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A Normal Gmod Server utilizes resources from various origins. Ensuring that all of them exist on your client will improve your experience significantly. As in, you're less likely to see missing textures and errors.
Allow all custom files in your game settings before debugging or reporting missing contents as a bug!
WorkshopDL
WorkshopDL, also known as workshop download, is a content serving method that is done through listing which addons the client should download directly from Steam Workshop. The addon download process is entirely independent from the server's connection. The server merely waits for the client to finish downloading the queued addons before proceeding to the next connection step.
This method's progress can be seen in the “Downloading workshop addons…” dialogue box while joining.
The following Steam Workshop collection is used to carry out this process along with some serverside scripts: https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=2459565773
Hotloading
While not an official term, hotloading is a very effective way of fetching sounds and models lazily. This is done by asynchronously downloading addons from the workshop and then slowly mounting them to mitigate crashes. This, being a non-sequential process, allows the player to join the server without having to wait for the files to be fully downloaded first. The tradeoff of this method is that they may see missing textures and errors briefly.
This method can be seen doing its thing when a workshop download popup with the word “Hotload” appears while joining or in the game. Although, subsequent joins will see it using local files instead, which are shown as numbers in the popup.
When the downloads are finished, it will begin mounting the downloaded contents, which can be heard as “tu-tae-tu” sounds in regular intervals.
Mounts
The server currently has the following games mounted:
* These aren't really used anywhere gameplay wise.
gluapack
Basically FastDL for scripts, gluapack packs (heh) the server's Lua files into a map file and then upload it to its dedicated web server so that players can download it from there. This method is prefered because traditional Lua file sending is mind-numbingly limited speed wise. The only catch with this method is that the player has to atleast allow map file downloading, and that there are cases where it fails for some players.