This case study will focus on everything about Garry’s Mod, because Garry’s Mod is quite easy to explain in my opinion. I’ll cut right to the chase. Garry’s Mod is a physics sandbox. Unlike regular games there aren’t any predefined aims or goals. Garry’s Mod give you the tools and leave you to play. For example you spawn objects and weld them together to create your own contraptions – whether that’s a car, a rocket, a catapult or something that doesn’t have a name yet. Everything is up to you, the player, that’s what the whole game is about. Garry’s Mod or GMOD is a sandbox physics game using a modified Source Engine. Garry’s Mod has been available on Valve’s very own service called Steam, since November 29, 2006. Garry’s Mod used to require the user to own at least one game on Steam based on the Source engine, such as Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike: Source, Portal, or Team Fortress 2, although the game no longer requires this as it is now its own standalone game. It is also commonly used for the creation and publishing of videos on YouTube, mainly from Team Fortress 2, Half-Life 2, Portal 1 and 2, Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2. Pretty much any type of Source Engine game can be implemented into Garry’s Mod if you have the skills. Garry’s Mod was originally a mod for Half-Life 2, but was later made into a standalone Steam game that was officially released on November 29, 2006. The release name was Garry’s Mod 10. The current version, Garry’s Mod 13, was released on October 24, 2012. In March 2013 it was revealed that the game has made over 22 million dollars.
Although Garry’s Mod is usually considered to be a full game, it has no game objective and players can use the game’s set of tools for any purpose. Garry’s Mod allows players to manipulate “props” – various objects that players can place in-game. Props can be selected from any installed Source engine game or from a community created collection. The game features two “guns” – the Physics Gun and Tool Gun for manipulating objects. The Physics Gun allows objects to be picked up, adjusted, and frozen in place. As of Garry’s Mod 13 the Physics Gun’s color can be changed via the context menu, which changes the color of its glow, beam, and halo. The Tool Gun is a multi-purpose tool for performing various tasks, such as combining props, attaching them via ropes, and creating controllable winches and wheels. The Tool Gun is also used to control add-ons created by the community.
Another popular Garry’s Mod concept is ragdoll posing. The player can import a ragdoll model from a Source game and pose it using a variety of tools.  This is a popular tool for making fan-made videos. Here’s an example of a video using the Physics Gun and Tool Gun for ragdoll posing and many other contraptions. PLEASE NOTE: WE DO NOT NEED TO WATCH THIS VIDEO IN CLASS UNLESS YOU REALLY WANT TO. It’s kind of a funny way to show how the tools can be used, not an educational way.
If you want to watch helpful video that could maybe show you how to actually use the ragdolls and possibly the tools, here’s a few sample videos.
Garry’s Mod takes advantage of the Source engine’s modified version of the Havok Physics Engine which allows players to build contraptions that follow the laws of physics. Garry’s Mod supports multiplayer gameplay on dedicated game servers. Garry’s Mod servers run many game modes, most of which are user-created modifications. Some of the more popular modes include: Roleplay (RP), where players take on a specific role in the server’s society; Trouble in Terrorist Town (TTT), which involves a group of terrorists (Innocents) with Traitors amongst them, whose goal is to kill all of the Innocents; as well as several zombie survival mods which are my personal favorite. There are also Deathrun servers where the “Death” Players trigger traps to try and kill the other players that are trying to get to the end of the level. Multiplayer is in the final stages of completion. Garry’s Mod features a wide range of mods and addons that can be created using Garry’s Mod’s implementation of the Lua scripting language, which allows users to create their own weapons, entities, game modes, and other modifications.
There are many examples of features created by Garry’s Mod’s addons. Game rules and features can also be modified to suit a particular game mode or genre. Players can create their own weapons, ranging from melee weapons, to firearms, to indirect weapons, such as airstrikes. Weapon models and skins can be reused from either existing Source engine games or from the community created list. Players can create “scripted entities” and “scripted tools” that can interact with the player directly in-game or allow manipulating objects from in-game menu, respectively. Players can also create scripts for non-player characters in Lua. Different models, skins, and maps can be added to the game. Multiplayer game servers will automatically attempt to send any custom content to the client when they connect.
On September 7, 2010, Gary Newman added a feature called the “Toybox” to Garry’s Mod. It utilizes the Amazon S3 service to download third party content, such as weapons, props, maps, game modes or models, directly to the users’ machine while in game. In an interview with GMod news, Garry Newman said that “One of GMod’s biggest draws is the amount of third party content. I want to make it easier for people to utilize that. I really want to move away from having to download files from websites and drag them to folders, that’s old school. So that’s what I’m heading towards. Maps, models, saved games etc, all saved on the cloud and accessible with a click. Everything should be accessible from in-game. If it isn’t, I’ve failed.” The Toybox has been replaced with the Steam Workshop in versions 13 and up. There are now over 90,000 mods on the Steam Workshop for Garry’s Mod and counting.
Now if you want to know the history of how Garrys Mod started out, I can just sum it up in a quick second. There was a man named Garry Newman who had this idea of wanting to make a sandbox game of Half Life 2. Thus, Garry’s Mod came about. He was an amateur programmer/coder with most of his knowledge coming from the internet, but looking at the success that Gmod has now, it’s ridiculous to see how one guy can make something this big. Eventually he founded his own independent video game development company in England called Facepunch Studios. If anyone wants to check out the forum you are more than welcome to check it out.
