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Underground > Games & Gameplay >

Garry's Mod

  
 
Sniv
12:57 / 07.12.06
Okay, how do we not have a thread for this already?

Garry's Mod is, as the name suggests, a modification for Half-Life 2 and it's pretty much the best sandbox game in the history of ever. More of a tool-box than a game, it allows players to use the varied physics features of the Source engine to do... whateverthe hell they want with, really. Using any prop from the game, players can make anything from lethal traps and insane weapons of war to fully drivable cars and flying machines.

The game has just had it's first official commercial release on Valve's Steam delivery platform for just $10 and is already making use of it's huge community to make mods and extensions galore for this already-detailed game. You can join servers and build with other people as well (although it's mostly full of annoying children at the mo).

You can pose ragdolls in all sorts of lewd or funny poses, you can spawn NPC characters and blow the shit out of them (or make opposing teams fight it out while you film the chaos). You can build cars with working suspension and turning wheels, spaceships that work in zero gravity, catapults to throw explosive barrels at people... you're limited only by your imagination really.

So, does anyone else play this, or I am alone? If you've never tried it and have Half-Life 2, then give version 9 a download to see if you like it. It's free (version 10 is the commercial version) and pretty stable, although version 10 beats the pants off of it.

I think it's also a fascinating game to watch people play, and it bring up interesting questions about the violence in computer games. This game is, in essence, non-violent. There is nothing in the rules or in the gameplay design that encourages players to kill or make weapons of mass death, but that's what some players (myself included) will do anyway. what does this say about gamers? Give them a screwdriver and they'll try to stab someone with it?

So, barbelith, what have you built lately? I made a car with hydraulic-based steering (might post the pic later, I'm at work right now on my lunch).
 
 
Triplets
16:37 / 07.12.06
what does this say about gamers? Give them a screwdriver and they'll try to stab someone with it?

Or that, in the absence of pain of self or pain of another, gamers will act out simulated violence? That suggests empathy for others in my opinion. Dude.
 
 
charrellz
19:40 / 07.12.06
what does this say about gamers? Give them a screwdriver and they'll try to stab someone with it?

I think that says someting about the particular gamer, not gamers, as not all (if even the majority) play in that manner. For instance, my brother and I don't make death machines (purposefully). He makes cars/boats/hovercrafts/contraptions and I test the limits of the physics engine with intricate devices involving pulleys. Sometimes we get bored and will spawn an NPC to be crushed by the elevator I just built, but we don't go into the game with that purpose, and we usually do it to laugh at the ragdoll physics trying to cope with a 7ton stack of dumpsters falling on the human form from 4 stories up.

If somebody stabs someone with a screwdriver, what does that say of carpenters?
 
 
charrellz
19:44 / 07.12.06
Also, I would very much to like to build things with 'lithers. That would be an unbelievable amount of fun. Maybe some in-game art projects?
 
 
lekvar
17:42 / 04.01.07
The free version that was available last year required both HL2 and Counter Strike to be installed on the user's computer before Gmod could be used. Is this still the case? I'd love to be able to use Gmod but I have zero interest in Counter Strike, and I'm not about to buy it just to use Gmod.
 
  
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