Garry's Mod: Sandboxing Your Way to Strangeness

If you're a frequent user of the Steam PC application, then chances are you've come across Garry's Mod at one point or another.  Garry's Mod (or Gmod for short) is a sandbox game built on Valve's Source game engine, which uses assets from their most popular games.  By this I mean you have full access to characters, props, and maps from these games, and you may combine them in any way you see fit.  Have you ever wanted to take characters from Team Fortress 2 and place them into the Half-Life 2 universe?  Gmod has got you covered!

Garry's Mod has no real purpose other than letting you have fun messing with game objects; there's no true "game" here (although if you're crafty you could use it to code up your own online multiplayer game). 

A very cool feature is the ability to import enemy NPCs from Half-Life 2, allowing you to either fight them yourself, or stage massive NPC versus NPC battles.

Combine soldiers battle a swarm of Antlions

However, the big draw for most people is the complete control over the character models from Valve's games.  You can pose every character as you see fit, even down to their facial expressions.

As you can probably imagine, this has opened the door for amateur filmmakers to utilize stop motion techniques to create their own short videos, usually starring Team Fortress 2 characters.  Who can forget such timeless classics as Sniper is Stupid?


Top notch animation right?  That really puts Pixar to shame doesn't it?  To be fair though, I have seen a few Gmod videos with incredible stop motion animation constructed out of thousands of screenshots.

Now you may have noticed earlier I said that Garry's Mod allows you to manipulate the facial expressions of the character models.  This is where the strange factor comes in.  In addition to standard models that allow a limited range of facial expression, the game contains an additional set of models where you have full control of the faces, which can lead to some unexpectedly terrifying results:



And because Youtube is.....Youtube, there are people willing to take these horrifying facial expressions to the extreme (I apologize for any IQ points lost during the viewing of all these vids).


Okay, I feel like this is enough brain-draining stupidity for one blog post.  If for some reason you can't get enough, by all means head over to Youtube and continue the search (a good starting point is typing something involving a TF2 character into the search box, such as "Heavy is ").

Thanks to the free release of Valve's Source Filmmaker software, which includes tools for creating smooth animations (no need for stop motion here), there has been a steady decline of Gmod videos being produced and shared. 

If you're a huge fan of Valve's games, or just sandbox games in general, you should head over to Steam and check out Garry's Mod ASAP, because it really doesn't get much better than this.  One last thing I should mention is that Gmod contains a huge database of free downloadable characters/props/maps (my personal favorite is the Kakariko Village map from Zelda: Ocarina of Time).  Have fun, and if you decide to create a masterpiece of stop motion animation, be sure to send me a link because I'd love to see it!

If you're a frequent user of the Steam PC application, then chances are you've come across Garry's Mod at one point or another.  Garry's Mod (or Gmod for short) is a sandbox game built on Valve's Source game engine, which uses assets from their most popular games.  By this I mean you have full access to characters, props, and maps from these games, and you may combine them in any way you see fit.  Have you ever wanted to take characters from Team Fortress 2 and place them into the Half-Life 2 universe?  Gmod has got you covered!

Garry's Mod has no real purpose other than letting you have fun messing with game objects; there's no true "game" here (although if you're crafty you could use it to code up your own online multiplayer game). 

A very cool feature is the ability to import enemy NPCs from Half-Life 2, allowing you to either fight them yourself, or stage massive NPC versus NPC battles.

Combine soldiers battle a swarm of Antlions

However, the big draw for most people is the complete control over the character models from Valve's games.  You can pose every character as you see fit, even down to their facial expressions.

As you can probably imagine, this has opened the door for amateur filmmakers to utilize stop motion techniques to create their own short videos, usually starring Team Fortress 2 characters.  Who can forget such timeless classics as Sniper is Stupid?


Top notch animation right?  That really puts Pixar to shame doesn't it?  To be fair though, I have seen a few Gmod videos with incredible stop motion animation constructed out of thousands of screenshots.

Now you may have noticed earlier I said that Garry's Mod allows you to manipulate the facial expressions of the character models.  This is where the strange factor comes in.  In addition to standard models that allow a limited range of facial expression, the game contains an additional set of models where you have full control of the faces, which can lead to some unexpectedly terrifying results:



And because Youtube is.....Youtube, there are people willing to take these horrifying facial expressions to the extreme (I apologize for any IQ points lost during the viewing of all these vids).


Okay, I feel like this is enough brain-draining stupidity for one blog post.  If for some reason you can't get enough, by all means head over to Youtube and continue the search (a good starting point is typing something involving a TF2 character into the search box, such as "Heavy is ").

Thanks to the free release of Valve's Source Filmmaker software, which includes tools for creating smooth animations (no need for stop motion here), there has been a steady decline of Gmod videos being produced and shared. 

If you're a huge fan of Valve's games, or just sandbox games in general, you should head over to Steam and check out Garry's Mod ASAP, because it really doesn't get much better than this.  One last thing I should mention is that Gmod contains a huge database of free downloadable characters/props/maps (my personal favorite is the Kakariko Village map from Zelda: Ocarina of Time).  Have fun, and if you decide to create a masterpiece of stop motion animation, be sure to send me a link because I'd love to see it!

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

Stalkers in Half-Life 2: Grotesquely Recycled Human Beings

Half-Life 2 is great at describing a worst-case scenario about first-contact with an alien species, or in this case multiple alien species.  Here you won't find aliens expressing greetings from far away star systems, in Half-Life 2 humanity is still dealing with the aftermath of a seven-hour war with the Combine after they first teleported onto Earth.  That wasn't a typo, the war with humanity literally lasted seven hours before humanity had to surrender, giving you an idea of how powerful this enemy is.

In previous articles, I've covered some of the horrors that arose as a result of alien species mingling with earthlings, such as the zombies and the town of Ravenholm where you first encounter them in abundance.  Today we're going to look at another disgusting result of the Combine invasion, which are Stalkers.

Believe it or not, Stalkers were once human beings.  Through heavy surgical modifications, they have been transformed into disturbing Combine slaves whose main purpose is to maintain Combine machinery.  As you can see, their hands and lower legs have been removed and replaced with some form of multi-use prosthetic tools.

Their internal organs and gender-defining...um....features have also been removed.  Whatever form of nutrition the Combine is giving them is obviously not enough, seeing as their skin clings tightly to their skeletons.  It appears that their vocal chords have also been messed with, because the only sounds they are capable of making are hisses and growls.

At some point before becoming Stalkers, these people were either resistance members who were captured and sent in to be converted, or they lived in a location such as City 17 and were unknowingly shipped to the processing facility.  The processing facility, a level in Half-Life 2 called Nova Prospekt, is a former prison which is now mainly used to create Stalkers and Combine Soldiers (they are heavily modified humans as well).

Although they make only a brief appearance near the end of Half-Life 2, Stalkers are encountered much more frequently in Half-Life 2: Episode One.  Here you will cringe in disgust as you see these mutilated beings working frantically to repair the collapsing Citadel in City 17.  Also you will be forced into some claustrophobic locations where you're forced to see these monstrosities up close.  It is in the Citadel where you discover that the metal plate attached to a Stalker's face contains a functioning laser beam.

Note the Stalker in the background using his head-mounted laser.

Attacking any Stalkers or interrupting their repair efforts will cause them to focus those laser beams on you.  Thankfully protagonist Gordon Freeman is always armed to the teeth, so these battles aren't too difficult.  Also, these former people deserve to be put out of their misery, don't you think?

That concludes our quick look at one of the most unsettling things in Half-Life 2.  Seeing a human being who is so disgustingly altered is sure to bring about a shudder now and then.  What did you guys think of the Stalkers?

Half-Life 2 is great at describing a worst-case scenario about first-contact with an alien species, or in this case multiple alien species.  Here you won't find aliens expressing greetings from far away star systems, in Half-Life 2 humanity is still dealing with the aftermath of a seven-hour war with the Combine after they first teleported onto Earth.  That wasn't a typo, the war with humanity literally lasted seven hours before humanity had to surrender, giving you an idea of how powerful this enemy is.

In previous articles, I've covered some of the horrors that arose as a result of alien species mingling with earthlings, such as the zombies and the town of Ravenholm where you first encounter them in abundance.  Today we're going to look at another disgusting result of the Combine invasion, which are Stalkers.

Believe it or not, Stalkers were once human beings.  Through heavy surgical modifications, they have been transformed into disturbing Combine slaves whose main purpose is to maintain Combine machinery.  As you can see, their hands and lower legs have been removed and replaced with some form of multi-use prosthetic tools.

Their internal organs and gender-defining...um....features have also been removed.  Whatever form of nutrition the Combine is giving them is obviously not enough, seeing as their skin clings tightly to their skeletons.  It appears that their vocal chords have also been messed with, because the only sounds they are capable of making are hisses and growls.

At some point before becoming Stalkers, these people were either resistance members who were captured and sent in to be converted, or they lived in a location such as City 17 and were unknowingly shipped to the processing facility.  The processing facility, a level in Half-Life 2 called Nova Prospekt, is a former prison which is now mainly used to create Stalkers and Combine Soldiers (they are heavily modified humans as well).

Although they make only a brief appearance near the end of Half-Life 2, Stalkers are encountered much more frequently in Half-Life 2: Episode One.  Here you will cringe in disgust as you see these mutilated beings working frantically to repair the collapsing Citadel in City 17.  Also you will be forced into some claustrophobic locations where you're forced to see these monstrosities up close.  It is in the Citadel where you discover that the metal plate attached to a Stalker's face contains a functioning laser beam.

Note the Stalker in the background using his head-mounted laser.

Attacking any Stalkers or interrupting their repair efforts will cause them to focus those laser beams on you.  Thankfully protagonist Gordon Freeman is always armed to the teeth, so these battles aren't too difficult.  Also, these former people deserve to be put out of their misery, don't you think?

That concludes our quick look at one of the most unsettling things in Half-Life 2.  Seeing a human being who is so disgustingly altered is sure to bring about a shudder now and then.  What did you guys think of the Stalkers?

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

A Visit to Ravenholm in Half-Life 2

A while back I wrote about zombies in Valve games, and part of that article covered the zombie-like creatures in Half-Life 2.  Since I've already talked about the zombies themselves, how about we take a trip to Half-Life 2's peaceful, scenic town of Ravenholm, where you'll find the largest concentration of horrors in the entire game.

Ravenholm used to be a mining town before the Combine invaded, and was later converted into a refuge for City 17 escapees.  It was connected to the main base of the human resistance (Black Mesa East) through a series of tunnels for convenient and secretive access.  Things were all peachy (well as peachy as they can get with alien overlords enslaving humanity and destroying everything) until the Combine discovered this town of refugees.  The Combine proceeded to "shell" Ravenholm, by bombarding it with capsules containing the zombie-creating creatures called Headcrabs (see my previous article about Valve zombies).

A skull-crunching Headcrab.

The result was that a large amount of Ravenholm refugees were converted into zombies, while the remaining population were wiped out by these terrors.  At some point after all this chaos, protagonist Gordon Freeman is forced to journey through Ravenholm (at night!), and we witness the destruction first-hand.

Signs of the zombie battles are everywhere, from barricaded doors, to blood-smeared rooms, to zombie and human corpses littered everywhere.  Zombies lie in wait in various buildings and alleyways, shuffling over to attack whenever you come near.  Needless to say there are some great jump-scare moments during your trip to Ravenholm.

As you continue your tour, you discover that not everyone was killed after the Headcrab shelling occurred; a lone survivor named Father Grigori somehow found a way to stay alive through makeshift zombie-traps.  You'll find car engine blocks which power spinning blades, cars suspended in the air by winches (which can then be dropped on zombie hordes), and even electrified chain link fences.  You can interact with all of these toys, making for an enjoyable way to dispatch enemies without using up your ammo.

It slices, it dices!

Ravenholm is one of the best levels in Half-Life 2, due to its immensely frightening atmosphere, as well as the fun-to-use zombie traps.  What did you guys think of this level?  Did you find it somewhat frightening, or have scarier games battle-hardened you to the point where this was nothing?

A while back I wrote about zombies in Valve games, and part of that article covered the zombie-like creatures in Half-Life 2.  Since I've already talked about the zombies themselves, how about we take a trip to Half-Life 2's peaceful, scenic town of Ravenholm, where you'll find the largest concentration of horrors in the entire game.

Ravenholm used to be a mining town before the Combine invaded, and was later converted into a refuge for City 17 escapees.  It was connected to the main base of the human resistance (Black Mesa East) through a series of tunnels for convenient and secretive access.  Things were all peachy (well as peachy as they can get with alien overlords enslaving humanity and destroying everything) until the Combine discovered this town of refugees.  The Combine proceeded to "shell" Ravenholm, by bombarding it with capsules containing the zombie-creating creatures called Headcrabs (see my previous article about Valve zombies).

A skull-crunching Headcrab.

The result was that a large amount of Ravenholm refugees were converted into zombies, while the remaining population were wiped out by these terrors.  At some point after all this chaos, protagonist Gordon Freeman is forced to journey through Ravenholm (at night!), and we witness the destruction first-hand.

Signs of the zombie battles are everywhere, from barricaded doors, to blood-smeared rooms, to zombie and human corpses littered everywhere.  Zombies lie in wait in various buildings and alleyways, shuffling over to attack whenever you come near.  Needless to say there are some great jump-scare moments during your trip to Ravenholm.

As you continue your tour, you discover that not everyone was killed after the Headcrab shelling occurred; a lone survivor named Father Grigori somehow found a way to stay alive through makeshift zombie-traps.  You'll find car engine blocks which power spinning blades, cars suspended in the air by winches (which can then be dropped on zombie hordes), and even electrified chain link fences.  You can interact with all of these toys, making for an enjoyable way to dispatch enemies without using up your ammo.

It slices, it dices!

Ravenholm is one of the best levels in Half-Life 2, due to its immensely frightening atmosphere, as well as the fun-to-use zombie traps.  What did you guys think of this level?  Did you find it somewhat frightening, or have scarier games battle-hardened you to the point where this was nothing?

reade more... Résuméabuiyad