Garry's Mod, or GMod for short, is a "sandbox" mod for the first-person shooter computer game Half-Life 2. It allows the player to manipulate objects and experiment with the physics, often with interesting results thanks to the Source engine's physics engine. The construction of complex machines within the game could be said to be a contemporary spin on the Rube Goldberg machine principle.

The current version of Garry's Mod is version 13, which still receives regular updates via Steam. An older, unsupported version, 9.0.4, is available as a free download at download.com among other places. It requires at least one Source engine game in the user's account to play, and therefore is offered in a reduced-price bundle with Counter-Strike: Source or Team Fortress 2 for those who do not meet that criterion.

Contents 1 Stock tools 1.1 Physics Gun 1.2 Tool Gun 1.3 Post-processing effects 2 Roleplay (RP) 3 Zombie Survival (ZS) 4 Melonracer 5 Wiremod 6 Influence on popular culture 7 Community 8 Awards 9 Movie making 10 Requirements

Stock toolsEdit

In this multiplayer session of Garry's Mod, several players have been turned into physically simulated watermelons and are roped to a Scanner NPC (also physically simulated). By rolling themselves around, the players are, with a coordinated poop nugget effort, able to drag the NPC around the area.

Physics GunEdit

Main article: Physgun

Manipulates, rotates and freezes objects in mid-air, everything from ragdolls (used to create comics and ragdoll poses, with interesting results) to props. It is a slight edit of an original unused script in Half-Life 2's code. It uses the skin of the supercharged Gravity Gun and the slightly altered icon of the Tau Cannon.

Tool GunEdit

Main article: Tool Gun

A new gun introduced in Garry's Mod that replaced the crossbow in earlier versions of the mod. The Tool Gun allows the player to use the many tools in the game such as; Rope tool, Weld tool, Balloon tool and the Thruster tool. decals such as blood, bird excrement, beer splash, alien blood and other substances onto different surfaces such as walls, objects and ragdolls. Spawn Menu The player can spawn items into the map by using the spawn menu (opened by pressing and holding the Q key). This menu gives the player access to most physical objects, such as rocks or furniture, and character ragdolls, such as enemies and characters.

Post-processing effectsEdit

There are a number of post-processing effects that can be utilised in Garry's Mod. Some examples are depth of field - a blur effect that simulates how a camera/eye lens focuses on different distances. Bloom: an effect which causes light to spread; or 'bloom' this effect is an important component of HDR rendering. Not all graphics cards support these features.

Roleplay (RP)Edit

Roleplay is a gamemode that tries to simulate Actual Life and its concepts (Jobs,Taxes, etc.). Each player can also own doors and vehicles. Each Player can have his own job which has its own purpose. There are also a selection of pre-made jobs that have special abilities. The types of jobs available on the server depends on the Admin's decisions and the gamemode. These classes include.

The Mayor: The leader of Civil Protection and the Overwatch, unarmed.Elected Official. Can declare martial law

Cops/CP/Civil Protection: Cops enforce the laws of the server with any means that are allowed by the server's rules. Armed usually with a pistol, battering ram, and an arrest/stun stick. This job selection is usually the most abused by servers.

Overwatch: An upgraded cop, armed usually with an assault rifle, battering ram, pistol, and arrest/stun stick.

Gangster: The opposite of the cop, can buy drug labs and other equipment. Unarmed.

Mob Boss: The Leader of the gangsters, can buy drug labs and other equipment, unarmed.

Gun Dealer: Can sell guns to other players, on most servers Gun Dealers are required to have a licence to buy heavier weapons (Machine Guns,Assault Rifles, and Grenades). Unarmed.

Citizen: The base job, usually receives no pay on most servers. Unarmed.

There is also a selection of RP Variants. These include:

DarkRP: Base Gamemode.

LightRP: A lest restrictive Version of Dark RP

Criticism

Roleplay gamemodes have been criticized by members of Garry's Mod Community to be too restrictive on the players and gives the power for players to abuse their job. Such examples as players with the CP or OW job tend to go on a killing spree. This has been countered with the "Demotion Vote" allowing players to demote other players who have such jobs. There has also been criticism to the fact that RP gamemodes to tends to give too much power to the server admin, allowing them to activate "Martial Law" and allow abusive players to keep their jobs.

Zombie Survival (ZS)Edit

Zombie Survival is a popular Multiplayer game played with Garry's Mod the aim is, as a human to fight off a zombie horde with weapons. The player usually start off with a "battle axe" handgun or "peashooter" handgun and a knife. The player upgrades their weapons and health depending on how many Zombies they kill. If the player gets killed, they turn into a Zombie for the remaining time on the map. If all humans die, everyone loses. If time runs out, humans win. Counter Strike: Source is needed to play the game. You also need to build a simple cade that you can get in and out of and making it hard, yet possible. You get a carpenters hammer to nail props down. Making it impossible to shoot out of your cade will mean your destruction. There are all the half life 2 zombies and 2 custom zombies called wraith (a lot of damage, fast movement, cant move when attacks, when completely still it is invisible), and chem(ical) zombie( medium speed, when shot, can explode and set props on fire and can kill humans). The zombie is trying to kill/eat four humans to "redeem" that makes the zombie human once more.

MelonracerEdit

Melon racing is when the player is water melon racing other water melons.(has been proven to work on gm_construct as well as the standard melon racer map)

Since the release of the commercial version over Steam, support for version 9 has been discontinued. Although version 10 is nearly identical to 9, modifications to the base program gave players the ability to write various "addons" using a slightly modified version of Lua, as well as the fact that GMod no longer required Hammer. Although most of the addons are concentrated on one site[5], some of the most prominent and frequently updated ones moved on to using Subversion (a.k.a. SVN) for distributing the newest version. These releases use a client program (independent from GMod) to download the newest version from a central repository. Examples include:

WiremodEdit

Wiremod is one of the best known addons among the GMod community, and adds a huge amount of tools to create automated contraptions that require no user input for increased functionality over stock tools (which work by numpad). The amount of possibilities is nearly limitless, including auto-tracking turrets, functioning bipedal mechs, etc. It is the only addon that is known to be updated daily. Stargates also appeared in GMod. The pack included (aside from the gates) teleportation methods, hand-held weapons, energy shields and cloaking. The current version is revision 44, although 45 is being made at the moment. The Phoenix-Storms model pack (a.k.a. PHX) was created as a general-purpose alternative to stock objects for construction. Current version number is 3. The SpaceBuild Model Pack (SBMP) took on the example of PHX to create a vast array of props suited for spacecraft construction. Recently the pack received a major overhaul, both in content (large amount of ship-mounted weapons compatible with Wire) and in name (now it is SpaceBuild Enhancement Project). Since it is constantly updated with new content (it is one of the biggest addons, weighting around 300-400 MB), it hasn't been designated with a version number and officially still an alpha version. Like PHX, it also received heavy criticism from experienced builders, but it also has a strong team of supporters. Some players were frustrated that none of the stock tools/weapons were able to destroy contraptions. To this end, GCombat was created as a base platform for damaging props. It is the most widely used damage system. Resource Distribution is a platform for collecting certain resources for various uses. One of its descendants is Life Support which gather resources to allow survival in hostile environments. Although they work well on their own, they are widely used in SpaceBuild, a gamemode with maps that enable players to colonize multiple planets and the space between. Currently, version 2 of these addons is officially discontinued, with version 3 undergoing open beta testing. The newest versions received much criticism, including the major redesign of the RD core (resource nodes must be created manually due to framerate issues with RD2) or the fact that in SB3, gaseous resources are now finite. Also, RD3 lacks backward compatibility and it conflicts with previous versions. Combat Damage System (CDS) is a damage platform designed to work with Life Support. Although it directly competed with GCombat for a while, it fell out of favor due to its complexity and the fact that with CDS installed, SpaceBuild became very hard due to props disintegrating from the coldness of space (remember, it is LS-based).

When Episode Two came out, GMod was updated to the new engine, causing some players to dub the newest version "GMod 11". It is possible that the next version will be based on the Left 4 Dead engine (some people requested it on the forums), but no official statement exists. Also, GMod 10 was the only version so far to be extensively pirated, with no success. All warez editions are extremely outdated, causing addons to no longer function. Some people still ask for help with these versions on the official forums, only to get themselves banned.

Garry's Mod is one of the few Valve-supported mods that doesn't use the Valve Anti-Cheat system (it would conflict with the large amount of Lua coding), although there was a debate in the forums [6] whether it should be enabled or not, with Garry giving an ominous response [7] .

Influence on popular cultureEdit

GMod has also become a tool for users to create music videos, comics and other forms of Machinima. For example the web-comic Concerned, which parodied Half-Life 2, was made using GMod.

It is currently the most popular third party modification for Half-Life 2 with online player counts beating popular Half-Life mods such as The Specialists and Sven Co-op. [8]Many different "Mini Mods" have been made by users. An example is "Wooden Wars", where teams make vehicles or buildings out of wood, and then add weapons made up of anything from gas canisters with thrusters on, to shells launched from "home made" cannons. They then destroy the other team's work [9]. It was even featured on the G4 series X-Play during a Half-Life 2 special episode as the best mod for the game.

CommunityEdit

Garry's Mod has a thriving internet community based around the game. There are multiple forum websites and servers.

AwardsEdit

Garry's Mod 9 has won three Mod of the Year awards:

GameSpy: PC Mod of the Year 2005 (December 2005) PCGamer US - Best Mod 2005 (January 2006) ModDB: Mod of the Year! (January 2006)

Movie makingEdit

Many users on Garry's forums, Facepunch Studios, have used Garry's Mod to create movies. Some examples:

Probably the most famous of them all, War of the Servers, a War of the Worlds parody. It is also one of the longest, being approximately 100 minutes long. Dr. Strangeman Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Plant The Bomb, a 39-minute two-parter parody/remake of a similarly named satire. The Idiots of Garry's Mod, a well-known collection of parodies and Left 4 Farts, a parody of Left 4 Dead.

RequirementsEdit

Garry's Mod is often criticized for its high RAM requirements. This is not a fault specifically for Garry's Mod, as sandbox editors must cache the contents of the map in RAM. Slow gameplay can be avoided by intelligent construction of creations,(Properly utilizing in-game tools to reduce the amount of physics calculations,) and installing more RAM in the user's computer will show a good increase in FPS, and reduce in-game lag.

Official minimum RAM requirements are cited as 512MB, though the Garry's Mod community often recommends at least 1GB for optimal performance.