[ANNOUNCEMENT] GMT Server #2 has shut down

Hey, GMTower fans!

We’re just going to let you know now: we’re going to be shutting down the GMT Server #2 (possibly until GMT shuts down for good), because we’re going to be using that server space for the temporary official Tower Unite Alpha server. It shouldn’t affect too many people, though, as GMT has been somewhat waning in popularity since the announcement of Tower Unite. Server #1 will still be operating until GMT’s closure in March 2016.

If you have backed into TU alpha access from the Indiegogo, you can access the official Tower Unite dedicated server by going into the main menu, clicking on the “Servers” button (found by rolling over the “Plaza” button), and then going into the lobby server list from there.

That’s it for now. Let us know if you have any further questions about the server closure.

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I understand that it needs to go, but I’m a little disheartened regardless.
Most of my time on GMTower was spent on server set 2, I always felt server set 1 was a little too crowded at times.

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My question may be a bit ironic hence why I’m posting it public.

SO!
Not even 5 hours after GMT2 has shut down, the capacity of GMT1 has overflown with 73/64 players.

The question is:
Incase of GMT1 overflowing again, is it better to just wait for a hour or are there systems in place to deal with overpopulation?

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I think (but am not 100% certain) that GMT still has a player cap of 128 players, it just displays the cap as 64 for some odd reason. Correct me if I’m wrong.

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The weekends tend to fill the servers anyway. Just find free time in the weekday if you can’t join right now.

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I am quite gutted that GmodTower is going to be shut down. I loved that server and now it seems I have to cash in more money for tower unite. gmodtower isn’t “waining” in popularity, its marvellous and one of the best places in gmod and now since it’s going to be shut down there doesn’t seem to be much hope for you with tower unite.

GmodTower works so seamlessly, tons of steam users have Gmod and love spending their time there, now you are making this just one huge port to cry-engine or something. gmodtower is full of memories of past times and now you are just going to rip it from its roots. even PixelTail games are bragging that “tower unite” is the best. you created the start of that, why not praise it.
you’re shutting it down at Christmas, I wonder how many people out there are going to get gmod for Christmas and then realising when they go to gmod tower there isn’t anything but boards up on every street corner, like a ghost town.

this “tower unite” thing is going to be like sega, they did good and now they do stuff that sounds good but frankly it is quite horrible. yes yes yes I’m stretching the “Work In progress” sign hanging up on tower unite’s office block but this game looks like Second life and will die like second life.

also this comment has a 80/20 chance of being deleted to paint PixelTail games as much as possible and I’ll get a letter as follows:

Dear user
thank you for the reply, for we have instantly thrown it in the bin with Gm Tower.
Oh, by the way, Have you heard of Tower Unite?
You’ll love it (ahem advertisement incoming email)
only in american dollars, which is most likely going to be expensive than Gmod!

yours truly
PixelTail games.

Now that is consumer advice to the masses, an ad to show why gmodtower is being painted in a bad light. its like you making a popular thing (think of it as a viral video) which then your target audience now only names you “that guy that made that video”. then you make, lets say, a parody or remix of it and most likely your audience will throw it back at you like a baby and sausage casserole.

Here I proceed to seal up my letter and give it to you, and in the next five minutes I will most likely be bombarded with spam about tower unite or be carted off to borstal.

as I said before, I am going to go nowhere but hell for this and let the hate comments keep on rolling as I only wanted to share my view thus being a bad decision because, as everyone knows, the internet is bloody awful at respect.

from
a concerned user :worried: :confused: :angry:

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I must admit, I’m not sure I know how to respond to this. Let me be clear: I don’t want to be disrespectful and don’t want to incite any flame wars. I understand where you are coming from. After all, it is never fun to have something you enjoy suddenly taken away or spontaneously require an admission fee.

Personally, I believe the devs will do a fine job with Tower Unite. After all, between their alpha releases, development streams, and random raw images, I can see that they have put a lot of passion into the product so far. Indeed, it is definitely a work in progress, but I believe that the finished product will shine much brighter than GMod Tower ever could. That’s not to say that GMT was ever bad; far from! It is the reason I joined the TU hype train, after all. However, the Source engine has its limits, especially when building a mod of a mod. By moving to Unreal, they will be able to do so much more. As for the memories? Well, we always have old videos and stories, and I’d be surprised if the devs didn’t add an easter egg or two. Honestly, if the final product is as good as promised (and with what has been shown so far, I have faith it will reach that success), then I think the $15 asking price will be very reasonable. I don’t see this as an end to GMT, I see this more as the next step in Tower’s life.

As for if your comment will be removed, that all depends on if the community finds it as spam or not. I know that most of us are rather lenient on flagging posts (at least, I know I am), so only time will tell. I understand that you don’t want GMT to go away. Honestly, we will lose a little bit of the silliness and novelty that comes with random, well known characters running around and playing games. Maybe you don’t see TU quite like I do, and that’s fine. Perhaps you should peruse the forums a bit, and see what we’re all doing. Who knows; maybe you’ll change your mind about TU.

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I understand why people are getting upset, its the end of an age! People have lives on there. Lots of memorys!

In my opinon they should keep GMT on Gmod (with one server) Because

Its a good point. And if you plaster it with ads for Tower Unite, then that could get even more people!

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The old makes way for the new.

Goodbye Server #2, you lived a good life, but you have been deemed Irrelevant, and you will be replaced. Your new purpose will rush in a new Era of Pixeltail Games and Tower Unite.

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I'm not sure if it is even possible for the developers to back out and continue supporting GMT.

They’ve started many fund raising campaigns and even got Tower Unite greenlit. If they back out now, all of the supporters won’t get the game they’ve been promised. Where does all of that money that they raised go to then? Pixeltail Games is a LLC now, so they can do more things than they previously could. They’re turning a mod of a mod into a standalone title, one that will either succeed or fail.

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I love how you’re proclaiming that Tower Unite will fail, even though that’s a baseless claim.

I get you like GMT a lot, but you have to look at the facts: PixelTail Games is looking to become more than just big name in Garry’s Mod; they want to be an actual indie game company.
They won’t get ANYWHERE if they keep supporting GMT instead of focusing on Tower Unite (and future games).

Garry’s Mod is a hunk of garbage for anything large-scale, such as Tower Unite/GMT. They have literally reached the limit with that outdated Source engine.
With Unreal Engine 4, they can stretch their imagination as far as they want, without getting weighed down by an outdated platform like Source.
It will be MILES ahead of GMT in every respect, ranging from actually being playable at a decent latency and framerate, to having a shit load more content than the GMT community could even dream of.

Plus, there is incentive for old GMT players to move to Tower Unite, such as having the total value of your GMT account being converted and moved to Tower Unite. And of course, everyone’s favorite games will still be there, too, such as minigolf, virus, ballrace, etc.

So, yeah, there definitely is a ton of hope for Tower Unite, and you’re honestly just talking out of your ass.

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I don’t quite understand, from what I’ve seen and played Tower Unite is GMT without the restrictions of the source engine and Garry’s Mod. In addition of course to actually let the devs get paid for the fantastic work instead of hoping for donations just to keep the servers running without losing money on their hobby and hopefully full-time job. The enjoyment and memories of GMT is exactly why Tower Unite is so great, I’m happy to give the devs whom I respect and cherish for their hard work all these years a chance to do what they, And I, love. I can understand missing Lobby 1 but the change from GMT to Tower Unite is improving upon their work.

The comparison to Second Life confuses me though. The only similarity I see is that they are both social based games.
I hope as time moves on you’ll enjoy the game just as I have and will.

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I will admit: I definitely get where you’re coming from. You’re probably one of the people who still love GMT and play on it a lot. I don’t blame you. GMT is still somewhat fun. The problem is that the game/engine it’s currently based on is showing its age and can be a lot better, feature/performance-wise.

I’d sorta kinda like it if there was one GMT server that was still up after Tower Unite comes out, but the thing is that’d also have to include the gamemode servers, and I don’t know if the PixelTail guys can host that and the official Tower Unite servers at the same time. (I’m probably wrong on this, though.) Plus, there would still be a bunch of people playing on GMT and complaining about Tower Unite because they either think it isn’t needed or it’s overpriced. Honestly, if only the main lobby server were still up, I know I’d be fine with that, but I know a bunch of other GMT regulars would complain about it, since they had previously free content taken away from them. So honestly, taking down GMT in the end is the best choice. It’s better than having an inferior version of a better game/social experience that’s on a completely different game based on an engine from 2004.

And even in a decade or two when Tower Unite dies, the developers will make it open-source and available for anyone to edit after that, so the game’s legacy can live on with its dedicated fanbase at the time. It’s at least better than all the online-only games that were shut down and can’t be played on again. And even when the game is active, anyone can set up and host their own server. So if you don’t like how the official server looks? Play on a different server with a custom map and models! There’s lots of variety here!

I know you love GMod Tower and it’s sights and sounds, but honestly, it’s time to grow into a new engine. A new start with a standalone game that anyone can pick up and play, without having to download complicated Workshop addons just to play on the server. You probably won’t agree, but that’s my opinion on the matter.

(also, I thought GMod Tower was shutting down in March 2016, not Christmas? Am I right?)

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I think it was stated that GMT will remain open for a week after Tower Unite is launched.

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But

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This is from the FAQ. I assume it’s still planned to happen this way no matter when TU launches.

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Hi concerned user, also known as icebat_gaming47.

First off, I love GMTower. I wouldn’t have poured all the time and effort and love into it if I didn’t. I still play GMTower all the time. I play it with my wife, whom I first met on GMTower. I play it with her and her friends and my friends. I cannot put into words how much it means to me. GMTower lead me on the path to becoming a real game developer. It was the sole reason I went to college for video game development. It is the sole reason I am married, I am happy, and why I love making video games. It’s a HUGE part of my life. I say this, with the hope that you understand where I come from.

GMod is a dead end. I’ve been working on GMod stuff since GMod 9 and I gotta say, I’m tired of it. I’ve had to deal with it breaking, it working wonderfully, and all it’s wonderful limitations. But it’s not just the engine that makes it a dead end or the fact that it’s often broken. It’s the fact that it’s a mod of a game. See, when I put all my work into a mod of a game, I can’t really show that off to people. I can’t have people install it and have fun right away. I have to tell them that my game I’ve been working on is behind 40+ workshop addons (after explaining what workshop is), behind a game/mod (that you have to pay for to play it), and that 90% of the content is just Half-Life 2. Great, that leads me nowhere in life. This is actually really important to me.

My goal in life is to become a wonderful game developer. I can’t do that by behind a mod of a mod of a game.

So, why would we make Tower Unite? As I said previously, GMTower is everything to me. I literally cannot stop thinking about how to improve it. I walk around in shopping malls or hotels and obsess over what I should add to GMTower from them. And with Lobby 2, we did a lot. A lot more than I could have ever imagined. It got me thinking, why? Why would we keep creating this wonderful thing inside of GMod? The answer is simple and always true: the fans. Everyone loved what we did! We were used to GMod, we mastered it all, we figured out the solutions that weren’t always in front of us. Wait a second… we became game developers! But we were trapped. There were things we couldn’t do. I know we could actually do them, but we were constantly being held back by limitations.

We tried making a few games that weren’t related to GMTower as standalone games. There’s at least 5 or 6 games that just didn’t make it. Developers lost interest or the games just sucked. After the failure of one of the standalone games, I would instantly go back to GMTower development. It was my happy place. Soon, I was convinced, we had to take GMTower out of GMod and make it a standalone game. That was the game we had to make!

So we (the developers) mustered up all we could and flew down to meet each other in real life, for most the first time we’ve met in real life. We drafted up a plan. We drafted up a Kickstarter. We picked our brains, we yelled, we stressed over every little detail and word we were going to say. And then we filmed, we edited, we did all that we could to make a trailer for the Kickstarter for the game we’ve always been wanting to make. And… it didn’t get funded.

Disheartened, we stumbled about for a brief moment. Then we heard the fans again. They still wanted what we had. So we did it again. We learned from our mistakes and started another campaign on Indiegogo. Going in this time knowing our fans would back us once again, we were successful.


Whew, so where does that lead us, and what is the point of all of this? The point is: we wouldn’t have done all this for nothing. We are putting literally everything that we can into this project. From the beginning and till the end our goal is to make GMTower a proper game. That means GMTower in all its glory, nothing less, but definitely more.

Yes, GMTower currently works pretty seamlessly. And yes, the alpha of Tower Unite is not ready yet. But you will see it, you will love it, because if you won’t - I won’t. Everyone at PixelTail Games wants to make the game they love.

We aren’t going to take away the memories, we are just transforming them into new memories!

Look, that last line was cheesy, but I really do mean this. I will miss GMTower just as everyone else will. Maybe too much. But, Tower Unite isn’t better than GMTower. It IS GMTower just unshackled from every limitation.

Yours truly and honestly,
Macklin

PS: We’re not going to delete your message, ever.
PPS: It will close down April 2016 when Tower Unite launches. We’re gonna throw a huge party. I hope you’ll be there. I will be.

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That was most undoubtedly the most beautiful thing i’ve ever heard (read) a developer say. I cannot wait for Tower Unite even more knowing how much work and effort you put into the game :smiley:.

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This is an incredible thought that you’ve shared with us and I hope more people than just the forum-goers will see this. I can’t wait to see all of you guys reading this thread at the gmt party too! :smiley:

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