Since our (our as in Robert’s) interview with JetBoom was quite successful at bringing our site attention, I am here to follow up with an equally popular yet less known gametype  made by Paul “mercior” Blower, called:

Feel free to join their community at: http://www.gangwarsrp.com/index.php

Since you probably won’t have quite as much luck as I did when it comes to having two admins help you figure out the game, I’ll give you a simple rundown of how GangWarsRP works.

Gangs are the main supports for the gametype, since everything you do in the end ties back to your gang. The things you can do include:

Money Printers: They are your main way to gain experience points and money (weird, hey?) When you join a gang (much like any guild/company/circlejerk), that money is also added to the gang’s total wallet. Money to the gang also earns the gang points. Points are basically how well you’re doing.

Missions: Missions are another fun way to earn your gang some money. Currently, missions include ’Errand’ where you run between NPCs talking to them for rewards, ‘Mass Murder’ where you kill other players (each player can only be killed once to avoid issues), and ‘Collection’ where you collect x amount of y. When you are in a mission, you’re open for anybody else to kill. GEE, IT SURE WOULD BE NICE IF YOU HAD SOMEBODY TO BACK YOU UP, HEY? Oh wai-

Crafting: Honestly, you’ll have to play the game to know how it entirely works, but it’s basically smash together rewards you get from missions, trading, etc. To make weapons, armor, or upgrades for the two.

Capture/Defend: Much like in Team Fortress 2 capture point, you basically clusterf*#$ near a point to capture it. Instead of ‘winning the game! Woo!’ it gives you a steady income for your gang. If you lose a point, your gang loses money.

What was the reasoning behind creating GangWarsRP (I hear that your reasoning on the Wiki isn’t actually true)? What kinds of things influenced your original idea?

Well, the wiki states the game was born when I was banned from another server which is partially true, but not quite the full story!
I had played gmod many years before I started GangWars, and had enjoyed it at the time but never found its multiplayer gamemodes to be very exciting when they were introduced.
However, in 2010, a friend convinced me to try this ‘DarkRP’ gamemode he had been playing, so I reluctantly agreed and soon found myself playing a surprisingly fun and charming game!
As I played the game I saw many little things which bugged me, but I also saw that it had this fantastic, unique gameplay at its core which keeps players interested.
A combination of my like for DarkRP, my dislike of bugs in DarkRP, and my opinions on how an RP gamemode should play out in a more long-term way were what got the idea of GangWars into my head.
I actually made an offer to code for the community whos servers I was playing on at the time, but this was rejected. I think getting banned from there was the final tipping point

Why GangWars? Why not say… AlienWars or something of the like. You are clearly capable of making literally anything you want for gametypes. Hell, why an RP all together?

Haha, mostly my lack of imagination! I think the ‘Gang Wars’ part came from what I identified as being the most fun activity in DarkRP – gathering a group of friends and going around together either stealing money printers or causing some sort of mayhem.
This was the core gameplay element I knew I had to reproduce and focus on, so the name ‘GangWars’ just seemed to come naturally at the time. It may well have been AlienWars had I the development team I have now, but back then it was just me alone. 

When did GangWarsRP officially start and what were your original expectations on how your community would turn out when you started your first server?

We officially started on April 23rd 2010, a Friday, in the evening. I had worked since Monday that week learning LUA, finding my way around DarkRP, and building the most important parts of the game at the time. I think the biggest feature on launch was our custom money printers.
I honestly had no expectations for the server, I was expecting to lose my money from hosting but at least have a bit of fun having learned a new language and made another game. I was very surprised that 3 hours after launch our brand new server was full 20/20 and I was contacting my host to get our player slots increased! 

I find it interesting that you have set up an entire leveling up and reward system (much like a typical MMORPG) except it’s based off of being able to create and fortify a base. Does this idea come from a long background of PvPMMORPG? Is this what you wanted it to be like from the beginning?

Well, as I stated earlier I did feel that the most fun element I saw in DarkRP was the building and raiding of bases with friends, so I knew that this part had to stay. Other servers had tried more classical PvE grinding, spawning zombies in the sewers of rp_downtown_v2 and such, but I found this type of gameplay got boring fast.
The problem in DarkRP was that the activity was ultimately pointless as all you could accumulate was money and all you could buy with money was the tools to raid people, to earn more money.
DarkRP quickly becomes boring after a couple days once you’ve realised this, and I wanted to give players something they could stay playing for weeks, months, maybe even years and still have new things to look forward to ingame.

Expanding from my previous question, I see that you have set up an entire intricate system involving gangs, capturing, defending, and even open warfare. Was this added from the beginning or was it later implemented when you saw your server(s) filling up?

The original Gangs system was actually a suggestion posted on the forums from one of our early community members which came a few months after we started. Ironic, since we had called the game ‘GangWars’, I know!
People already based and raided in groups in-game, so fortifying the idea with a gang system in code was only logical. It was swiftly implemented, and we’ve continued building on it since then.

You mission idea is great. There is no question that will follow this statement.

Thanks We enjoy adding new missions.

I’ve always wanted to know: when making a gametype with a bunch of different items with different effects, how the hell do you think up each item? Is it individually? A group? Do you randomly wake up at night realizing your gametype /must/ have this new thing you just thought up? Same goes for attatchments, upgrades, etc.

Thats a tough one to answer. Certainly some items in the game were born scribbled on a notepad next to my bed at 4am, but its not always that easy! Our core development group consists of about 10 developers who all have freedom to submit ideas, yet sometimes even between all of us we’ll get stuck.
Good ideas can come from anywhere, anytime so I guess the key for us is to be open to anything & everything, and worry about filtering out the crap later on. We have some pretty crazy ideas thrown around in our developer chats.

Do you plan on adding on more missions and/or capture areas, expanding the map, anything like that?

GangWars is a constantly evolving game and we regularly release updates. Sometimes its a bugfix update, sometimes we’ll overhaul an existing system, and sometimes we’ll introduce something completely new! We love updating the game.
Our last update provided a huge content boost for gangs for example, adding a new capture area, doubling the number of items & upgrades available to gangs as well as introducing the concept of the ‘Gang Mission’. It also came with a big expansion to the map in the form of the new sewer system.
We have some pretty exciting stuff planned for this year which I’d love to talk to you more about, but I’m afraid its all top secret right now!

I hear you’re currently working on something called ‘Street Wars’. What is it, and how is it different from Gang Wars?

‘StreetWars’ is a game designed to loosely fit into the whole ‘GangWars’ universe but provides a radically different play experience to GangWars. Its not RP, its a team deathmatch gamemode which includes elements from an RTS game. The game is played in rounds, and players earn points over these rounds which they can use to buy upgrades for their character or build structures to support the team.
If any of your readers are old enough to have played a half-life 1 mod called ‘Natural Selection’ then the game will be kindof familiar to them I always had a great love for this game and StreetWars is my take on it, really.
It tries to take the fast paced action of Natural Selection’s ‘Combat’ mode and combine it with the intense strategy of ‘Classic’ mode, whilst also linking back into GangWars by letting players earn rewards in GangWars through playing StreetWars and collecting coins. Its very much a work in progress and I look forward to seeing how it develops.

In summary, the more numbers that go up, the more fun you’re having.

Special thanks to Thor, Crabman, Swifty and KaiTiger for helping me learn the gametype in its entirety in hours rather than weeks.

Oh yeah and Juicebox too, since he told me to thank him.

To kick this website off , I would like to start with a very brief article on NoXiousNet followed by a YouTube How-To video explaining NoX’s Zombie Survival server and then wrap this long post up with an interview of JetBoom – founder of NoXiousNet – that is around 1,300 words total.  Sounds like fun!

NoXiousNet, formed in 2006 by William “JetBoom” Moodhe, has grown to become one of the most successful communities within Garry’s Mod.  The community offers a wide variety of different servers for your entertainment.  All of these servers may be found on their website, www.NoXiousNet.com.  Additional information on the NoX community can be found within the Wiki dedicated to everything NoX.  The link to the Wiki can be found in the website linked above.  Please take the time to stop by their site or servers.

The following wall of text is my interview with JetBoom; the bolded words are his.

What gamemode did you release first and what caused you to start working on it to begin with ( and if that gamemode is still running, how does it compare from your original idea to its current form )? Did you receive any aid in designing the gamemode?

 

Advanced Fortwars. This is currently known as Retro Team Play. This is gmod9 we’re talking about so you can imagine how much it has changed. Originally it was just a testing bed for learning how to code with Lua. It started as an edit of the original Fort Wars gamemode included with gmod9 and eventually was completely recoded and polished. You still bought guns at your base but I added some more interesting ones, eventually added classes, the magic system, crafting, and vehicles. The gmod9 and gmod10 versions actually play very similarly.

 

How did you come up with ‘NoXiousNet’ as your community name? Was it your first and only name or were there others that competed with it?

 

I took NoX, the game that Team Play was then loosely based off of and then added -ious and a net to it. Really that simple.

 

When did NoXiousNet officially start and what were your original expectations on how your community would turn out when you started your first server?

 

September 2006 I believe. I just put up a forum on a free forum hosting website (it’s still up to this day) so people could post when the listen server we used was offline. Eventually it was suggested to rent a game server and accept donations from players. I thought it was a stupid idea and no one would bother to do something like that. I was wrong since it became immensely popular. The game server turned in to two game servers, then three game servers, then eventually a leased server box. I never thought I would still be hosting to this day.

 

I’m taking note of how your server rules are set up. What has peaked my interest the most is rule point 5; “Don’t be an ass – to the point where people can’t play the game.” I take interest in this mainly because of how the majority, if not over 80% of gaming communities are typically strict with having some form of modesty or ‘honor’ about them so that they typically punish people from lued messages to one another. Yet whenever I join a NoX server (especially Zombie Survival), I see what could very well be nothing but trolls trying to out troll one another or insult each other for fun. While I personally don’t see anything wrong with it as the conversations are quite entertaining, I’m curious. What made you decide to ignore the standard morality rule and allow this form of behaviour between the players?

 

I’m not your babysitter. Administrators are there to get rid of cheaters, exploiters, little kids on microphones, and griefers. That’s all. I don’t want to play with “You have been kicked from the server. Reason: admin disrespect”.

 

How has this decision affected NoXiousNet as a community; do you belive for the better or worse?

 

The better. I’d rather have trolls that are at least slightly intelligent and fun to play with than annoying idiots and (man)children. If you’re getting legitimately mad over someone questioning your sexuality on an online game then there are plenty of roleplay servers for you to join.

 

I’m looking at the Server Portal feature that you have within your servers which enables players to quickly change between NoXiousNet servers with two clicks of a mouse. First off, how did you come up with this idea; was it your idea originally or did a player suggest it and you thought it to be worth plugging it in?

 

Just a random idea that took a few minutes to put in.

 

Now, for a few general questions about your gamemodes listed within the portal:

How did you originally come up with the idea of Zombie Survival, and does its current status and gameplay resemble what you had in mind for it when you were initially designing it?

 

I was playing one of those maps where zombies infinitely spawn and come after you and your friends. I thought it would be a pretty neat idea that if you died then you become a zombie. A few hours later and I had a really simple and fun gamemode. The gameplay hardly resembles my original idea at all. I never thought I would be able to make it as complex and intricate as it is now. All we wanted to do was shoot some zombies. Barricading was basically finding a couch and spending 2 minutes pushing it in a doorway. Ammunition was infinitely spawning, there was only one zombies class, and sometimes zombie players spent more time hitting the NPC zombies that were blocking doorways. Today it is probably the most recognized “real” gamemode for gmod with the most amount of players (besides roleplay). The next few updates I hope to add in more RPGish things like combining items, using props as weapons, and a much needed difficulty increase.

 

Awesome Strike: Source. Again, what made you come up with this idea and why was it created to begin with? In my own personal opinion, it just looks like a script designed to test out new features you’re working on implementing into other gamemodes down the road. Hell, it even performs better than Retro Team Play (Crafter ftw). So I’d feel more comfortable asking ‘Why’ instead of ‘What’. Why?

 

I love fast-paced games. Much of the influence came from things like GunZ, S4League, Devil May Cry, etc. You’re right in the aspect that it’s almost a testing gamemode. I can put pretty much whatever I want in to the gamemode and it’ll “work” with the theme. I created for the reason I created the other gamemodes – just a random idea that looked fun on paper.

 

Retro Team Play. I was very impressed with this gamemode during the time it was populated a lot of the time. If I do remember correctly, it was sometime last summer; and I couldn’t stop playing due to how much fun it was to compete against other players in a class based gamemode. I really enjoyed the crafter class due to its wide abilities to ensure you team’s defenses were set up properly. Moving on from the nostalgia, while this isn’t the most eye-pleasing gamemode, the aesthetics of it work fairly well. The classes are fairly balanced and the players have the ability to unlock classes later on as they gain more experience or different awards that enable them to use the classes. The entire core of the gamemode must’ve taken quite some time tweaking the different bonuses and percentages to ensure the classes were as balanced as you wanted them to be. How much time have you spent on RTP, and was the time well spent? What kind of lessons or lines of script were you able to learn from RTP or the other gamemodes made before it that have helped you as a coder over the years?

 

It’s the first and longest running gamemode so a lot of time was spent on it. Any time spent learning new ways of coding is time well spent. You need to understand though that RTP is a mess in terms of coding, although this is relatively speaking to my other gamemodes, not all gmod gamemodes. I find it to be a pain to add or modify anything for it and it has generally seen no updates for the past year or two. It’s about to be released so hopefully some other people may want to learn from it or take over development.

 

Super Mario Boxes. From my own knowledge of NoXiousNet history, perhaps the first 2D sidescrolling game that has been developed within the community for the community’s entire existance. I must ask, when you could have themed this gamemode after almost anything you could think of, why did you decide to go for the Mario/Luigi theme? Was the decision made before or somewhere in the middle/end of development and has the theme made you re-think how to design this gamemode when you were working on it?

 

The first map that was made was themed after Mario so that just stuck with the gamemode’s development. This was another gmod9 gamemode before it was recoded on gmod10. The gmod9 version was very limited in terms of weapons and powerups, mostly due to the limited amount of stuff you could do with Lua. All of those were Mario themed – fire flowers, star mans, etc. The gmod10 version as you can see is much more loosely themed and weapons come from all different areas (Kamehameha for example). If I ever have the time to go back and start developing it again then I’d like to come up with an original name.

 

I understand that this is a fairly long interview, so I will try to finish this up in a few more questions.

Sandbox. Throughout my time at NoXiousNet, I’ve noticed that a low player count is held within this server more than the others. While I applaud you for your dedication to keep the Sandbox server running, I must ask, and forgive me if I come off as an ass for asking this, but what is keeping it from being shut down? How is it still valuable to the NoXiousNet community?

 

It was much more popular back in the day especially with events like robot war tournaments. Building stuff is old news. Plus it’s SandBox, not exactly something that should be played with a lot of people.

 

Could it be possible that your Sandbox varient will make a come back once Garry releases Garry’s Mod Beta into the community?

 

Not much at all has been changed in the SandBox gamemode to warrant that. Most changes are with the Lua implementation.

 

While we’re on topic, I understand you’re very open with your gamemode updates. You have threads dedicated to update ideas and statuses located on the forums. But I’d like to know, would you give the readers any hints or statements on upcoming updates or gamemodes that will be debuting on NoXiousNet servers that are not listed in the update threads?

 

WSIWYG. I do have one idea and one thing definitely in the works though. An overhaul to the whole hats thing is being worked on. An inventory, trading, special items, etc. as well as items being able to be made of more than one model for some more complex costumes (by the way did you know we were doing hats way before TF2?). The idea is an Obby remake. Obby was basically a gamemode where you played “courses” created by other players in SandBox. It wasn’t limited to just obstacle courses but that’s pretty much what we had. You could also get recorded times for different courses that everyone could see. Most were annoyingly difficult and the reason that it was popular for such a short amount of time. The new version wouldl have realistic movement such as momentum, no air control while jumping, as well as some parkour moves borrowed from Awesome Strike (although not as ridiculous). Zombie Survival also should be getting some more RPGish things like combining items and more things to do.

Thank you for your time in answering my questions, JetBoom. I really appreciate the effort you put into your responses.

And as a closing to this article, I’d like to make a note that I plan on doing more than just simple article work for this site. As this post itself shows, I have interest in making interviews with community heads as well as making videos on different servers. Hopefully, these will spread to different areas such as Services offered (game servers, websites, etc) and I might also include How-To’s for certain things.

Thanks for reading.