Experimental Contraptions

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Sometimes a contraption doesn't need to serve a specific purpose. You can make a contraption that looks interesting, or tests the ability of the Source Engine. Experiment to see what you can do with the objects and tools you are given in Garry's Mod.

Kaleidoscope Washing machine Thing

Description:	A quick little funny thing to watch.
Original Author:	DirtyDietz
Created:	26 January 2009
Notes:	-

Requirements

Phoenix Storms Construction Pack

Construction

1. Use the wheel-tool to place a glass-tube wheel on any wall. Torque about 3000, Friction about 10. Use any keys you want to spin the wheel
2. Spawn about 10 Soda cans
3. Use the trails-tool, select a color and the electric or normal trail. Now shoot 2-3 Cans, change the color and shoot the next 2-3 cans, repeat as often as you like but keep in mind that the Kaleidoscope needs a lot of performance
4. Spawn a big blast door, place it in front of the wheel so that the tube is covered but not touching the door
5. Use the material-tool, select some transparent material and shoot the blast door
6. Viola! Use the selected keys to spin the wheel and watch!

Customization

Use the 2x2-Glass from the Phoenix pack instead of a blast door if you want, and if there are still cans popping out, try to no-collide wheel and glass so you can perfectly seal the wheel. You can experiment very much with this contraption, different trails, colors, amount of cans, torque and so on! If your computers fast enough, put a ragdoll in the "Washing machine", its fun!

Basic Firework

Description:	Create a fun firework!
Original Author:	Unknown
Created:	11 October 2007
Notes:	-

Construction

1. Spawn an explosive barrel.
2. Spawn a single soda can.
3. Duplicate it as many times as you want (the Soda can)
4. Take out the Color Tool
5. Select a color, then paint two or three soda cans.
6. Repeat with a different color
7. Take the Trail tool and select the color of the first few soda cans. Then click them.
8. Repeat
9. Easy weld the cans to the barrel.
10. Spawn Dynamite With your own settings.
11. Easy weld the dynamite to the barrel
12. Select Color. Paint the Dynamite.
13. Put a thruster on the bottom, with your settings BUT DON'T HAVE IT THE SAME AS THE DYNAMITE!
14. Launch!

Barrel Firework

Description:	Create a fun firework!
Original Author:	Ritosito
Created:	4 December 2008
Notes:	-

Construction

1. Spawn an explosive barrel.
2. Freeze it.
3. Use the Stacker tool (addon) or easy weld to add two more explosive barrels on top of it. It should be a 3 barrel tall stack now.
4. Spawn 6 additional explosive barrels.
5. Weld the barrels side to side around the topmost barrel. Try to align their physboxes so they are flat, and the weld is in the middle of the face.
6. Either use the Smart Weld addon or weld the barrels together for stability.
7. Add 6 thrusters (one for each barrel) on the bottoms of the explosive barrels you welded to the topmost barrel. Make sure it has "Damage Activates" on.
8. Duplicate it for more than one use.
9. To use shoot bottom barrel, stand back and enjoy. :)

Customization

1. Also fun with pod vehicle attached below. Place firework 128 units high (about a story) and rope it to the six barrels at the top. Shoot bottom barrel once with pistol and get into the pod. You should be in for a wild ride.

1. Weld small physics objects to the sides of the barrels and give them trails for a willow tree effect.

A Chain

Description:	A method to create a chain using a string of props.
Original Author:	IG-64
Created:	3 December 2006
Notes:	-

Construction

1. Spawn four or five helicopter bombs, get out the "Easy Ball Socket" tool and connect them together.
2. ' Get out the "Entity Duplicate" tool and right-click the string of bombs to copy them, left-click to paste the copy next to the original string.
3. Get out the "Easy Ball Socket" tool and connect the two strings together.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until you reach your desired length.

Warning: The longer the chain, the more performance loss you will experience.

This method of using the duplicate tool allows you to create a large chain faster and with less effort.

Now, to demonstrate the dynamics of the chain, attach it to the top of a spinning pole:

1. Find "column02a.mdl" in the prop list and spawn it. Get out the "Motor" tool, set the keypad keys, and click the center of the base, then click the ground.
2. Attach the string of bombs to the top of the pole.

Press the keypad keys you set to spin the pole. The chain wraps around the pole realistically. Spin the pole the other way and the chain unwinds realistically as well. Longer chains tend to bunch up at the bottom of the pole, which causes lag.

Tip:

If you want to see a certain effect, but are getting significant performance loss, you can open the console with ~ and type "host_ timescale 0.1". This makes the game run in slow motion, which allows the engine more time to calculate complex simulations, and gives you a higher frame rate. If you want the game to run a little faster, any value between 0.1 and 1.0 will work. If you want the game to run at normal speed again, set it at 0.0 or 1.0.

To further demonstrate the dynamics of the chain, pull on the end of the chain with the PhysGun. If the chain is wound around the pole, it will spin the pole in the opposite direction until the chain is fully unwound. When the chain is at full length, make looping motions with the PhysGun; the loops travel down the chain like they would in real life.

Customization

Another fun thing to do with chains is to make one out of metal beams. Side by side. Do about 40 of these with the method above. Then when done, carefully weld (or easy weld if you have a good computer) the last one to the first one. You just made a big flexable wheel. If it's big enough you can put thrusters on it and walk inside of it like a hamster wheel. Very fun.

Alternative Chain Method

Description:	A faster way to make chains using wheels.
Original Author:	Silverhammermba
Created:	3 December 2006
Notes:	-

You can achieve the same effect much faster by using the wheel gun. Open the console and type "phys_timescale 0" without the quotes to freeze physics interactions. Turn on noclip and fly up so that you're a little higher than you want your chain to be. Take out the wheel gun (the standard car tire works pretty well), aim straight down and just click constantly until the stack of wheels reaches you. Then use the remover gun to delete the bottom wheel thus freeing the stack of wheels from the ground. Enter "phys_timescale 1" into console to unfreeze everything. Now you have a chain of tires! It's a little less flexible than ball sockets, but you can use the wheel's numpad keys to make the chain spin and do crazy stuff.

Pinball

Description:	Boing.
Original Author:	plams
Created:	6 December 2006
Notes:	-

Construction

Spawn a canal bridge like this and weld it to the ground. (note: the upper surface is 100% solid even though it doesn't look like it)

Spawn two Borealis doors. They'll be the flippers. Axis mount them on the bridge like on the second image. Freeze them in "rest position" and put short elastic ropes between each flipper and the bridge (mount the elastics to the side opposite of where the axis constraint is).

Put two restraining poles behind the flippers like this. Easy weld them to the ground.

Build a stage of some sort.

Put thrusters on the back sides of the flippers. Give them fitting controls like 4 and 6. Now test it by putting something that's round and rolls on the stage.

Escape Pod

Description:	An escape pod for zero-gravity maps.
Original Author:	Foda
Created:	8 January 2007
Notes:	-

Construction

1. First, you will need a map that has zero-gravity, like gm_orbit_v3.
2. Now you will need to spawn a long metal wall and a pod.
3. Now, easy-weld the pod onto the metal wall.
4. Next, spawn 2 more long metal walls and weld them to the sides.
5. After that, close the top and bottom to make a box that has no top. (Make sure the pod is facing the top side)
6. Now, you need to make another long metal wall and make 2 hydraulic constraints on the bottom metal wall and the metal wall you just made.
7. Next, make a long shaft that the pod can slide through.
8. Now you will need to make the thrust part of the pod. To do that you will need to make a small object, like a sign, explosive with a health of 1 and damage of 1.
9. Now that to the back of the pod. And then weld dynamite with a timer of 3 onto that.
10. Next, put a high-power thruster on that dynamite.(Make sure the dynamite and thruster are the same numpad key)
11. Put the pad into your shaft and freeze it there with the physgun.
12. If you want to make a door on the end of the shaft, just freeze a wooden palate on the front, with some dynamite on the same numpad as everything else with a very low timer. Then weld a blast door onto the wooden palate.
13. Now make a button to coordinate the numpad keys.
14. Now when you press that (and will need to hold) the button, the front hatch will blow off, the pod will thrust forward, the thruster will blow off the pod, and the pod will now float freely in space.

Pictures will be here soon.

Tentacle

Description:	Tentacle, what more do I need to say?.
Original Author:	Blackhawk33
Created:	29 January 2007
Notes:	-

Construction

Quite an interesting effect. This basically is a string of manhacks that act very similar to a tentacle. This tentacle will automatically attack any players or non combine npcs that come near it.

Steps

1. To begin, create a base. It can be almost anything. I recommend you make it hover with hoverballs.
2. Disable AI. Very important.
3. Simply take out the manhack gun and make a long string.
4. Shoot the string up with pretty materials.
5. Enable AI and run for your life!

Pictures

Conclusion

This really is a very interesting effect. It's a lot of fun to build one and release it onto the map and watch all your players run. The tentacles also have a tendency of coiling around the target, trapping him. Great fun. Try it!

Swing

Description:	It's a swing. That's about all there is to say.
Original Author:	Metroid48
Created:	25 February 2007
Notes:	-

Requirements

• 1 Airboat vehicle
• 2 Stone columns (they're in the upper-right of the Useful Construction Props menu)

Construction

This is very quick to make.

1. Place the two stone columns about 7 meters apart. Weld them to the ground.
2. Place the airboat right in the center. Make sure it's inline with the columns.
3. Lift the airboat about two feet off the ground.
4. Rope each side to its corresponding column. About three ropes per side is good.
5. Put thrusters on the back of the airboat. About 4 thrusters of 100,000 force each is good. Set them to key 0 and check the Toggle box.
6. Unfreeze the boat.
7. Fly!

Uses

None. But it's very fun, and you can let other people try too. Usually I make one, put buttons on the side, then leave it for people to try.

Customization

1. Use two columns on top of each other, welded, instead of one. In this case, make them at least 14 meters apart.
2. Put one column, as high as you can, at either corner of the gm_flatlands map. Do the same at the other corner. Put an airboat on the center platform. This makes for an insane ride!

Mechanical Hammer Toss

Description:	A mechanical version of the Hammer Toss Olympic event.
Original Author:	WingDairu
Created:	21 May 2007
Notes:	-

Construction

1. Spawn a water heater and lock it in place.
2. Attach a wheel set to toggle (I use the Ravenholm Propeller for length) onto the top of the heater.
3. Spawn a rollermine (or ragdoll, or prop, if so desired.)
4. Lock the rollermine in the air right next to the wheel, then rope the roller mine and the wheel together.
5. Start up the wheel. To toss the hammer, hit your "undo" key.

Base Jumper

Description:	A 1 piece contraption to jump long distances or jump high over walls.
Original Author:	x732
Created:	28 December 2007
Notes:	-

Construction

1. Place a round prop on the ground. For instance a helicopter bomb or barrel.
2. Use the phys gun to freeze it just above the ground.
3. Back up then sprint at it and jump when you are really close to it.
4. If done right you will jump pretty far and high without using noclip.

Tonky

Description:	A Small Robot.
Original Author:	Entrixo
Created:	19 February 2008
Notes:	-

Construction

1. First spawn a city scanner or other scanner.
2. Then Freeze it and disable AI.
3. Spawn a file cabinet.
4. Make the city scanner no collide with that file cabinet.
5. Use your PhysGun to make the scanner get in to the cabinet.
6. Weld it using Weld Tool (not easy weld).
7. Create two wheels on the file cabinet ( you choose the torque ).
8. You made it!

Customization

If you have Weight tool you can change the weight of the file cabinet

Drivable Rocket Pod

Description:	A pod based vehicle, which can be turned
Original Author:	jjmfdl
Created:	27 March 2008
Notes:	Timing is required to enter the vehicle

Construction

The required spawned item is the pod only, from the vehicle menu.

1. Lift the pod with the phys gun and freeze it in place, so that the bottom is facing directly at you(As in you can see through the pod).
2. Switch to the thruster tool and use the thruster model. The other settings are up to you, currently working on the optimal setting for thrust, if it is set to maximum then when moving it will not turn at all (recommended keys: Push=+, Pull=-).
3. Place a thruster on the front, back and sides(referred to as if it were upright.) of the pod so that the thrusters are approximately 90 degrees apart from one another this is for stability, and no it won't take off into the sky, well it will if you press the pull button.
4. Switch to the wheel tool and select the small wire with the green center and place them on the notch near the top of the pod the area where you can see the insides of the pod, there is a little square above those areas, and change the direction of the spin of one wheel, that is the driving system, you can set the keys to what ever you want, but make sure that one wheel is set to be the opposite of the other wheel(i.e. the 'forward' wheel's keys are forward=4 and reverse=6. The 'reverse' wheel's keys are forward=6, reverse=4).
5. Switch to the phys gun and click the pod, and lift it over your head, then move it so that the entrance is near the bottom, place a finger on the "use" key and release the pod, quickly pressing the use key to enter the car before it kills you.

Pictures to come soon

Portal Turret NPC

Description:	Make a Portal Turret NPC!
Original Author:	Crazyking
Created:	8 February 2008
Notes:	-

Requirements

• Model Manipulator
• Portal

Construction

1. Spawn a Portal turret prop
2. Spawn a Turret NPC
3. Using the model manipulator, right click the prop and left click the turret
4. That's it, you're done! Have fun with your new fully animated Portal turret NPC!!

Radar

Description:	Make a cool radar
Original Author:	TheSliPKnotsEmperorEuan, Jw ^^, hanzo
Created:	14 March 2009
Notes:	-

Requirements

• PHX 3
• Wiremod

About

• This radar has two modes one which only displays something if it is in the range of the radar and the second displays a continuous line in a circle around the inside of the oscilloscope display like a real radar - the tracking and detection on this one is reversed as to the other configuration as the range gets smaller rather than bigger e.g
• This means that it is less reliable than the other one and the points are quite vague as to where the object it is detecting is.
• The 0 default radar configuration means that the readings are more accurate and you can tell better what direction the object is. This is the only radar that actually works so enjoy!

Construction

1. spawn a half pipe as big as you want
2. spawn a ranger set the max range to 10000 and place it in the center of the half pipe (make sure you select showbeam)
3. spawn a 1x1 plate and using the axis tool weld the halfpipe to the plate
4. using the thruster tool attach a thruster to the side of the halfpipe to make it spin set the force and max to 10 and select toggle (set this to any key you like)
5. now you have a rotating radar dish with a ranger on it!

• now you need to follow the wiring steps

Wiring

1. spawn a sin(deg) gate, a Cos(Deg) gate, a constant value with the value set as the max range of your ranger, 2 multiply gates and an oscilloscope put all this on a plate or whatever you want.

• now the wiring

1. wire the A of the sin(deg) gate to the yaw on the gyroscope and do the same with the cos(deg) gate
2. then wire the divide gate's A to the ranger's range and the B to the constant value
3. now wirer the multiply gates A's to the divide gate
4. then wire the multiply gate's B's to the cos(deg) gate and sin(deg) gate alternatively #
5. finally wire the oscilloscopes X and Y to one of the multiply gates for each one

• You've made a radar now try it out

spinning thing

Description:	I don't know what to say!?!
Original Author:	TheSliPKnotsEmperorEuan
Created:	14 March 2009
Notes:	-

Requirements

• PHX 3
• Wiremod
• A basic understanding of wire

Construction

1. spawn a Phoenix hollowsquare and use the stacker tool to make a tower
2. duplicate the tower twice and place one of the duplicates upright next to the first one
3. now using the axis tool attach the first tower to the side of the other one to make a swingy thing
4. then with the axis tool put the other rower on the other side making sure that the piece you attach is exactly the same a s the first one

• make sure that the middle tower now swings freely

Wiring

• this part is optimal you can use normal thrusters if you want

1. spawn a seat from vehicles
2. then using the wire thruster tool (decide what thrust to put it it determines the speed of rotation)put 2 thrusters on onside of the tower at the bottom to make it spin round uncheck the toggle button
3. now place a adv pod controller and link to the seat
4. wire the A on the thrusters to the w on the pod controller
5. weld the seat to the bottom of the tower
6. Climb in and ENJOY!

• optimal

1. spawn an rt camera and weld to the tower so other people can see you at the bottom as you go round
2. spawn an rt screen from useful and explosive props and put where ever you want

• what it should look like end on

simple firework

Description:	I don't know what to say!?!
Original Author:	TheSliPKnotsEmperorEuan
Created:	12 May 2009
Notes:	-

Requirements

• PHX 3
• Wiremod
• a basic understanding of wire

construction

1. Spawn an explosive barrel place this somewhere where there is lots of room and freeze it.
2. Now walk around it and spawn about 10-20 more explosive barrels around the center on in a large circle make sure there are big enough gaps between them (you should be able to walk through them).
3. Now you need to weld them to the center barrel DO NOT USE THE SMART WELD OR SMART CONSTRAINT TOOL IT WILL NOT WORK you have to weld each barrel individually to the center on so that if the center barrel is destroyed all the others will be free.

• This is when it starts to get tricky

1. First you need to put trails on all the barrels whatever colors you want
2. Now you need to make lots of cans THE PROP and weld 1 or 2 to each one of the outside explosive barrels and weld them all around the center one.(remember to put trails on these too!!)
3. Finally save it using the adv dupe and unfreeze it be careful!! now holding the center barrel with the physics gun lit the firework up so you can work on the underside. then freeze it again ( MAKE SURE YOU DO or it will try to fly away while you are building it).

Wiring

This is the difficult bit

This is the difficult bit if you don't understand any of this or need help then ask me I'm on every night! I can help with every type of wiring by the way and I am Jw ^^'s apprentice :

1. OK. First you have to put thrusters on every barrel round the outside not the center!! Set the thrust to 10000 and the model to the lampshade (MAKE SURE THAT YOU USE NORMAL THRUSTERS NOT WIRE this is much easier by the way!!)
2. Now you need a ranger out this on the center one! (max range 4000)
3. 2 sign(1,0,-1) gates in the wire gates menu.
4. A less than/ equal gate and a more than/equal gate.
5. A constant value with values (3000)