 Good evening. Do you recognize this place? GM Construct. It's a map that millions of people have come to know and love. This iconic place has provided comfort and laughter to millions over the years, and continues to regularly show up in memes, videos, and even fashion in the most unexpected of ways. It's also a more recently developed reputation as a deeply unsettling and to some even terrifying realm of existential horror. But what even is this place? What's the secret behind its never-ending popularity? But how did it come to be so iconic in internet pop culture? Today, I'm going to share with you all the unabridged story of GM Construct. Construct's story begins in the year of our lord 2004. It was then that a 22-year-old British chap named Gary Newman fell madly in love with the physics engine seen in Half-Life 2, and got the brilliant idea to create his own game built entirely around it. This was the birth of what we know as Gary's mod, though I think you'll find it's hardly recognizable in its earliest iteration. The first two releases of the game, dubbed GMod 1 and 2, were posted online just three days apart in December 2004, but the only levels they came with were the stock ones from Half-Life 2. Gary eventually decided that he wanted his project to have its own map, and that's when he created this. This thing you're looking at? This weird, indiscernible white void? This was the first iteration of GM Construct, debuting on December 30th, 2004, alongside the release of GMod 3. It was nothing but a small white abyss with some props, a panel on the wall to spawn character models, and a hallway with buttons that load up levels from the Half-Life 2 campaign in case you somehow managed to get bored of this place. Thankfully, Construct didn't stay this boring looking for very long. In fact, the next patch of GMod released later the same day, transforming the level into a much more welcoming looking grassy enclosure and renaming this older version of the map to GM Construct white. And this is when things started really taking shape. With a unique visual style finally decided on, Gary's imagination went wild, and the start of a new year brought rapid-fire additions and tweaks to both the mod and to Construct. On January 5th, 2005, the release of GMod 4 scrapped GM Construct white altogether, and brought a vehicle garage and a flat concrete area to the new version of the map. And four days later on January 9th, GMod 5 introduced this raised walkway, this pool of water, and even a new primitive 3D skybox. Two weeks later came GMod 6, and with this version, Construct finally starts looking like the map we know it as today. It gives us this iconic warehouse building, complete with the first ever instance of the dark room, and turns that pool into the pond we all know and love. I also find it interesting that, despite the player spawn menu being introduced in GMod 6, its version of the Construct still includes the manual prop spawning panel, which you'll see survived for a surprisingly long time. After the release of GMod 6, updates became increasingly complicated on the technical end, with longer and longer waits between them. GMod 7 took almost a whole month to release on February 12th, 2005, and it added some apartment buildings to the 3D skybox, as well as the white room and this black room, Yin and Yang. GMod 8 came out two months after that, on May 9th, 2005, finally sacrificing the Half Life 2 hallway to make room for a bigger garage with two entrances. It also added this side door to the warehouse, and for some reason has completely busted lighting that brightens and dims when you look up and down. I'm not really sure what that's all about. Anyway, it took more than half a year for the next update to come, and it was quite the big one. November 27th, 2005 finally brought us GMod 9, one of the most iconic versions of the game, and with it, a number of changes to Construct. It made the garage building even bigger and added windows to it, added these iconic apartment buildings right on the edge of the level's bounce, and finally removed the in-level prop spawner, Hallelujah. This is easily one of the most beloved versions of the map due to how familiar yet different it is. It's the last version of Construct to have these grass-sprites everywhere. It has a uniquely gloomy and foggy atmosphere, and it really just carries a vibe like no other. Also, since GMod 9 was the last version of the game that was published for free, a lot of people were stuck playing this version well after it had become outdated, and there's actually still servers up for it today if you can believe that. Anyway, after the release of GMod 9, Valve approached Gary and made a deal with him to produce a new commercial version of Garry's Mod, and as you might have guessed, with this jump came yet another Construct makeover. On November 29th, 2006, Garry's Mod 10 released on Valve's official storefront Steam for $10, and it brought possibly the strangest version of Construct yet. It expanded the size of the level by giving the garage building a rooftop, it added this side entrance to the warehouse building leading to a new walkway above the dark room, gave us this dock-like area next to the lake, and it's also the first and only version of Construct to include this peculiar room. I'm pretty sure this is meant to demonstrate colored lighting, but that tech had existed since the 90s, so I imagine the room was cut for not really being impressive enough for the times. Its existence has always fascinated me though. Mod 10 continued to get patches and minor fixes for two entire years before we finally got GMod 11 on January 16th, 2008, and not only did its version of Construct change quite a lot, it was also the last version of the map that Garry ever created. GMod 11 removed all the sand in the level in favor of a brighter green grass texture, got rid of the island in the middle of the pond, and brightened up the skybox. It also added stairs to access the roof of the garage building as well as this secret room beneath them, removed the black room and got rid of the vehicles in the garage, redesigned the white room to be much bigger and colorable, and finally removed this weird scaffolding in the warehouse building. This was also around the time Garry built a map called GM Construct 2, which was basically just a bizarre remake of the map with a bunch more strange structures to explore, but it was never finished, and I'm honestly surprised people don't talk about it more. Anyway, when GMod 12 released two years later on August 23rd, 2010, the update brought, for the first time ever, absolutely no changes to Construct at all. It seemed that the map was in a state that Garry deemed satisfactory, and he had shifted his focus entirely onto improving the game itself. The next update was set to be the biggest in the game's history, and it's also where the story of Construct finally comes to a head. GMod 13 was easily the most important update that Garry's mod has ever received. It brought interface changes, workshop support, and tons of other new features that revolutionized the game in its modding scene. For such a big update, it would only seem right that it come with a fittingly radical and glamorous makeover for Construct, right? Well, there was one problem. Garry seemed not to have much interest in ever working on GM Construct ever again. Early access footage shows that private builds of GMod 13 still use the same map from GMod 12 while into development. And had Garry still been the sole developer of GMod by this point, we'd probably still be playing that version to this very day. However, Facepunch staff members High Voltage, Max of S2D, and Colton Rape, I really, I, that's such an unfortunate name, man, all agreed that there needed to be a new version of Construct for this upcoming update, and that it needed to be bigger and badder than all that came before it. So with Garry's permission, the three opened a public thread on the game's forums on March 19th, 2012 to basically crowdsource a new version of Construct for GMod 13. The team whipped up a new, much bigger version of the map, turning those backdrop skyscrapers into explorable buildings and adding a new mirror room. And with input from the community, as well as Garry, tons of things were suggested, added, changed, and removed over the course of eight months. They experimented with tunnels, elevators, submarine building rooms, ladders, vents, and much more. But what's kind of funny is that the final version of the map that they settled on in the end really wasn't much different from the one they started with. When the Garry's Mod 13 public beta released on August 24th, 2012, it gave people for the first time in four years a new official version of Construct to explore. It was pretty much exactly the same as the one we have today, but with a much denser blue fog and more forests and mountains in the skybox. I actually really liked this version. I remember playing on it when it first came out, and it really felt like the start of a new era for the game. I think Garry knew this was the end of the line for Construct. As on October 22nd, 2012, he uploaded a workshop add-on called GM Construct History that collected together all the old versions of the map he still had. It doesn't include everything, and a lot of the maps have visual bugs when run on the modern version of the game, but it's still pretty cool that he did this for the sake of preservation. And finally, two days later, on October 24th, 2012, the final release of GMod 13 was unleashed upon the public, and it finally rolled out what is by far the most famous version of Construct. The GM 13 version that we all know and love, complete with the secret room immortalizing all of its contributors. Since then, GMod 14, 15, and 16 have all come and gone. In fact, the internet seems to have lost track of what version we're on today. And while the game still continues to get somewhat regular maintenance and bug fixes, it definitely seems like this version of Construct we've all come to know and love over the last 11 years is here to stay. And I can't complain. I've come to love this map, and I can't picture anything you could add to it that wouldn't feel alien or out of place at this point. It's picture perfect. Most people haven't experienced any version of the map other than this one, but I think that's fine since it's easily the most feature complete of all of them. To me, it really feels like this is the state that Construct is meant to evolve into all along. Anyway, now that we've wrapped all that up, I do also wanna dedicate just a little bit of time to analyzing what makes this map work because it's far from a traditional FPS game level. Garry's Mod maps have a tendency of being dream-like and ethereal, unreal locations that couldn't possibly exist or be constructed in the real world. And if that's the way we characterize Gmod maps, I can't think of a better poster child than Construct. What the hell is this place? We've got a giant grassy field, skyscrapers, some kind of warehouse building with a freaky mirror room, this giant creepy pitch black storage, and a big old pond all boxed into a single compound by these weird plaster walls with empty apartment blocks gazing down upon the player from out of bounds. It's truly bizarre. Now, it's not hard to find pictures of real-world buildings that look like those you see in Construct. After all, the map is pretty much completely built from the Bulgarian-inspired assets Valve made for Half-Life 2. But it is absolutely impossible to find pictures of real-world locations or facilities that are even remotely similar to Construct in layout or design. The more you step back and try to rationalize this place, the less sense it makes. We've got 20th century Eastern European apartment blocks in a green grassy wonderland, and all of this apparently exists in or around California if this flat he would sign means anything. These buildings you can explore don't do anything. They don't have stairs to traverse between floors. Hell, they're lit up by light sources that don't even exist. And that's because their only function is to be unique locations for the player to mess around in. Construct's main priority is simply to provide a large, open environment with plenty of opportunities for creativity and physics-based sandbox shenanigans. And if nothing else, it certainly succeeds in that. It's funny though, because while all these areas are designed with specific gameplay and counters in mind, I think most people who've played Construct couldn't tell you what these buildings are for. And if you're not familiar with GMOT's history at all, I could see this map being really trippy and confusing. Like, sure, everyone could easily assume that the big fields and the garage are for vehicles. But what about that mirror room? It was made specifically just to show off the GMOT 13-added working mirrors, but if you didn't know that, this big old bunker probably just seems like something out of a fever dream. The dark room is probably the best example though. It exists to test out lighting tools, but since most people are removed from that context, it's become an icon of confusion and terror among younger players. All of these quirks come together to create what I think is a truly unforgettable level. And that brings me to my conclusion. It's pretty crazy to think that Construct devolved from a random British guys pet project in the mid-2000s to the face of a true cultural phenomenon that has propelled an internationally acclaimed game development studio into existence. It's a digital rags to riches tale unlike any other. Over the span of 18 years, GM Construct is blossomed into a beloved virtual home for millions of people. When life gives you lemons, it can be fun to load up this familiar level and start pelting them at Dr. Kleiner to get all the anger out of your system. On Construct, you can effortlessly project your own ideas of what GMod is or should be. The level can be a loving embrace, a war zone, or even a terrifying liminal prison, all depending on how you choose to experience the game. And that versatility is what makes it so beautiful. Of course, this is all just my interpretation and my opinions I've built over my time playing the game. It would be amazing to know what the map's original creator thought of it and its success. If only there was a way that I could get in contact with the original creator and- Free Newman is a busy guy who I always feel a little anxious about hitting up. But I messaged him on Discord and asked him if he'd be willing to answer a few questions for a video and he was super nice and cooperative. He also ended up sharing quite a bit of cool insight about the map's development. Is there anything that you recall influencing Construct's initial design or style? It was based on the matrix, the white room where they'd spawn a load of guns. What about the style you developed afterward with the red and beige walls? I just chose my favorite materials from Half-Life 2. It wasn't designed as much as, this doesn't look like total shit, so let's ship it. What priorities did you have as you made changes in additions to the level? It evolved with the game. I was loading into the Half-Life 2 maps and it was taking two minutes every load. So I wanted a simple map that would load as fast as possible. Originally, it had buttons to spawn props. When we got a spawn menu, we didn't need that. With ragdoll posing, we needed nice different areas to take screenshots. Inside, outside, white box, and black box. We needed water to make boats, ramps to roll things down. Do you remember your scrapped GM Construct 2 map? If so, why did you create it? I do not remember that at all. You posted it on Face Punch back in 2010. Here are some screenshots. What a clusterfuck. How has it felt to see GM Construct's reach continually extending to pop culture through memes, videos, and even fashion? It's cool. I don't see it as a GMod thing as much as a Half-Life 2 thing though. All of the materials are Half-Life 2. What qualities do you think have made the map so enduringly popular? I think it's only really popular because it's the default map. If you had to actually select it, it wouldn't have been as popular. And finally, your upcoming project, Sandbox, right now includes a rendition of Construct that turns the level into a town based off of Walsall, England. It adapts the dark room to a photography studio, the warehouse building into a fully fleshed out facility with its own parking garage, and is generally a pretty ambitious change from the one we know from Garry's Mod. What do you hope for the future of Construct to look like with this new version of the map? We actually still need a Construct map in Sandbox. The one we started building has ended up compromised in terms of performance and scope. We're working on something else to be the default map that will hopefully tick the boxes in being fast to load and perform well. With that, he'd more or less address pretty much every question I had, so I thanked him and sent him on his way. Only time will tell if making the map British is the right way forward, but one thing remains certain, Construct is eternal, and it'll surely continue to captivate people for years to come as GMod's most iconic map. This video was a bit of a pain to put together since Construct's history is nearly two decades long and isn't documented very well online, but if it taught you at least something about this legendary level and its many versions, then I'd say it was worth it. A special shout out goes to my friend, Figuardo, for helping me put all this together. Thank you for watching. Subscribe to Ricky Blober for more videos like this one, and have a good day. I've made a mess of things without you here, but just can't hold back.