Today, a mid-sized update is being released for Garry’s Mod, which brings one particularly surprising change.
With the July update, content from Counter-Strike: Source as well as Half-Life 2: Episode One and Episode Two is now included in the game by default. This means that add-ons which previously relied on models, textures, or sounds from these games no longer require you to install them separately from your Steam library or use third-party resources. However, not all content from Counter-Strike: Source and the Episodes is bundled with Garry’s Mod. For example, voice lines, music, and maps from those games will still be missing. To access the full content, you will still need to install or purchase the respective games from Steam.
In addition to improving the game’s self-sufficiency, other changes have been made to various gameplay aspects. For instance, the player models for the Metrocop and Elite Terrorist have been tweaked. First-person weapon viewmodels now inherit lighting from the weapons themselves. The physics gun beam range has been increased from 8,000 to 32,000 units.
From a technical standpoint, the update also fixes long-standing bugs and introduces some quality-of-life improvements. For example, previously, disabling voice chat with the command voice_enable 0 made it impossible to re-enable it with voice_enable 1. That has now been fixed. A new launch parameter -mountcfgfile was added, allowing the use of any other .cfg file from the same folder instead of mount.cfg. The lights.rad file has been updated to the Half-Life 2 HDR and Episodes version. AI node limits have been increased from 4,096 to 8,192, and the maximum number of model skins has been raised from 32 to 64. Several Lua functions have been added or updated, mainly those related to players, networking, and color.
The July update is striking for its inclusion of Counter-Strike: Source and Episode content. While not strictly necessary for Garry’s Mod and its sandbox to function, it addresses a major limitation for many add-ons and servers that typically rely on those assets due to the base game’s limited content. Now, ordinary players no longer need to install multiple games just to play one. As a result, missing textures and those notorious “ERROR” signs will appear far less often.
Full changelog available on the official developer devblog
Official post in the Community Hub
DenDi85 retains authorship of the article
