Because there are some questions that have just been asked too frequently.

You must be new to the Gmod workshop. Or else just really stubborn. But let me break it down for you; Garry's Mod started as a mod of Half-Life 2 created by Garry Newman, hence its name. As such, its base content included in the game is from Half-Life 2, which is set in an Eastern European setting. As such, all the assets from it are based in that sort of culture. It kind of limits what kind of aesthetics you can do in making a map. Counter-Strike: Source, on the other hand, is set in a myriad of locations, and as such provides a much more diverse pool of assets for use in maps. A lot of other maps on the Gmod workshop take advantage of CS:S assets to enhance their quality, and it is very much worth the $20 dollars the game usually costs to have so many more Garry's Mod maps accessible to you. Take it from me; I've never even played my copy of CS:S that I bought for Garry's Mod. I pretty much only have it for the content, and I'm not complaining here down the line. Also, for those of you to whom it may apply, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive does not count. It has to be Counter-Strike: Source.

Unless you want half the props and textures in the map to go kaput and be replaced with purple checkers and error signs, then no. CS:S assets make up at the very least 47% of the map's content, and trying to remove involvement of CS:S would require a lot of reworking, with a lot of things present in the map being removed and thus downgrading the authenticity of the experience. Though, if you were to make your own Mystery Shack map that did not require CS:S, I encourage you to try. We need more good mappers here, and you could be one of them if you tried properly. Give it your all! Maybe you could even surpass my work here. I don't doubt it.

This workshop addon is three years old now, at the time I add this question to the FAQ. Was posted in 2015. I don't have the time to be going back to this map and constantly modifying certain aspects of it due to a fresh complaint from a newbie. But hey, aside from my suggestion in the previous answer of making another, separate Mystery Shack that does not require CS:S, you could also make your own CS:S content pack for the map! Novelty idea, right? If you're one of the fortunate individuals to already have CS:S, you could do that! I'll even give you the benefit of the doubt and provide the content list in another discussion post. At the time of writing this, I am not yet able to insert this list, but I'll at least make the Discussion post.

This has been asked enough recently to the point of me adding this question to the FAQ; yes, this map is listed as a roleplay map, and yes, one can theoretically roleplay in it from that. But, the thing is, with roleplay maps, typically it would be more correct, in the case of a heavily themed map such as this, for any players visiting to have thoroughly experienced the base content before playing anything based on said base content. Ergo, watch Gravity Falls before playing this map. Ethically, it just isn't right if you don't know anything about the source content of a map before playing it; you don't go into a Minecraft map not ever having played or seen Minecraft, you don't enter a map that's a port of a classic video game without ever having experienced that classic video game in any way, shape or form. It just ain't right. While it shouldn't be an obligation, as some of you have said, I am making it an obligation here. Especially because the map contains massive spoilers for Season 2, and if you were planning on getting into Gravity Falls anyways, then you'd have all of said spoilers dropped on you by playing this map first. This map came from a watching a lot of Gravity Falls and becoming familiarized with the Mystery Shack, and so, any visiting players should respect that in having experienced enough of the show as well to know these locales. My recommendation is from Season 1 Episode 7 to Season 2 Episode 12. If you haven't seen anything in that range, then please, do leave the premises until you have done so in any possible way you can manage. Even not-entirely-legal ways, if it comes to it. (It's probably not good that I'm endorsing that, but, any way you can find, man.) And don't just come here as someone who's never seen/heard of the show who's just curious about the map. Because, with something as heavily themed as this, you're not going to learn all the essential details about the show from the map, and conversely, the map will massively spoil you on details from the later episodes if you play it beforehand. It's best to come prepared and in-the-know than to come unprepared and knowing nothing. Plus, you also don't have to ask as many questions, because if you'd watched the show you'd be able to come up with the correct answers yourself. (I saw one guy mistake the storage cellar where the wax statues were found as the underground lab, even though it looks nothing like it. What the heck, man?)

It may just be a game, but I'm the one who made this map, I'm the one that did all the work so that you could play here. I did all the dirty work, and I should at least get some respect for that. What effort did you pull for this? You just clicked a big, green subscribe button. And some of you bring back up that which I have declared we do not discuss anymore, on a truce. And some of you still don't give me any respect for MY efforts. Who's really the bad guy, here? Just, give respect and you'll get respect back. Simple as that.

The majority of the shack-specific textures, like the MYSTERY SHACK signage and things like some of the carpets, I made myself using Paint .NET. A few textures came from Google Images, like the roof shingles and one of the posters next to Mabel's bed. The rift inside the Mindscape Dimension was edited from a screencap of the show, where I vector-traced the edge of the rift in Inkscape and cropped the inside of the rift from the original screenshot.

If you're a true Gravity Falls fan, you can figure out what cipher each message uses, and how to decipher it. If you can't figure it out, ask Reddit or something. Try using the Gravity Falls wikia to help translate them if you haven't already.

That's not a question, but I appreciate your appreciation.

No, main maintenance to this map has been discontinued. The only maintenance it still gets is adding further notifications for those who have trouble reading the description and discussion posts thoroughly for the answers to their questions. Well, look at what you've done now, there's now a FAQ on here.

No, sorry. I only made a map of the shack because with how it appears in every episode except for one, I became very familiar with the interior layout. Trying to map out the whole town of Gravity Falls is a whole 'nother story.

I'm a mapper, not a modeller. Nor do I have any modelling experience. I'm not the person to ask for models, believe me. I'm really the last person you'd ask, because I've had a history of just making things out of brushes in maps.

The most specific hints I will give are in the following linked discussion post. You have to run the text in there through a Caesar cipher translator to read it; the translated text are slightly cryptic riddles that a good amount of people have figured out already. There are 21 pages total, since they come from the 20 episodes of Season 2, with the finale episode containing 2 pages over its double-length runtime.

http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/discussion/580300902/392183857624736682/

I see you haven't read the description or the other discussion posts thoroughly enough. Well, here's my most specific answer so that you can't possibly still be confused; as everywhere here dictates, there is a switch that unlocks the vending machine. It is a red dial. If you've played Half-Life 2, it's the same switch model as the one used to activate the propane traps in Ravenholm. Red dial switch, the turn-y kind of switch. As for the location of the switch, as the areas accessed through the vending machine closely relate to Ford Pines, the location of the switch (DIAL) must be in another room closely pertaining to Ford Pines. And if you don't know which rooms pertain to Ford Pines, then go back and watch Season 2 all the way through again, because you weren't paying enough attention.

And if you still need further hints, how about this; imagine you were physically in this map playing hide and seek with a friend. Think of places your friend could hide, inside the shack, on the first floor, realistically. Look in those kinds of places. And if you still need another hint? Well, you're kind of backing yourself into a corner at this point.

Nyeh! What fun would there be if you didn't try out the puzzles first?! I love making puzzles, which is why I had started my mapping "career" with Portal 2 back in 2011. It's why I still make Portal 2 maps, albeit not for the Steam Workshop anymore. I'm setting down puzzles for the community, and a good number of you have figured out my puzzles or else blindly knocked about until you found the solution anyways. Puzzles are only fun if you try them out first before giving up.

Good GLaD man, calm down! No need to get so frustrated, this isn't Counter-Strike! I added the secondary lock to the vending machine as an additional security measure, for reasons I shall not elaborate on if you don't already know the reason. But still, the dial needed to unlock the vending machine is not all that hidden, it's not too hard to find it if you search for it with common sense. I could have been a jerk and hid it completely out of sight or in some location you needed noclip to reach, but no. It can be visually seen normally, and the player only needs to walk about to find it. I've already narrowed down where it could be by saying that it's inside on the first floor, in a room pertaining to Ford Pines. There are only so many rooms that pertain to him, only a few if you'd actually paid attention to what happened in the show. So drop it with the rage already and calm down.

Because really, if you're going to rage because the vendo didn't give you your popato chisps right away, then you might have a problem, and should probably spend some time outside or with family before returning to play PC games.

That issue is long over now, but the main gist is, I dislike the videos they made on my map a lot. There's a locked discussion post on here that gives a CinemaSins-styled appraisal of the videos, but in short, the most main reason for my disliking is that they used the map with little actual knowledge of the show. At most, they knew of Dipper, the young male protagonist, though at the same time butchering the kind of role he actually played, they sort of knew about Mabel, the young female protagonist (they kept calling her Maple, which is incorrect unless after that one maple syrup-chugging contest she had with Dipper she became the Queen of Maple Syrup, which I kind of doubt) and didn't know quite as much about her, and then, they vaguely knew about Bill Cipher, or as far as they knew who he was, the Illuminati. (I mean, you could say Bill IS the Illuminati, as those jokes could likely have been a part of his creation, but that's not the entirety of the character, as there is so much more to him.)

There is so much more to the show they could be using in their plays of the map to enhance the quality of their shenanigans, but with their actual lackluster knowledge, their shenanigans just fall short of being proper good. While I dislike them for that, I still have full confidence that their videos on the map could have been better if they had actually watched more of the show prior to making the videos; they didn't even know of or acknowledge conman Grunkle Stan, manchild maintenance man Soos Ramirez, axe-wielding redhead Wendy Corduroy, diabolical magician child Gideon Gleeful, and so much more. So much potential lost by having just about no knowledge about the show. Again, I have full confidence that their videos could have been Not As Bad if they had watched more of the show.

Now, you may be saying to me, "Why are you obsessing about this?" "So what if they didn't watch the show before playing the map?" "You're a childish fool for having done what you did, that is if I know what you did" Well, for that first question, imagine the age-old classic case of being a Star Trek or Star Wars fan, and having some person who knows little of the franchise making obvious mistakes in perception. Your inner nerd would become irritated at them making such mistakes. That's basically the answer for that. The second question? Well, why would you enter a map based on a cartoon if you barely knew about the cartoon in question in the first place? It's like entering Harry Potter roleplay when the only thing you know is the three main protagonists' names. You won't actually know anything about the story, and it most likely will result in lots of errors made when you try to be part of the story at hand. As for the last question? Well, it wasn't a question, but if you know what I did, I had full right to do what I did as the creator of this map. Nobody had the right to complain to me about it; I'm the one who spent weeks on end developing the map to be accurate as can be to the show; you did nothing more than click a green + Subscribe button and launch Garry's Mod, and in the case of some of you, complain about missing textures that for the most part were there because you ignored the prerequisite of needing Counter-Strike: Source installed.

All in all, in summary, TL;DR, the crew of VenT made a fool of themselves from their lack of proper knowledge of the franchise they had been getting themselves into. If they were proper fans, they would have seen a lot more episodes than the few it seemed they had actually seen before playing the map. Such actions can be typical of YouTube channels that do nothing but plead for attention and care not for the quality of what they produce. But, I won't get into that. That's a whole 'nother bog to cross that I won't do.

ADDITIVE NOTE: I'd just like to point out an extra misconception here, with the advent of Ultiman's voiding of Waterloo High (Day Version); the issue at hand is not with people making videos of the map which is posted to this public workshop space, but rather, VenturianTale making videos of the map. Them in particular. We don't particularly mind any other peoples' videos of our maps; it's just the crew of VenT that are the trouble children. All right? Just thought I'd clear that up.

SECONDARY ADDITIVE NOTE: And if you're still missing the big picture here, here's something else that's wrong with the crew of VenT; they're terrible YouTubers. Now, before we get a flame war or anything started, let me say here; at the very least, a good YouTuber has an even balance between their calm moments and their crazy moments, and they pay at least some good attention to the community around them. VenT does not have these qualities; quite a lot of the time one of them is making some unbearable noise with their mouths, with little regard to those who care for the state of their ears, and the only thing they ever seem to pay attention to from the community around them is people demanding them to "Do X with Y!" and they never care about the people who make the content they use for their videos, like for instance, Garry's Mod addon creators. *nudge nudge* Believe me, I tried to peacefully deal it out with them when the incident happened, and they paid absolutely no attention to me whatsoever. When peace doesn't work, other means will have to be used instead.

And if they return and disregard the sign I left in front of the Gift Shop entrance, then I'm going to add a quiz to the map that the player is required to solve to access it. Because, whether or not you legit know the answers, even if you cheese it you'll be learning about the show.please refer to the next section.

Well, it's been a long time since their last visit, and as far as I'm aware, they aren't going to return, ever. What am I going to do if they do end up returning? Well...nothing, really. It's all on them now. Morality test. If they're good people, they will acknowledge what happened, at least knowing through the sign that's still on the gift shop porch, and if they apologize, then all will be good. Because, even if someone in their position truly believes they did no wrong, they could at least apologize out of keeping the resolution to the past issue peaceful. If they decide to come back and don't apologize, well, then, that's still on them. At this point I won't do anything against them. It's been too long for me to continue standing over this map like Nintendo does over their personal properties. So, it's completely down to the morality test, and either way it goes, I won't do anything in response. Except perhaps just look disapprovingly at the video. I ain't gonna obsess over it; I have other things to do with my life. As should the rest of you, as choosing to spend all your life time continuing to fuss over this level for a sandbox computer game is really not the way to go. Just let it be, and we can all walk way from this peacefully. I know that's a lot to ask for on the internet, but do you really want to keep fighting about a long forgone issue?

And if you answered 'yes' to that, then please, leave and reconsider your life choices.

- The message on the back of the notice board outside the giftshop teaches us all a very valuable lesson.
- The skulls in the gift shop have no physics data, because I ripped them from MvM over in Team Fortress 2. Not meant to be physics props, so they don't have physics data.
- The door separating the gift shop from the living room is a touch-to-open door. Noting that as well because people seem to have trouble comprehending that sometimes.
- The stairs up to the attic do provide limited headspace, but it was a hassle making them fit into the allotted space, so, it is what it is.
- The cellar under the room with the fireplace is the room where the wax statues were found in Headhunters. I moved the room down there due to layout space issues.
- Yes, the toilets flush. rp_rockford had flushing toilets, so why can't rp_mysteryshack?
- Stan's office is technically where a bathroom should be via Double Dipper, but then, according to Dreamscaperers it should share a wall with the living room. Cartoon inconsistencies.
- Also with Stan's office, his shelf will always be checkers for you if you don't have CS:S installed. I have the materials for it packed in, so if it still doesn't work, it's a clientside issue.
- For those who aren't aware, all of the museum exhibits (bar the horse riding a horse) are things from Half-Life 2. If you play Garry's Mod then you should really know the story of HL2.
- Mirrors in the Source Engine are fickle, so that's why the mirror in the attic bedroom glitches from certain angles. It's expensive to render a reflection of the world.
- The switch used to open the vending machine is called a dial. It's the spinny round knob kind of switch, you also see that sort of dial on typical combination locks, stoves, and those fancy modern house thermostats.
- The basement elevator takes a second to initiate movement after being activated, keep your pants on.
- Ford's study does have a light switch. I assure you that there's one there.
- The three dials found in the lab, contrary to what one might believe their purpose to be having watched Not What He Seems, are just a cumulative lock for the door into the portal room. I dunno what you'd use that for, but that's what that is.
- The lever can still probably crash your game if fondled inappropriately, and I am no closer to finding out why than I was several months ago. Nobody has provided any helpful advice, either, so it stays as it is until a solution is found.
- The dimension found through the portal is the mindscape realm that Ford interacted with Bill in when they were still tentative "allies."

ADVENTURE!