Ever heard of FTL? The Kickstarted space simulator that pits you and a straggly crew of space pioneers in a deadly race for survival in what could be considered the sleeper hit of 2013? Well, it only sold a gazillion copies and garnered lots of critical acclaim... and now a mod based on the concept of FTL is coming to Garry's Mod.
The kind folks at Rock, Paper, Shotgun did some digital sleuthing to find out about this work-in-progress adaptation of sci-fi, crew-based space exploration for the physics-oriented sandbox game.
If you're a fan of Star Trek then this mod kind of fits right up your alley. There are various consoles and computers littered throughout the ship that allow you to control and modify various parameters of your star-hopper, which varies from things like raising and lowering shields, manipulating the engines, controlling the life support systems and opening and closing doors like a professional door opener. I can't wait to open and close doors like a professional, yeah!
The mod shows some amazing promise, though, including the ability to transport objects and people and work cohesively together with a group of friends, enemies or frenemies while you journey throughout space. It's such an ambitious project that warrants some measure of attention, even though it's still in the early goings of development.
My biggest concern, however, is how the whole space mechanic will work? Those of you unfamiliar with the Source Engine only need to know that the design tools for Source are severely limited in making large scale maps with decent performance. There are a lot of hurdles and roadblocks in place that limit a lot of different variations of gametypes whether you're working with Half-Life mods or Garry's Mod – anything source related has some limits on how you explore large scale environments. All of this is to say that actual space exploration may not be possible in the mod.
Still, Rock, Paper, Shotgun notes that the designers are simply using Garry's Mod for prototyping. So I imagine they may work out classes, ship functionality and design aesthetics and then port over their work to something a bit more expansive... maybe? Who knows. Then again, some modders have found ways to recreate things like Left 4 Dead in Garry's Mod with the ReDead mod, and they even found ways to recreate things like the Weeping Angels mini-game and Slender Man Forest. So I guess anything is possible.
