S&Box Developers Beta initial thoughts
Facepunch recently released the s&box(sandbox) developers beta free to the public. It’s in very early shape so it’s really rough, but there’s already a lot of interesting things going on.
If you’re unaware, Facepunch is the studio helmed by Garry Newman, creators of Garry’s Mod and Rust. They are creating s&box in Source 2, not as a direct sequel to GMod but as the next evolution of it. Brand new engine, tons of improvements and features that are unobtainable in old classic Source engine. Garry’s Mod is arguably one of the pioneers of user-generated content games, meaning the whole appeal is all the community made game modes, maps, assets and mods that come together to make an experience, so this will be the next evolution of that.
Right now there isn’t much going on for the average player like myself. I have over 1000 hours on Garry’s Mod across 15 years, so I thought it would be very interesting to check this out for myself.
One of the coolest things right off the bat is removing the need to “subscribe” or download assets to use in game. Previously, you had to subscribe to mods in the Steam Workshop, or even earlier, the GMod Toybox which predated Workshop, which then downloaded the assets, and you had to start a brand new game to use them. In s&box, you can search the entire cloud library for these user-made assets and instantly drop them into your game, no prior download needed. This is all thanks to their new cloud tech built into the game, primarily meant to do away with Workshop, but is also kind of the whole basis of the project. By allowing easier access to all of these assets, not just while playing but also while making game modes/maps, it helps for quicker experiences and creating. Although it’s not as simple as another similar game EVERYWHERE, where they want to make it as simple as possible requiring zero coding experience, s&box is trying to seriously streamline the creation and editing process to get more user-made content out there faster.
So far the amount of content built in and user made content is a bit low, but this is the first open beta so it will only get better as time goes on. I’m very excited to see what is going to be made with this game. One of the main features they are promoting is the ability to export your game made within s&box to a dedicated Steam store page, and release it either free or paid, and they will never ask for royalties for any sales you make. They want it to not only be a game, but also an entire game creation engine, which GMod definitely kind of is. On one hand I hope this doesn’t flood Steam even more with totally garbage games, on the other I’m very excited to see the potential of this. I am not sure how that entire process will be, surely you still need to pay Valve to list it like everyone else, but apparently Facepunch will never reverse their policy and start to ask for royalties, according to their blogpost.
They say this isn’t Garry’s Mod 2, but an entire next evolution of that same foundation. Strong focus on user made content, and developing even more tools to make the creation of that content a lot easier.
I totally fell off the EVERYWHERE hype, mainly because that game studio raised like nearly $200mil to make it and the beta release was garbage. I believe in Facepunch a whole lot more to deliver on their promises. They are way more transparent in their development, and let’s be honest, Garry Newman is kind of a game developer legend, he is a lot more trustworthy than an ex-Rockstar dev with $200mil in shareholder investments to make similar games.
Facepunch recently released the s&box(sandbox) developers beta free to the public. It’s in very early shape so it’s really rough, but there’s already a lot of interesting things going on.
If you’re unaware, Facepunch is the studio helmed by Garry Newman, creators of Garry’s Mod and Rust. They are creating s&box in Source 2, not as a direct sequel to GMod but as the next evolution of it. Brand new engine, tons of improvements and features that are unobtainable in old classic Source engine. Garry’s Mod is arguably one of the pioneers of user-generated content games, meaning the whole appeal is all the community made game modes, maps, assets and mods that come together to make an experience, so this will be the next evolution of that.
Right now there isn’t much going on for the average player like myself. I have over 1000 hours on Garry’s Mod across 15 years, so I thought it would be very interesting to check this out for myself.
One of the coolest things right off the bat is removing the need to “subscribe” or download assets to use in game. Previously, you had to subscribe to mods in the Steam Workshop, or even earlier, the GMod Toybox which predated Workshop, which then downloaded the assets, and you had to start a brand new game to use them. In s&box, you can search the entire cloud library for these user-made assets and instantly drop them into your game, no prior download needed. This is all thanks to their new cloud tech built into the game, primarily meant to do away with Workshop, but is also kind of the whole basis of the project. By allowing easier access to all of these assets, not just while playing but also while making game modes/maps, it helps for quicker experiences and creating. Although it’s not as simple as another similar game EVERYWHERE, where they want to make it as simple as possible requiring zero coding experience, s&box is trying to seriously streamline the creation and editing process to get more user-made content out there faster.
So far the amount of content built in and user made content is a bit low, but this is the first open beta so it will only get better as time goes on. I’m very excited to see what is going to be made with this game. One of the main features they are promoting is the ability to export your game made within s&box to a dedicated Steam store page, and release it either free or paid, and they will never ask for royalties for any sales you make. They want it to not only be a game, but also an entire game creation engine, which GMod definitely kind of is. On one hand I hope this doesn’t flood Steam even more with totally garbage games, on the other I’m very excited to see the potential of this. I am not sure how that entire process will be, surely you still need to pay Valve to list it like everyone else, but apparently Facepunch will never reverse their policy and start to ask for royalties, according to their blogpost.
They say this isn’t Garry’s Mod 2, but an entire next evolution of that same foundation. Strong focus on user made content, and developing even more tools to make the creation of that content a lot easier.
I totally fell off the EVERYWHERE hype, mainly because that game studio raised like nearly $200mil to make it and the beta release was garbage. I believe in Facepunch a whole lot more to deliver on their promises. They are way more transparent in their development, and let’s be honest, Garry Newman is kind of a game developer legend, he is a lot more trustworthy than an ex-Rockstar dev with $200mil in shareholder investments to make similar games.
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