ducc

Is the modelling done in Hammer?

Test

You give s&box a Steam app ID, and it tells you the directory of the game files for that game. Then, you load and parse whichever of those files you want, using that data to create models, textures, and sounds at runtime. There's not really a limit yet, but the feature's still in development.

In the 90s and early 2000s, players could keep and play games they bought indefinitely - either offline or on community run servers - even after official support ended. Today, many games require constant online access, and once servers shut down, they become completely unplayable. Stop Killing Games is an initiative aiming to require companies to allow players to play the games they purchased even after official support ends. If you're an EU or UK citizen, sign the petition at www.StopKillingGames.com by July 31st to help protect game preservation. Not in the EU or UK? Spread the word using #StopKillingGames. www.StopKillingGames.com

Rare ducc political post:

The #StopKillingGames movement fights the anti-consumer practice of selling video games with an expiration date.

If you live in the EU or UK, there is a European Citizens' Initiative or a petition to the UK government that you can sign to help.

www.stopkillinggames.com

Gonna ask Electronic Arts nicely for the source code to Darkspore so that I can patch in an offline mode and play it in my museum.

If that doesn't work, all of my Spore-enthusiast friends have agreed to stand with me in boycotting the next Spore game that comes out.

Wish me luck!

YouTube video by CAPCOM R&D RE:2023 Anti-cheat and Anti-Piracy Measures in PC Games Recommendations for In-House Production

This talk from Capcom R&D (relevant timestamp linked) makes it sound like Capcom considers modders to be a nuisance who cause PR harm and burden customer support.

youtu.be/CT5bwwvDv00?...

But the talk is two years old, and I've heard the RE games are good on PC, so I don't know what to think.

Because s&box will allow you to export games to sell on Steam, I see it as more of a dark horse Unity competitor than as a Roblox competitor. At its core, s&box is a game engine - derived from Source 2 in the way that GoldSrc was derived from id Tech - and its cloud/platform are a nice bonus on top.

For the most part, s&box is about as genre-agnostic as Unity. In my opinion, the only thing it really lacks is mobile and console support. Facepunch would like to support other platforms, but they're initially targeting Windows and Steam Deck. I'm unclear on their plans for MacOS and Linux support.

The engine is general enough that Facepunch made a Roller Coaster Tycoon clone over the course of a few weeks.

sbox.game/facepunch/fair

s&box still has optional systems for baked visibility and lighting that favor FPS games, but Facepunch fully intend to provide dynamic alternatives.

The performance will depend on the game you're playing. Try Pizza Clicker for an example of a UI-based game that should run fast on everything.

Idaho RP if it was good

Made a surface nets compute shader for s&box.

Here, it's generating a new mesh each frame to cover some metaballs that are moving around.

I have some fun ideas for where I want to take this project!

#sbox #gamedev

s&box will let you export games as standalone and sell them on Steam

s&box is a Unity alternative (sub-second C# hotloading!)

Also, it has a Roblox-like platform

This is extremely appealing to game devs, and the appeal to players will depend on what games are made in s&box

It just needs time

There's a learning curve to getting Razor and SCSS working the way you want them to in your project.

When prototyping your game, you could try using HudPainter for the stuff that doesn't need to be interactive.

But if your game has a lot of menus, there's currently no way around making Panels.

It's too early to tell whether s&box will offer good discoverability, but the development tools are nice. Clearly it was made by people who love coding in C#.

You can just get s&box here: sbox.game/give-me-that

No key required anymore. It's an open preview where they want to attract as many game devs as possible.

I've been doing C# programming in s&box for a couple years now. It's great! It breaks often, and some parts of it have a steep learning curve (e.g. shaders, animation ), but it's currently my favorite game engine to use.

Maybe it's a holdover from the SQL ASC/DESC terminology, given that LINQ is meant to appeal (e.g. with its query syntax) to those who know SQL. If the method name were different, people accustomed to writing software in large corporate environments where SQL is king might find LINQ less intuitive.

I think s&box could have a massive advantage over VRChat by letting you use actual C# code (with an access control allowlist for security) instead of being limited to Udon. But, it remains to be seen whether the VR support will be good enough.

There's also a height slider for your avatar, so it should be possible to make a pretty good approximation of any character whose skeleton has the same bones as a human, assuming you replace body parts.

It's possible for clothing pieces in s&box to completely hide the underlying body part and replace it with a custom part. For example, you could have a spooky skeleton "clothing" item that replaces the player's entire body with a skeleton. The limitation is that the animations are the same.

The lighting and atmosphere is so much better than before!

The results are in: I've won the Best Simulation category! 🥳

Made a simple Verlet rope/cloth physics simulation with collision for my s&box Tech Jam 1 entry.

Anyone can play it here:
sbox.game/duccsoft/rop...

The integration and collision resolution happen in a compute shader. I generate SDF volume textures to support mesh collisions.

#gamedev #sbox

Currently, the rope sim and collision resolution code runs on the CPU. The only data it has about the mesh is an array of floats with signed distances that was filled by a compute shader.

I have exciting plans for what else I can implement. Stay tuned.

Day 10/34 of making rope physics for the
#sbox
Tech Jam.

Verlet rope isn't too hard, as there are many examples and tutorials online. The part where I needed to get creative was resolving point vs mesh collisions. It's glitchy right now, but I've learned lots about compute shaders.

#gamedev

Crucially, it will be possible to export s&box games as standalone and sell them on Steam. So regardless of whether the s&box platform is to one's liking, s&box can still be treated like a regular game engine. Like a cooler version of Unity (but PC only for now)

A screenshot of the s&box "Tech Jam" contest categories as shown on sbox.game

Facepunch just began a "Tech Jam" contest for s&box

Make art and/or code as a tech demo of the engine

£2,500 prize is offered for each of the 10 categories

34 days remain

Contest info: sbox.game/c/tech1
Get s&box for free here: sbox.game/give-me-that

#sbox #indiedev #gamedev #shaders #techart

In s&box, I don't yet know of a way to set a custom depth per-pixel, which is a problem since ray marched geometry has no mesh.

So the model for the lava is a subdivided box that I "shrink wrap" in the vertex shader by sampling the SDF scene once per vertex.

It may be foolish, but it sounds cool.

Made a lava lamp simulator in s&box.

You can play it now: sbox.game/duccsoft/lav...

The lava blobs are SDF spheres with smooth min, ray marched in a shader.

I'll expose more simulation parameters to the player once I make further progress on a certain UI library...

#sbox #gamedev #shader