I understand not wanting to use the launcher, but the launcher was ONLY MADE to fix these issues and allow people to download our content without launching GMOD, and without me having to manually make any download zip links to give people. It is a surefire way to ensure our content is downloaded, and I only made it due to how buggy in-game mounting is in GMOD. We needed a new download system as we were very close to the download count limit(yes, we have a SHIT TON of content), AND certain files were impossible to download from the loading screen due to some characters they contained, which is dumb af.
Longer fix: Wait for the upcoming changes/fixes I talked about in discord. GMOD's mounting system is extremely buggy, but I found some work arounds that seem to fix issues like this, it's not ready to roll out yet though. Basically I wrote a program to split models into their own little download packs, rather than 100s of them in bigger packs (which seems to be where the issues come from), you then download those instead of the big packs you do now in-game. It means more but smaller downloads for the first time, but it seems to work much better once you have everything downloaded. It also means slightly longer sending client info times(after the initial downloads), BUT in turn when you do get in, there's a bit less initial stutter. Note: this only applies to your first-time join after launching GMOD, any joins/map changes after the first session join will be normal.
In the mean time, try deleting your frgws folder in your garrysmod/data/ directory, restart GMOD, and let everything re-download.
Longer fix: Wait for the upcoming changes/fixes I talked about in discord. GMOD's mounting system is extremely buggy, but I found some work arounds that seem to fix issues like this, it's not ready to roll out yet though. Basically I wrote a program to split models into their own little download packs, rather than 100s of them in bigger packs (which seems to be where the issues come from), you then download those instead of the big packs you do now in-game. It means more but smaller downloads for the first time, but it seems to work much better once you have everything downloaded. It also means slightly longer sending client info times(after the initial downloads), BUT in turn when you do get in, there's a bit less initial stutter. Note: this only applies to your first-time join after launching GMOD, any joins/map changes after the first session join will be normal.
In the mean time, try deleting your frgws folder in your garrysmod/data/ directory, restart GMOD, and let everything re-download.