[Vinesauce] Vinny - Gmod Liminal Space Maps #1 

I’m one of those weirdos that would love to be alone in those places lol

I think a lot of retail and business spaces are almost intentionally like this, either because of extreme cheapness and a weird semi-standardized cookie-cutter construction, or they literally want people shuffling through just quickly enough that they're looking at things but not so long that other customers can't make their way through, too, so they're just kinda quick to pay and get out too.

I like liminal spaces for how comfy they look

I like liminal spaces for how comfy they look

@@Aeduo That honestly describes the concept really well. You don't want people to be completely immersed and never stop looking at your commercial space, you want it to move them and draw them towards wanting to purchase. Which inevitably leads to them being uncomfortable if it remains for too long.

There's a game called NaissanceE, which is free and it's the closest thing there is to what you ask for, except that there is no dialogue.

I don't know if it helps, but there's this anime named Blame! That kinda uses these empty spaces to give you unease

Me and my friends are writing a book rn, and at one point the characters are in a place called the great indoors where it’s miles and miles of building and room smushed together. It’s practically just liminal space after liminal space. Can’t wait to write that part

Search for The Librarian on youtube. He goes through several maps a lot slower and in VR. it really changes the dynamic.

situationist reference in username? I feel that fits in very well here lol

Here's everything I know about The End library, for your reading pleasure: - The library was originally attached to a larger building, so the End sign was basically an entrance sign for those walking through the main building. - As the library/bookstore was closing down, its workers decided to rearrange the sign as a joke. - If I'm remembering correctly, one of said workers (or a worker's friend) took the original photo. This was clarrified in a comment on one of SolarSand's videos on liminal spaces. (He may have an origin video on the photo as well). - The photo gained traction as a liminal space because of how vaguely threatening the sign looked despite its innocuous intentions, elevating it above many other liminal space photos for the extra element. - The photo was then adopted into the lore of The Backrooms, most likely because no one could resist the cruel temptation of adding false ends into an "endless" series of levels. Bonus: Not all liminal spaces in the first map are a part of The Backrooms, but many are similar enough to feel familiar and the Backrooms certainly source a lot of ideas from Liminal Space image collections. This is probably why you couldn't pinpoint if it was a Backrooms reference or not - it kinda is and kinda isn't. It's simply a fully moddled highlight reel of the most popular liminal space photos mixed into one map.

@@conspiracypanda1200 Damn, good to know, thanks for the info

Definition of liminal spaces is really subjective and i'm happy to see you have the same vision of that concept ;)

Now, if you put soldiers in the map with guns. It just became a surreal close-quarters combat map.

@@MatthewT394 I like the idea of an FPS with all the maps being liminal spaces, imagine a GM_Liminal save where you use the parkour mod and CW 2.0 to like, jump around the grocery store section to take cover behind shelves but as like a full game, lots of potential with that concept.

@@plasmaxander912 i love doing that shit

​@@plasmaxander912 The Shadgrimgrvy trilogy of maps (Paranoia, Insomnia, and Hypnophobia) are probably my favorite Garry's Mod maps that are close to what you're asking for. They're more outright surreal than liminal spaces usually are but they're sets of beautifully constructed combat arenas with some of the best usages of default Half Life 2 assets I've ever seen.

I generally agree, I think part of the charm of liminal spaces is that you can't really put a finger on *why* it unsettles you, by all rights there's nothing *really* scary about them, they're just, unnerving. That said, I would definitely enjoy some creepy little, very subtle things to find in maps like these. Make it especially worth exploring. EDIT: That mini playground at around an hour in is a perfect example of what I mean, holy fuck.

Oh please tell me he does more than one map

First thing a human being will try to do in an unfamiliar environment

He could just order takeout, no need to look for food. Silly.

And 31 seconds

“Vinny’s hungry”

it gave me chills tbh

Imagine it just playing once every few minutes over a loudspeaker in an abandoned building

Would be unsettling yet funny if the message continued to persist no matter what you did.

@@Vekette i hate the idea of that happening irl if not for the fact that it mentions playing something

@@GigglebunsUV Imagine playing Garry's Mod while walking around an abandoned building in real-life and every few minutes a voice says "You’re playing on Garry’s Mod, enjoy your stay!" over the building's loudspeakers.

GM_Construct is one hell of a creepy map Thats why TONS and i mean TONS of early gmod "rumors" and "myths" is located on that map Love the painwheel pfp btw

Real, I never liked going inside that building

Worse would be finding a pistol with half a magazine, you can't see any spent shells near where you found it either. And it's warm when you pick it up.

@@mycocodog47 At that point, I'd probably believe I'm in some sort of unknown experiment.

No. even worse. A mag with 1 bullet. The implication is a bit terrifying.

"thank god!" And blow my brains out

it's sort of the concept behind the backrooms wiki.

there was a few he missed like that, like one around 38:02

The hotel map has a few shadow figures hidden inside of it.

@@LolaTheGardevoir it's weird not seeing you in a mother 3 or earthbound video Hi

@@LolaTheGardevoir hey you're one of my favourite commenters on youtube, I always see you in Mother or Yume Nikki OST

@@cabecinha4987 I also comment on LSD Dream Emulator and Space Funeral but I’m honestly surprised people find me as one of their favorite commenters

This. Also the fact some spaces can feel familiar. Sometimes you can have an eerie feeling simply walking around your house in the dark. That's how it is for me anyways

another thing what makes a liminal space so creepy is that you're not meant to be in them for a long time. you enter an airport or a parking garage for the sole purpose of going somewhere else. then being *stuck* in a place that wasn't designed for any human to remain there, but rather be part of a consistent design formula to funnel people from one place to the next... is eerie!

A bunch of them looks like they're supposed to be some filming locations from a spooky movie except the ghost/murderer/devil/etc. just isn't there.. Not even the camera man, director, actors. Not a single soul. Like you're just revisiting the project for nostalgically but also don't remember it at all at the same time. It's just that weird.

The fact that it's not abandoned, it's still open and being maintained. The lights are still working, just nobody's there anymore.

Old games in general are a _goldmine_ for this sort of thing. It's the reason I always found Super Mario 64 eerie as a kid, and I still can, when I play that game alone at night. It's not so bad when you're outside the castle; the sound of the butterflies, the birds, the ocean, the waterfall, etc. make you feel not alone in a way that's pleasant and calming, but inside of the castle there's absolutely _nobody._ Yes, there's the Toads, but they don't really help because they're these weird 'specters' that fade away the farther you are from them, and we learn from dialogue that's because they are actually trapped in the walls and what we see are their 'projections' of themselves to communicate to Mario. This is made even creepier by the name of that bombastic, grandiose music playing throughout the castle (which by itself adds to the liminal space factor, like you'd need a whole-ass orchestra to play this music but there it is, just playing throughout the _entire_ castle), the name of the song is "Inside the Castle Walls," which can either refer to Mario walking through the castle or, more creepily, the Toads and Peach trapped in the walls. Not to mention Wet-Dry World, which is liminal space incarnate. I mean, it's definitely left an impression on me, that's actually why I like it; it's solidified itself as my favorite SM64 level. Just this big ol' underwater city looming above you, and this abandoned town underground, and there are just puzzles everywhere for some reason. A lot of people made fun of the SM64 "secrets" last year, like the Wario Apparition and the creepy 1995/07/29 (DO NOT RESEARCH) stuff, but I fucking loved that shit. Not just as a kid who grew up playing SM64 and found it to be downright eerie at points, but also as someone who grew up on the internet _loving_ stuff such as going through RU-vid and finding videos about Polybius, Ben Drowned, Herobrine, the Luigi's Mansion phone room thing, and all these other weird internet gaming "ghost stories." A lot of it was obviously dumb, such as Herobrine and the Luigi's Mansion shadow, but it's just _fun_ to look at it through the eyes of, like, a kid who doesn't know any better.

Me too

Ever had dreams of large places like water parks of malls that go on forever or you cant find the exit to?

@@irabbit_ meaty or WATCHER ~

I think it's cause a place that's mostly submerged in water is inherently liminal in a sense. As a human you're not really supposed to constantly be in water, so a place that's an endless standing pool is just. Not comfortable.

@@DeaconPain The bad/nightmare version of this is endless giant dark public washroom that has no exit that has randomly placed sinks, urinals and toilet stalls. Just the plumbing and logistics of a place like that sounds scary enough lol

I am so incredibly intrigued by the premise of this movie, sucks that it may be lost media at this point. :(

Just dropping a comment here so I can be notified if anybody finds it. This sounds like a really interesting movie.

I'll check the Lost Media Wiki to see if anything strikes a bell. You might wanna make a post on the forums or their Discord as well.

b

@@rustypatriot4335 b

Huh, it is you. Thanks for capturing a space capable of causing so much unease.

Your picture has contributed so much to represent liminal space. Its one of the better ones I’ve seen really and I hope to actually go to that hotel in person. Thanks for writing this.

I think I once described it as, its kinda like what you'd think a building on the moon would look like. Like a lunar city would have a hotel that looks like that.

I believe you. It's a great photograph

Bruh, I just watched Skinamarink, saw this comment, checked your channel and found out you made that Skinamarink shitpost I watched not even an hour prior. What a small world we live in sometimes, makes me wanna run full tilt at a wall in awe.

I also had weird pool dreams as a kid, but one where it was dark inside and it was a really nasty pool, yet my family always wanted to go there. This was a reoccurring dream and every time there was this weird "portal" that I would get sucked into every time in the dream and could never escape. Awful dreams lol

I had similar dreams, in mine the tiles were green. The roof was tiled and very low and there was a little square sauna in the middle of a giant knee high pool that had 3 godlike beings in it. I’d jump out the sauna when I woke up. This is weird but I used to think that the dream was something I saw before I was born

There's just some... specific vibe that pools give to any space like it's a relaxation spot, amidst the weird aura these spaces give

i had very very similar dreams, usually focused around an abandoned, decrepit location, with some sort of foreign body of water, and for whatever reason the water specifically gave me such a strange feeling

did u astral project into the backrooms as a kid or something

unfortunately you're wrong there. there is a purpose, you just never factored into it. that's what's so disturbing about the backrooms. you're not supposed to be here

@@Biodeamon ??? im not sure what you're on about, that's not what a liminal space is at all, and that's especially strange because the definition of a liminal space is actually quite broad, but not really that. it is a transition. a hallway or a door connecting two rooms. or a span of time a place is empty between uses. as an extension of that second one, a room that is meant to be generic where its purpose is to be used as the user sees fit (like, a rentable space, for example for conventions). hence why a purpose for liminal spaces is often quite vague and hard to pinpoint, because they often dont have a specific purpose, they are just a space. and one that is not being used, or is in a period between usage. there isnt exactly anything WRONG with a liminal space out-right, and that is what the real deal is. nothing is actually wrong, but there is no context to understand, so our mind runs wild with ideas. in the case of the Backrooms, its an area that is *only* Liminal spaces. All places not being used, or all places are just connections between other places. all hallways and doors, connecting no rooms.

@@Templarfreak basically to put it way more simply, it’s places between locations, ones not really intended to lingered in especially, like the empty areas in malls that usually have the lights low for some reason.

@@evandotson6975 Chefs kiss summery. Whenever I walk through those "Mall Halls" just as you described, I genuinely feel like that walkway could lead anywhere, literally so vague your imagination runs wild in there. I always think of a zombie apocalypse breaking out for some reason. It might just be the fact a lot of zombie movies use liminal spaces as their settings, but also because you subconsciously don't want to be trapped in a space without any use and think of the worst case scenarios, like Vinny did in these maps.

Transitory places.

So wait, is it from EATEOT or AEBBTW?

I had a feeling it was from EATOET but I couldn't remember which one it was. Thanks.

you're not wrong to say it's an edit but I find it a bit disingenuous to just call sampling, chopping, and screwing an "edit." I guess it's the baggage "edit" has in this context combined with the debated validity of sampling in music?

@@YokaiDisorder It is from "Everywhere at the End of Time". I apologize for not originally specifying this and have edited my original comment to do such. Thank you for wondering!

@@thag_simmons I do understand what you mean, and I apologize if my use of the word "edited" implied any sort of discrediting or negative connotation towards The Caretaker. That was not my intention, as I really respect his work and have even made a tribute piece of my own. I have edited my original comment to provide an explanation towards what I meant by that word. Thank you for the comment!

Myst has a similar feeling at times, also another classic, I recommend the original point and click, the remake loses a bit of the charm of the original rendera

I noticed it lol

@@Evaisa 22:49 on the left side of the screen when he looks up you see a figure behind the pillar/where the blood spot now is

@@ProfessorSnack wow good eye, it's there for a fraction of a second

There are couple more spooks and a little secret if you break the record player.

My brain caught onto something suspicious being there at first but it was so short and Vinny was going so fast that I just *didn't care* and that absolutely tickles me knowing there was indeed a spook

A really good way I've heard liminal spaces described is they're oftentimes places that look like they were designed FOR humans, but not BY humans

That's just modern and contemporary architecture bro

The Beginners Guide, made by one of the Parable designers, is another good example of this (also in the Source engine)

@@vacuumboots The Beginner's Guide goes crazy, super underrated game with a fantastic subtext.

ooooh like playing on all the long-dead half-life deathmatch servers. most of them are completely empty or have a few bots in them and nothing else. definitely very eerie

Oh my, someone still remember about worlds. It was very long time since I last heard about 'em.

@@awfulpancakes ah man you just gave me flashbacks to playing Half Life 2 death match as a kid, despite the servers being empty

@@zeallust8542 oh yeah, I was mainly talking about the original half life's deathmatch mode but half life 2 deathmatch is also pretty eerie

@@awfulpancakes fr its like your exploring old ruins of a bygone era.

yeah they're spaces that are meant to be "moved thru". So you get the emotional anticipation of things moving thru there, but you're by yourself. Your brain kinda tricks you into feeling like you aren't actually alone there. I feel like it probably wouldn't work on people or young kids who haven't experienced large spaces, tho, because it kinda relies on triggering that memory.

I think that 'liminal space' to most people has evolved from being things like hallways and airports to any spaces that tickle the uncanny valley.

Yes this, but also the concept that the *place itself* is in the process of shifting between states, e.g. an old building with no furniture as it's been abandoned, and will eventually be used for something else, or be destroyed

I think the factor that there's usually people is just as important as the architecture itself. Like an empty school at night

I was switching windows when it happened, thought it was just a result of that. Went back and NOPE

i came just to post that! i was like WTF was that a bug? rewinded and just like Audixas... NOPE!

.

I thought I caught a thing or two when watching!

More than one pair of steps at 25:00

liminal spaces aren't all just freaky and terrifying, sometimes it does just feel like that, like you're trying to piece together a puzzle and understand what a given liminal space _is_ :D

Exactly what came to my mind when I saw the first map. It looks like places you'd remember from a half-forgotten dream.

Its a ulib, ulx thing lol. XGUI, lets you turn the adverts off.

god this makes me wanna play project zomboid again, or like try to find a first person version of it. a backrooms survival game or a survival game with liminal spaces would be a game i play for hours

@@cr1msonriver 7 days to die?

And then there's that vent that leads to a secret room where someone presumably lived in before you got there. And that'll leave you wondering what happened to that person? Did they find a way to escape and how? Or did something else happen to them?

that could be an episode of the twilight zone lol

Something about the Source engine has an unnerving atmosphere to it

@@TheHeavyModd it feels dystopian and totalitarian, with a somehow far future sci fi with a Russian late 60s/80s Eastern Bloc aesthetic

@@nickm5419 Yeah, I totally get what you mean! The colors and graphics give themselves well to a bleak, oppressive world. Source works very well with functionalist/brutalist architecture.

I'd recommend a channel called "The Librarian". He does various horror/spooky related stuff, including tons of spooky Gmod map exploration videos, one of my favorites being his rp/Asheville video.

You are right. I've created those rooms in gm_liminal_space with carpets and etc. Here, in Belarus (which is close to Russia you know) we would not place carpets in that way. It seems to be weird for us, because we think that we will need to spend more money and time to just clean that thing all the time someone goes on with shoes

Everything about North Korea is scary

@@crystalalumina That country is like a horror relic from the past but instead it exists in the damn present.

I KNOW HE WALKED INTO THE BATHROOM AND I JUMPED

at 22:51 you can see someone there, behind the pillar

also figures randomly appearing for a few frames, like at 38:01

now I feel bad. really though, I only speak one language and I'm sure if I spoke another this is better than I would be able to do

This may be the case, but I think there's value in going out of technical exactness and expanding out. Maybe to call a lot of these derivative genres liminal spaces is incorrect but it falls under a similar umbrella and people may lack the words to describe it.

Unrealistic geometry or architecture takes me out of it, it just becomes a cool fun house, but I lose the liminal feel. Just me, but eh, i just want an abandoned facility with ambiance

@@Aeduo I’d just use the word Escherian for impossible spaces, liminal means specifically that it’s transient.

I like to think he just ignored it

Thats what I was thinking a bit. They're eerie, but nostalgic. I almost want to keep going in them to uncover something I've forgotten or lost. Maybe its that idea that theres something missing (be it the people, or larger details than just the bare minimum needed to identify a kind of space) and the sense of curiosity to be satiated that lends itself to people being drawn back to these spaces, despite the seeming possibility of a 'threat'. Personally i think the liminal spaces thing is super interesting because of this and as an artist i almost want to explore my own version of it in some pieces, yknow?

I love to create illogical stuff to expect which questions people will ask, and, what is suprising, people are not asking questions as much as i do

The most unsettling thing about Limmynal Spaces is all the purple burglar alarms

the backrooms may seem to you a meme but it's way closer to a creepypasta, among the best of the best imo

@@oscarcetee a meme doesn't always mean a joke, yknow. it means it's a cultural thing, and it definitely became a part of internet culture.

Pretty sure the backrooms were originally based off / built around the concept of liminal spaces. The original /x/ (I think it was /x/) 4chan thread where it all came about used that scummy "yellow office space but creepy" image, the one that is now most well known as "the backrooms" image

I really liked the concept of "the backrooms" having "levels" per say when it was first starting out (there were just like 10 in total), but now it feels more like it's trying to be its own SCP wiki with tons of entries when I personally feel there's nowhere near as much material to be made from such a narrow concept. Keep in mind that I am referring to the Official Backrooms Wikidot site. There are still good ones being made though, it just feels like the policing of the content is a lot less strict compared to the SCP wiki, so it tends to get a lot more low-effort content in comparison that imo hinders the effect that the backrooms is trying to go for.

@@tacothedank Yeah liminal spaces and the backrooms have always been highly correlated in my mind's eye. Some other good examples are PT and Control. Of course Control is only liminal sometimes, and for the rest things are very overtly unnatural.

They would also make ok RP maps, but I think it would be better for TTT.

@@trulyinfamous What kind of rp?

Extreme raid progression

huh nexpo has a new video? his last one appears to be a month old are you talking about that?

coincidentally I think you mean

I love your comment! I totally agree with you, Liminal Space is not always a sense of unease, there's also something nostalgic, amiable like a distant memory about them. Or even a third aspect: spaces that feel almost dreamlike, some liminal spaces are very like our dreams too. And for dead spaces, like dead malls, there's a very specific word: *kenopsia*

Shit you're right. Running around alone on that map is nervewrecking.

Well gm_liminal_space is just recreating those places i've seen on pics, i've tried to recreate them rather than keep that feeling. I understand that's really subjective, so why should i even try to control it

Playing on empty HL2 RP servers is the ultimate liminal experience. The maps are unsettling at the best of times, but when you're all alone on them, it's next level unsettling.