In the PC community Garry's Mod is a well known sandbox game built off the Half-life 2 engine that allows you to do... mostly anything you can think of. The game is still very popular and much awesome strangeness encircles its community. Facepunch Studios, the company behind Garry's Mod has a new game in development called Rust, an open world survival game. Interested in this I hit up Garry Newman to talk to him a bit about Garry's Mod and Rust.
I want to thank him and @Travis for taking part in the interview and I wish Facepunch Godspeed to Rust 1.0!
jdodson: Garryâs Mod was released in 2004 and came to Steam in 2006. Most people donât work on a project for 9 years, what kept you going as long as you have?
Garry Newman: Well, the popularity of it! I don't think I'd have worked on it any longer than a month if it wasn't as popular as it was. I'd be deeply ashamed of myself if I'd given up working on it considering the amount of people that play it. They pay my wages - I should do something for that.
jdodson: Many people have made Mods inside of Garryâs Mod. Do you ever plan on running Garryâs Mod on top of Rust? If you did them people could run a mod on that which would instantly cause MOD-CEPTION! But, its possible you could go deeper too...
Garry Newman: It's not something we've put much thought into. I guess our plans for Rust are that open ended that all the 'modding' is going to be done in game.
Travis: All the different Source games and the Steamworks addons players have made give us almost endless possibilities with Garryâs Mod. Is there anything big youâre planning for the future besides bug fixes and compatibility with future Source games?
Garry Newman: I have a few things I want to do with Garry's Mod. Gamemodes have been good for us. A lot of people play Garry's Mod and never even touch the singleplayer - they go straight to TTT or prop hunt. So we'd like to find a way to reward the people creating those gamemodes. Financially.
jdodson: Whatâs the strangest thing you have seen someone do with Garryâs Mod?
Garry Newman: Oh man. That's like asking me the strangest thing I've ever seen on the internet. There's that much stuff out there that it's impossible for me to choose.
jdodson: Are you working primarily on Rust or Garryâs Mod these days?
Garry Newman: I'm flicking between projects. We have a lot of plates spinning right now at Facepunch. The last month or so I've been hitting Rust pretty hard. But I think now it's where we want it to be, I can start to lean off it a bit and let the other guys plough it forward.
jdodson: I know you may have answered this question a million times... but do you call it âmy mod?â
Garry Newman: Haha! I call it Garry's Mod. or GMod.
jdodson: Rust is an open world survival game that features crafting and building. From what I have seen of it, it looks really cool. Will Rust be a procedurally generated world or a more narrative driven game?
Garry Newman: The worlds aren't procedurally generated. They're more iterative. They evolve as the players build houses, srongholds, towns.. and destroy them. We're planning to have farming and stuff - which will change the landscape hugely.
jdodson: Do you have any rough idea for when Rust will be released? 2014 or beyond?
Garry Newman: We don't have any aims or any plans beyond a couple of months. We don't know where the game is going or what it will become. We're discovering the gameplay as we release updates, seeing how it plays, then making decisions from that point.
Travis: Youâre now selling alpha keys for Rust via a âDutch Auctionâ model. This is an interesting alternative to something like Kickstarter for early backers, which in a way makes buying the game a game itself. What was the inspiration for this model, and do you have anything else like this planned?
Garry Newman: We wanted to let a limited amount of people in. If we'd have done it using the old model the keys would be gone in 10 seconds. So we had a think and this way everyone has a chance to buy - their limitation is how much it's worth. It also means we don't have to put a price on the keys - they choose how much they pay.
jdodson: Rust has been in alpha now for a few months. I am curious how this has been going and the direction development is headed right now?
Garry Newman: It's been going great!
Travis: Earlier in the year you said âwe hate zombies and are going to replace them with other NPCs at some point.â What ideas do you have for the enemy NPCs?
Garry Newman: We've got lots of ideas. But they're just ideas right now. We want to concentrate on wildlife that attacks you right now. This seems to make a lot of sense to us because you can harvest them for their pelt, meat and bones. Further down the line we have some big ideas - but we don't want to talk about them until we're there.
Travis: Rust seems, at this point, to be heavily PvP-based. Are there any future plans for a âfriendlyâ mode where players team up to take on the NPC enemies and thereâs no friendly fire?
Garry Newman: Yeah this is something we are hating. We're trying to boost cooperation and make players treat each other friendlier. There's a bunch of ways we can do that. Adding voice chat was a big step in that direction.. but we appreciate it's still a problem so we need to keep experimenting.
jdodson: Thanks for taking the time to talk with us today, is there anything you want to say before we wrap things up?
Garry Newman: Thanks for taking the time out to send the questions!
http://www.facepunchstudios.com/
I want to thank him and @Travis for taking part in the interview and I wish Facepunch Godspeed to Rust 1.0!
jdodson: Garryâs Mod was released in 2004 and came to Steam in 2006. Most people donât work on a project for 9 years, what kept you going as long as you have?
Garry Newman: Well, the popularity of it! I don't think I'd have worked on it any longer than a month if it wasn't as popular as it was. I'd be deeply ashamed of myself if I'd given up working on it considering the amount of people that play it. They pay my wages - I should do something for that.
jdodson: Many people have made Mods inside of Garryâs Mod. Do you ever plan on running Garryâs Mod on top of Rust? If you did them people could run a mod on that which would instantly cause MOD-CEPTION! But, its possible you could go deeper too...
Garry Newman: It's not something we've put much thought into. I guess our plans for Rust are that open ended that all the 'modding' is going to be done in game.
Travis: All the different Source games and the Steamworks addons players have made give us almost endless possibilities with Garryâs Mod. Is there anything big youâre planning for the future besides bug fixes and compatibility with future Source games?
Garry Newman: I have a few things I want to do with Garry's Mod. Gamemodes have been good for us. A lot of people play Garry's Mod and never even touch the singleplayer - they go straight to TTT or prop hunt. So we'd like to find a way to reward the people creating those gamemodes. Financially.
jdodson: Whatâs the strangest thing you have seen someone do with Garryâs Mod?
Garry Newman: Oh man. That's like asking me the strangest thing I've ever seen on the internet. There's that much stuff out there that it's impossible for me to choose.
jdodson: Are you working primarily on Rust or Garryâs Mod these days?
Garry Newman: I'm flicking between projects. We have a lot of plates spinning right now at Facepunch. The last month or so I've been hitting Rust pretty hard. But I think now it's where we want it to be, I can start to lean off it a bit and let the other guys plough it forward.
jdodson: I know you may have answered this question a million times... but do you call it âmy mod?â
Garry Newman: Haha! I call it Garry's Mod. or GMod.
jdodson: Rust is an open world survival game that features crafting and building. From what I have seen of it, it looks really cool. Will Rust be a procedurally generated world or a more narrative driven game?
Garry Newman: The worlds aren't procedurally generated. They're more iterative. They evolve as the players build houses, srongholds, towns.. and destroy them. We're planning to have farming and stuff - which will change the landscape hugely.
jdodson: Do you have any rough idea for when Rust will be released? 2014 or beyond?
Garry Newman: We don't have any aims or any plans beyond a couple of months. We don't know where the game is going or what it will become. We're discovering the gameplay as we release updates, seeing how it plays, then making decisions from that point.
Travis: Youâre now selling alpha keys for Rust via a âDutch Auctionâ model. This is an interesting alternative to something like Kickstarter for early backers, which in a way makes buying the game a game itself. What was the inspiration for this model, and do you have anything else like this planned?
Garry Newman: We wanted to let a limited amount of people in. If we'd have done it using the old model the keys would be gone in 10 seconds. So we had a think and this way everyone has a chance to buy - their limitation is how much it's worth. It also means we don't have to put a price on the keys - they choose how much they pay.
jdodson: Rust has been in alpha now for a few months. I am curious how this has been going and the direction development is headed right now?
Garry Newman: It's been going great!
Travis: Earlier in the year you said âwe hate zombies and are going to replace them with other NPCs at some point.â What ideas do you have for the enemy NPCs?
Garry Newman: We've got lots of ideas. But they're just ideas right now. We want to concentrate on wildlife that attacks you right now. This seems to make a lot of sense to us because you can harvest them for their pelt, meat and bones. Further down the line we have some big ideas - but we don't want to talk about them until we're there.
Travis: Rust seems, at this point, to be heavily PvP-based. Are there any future plans for a âfriendlyâ mode where players team up to take on the NPC enemies and thereâs no friendly fire?
Garry Newman: Yeah this is something we are hating. We're trying to boost cooperation and make players treat each other friendlier. There's a bunch of ways we can do that. Adding voice chat was a big step in that direction.. but we appreciate it's still a problem so we need to keep experimenting.
jdodson: Thanks for taking the time to talk with us today, is there anything you want to say before we wrap things up?
Garry Newman: Thanks for taking the time out to send the questions!
http://www.facepunchstudios.com/
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I can't wait to see where Rust ends up. Such an interesting idea for a game.
Yeah me too. Seems like it could really go in a few directions at this point.
I saw a free videos of Rust and I really like the idea of having to build your own shelter. There was a game I played on GMOD actually, that was very similar to the idea of this. You had to cook food to survive and you could build walls and houses and other stuff. I had a bunch of fun playing it but than the server crashed and I never could find it again.