Crystruct is the definitive sandbox game. Featuring state of art graphics, scalable performance, and exceptional physics simulation and more powered by Crytek's legendary CryEngine 2 - the same foundation that powered Crysis from 2007. Crystruct is a replacement for Garry's Mod that learns from that games' biggest mistake(s)
(Image: The Crysis map I created at 14-16)
But... Wait.
That is what I would say, Crystruct is a game I dream of creating - One with massive maps, one with great physics and the exact same modularity as Garry's Mod itself. Believe me or don't, that is what Crysis exactly was around 2008 - 2011.
Lets just say, that Crystruct is a game that should have existed a long time ago, but for whatever reason, *doesn't,* And I am deeply sad that it does not exist, for the game should have existed in 2010 and Garry's Mod should have became irrelevant the moment it did.
Why I love Garry's Mod and keep coming back
Garry's Mod is literally the best game in the whole entire universe to bond over, period. You get your mates - whether you met them on Discord or in person - to buy the game. You host a peer-to-peer server in just a few clicks and make them join. You create NPC battles, spawn in and play with workshop dupes, and create basic and I mean VERY FUCKING BASIC builds literally builds all day long and just have a blast. You get your hands on some addons, whether that is some nuke, NPC, library or map, and play with that aswell.
What if you have no friends to play with? The game is still a blast. Whatever niche you have - playing with NPCs, addons or physics. Garry's Mod, the game, NOT the engine, will still let you have fun. Albeit it might just inevitably wear off if you have nobody to play with, but you'll still have fun. Physics are fun. AI battles are fun. destructible dupes? They are fun.
You know what a sandbox game is. They are fun, they're limitless. Now let me tell you why Garry's Mod makes me angry.
The Source™ of the problem
It is in the fucking name.
To say I am just "sick and fucking tired" of the limitations that plague Garry's Mod as a result of the engine it is using would be a gross understatement. There are only so many ways one can articulate anger within the English language.
Source has forced me to explore all of them.
Hard limits on map size
Maps in Garry's Mod are a fucking shoebox. There are addons like LVS that add planes to the game, - super fun stuff - but inevitably, you will crash it into an invisible wall because Source has a hard limit for how big maps can even be, and.... It is small. In fact, it is so small you have probably memorized the endpoints of the map.
"NOO!! I crashed into the ARBITRARY INVISIBLE WALL WHILE FLYING MY SMALL PLANE!!!"
What did the community make in response? infmap. Somehow, modders were able to force procedural maps, and the GTA San Andreas map into the brittle foundation we call Source. The problem? It is buggy as hell, and there are like two second frame drops every few seconds even when nothing is happening. Beyond that, you give up things like having an AI navigation mesh, because it just simply will not go. It won't work, it is impossible. It will solve the problem, and then give you a few more to deal with. Problems that are unacceptable prompting you to go back to a normal map. Like.... sigh gm_genesis?
The fact we don't have War Thunder's map running seamlessly with no issues in a sandbox game is fucking beyond me. For all I care we should already have it now, and we would if Garry's Mod just died and we built something up greater on a different engine. If we built something up greater on CryEngine then rather than crashing a Cessna 172 into a wall 5000th time, it will keep going. Even beyond the heightmap, it will keep going. Perhaps you would not be flying a 172. Why? Well, thanks to CryEngine, You have a fucking 747, and it wont just crash into a god damn wall this time because a heightmap in CryEngine 2 can go up to 8192x8192 with 32 meters per unit! 262144x262144 to be specific.
Excessive? Absolutely.
So is needing a fucking library just to be able to play on larger maps.
Scalability? What's that?
For all the Source engine cares, your Ryzen 9 5900X, 64GB RAM-3200 RTX 4070Ti beast of a system is no more than a fucking i5-2500K from 14 years ago. (December 2025) AI, physics, entities and dupes and easily bring your frame rate to a crawl. One that only updates every two minutes.
Let's play a game.
Spin up Garry's Mod right now on your computer, open a map of your choice, spawn any object of your choice and use the Stacker STool to stack it, stack that object specifically by 61 objects, unfreeze it, and watch your game slow down to a fucking crawl.
Spawn 100 NPC's and watch your game go into the seconds-per-frame crawl, just like you saw with those stacked boxes.
Now you have a clear idea on just how fucking **brittle** the physics solver in Source truly is. You might know CryEngine for being the engine behind a game that blew PC's up in 2007, but get this, CryEngine scaled. CryEngine only got more and more frames as CPU's and GPU's got better and CryEngine is stronger for it. Crysis is no longer so god damn hard to run because CryEngine 2 was prepared for whatever bullshit the future threw at it. Source? Not. A. Fucking. Chance.
The physics in Source are fucking revolting
You are literally playing hot potato with your frame rate and your sanity on the line. Did you do what I told you to do above with stacking boxes? You didn't did you? Well, for the record, any sane physics solver created by a human (or fucking ChatGPT with the conversation style of a shy catgirl for crying out loud) would have coded a solver where stacked rigidbodies cascaded down to the ground in a satisfying manner rather than just lock in place and bring the frame rate to a crawl. You just stacked a *few* boxes, and now you are mashing Z on your keyboard trying to recover the game.
Wanna know a fun fact? Even CryEngine 1 - an engine from the SAME YEAR as Half-Life 2 - will let you stack objects to the sky while Source won't. What did CryEngine 2 do? It only did more. And CryEngine 3? Even more and an EVEN BETTER solver as if CryEngine 2 wasn't already good enough. Actually, let's make this even more insane. CryEngine 1 didn't just come out in 2004 - it's first public demo was X-Isle. Built in 1997. CryEngine 1 is not just better than Source, it predates Source, and still beats it on MULTIPLE fucking fronts.
Why did the Office dupe destroy your frame rate the moment you unfroze it?
Was it because the building lacked any kind of structural integrity?
Was it because the creator of the dupe threw it together with a thousand colliding, Z-fighting props as walls?
Was it because Source fucking sucks?
It was the last. Source doesn't care. It doesn't matter how many props you are simulating at once, because for all it cares, ten ragdolls could bring your game to a crawl just because they all got into a position that it's vPhysics solver simply could not handle.
Here is something cool about CryEngine. Even if you went overboard with physics simulation (which, is very unlikely because of how good it is) it actually would not bring your frame rate to a crawl. How? Physics in CryEngine are not even tied to your game's frame rate but rather a core defined by `sys_physics_CPU`. Basically, when you go overboard with physics in CryEngine, your game just... Won't collapse in on itself. Rather, it would make it so physics start updating like a tick in Minecraft rather than the tick being tied to FPS (as it would in Source)
So, what are your options?
Modded GTA games (mainly IV and V)
Minecraft
CryEngine Sandbox editor
Any other video game SDK for that matter.
You wanna know what is wrong with each of these options? Modded GTA is nowhere near as accessible as Garry's Mod, Minecraft does not even have physics, and CryEngine?
CryEngine is just fucking sad.
Since none of these games can provide what Garry's Mod can, you keep hauling your scrawny ass back to Garry's mod.
We keep coming back
Here is the fucked up part. Since there is no other sandbox, we will keep returning to Garry's Mod and it's clunky Source Engine. While I really could just have the time of my life in the Unreal editor or CryEngine Sandbox editor making maps and importing/throwing objects around I am giving up the things I love Garry's Mod for. I am giving up addons, thousands of custom maps, weapons, and above all else, friends to play with. The solution? Either I hunt CryMod archive forums for addons, modify CryMod archive addons to your liking, or, you know, make your own. Friends remain **gone.**
You could make the most insane map in CryEngine that is dependent on the features of that engine, dependent on features Source does not have, and then, there is no one there to play with you.
It is just... not a good trade, yk? Sure, I can get larger maps and a 747 in CryEngine... But what the fuck is the point of that when I got nobody to experience that with? Whenever I want:
Friends
Addons
Community
Dupes
I will find myself crawling back to Garry's Mod.
You will find yourself crawling back to Garry's Mod.
You wanna know the most universal answer to why we have not made a Garry's Mod on a different engine and migrated to it?
"Half-Life 2 has charm."
What in the father-flying fuck kind of reason even is that?
I am sick and tired of having to return to Source to be able to play with my friends, when even they could have more fun if the game was built on a better, more scalable engine.
That is why I want to make crystruct
... As an alternative to Garry's Mod where we can have scalable performance, absurdly good physics simulation, massive maps and shinier graphics than Garry's Mod. One that can take advantage of all the nice things made possible by modern engines. Something that doesn't use Source, not Source 2 either, but something completely different. It is something, for all intents and purposes, should have existed a long time ago, it is something that, I should not have to make.
So I am asking for your help.
You in?
Keep reading then.
The final twist
I could yell all day about how bad it is, and there are more than just these three reasons that make Source awful. These are just three key reasons that should have invalidated it from being crowned a "modding titan" from the beginning. CryEngine predated Source, and it still kicked it's ass.