Saving and Loading Creations

Garry's Mod is all about creation, and naturally, you'll want to preserve your masterpieces! Whether it's an intricate contraption, a sprawling base, or a perfectly posed scene, saving and loading your work is fundamental to the GMod experience. This guide will walk you through the various methods to ensure your creations are never lost.

Saving Your Work (Dupes and Saves)

Garry's Mod offers two primary methods for saving your creations: Dupes and Saves. Understanding the difference is key to choosing the right option for your needs.

Saving a Dupe (Duplicator)
A Dupe is a snapshot of a specific selection of props, entities, and their physics constraints. It's ideal for saving individual contraptions, vehicles, or smaller builds that you might want to spawn repeatedly or share with others.
- Accessing the Duplicator:
  Open your spawn menu by holding down Q. Navigate to the Tools tab, then locate and click on the Duplicator tool. This will equip it.
- Selecting Your Creation:
  With the Duplicator equipped, you have two primary selection modes:
  - Single Prop Selection: Left-click on individual props to add them to your selection. They will highlight in blue.
  - Area Selection: Hold down Shift and left-click and drag to draw a box around multiple props. All props within the box will be selected.
  - Deselecting: Right-click on a selected prop to remove it from your current selection.
  Ensure all components of your creation are selected. Pay close attention to any props that might be subtly connected or parented.
- Saving the Dupe:
  Once your creation is fully selected, press R (the reload key by default) to open the Duplicator's save menu. A text box will appear. Enter a descriptive name for your dupe (e.g., "Flying Car V2," "Small Base," "Crane Mechanism"). Click Save.
- Locating Your Saved Dupes:
  Your saved dupes can be found in the spawn menu (Q) under the Dupes tab. They are organized by the name you gave them. You can also find them in the Legacy Dupes tab if you've been playing for a while.
Saving a Save (Game Save)
A "Save" in Garry's Mod is a complete snapshot of your entire map, including all spawned props, entities, NPCs, and their states. This is perfect for saving large-scale builds, intricate scenes, or the progress of a long building session.
- Accessing the Save Menu:
  Press Escape to open the main game menu. Click on the Save Game option.
- Creating a New Save:
  In the Save Game menu, you'll see a list of existing saves. To create a new one, type a name into the "Save Name" text box at the bottom (e.g., "My Epic Base," "City Build Day 3," "RP Scene"). Click the Save button next to the text box.
- Overwriting Existing Saves:
  If you want to update an existing save, simply select it from the list and click the Save button. Be careful, as this will permanently overwrite the previous version of that save.

Loading Your Creations

Once you've saved your work, loading it back into a game session is straightforward.

Loading a Dupe:
- Open Spawn Menu: Hold down Q to open your spawn menu.
- Navigate to Dupes: Click on the Dupes tab.
- Select and Spawn: Browse through your saved dupes. Left-click on the dupe you wish to spawn. It will appear as a ghostly blue outline in front of you. Left-click again to place it in the world.
- Troubleshooting Dupe Placement: If a dupe fails to spawn correctly or appears red, it often means there isn't enough clear space for it, or some required addons are missing. Try moving to a more open area or checking your subscribed workshop content.
Loading a Save:
- Open Main Menu: Press Escape to open the main game menu.
- Click Load Game: Select the Load Game option.
- Choose Your Save: From the list of saved games, select the one you wish to load.
- Load: Click the Load button. The map will reload with all the props and entities exactly as they were when you saved.
- Important Note: Loading a save will restart the entire map, clearing anything currently in the world that wasn't part of the save. Ensure you've saved any current work before loading a different game save.

Managing Your Files

For advanced users or those experiencing issues, knowing where Garry's Mod stores these files can be helpful:

Dupes: Your custom dupes are typically stored in Steam\steamapps\common\GarrysMod\garrysmod\data\dupes. Each dupe is a separate file with a .dupe extension.
Saves: Game saves are found in Steam\steamapps\common\GarrysMod\garrysmod\saves. Each save is a folder containing various files that reconstruct the map state.

Understanding these locations can assist with manual backup, sharing files directly, or troubleshooting corrupted saves.