All 1,000 keys are gone - sorry!

Beta keys are now being given away via this website. All you have to do is log in with your steam account and it will check how often you have played Garry’s Mod. If you’ve played more than 100 hours in the last 2 weeks you’ll get a key.

I already have a beta key - can I still log in and get another?

Yes - you can give the new key to a friend.

I don’t have 100 hours this is stupid!! I have a million overall hours!

Ok - calm down! I’m looking for people who play a lot of Garry’s Mod. Not people who used to play a lot of Garry’s Mod. I’ll relax the restrictions to 50 hours once all the hardcore guys have been served.

What do I do with the beta key!?

Put it in Steam. Go to Games > Activate products on Steam

Anything I should know now I’m a beta tester?

Yes. Here’s some links.

• The Beta Forum (for bug reports etc)
• The Sticky - how to report bugs etc
• The Update Thread - what I need tested - what I DON’T need tested 

How many beta keys are you giving away

1,000 

I have just submitted update 9 to Valve, it should be on Steam some time later today. Here’s the changes (Overall beta changes are here):

Additions to main changelist

• Fixed generic constraint crash
• Fixed motor constraint crash
• Added ingame video recording
• Undo’s, Unfreezes and Limits no longer print to console 
• Merged weld and easy weld into one tool
• Moved statue tool to properties menu
• Moved keep upright tool to properties menu
• Face posing now works on NPCs
• Fixed weapons not being predicted on secondary fire
• Spawnicons are now resizable

• Added system.IsWindows()
• Added system.IsOSX()
• Added system.IsLinux()
• Added system.HasFocus() (windows/mac only)
• Added PANEL:SetTabbingDisabled( b )
• Added PANEL:GetTabbingDisabled()
• Added render.PushFlashlightMode( b )
• Added render.PopFlashlightMode()
• Added GM:FindUseEntity( ply, ent ) [verify]
• Entity:DrawShadow now works on players [verify]
• Fixed math.randomseed [verify]
• Entity:SetRenderBounds no longer clamped
• Fixed UTIL_ScreenShake not working clientside
• Added Panel:GetChild( iNum )
• Added Player:AddVCDSequenceToGestureSlot( i, i, f, b)
• File.Read now takes a 3rd parameter bool. True to read in binary mode.
• Overlays now come from the list OverlayMaterials

Beta Fixes & Changes

• Fixed menu not always loading [verify]
• Fixed menu not loading when steam in offline mode
• Hide console auto complete when console hides
• Fixed crash on shutdown [verify]
• Fixed console input box tabbing
• Fixed console minutes
• Fixed weird movement in singleplayer when sv_cheats 0
• Fixed tabbing in console
• Fixed spaces in console
• Added effect for console input
• Fixed HTML in console
• Lua Error realm set properly
• Fixed multiple potential crashes in Entity: functions
• Improved Halo FPS [verify]
• Fixed halo not showing on some models [verify]
• Fixed bone manipulator error when calling it on entities without bones 
• Main Menu debug output
• Fixed error when blowing up enemies with RPG
• Fixed net.ReadTable
• Fixed net.WriteTable not writing/reading floats properly
• Added video.Record( table ) (returns vid object on success)
• Fixed history always being enabled on DTextEntry
• Console server error colours
• Console number of errors > 3 digits
• Fixed error in DIconBrowser
• Allow non ascii chars in console
• Hook errors now show using the new error format with stack trace
• First spawnlist category is now automatically opened
• Spawnicon rendering progress works again
• Fixed sents not showing up for spawning
• Moved sents from their tab to the main screen (tree)
• Moved  weapons from their tab to the main screen (tree)
• Moved  vehicles from their tab to the main screen (tree)
• Added spawnmenu.SetActiveControlPanel( pnl )
• Added spawnmenu.ActiveControlPanel()
• Added spawnmenu.ActivateToolPanel( tabid, controlpanel )
• Removed global g_ActiveControlPanel
• Moved postprocess to the main tree
• Changed color cpanel

If you’d like to join the beta then chill out because I’m going to be making a post about it in the next few days.

Discussion and bug reports and requests go in the beta forum.

Merry Chritmas GModders! The picture above is from MaxOfS2D - many thanks and much love to him for making it for our Christmas cards this year! You can see some of the cards people received in this thread here.

So Merry Chrismas, Happy New Year. We’ve got some big things to look forward to for GMod in 2012!

Ok. So we’re all updated and working again. If it’s still crashing for you then rename the garrysmod folder to something else and then try it again. If that’s too technical for you then uninstall garry’s mod and try again.

In this update I included the engine binaries. This means that it should be very rare that it crashes again due to a source engine update. But it does introduce some other problems. These are problems that we’d have to deal with in the next update anyway, but they’re problems none the less. 

But we shall see. The days of seeing GMod updating and thinking “oh no - I won’t be able to play for a couple of days” should be over.