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It is a physics sandbox game that allows the player to manipulate objects and experiment with physics.
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 $9.99.
Overview
An example of gameplay using models from Team Fortress 2 and the cake from Portal, as seen in the release of GMod 2007
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 eleventh 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.
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. The game no longer works rejected from Garry's Mod.com
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 (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. Game servers for Garry's Mod will automatically attempt to send any custom content running on them to the client when they connect.
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.
Wiremod is a popular mod for Garry's Mod, containing 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. Professional builders attack its usage heavily, stating that most of its functionality can be replicated with stock tools and ingenuity.
In addition, mingebags (A derogatory term for noob in the GMod community) began to exploit the Expression tool to forcibly execute console commands on unwilling victims from simple annoyance to the spreading of in-game viruses written in Lua, although the ability to distribute viruses has been reduced with newer releases.
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 also includes various material textures.
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). Furthermore, large quantities of addons can drastically increase loading time.
List of games that meet the Source engine requirement
*Note: Left 4 Dead content cannot currently be used in Garry's Mod without manually extracting files including but not limited to Infected NPC's 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. In 2005, this included the Mod of the Year award at GameSpy, ModDB, and PC Gamer US. GameSpy praised the game for being simple yet versatile, and noted the mod's unique quality that distinguished it from other notable mods.
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. Garry receives half of the $9.99, and Valve Corporation takes the rest.
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. Source weapon models or HL2 models, because of the difficulty of making/acquiring the view model.
The weapons are displayed as large red error models if the player does not have the required model installed. Developers are free to create their own models using any model editing program, and convert them to the Source Engine's model format, or '.MDL'.
The conversion will create the physics for the model in its process.
Scripted Tool: A Scripted Tool, or STOOL, also made with Garry's Mod LUA coding, which adds to the users' list of tools. Some popular examples of STOOLS are: Door Tool, Keypad Tool, and Stacker Tool.
Here the user may interact with the tool's options, and use the tool freely to manipulate the game to their preference. A scripted entity allows the creator to completely create an entity, such as a turret, that has its own physics and interacts with the world.
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. As with any Source mod, a broad variety of maps is also available to download.
Some custom-made addons have become a part of Garry's Mod, such as finger poser.
Garry's Mod has a massive scope for modification, and in fact was designed primarily with this as its 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. 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.
Requirements
Garry's Mod is often criticized for its high RAM requirements.