Garry's Mod " 2 " CREATION. Porting - improving tools.

s&box
#1

Greetings to all. This is my first time here. I’ll be honest, I immediately registered after I learned about the release of the new Sand Box game. I would like to suggest or clarify some future or existing features of the game.
I do not know where to suggest my topic, so that the developers can notice me and answer my questions. I think I’ll write here for now.

Of the main things that interest me, this is:

  1. Features of the engine.
  2. Tools. (helpers for designing, modeling and correcting, changing)
  3. Lighting, shadows, textures. (working on brightness adjustment and physics and shadow adjustment)
  4. Realistic game play.

Features of the engine.
I am a kind of “designer” only interested in constructing everything that is possible (and build scenes). The possibilities of Garry’s Mod do not allow me to recreate this or that form of that… what I’m going to construct. The number of static props always gave a low FPS and in the future did not allow me to continue working.
Therefore, I am concerned about this question - Can the new engine fix the problems of the old engine? I certainly do not hope for the" all possible " engine, but at least it will increase the limit of propov at least 5 times more?
And how will the engine react to a large number of static objects? Will it all depend on the engine itself, or on the power of the computer?

Tools.
I am very worried that in the new sandbox, I will not be able to own such tools as from the old one - Garry’s Mod. Roughly taken tools from Garry’s Mod mods:

  1. Improved Stacker - The best assistant to create the shape of different items. It speeds up the work of creating certain forms several times faster, and not only that.
  2. Precision Tool - A tool that greatly helps to move objects exactly up to a millimeter. My most favorite tool, without which it is impossible to create a surgical model for complex and sophisticated work.
  3. DBOT’s Tools for GMod - A tool that allows you to do symmetric construction. The most flexible and useful tool, which is unfortunately a given moment… it needs to be improved.
  4. Improved Polyweld Tool - Perfect welding. Welding, which allows you to fasten objects exactly as we want! And no more!
  5. And other tools to help you design with convenience, precision, and speed.

Will these essential tools be included in the new game? Or there will be their analogues, or the possibility of installing them… through the Steam Workshop?

Lighting, shadows, textures.
I wonder how the physics of lighting and shadow work.
Can this be manipulated? To change the brightness, location?

Most importantly, the physics of the reflection of light from other planes or objects. I noticed the lighting and the shadows… almost unchanged, they are the same as in Garry’s Mod. That is, we see an object that is illuminated from one side, but behind it is almost pitch black. It is such darkness and should not be, it spoils the realism of the lighting. For example, if you put a cube in a lighted room, then from the opposite side, the shadow should be insignificant, because the light should be reflected from the walls and fall on the back of the cube, making the object more illuminated.

The realism of the game.
The test view disappointed me a little. I just thought, coming from what I saw “an animated character and some items”, I begin to form such an idea that the game will not be able to seem serious and realistic. How to say it… I would hate to play a game that resembles an animated cartoon where I’m going to do serious scenes.

I think we are shown the first models on the test, which simply parade an ordinary person. And soon they can be changed to realistic-human bodies.
The same applies to items that are now similar in appearance to TF2.

If we now compare the test vshenost of the new game with the usual Garry’s Mod, then “Garry’s” is more realistic.

Almost in a hurry, I formulated everything that interested me very much.
I will be very happy if I see the official answers to all questions.
Or, at least, I would be happy to have a normal discussion. (But for such a discussion, I want to see the same designers and snets-builders like me, who will be able to understand my experience)

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#2

  1. There is already better performance for props, or so people that tested the Sourge 2 engine say (if you have HL:A you can test yourself).

  2. Not only all those will be in (probably natively and if not then community-made), but they will be better and probably more efficient. For instance true weld is already in the game (you can see it in action on the December 2020 blog, I think). We’ll have more control over the engine than before, so there’s that.

  3. I’m not sure that will change unless we get raytracing illumination, but I don’t really know.

  4. I’m sure you’re well aware that you’ll be able to import or create any asset you want: materials/textures, models, sounds, shaders, etc. So you’ll be able to make it as realistic as you want. And the tools to import external assets are way better than they were in Source 1. Having said that Garry said that they’d like to support two art styles natively: cartoony (which is what you’ve seen) and realistic (reusing Rust assets, so check Rust to see if it suits your needs).

To add: there’s a bunch of scene builders on the official facepunch discord, specifically on the #art channel, feel free to visit anytime.

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#3

  1. I hope that the engine’s capabilities will meet my expectations.

  2. This is amazing, the new game is already preparing the possibilities for construction, Great.

  3. Lighting and shadows, they must be modified and controlled. Such things should give a lot more realism and the right light. I very much hope for their work with these things.

  4. Realism… which will be applied… not from Half Life, but from Rust? Of course, I didn’t really notice the difference, but in any case, I think that realistic people will be worked out much better and will have more polygons than in the old games.

I have not looked for such groups before, where they post their inventions. Thank you for telling me about this. I will definitely go there and probably soon, I will post my work.

Thank you for your answer, you helped to remove from my soul - a whole mountain of doubts.

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#4

  1. Check this: https://youtu.be/2bg22FUpNC4&t=170s

  2. Of course, the game is already making great progress in that regard.

  3. They’re working on it, I’m sure Sam (the dev behind all the graphical stuff) will do a great job.

  4. Yes, Half-Life is Valve’s IP and as such Facepunch can’t use it for their game, not this time. On the plus side, not everything will be based around HL2, and there will be more creativity, I hope.

You’re welcome!

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#5

I remembered another moment.
I am a “Naturalist” By this I want to say that it is better to do creativity with native tools and source material. An example is the release of a new game… it will contain the same plastic cubes, slats, gears, channels, etc. what is in Garry’s Mod?

Usually, in Garry’s Mod, I always create things from everything that exists in the game itself, making it all natural and visible to the guests. This is done so that people are logging in to my server… did not install third-party add-ons. They should see it all in its natural form, in the natural objects of the game itself and textures.

There should be a wide variety of such items and texturization.

As if, another concern is that during the release of the new game, I will not have the available materials to start as in Garry’s Mod without addons.

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#6

I’m sure there will be plenty of source material in the game, it will not come from any Valve IP though, just Facepunch’s: like Rust, Tub… And probably original s&box assets.

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#7

Are you saying that if anything, I’ll have to get used to new, unusual types of material?

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#8

We won’t get the exact same ones we had in Gmod. They’ll be similar, better, or worse, but not the same ones. So yes, you’ll have to adapt.

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#9

“To adapt to the new material” and I Think that really shake my idea of the invention of something.

I apologize for the frequent questions, maybe I’m tired, but there was a thought about console commands. Will the console itself be in the game? Will it work the same way as in GMod?
For example, do what I’m interested in, and this is it… as in GMod, the ability to install SkyBox without re-entering the game was added.

And of course, I would very much like the variety of SkyBox and the ability to move it from one location to another.

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#10

And I think… last questions. How big can the map be and what is the maximum number of locations?

Hopefully, in a room with no Windows, would be really dark.
And with a hole in the wall, this hole will work as a flashlight aimed at the floor or wall, or it will be scattered due to the distance of the hole to the wall.

Release date? Or how can I get to the test version?

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#11

The console will be better than what we have in Gmod and you can see some of it if you take a look at the January 2021 dev blog, here: January 2021 - News - s&box

At the moment the maximum map size is the same as in Source 1, but Garry wants to push the limits further and (paraphrasing him) allow people to make gamemodes that require big maps such a rust or pubg. There’s also level streaming in Source 2 (but I think it doesn’t work properly)

As for the light stuff, I don’t know. But you’ll always be able to fake it adding lights of your own, if you know what I mean. My guess is the light will be very diffuse, weak and not like a flashlight, if you simply use the sun as a light source.

Release date is second half of 2021, early access will come before June, and you can apply here: Loading... - Form by Asana

You must pick “Just Early Access” on “How do you want it to work?”

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#12

  1. It is still clear about the console.

  2. At the moment, it is like this, because there is no need for the size for the tests yet. So I can still understand.
    But GMod makes a surprise for me, I’m surprised that it is going to expand. I hope that S & Box will not lag behind in this regard… and it will probably make it even bigger than GMod in the future.

  3. If you create an artificial effect of light passing through the hole in the wall, then this will not be a problem.
    It’s just that, earlier, I said that… it would be nice to have an imitation of real light in the game, so that you can do without interfering with your own hands.

  4. About the application. I’m afraid I can’t offer developers anything other than complex constructs and a test of their behavior. Simply put, the reaction of the engine and design capabilities. (In GMode, I experienced many design variations and saw many problems.

Is there even a suitable section for me? I do not think that I will be suitable for such options as -

What do you most want to do for us?
Answer-Modeling

How do you want it to work?
The answer is Early Access only

And more. There you need to send a photo of your work. They also require a model… made in the programs. Certainly not my own work in GMod, which I was able to collect on my own?

  • I would help with tips on adding design tools. And their reasoning.
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#13

We have custom shaders, and that means we can easily change how scenes are rendered, like ray tracing everything. I’ll recommend taking a look at the AO sam’s made, it’s quite efficient and looks nice!

Considering the willingness and skill we’ve seen from facepunch in making s&box and changing the source 2 engine to their likening, I think we’re in safe hands.

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#14

Shaders… they can only change the overall visualization of that… what really is, that is… it’s like retouching on an outrage.
Did I get that right?

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