concert with Wiremod and GCombat (the latter is another addon that makes certain weapons able to destroy props). The pack is constantly being updated and thus, it is officially designated as a fully working alpha version.[4]
List of games that meet the Source engine requirement
| Title of game | Release date |
|---|---|
| Counter-Strike: Source | August 11, 2004 |
| Day of Defeat: Source | September 26, 2005 |
| Half-Life: Source | June 1, 2004 |
| Half-Life 2 | November 16, 2004 |
| Half-Life 2: Deathmatch | November 1, 2004 |
| Half-Life 2: Episode One | June 1, 2006 |
| Half-Life 2: Episode Two | October 10, 2007 |
| Portal | October 10, 2007 |
| Team Fortress 2 | October 10, 2007 |
| Left 4 Dead* | November 18, 2008 |
- Note: Left 4 Dead content cannot currently be used in Garry's Mod without manually extracting files including but not limited to Infected NPCS and Maps due to the enhanced engine that Left 4 Dead uses.
Reception
Garry's Mod 9 has won nine Mod of the Year awards.[citation needed] In 2005, this included the Mod of the Year award at GameSpy,[5] ModDB,[6] and PC Gamer US.[7] GameSpy praised the game for being simple yet versatile, and noted the mod's unique quality that distinguished it from other notable mods.[5]
As of November 29, 2008, two years after its release on Steam, 'Garry's Mod' has sold over 300,000 copies, bringing the revenue to over $3,120,000.[8] Garry receives half of the $9.99, and Valve Corporation takes the rest. [9]
Mods and Addons
 | This article is written like a story. (April 2009) |
Garry's Mod has an broad array of mods and addons. These are sorted into categories, such as
- SWep: A SWEP is a scripted Weapon, written using Lua code, designed by players. These can vary from melee weapons, like knives and swords, to guns and laser designators for indirect weapons like airstrikes, to tools like the web-shooting SWEP in a spider-man modification etc. Some of them use the C.S. Source weapon models or HL2 models, because of the difficulty of making/acquiring the view model, and getting the model to look right and not stick out of the groin due to the weapon being attached to the centre of the character's body. The weapons are displayed as large red error models if the player does not the required game.
- STool: Scripted Tool, which (also made with Lua code) add to the users disposal of tools. Some popular examples of STOOLS are: Door Tool, Keypad Tool, and Stacker Tool. Most downloads can be found here These differ from the above as they are not individual different weapons in-game, but are loaded individually into the STOOL weapon from an ingame menu that allows you to select between them.
- SEnt: Scripted Entity, an entity (an object that has a function e.g. open and close, shoot something etc.) that is scripted in Lua. Garry's Mod comes with one default SEnt, the Bouncy Ball.
- SNPC: Scripted NPC, a NPC which is scripted in Lua defining its essential information e.g. who are enemies. These are the rarest scripted items. Some of them are quite professionally made, but eat up a large chunk of the player's processing power.
- Gamemode: A method of play adding or removing certain abilities from players, and causing modification to the game rules. Common examples of this include death-match modes, where STools are removed, Spacebuild modes, where areas outside the specially designed maps are designated as harmful,(such as space being devoid of air,) and the player must build devices to traverse them.
These addons and mods range from the amateur to the professional. Other addons include modification to the basic Source files e.g. F.E.A.R. blood effects, The Dismerberment Mod which allows the separation of body parts (technical name: mutilation), prop models, gamemodes etc.. As with any Source mod, a broad variety of maps is also available to download. Some of these maps have a specific intention e.g. ragdoll destruction and mutilation, construction areas, sea battles, space battles with different planets, etc. Some custom-made addons have become a part of Garrys Mod, such as finger poser.
Garry's Mod has a massive scope for modification, and in fact was designed primarily with this as it's goal, but due to the amount of modifications available to the player, and the lack of any form of quality control, Garry's Mod sometimes suffers from incompatibility issues. Modifications and maps are made that require certain elements from other source games, or conflict with other mods installed and thus display errors or chequered pink and black textures (the games method of highlighting ones that are missing.) In many cases, the only method of curing an issue, due to the wealth of configurations and thus the scope of potential problems, is to delete all modifications installed and recollect them all, often a lengthy procedure.
References
- ^ "Garrys Mod". ModDB. Retrieved 2008-06-16.
- ^ "Steam - Garry's Mod". Retrieved February 22 2008.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help); Unknown parameter|dateformat=ignored (help) - ^ "Garry's Mod Lua Wiki - Resource.AddFile". Team Garry. 10-2008. Retrieved 2008-10-05.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ See the SBEP Wiki for more info.
- ^ a b "GameSpy: PC Mod of the Year 2005". GameSpy. 2005-12. Retrieved 2008-08-20.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ "Mods of 2005". ModDB. January 2006. Retrieved 2008-08-20.
- ^ "???". PC Gamer. 2006-01.
{{cite magazine}}: Check date values in:|date=(help); Cite magazine requires|magazine=(help) - ^ Newman, Garry (2008-11-29). "GMod10 second anniversary blog post". Retrieved 2008-11-29.
- ^ "Garry's Mod - Valve Developer Community".