For those unfamiliar, the studio behind S&box is Facepunch, creators of Garry's Mod and Rust. Facepunch as a company doesn't get much attention but they're wildly successful. Started as just some guy in a bedroom, now ~$100m/year in revenue (all via Steam), $100m in the bank, ~100 employees and almost entirely a company of game developers (maybe 20% of employees are administrative staff). Still owned and ran by the founder, Garry. S&box (and Garry's Mod and Rust) is pure game developers making things they want to make.
Oooo, I remember Garry Newman! I found his UI library GWEN (GUI Without Extravagant Nonsense) when I was still in uni and working on my game engine. It's been abandoned for 9 years now, nice to see he's still working on cool tech.
The origin story of Rust is classic: they got tired of Day Z and wanted to make it better, so they hired some random contractor to copy Day Z with elements of Fortnite and Minecraft, the developer complains that he's entitled to more money from the success of the game, lawsuit follows, and then Facepunch supposedly claims the original version was so buggy they have to rewrite the whole thing from scratch. Unclear if they were just trying to start fresh so the lawsuit wouldn't follow them forever, but it started out as just a clone of another game and they turned it into a hugely successful business (and an incredible game). Most games have a short shelf life, but I've watched at least over the past 4-ish years, and the rate that they continue to push changes is impressive.
I occasionally play Rust but I've never written a line of Rust, so almost everyday I do a double-take when reading HN. So its pretty amusing to see HN be the one getting mixed up for a change.
As someone who both plays the game and used the language at work, and used to do cheat development, I always wonder if I can write a Rust cheat in Rust.
I really like all the cultural oddities that Garry's Mod spawned. All of the indie animation. It was a big piece of machinima / virtual filmmaking / YouTube history and absolutely paved the way for VTubing and Unreal Engine in film.
Any idea if Facepunch or Valve retain rights to "Skibidi Toilet"?
The Hollywood development company that bought the rights to Skibidi and are developing it filed a DMCA strike against Garry's Mod. It got resolved, but no one involved is talking.
S&box was based on UnrealEngine 4 until late 2020. I think Garry wanted to use the latest and greatest engine, then Valve continued to be friendly with him, and even though Valve wanted Source2 to be a VR platform, it was clear desktop was going to remain relevant, but the content creation tools on SteamVR Environments were a cut-down version of what was actually used to make Half-Life Alyx, but they gave Garry all the tools, and he moved to Source2, and built a .net "framework" to make it faster to develop and iterate in Source2. So Garry's tools are now an open version of the closed tools that Valve didn't want to release that they used to make Alyx.
Finally there's another serious competitor to UE and Unity.
Fair point. Maybe I should've said SteamVR environments instead, it never took off like SourceSDK did, partially due to incomplete tools. SteamVR as a whole is very healthy though.
Good, great even. The more the better. Even if the ecosystem gets seriously fragmented I'll take this over your only real choice being UE and Unity (t. Godot enjoyer).
Yet another one. Along with Stride, Godot, Unigine, O3DE, Flax and tens more. All look like they just want be clone of UE: generic dark UI with inspector, scene hierarchy, asset browser in the bottom and play button in the top. Zero creativity and innovation. Where's Emacs or Vim of game engines which brings its own unique philosophy?
And then the forums and subreddits are flooded with miserable folks complaining about how destructive, inextensible and unpleasant to use those experiences are.
This is not the problem of UI in engines itself, it's problem of how long it takes to bring it to acceptable state with all those moving parts. For UE, Unity and Blender it took decades.
Complaining is a lot easier than actually doing anything.
Realise that the people you are slinging mud at are actually busting their asses to provide game engines to the public some of them for free and with the source.
To be honest for most developers editors are much alike. While Emacs and Vim guys debate on their philosophies and config files others just open their favourite editor/IDE and ship.
Lol, I haven't tinkered with my emacs config in nearly 10 years now. Most vim and emacs users put together a config they like over maybe a few weekends then get to work. We have deadlines to meet just like all the rest of you.
I don’t understand this take. The abundance of game engines has never been greater, both open and proprietary. As has the abundance of indie games. Some people make a distinction between more batteries-included engines with editors etc. and “game frameworks”, which are supposedly more bare-bones libraries such as Bevy or Babylon.js. Maybe that’s what you’re after?
Complaining about the UI color and button layout of an game _engine_ is a bit like comparing aircraft carriers by the color of the rug in the control room. What about the built-in tools for organizing and connecting assets, format support, how user input is handled, the batteries-included ways to model game state, and all the ways of interconnecting all those things in the code the engine provides? Does anyone have interesting comparisons/notes around those subjects as it relates to the S&box engine?
Who cares about the UI. A game engine is the library code needed to make games, not the editor UI. Just use vim to edit your files if that's what you want.
The vast majority of non-text editing in game development isn't done in modeling or image manipulation apps, it's done via the game engine's editor. That's true whether you're using Unity, Unreal, Godot, or a homebrew engine.
There are the rare engines with no editor to speak of -- where things are either done programmatically or other textual definitions -- but they're very very very few and far between.
The engine itself doesn't have a UI, but working with any major engine without using their editor is functionally impossible.
I would suppose anyone being creative and innovative with their game engines are happily using their creation without trying to turn it into a community or business model to the point where you would have heard of it.
Emacs and Vi were both born from an era when industry standard UX had not yet been developed, so they were both explorations in relatively uncharted UX space. This kind of thing only happens anymore when you get a project lead by somebody ignorant/indifferent to established conventions who sets out to make something new without caring if anybody else uses it.
So the projects you desire almost certainly do exist, but they're languishing in the obscurity they earned with their indifference to convention.
wasd is that, and then 1-9 (tho 9 and such is hard to reach) for the weapons/spells/tools, with keys near wasd for other binds, and the mouse for free look, autorun, shoot, and alt with scrollwheel for swapping weapon, too. This way, you use practically only the left side of the keyboard, but that is because keyboards aren't even an ideal input device for gaming. Something like an Azeron device (think: Orbweaver) would be far better.
BG3 has F5 for quick save and F8 for quick restore. Like the old ways.
As for game engine, who cares how things look in-game? Just make it theme-able and mod-able. Cheaters gonna cheat anyway, no way to hold that back on the client-side.
S&box was initially developed on top of Unreal Engine, but in a backend-agnostic design. It's more like a framework/runtime meant to be portable to any backend engine. Once Source 2 released, S&box was ported to that.
I wouldn't call it an engine because of that. S&box is open source, but you can't run it without a closed-source backend.
Valve isn't keen on releasing Source 2 as widely as Source, and I feel like soon, S&box will be declared the official API interface for the engine, while the backend remains unstable. Kinda like Win32 vs NT.
i miss the old facepunch. on gmod i have a couple dozen IP mods. on s&box i made call of duty zombies gamemode and was perma banned. all cause they can make more money, but they forget mods like that is why their games are popular
This is cool, though I'm reluctant to give praise when they have been so weird with Linux support on their games.
It was annoying after buying Rust to learn that you can't play on official servers on Linux. The game runs fine on Linux, the devs just don't allow it.
They're pretty upfront about the reason - their anticheat supports Linux, but enabling it would make it much easier to cheat because it's not nearly as effective on there, and they decided the cons outweigh the pros.
Apex Legends went through the same issue when they enabled Linux support, cheaters swarmed to Linux en-masse because it was so trivial to evade detection even with free/public cheats, and after a year or so the devs threw in the towel and blocked Linux again.
They're not doing this out of spite, they'd be happy to take your money if there were no downside, but unfortunately it is a trade-off for games which are sensitive to being ruined by cheaters. At least for now.
Yeah I'd say it's not accurate to say it's the same anticheat. Only the same name. It's like saying Excel supports iPad. Except Excel on iPad doesn't support VBA, so any more complicated spreadsheet will not work.
I don't think cheaters are swarming to Linux, but part of the issue with Apex Legends is that Linux support is done through Proton, through the Windows version of the game, because there no Linux version of Apex Legends. So now you've got a backdoor for everyone on Windows to run the less secure anticheat.
Solvable maybe by having a separate Linux version of the game, but that's also more supported needed.
> Solvable maybe by having a separate Linux version of the game, but that's also more supported needed.
As someone who would play on Linux then, it doesn't sound like a solution at all. The separate version would just be filled with cheaters then, would almost be like an punishment for Linux users.
I do not mean separate as in separate matchmaking. Just separate ports of the game. So Linux users are not running the same Windows port of the game as Windows users, just under Proton.
That way you don't need a backdoor in the Windows version of the game for the weaker Linux anticheat that runs through Proton. You would just have a native Linux version of the game with native anticheat.
A game can start up native Linux binaries even when the game itself is running under Proton.
But EAC has a kernel driver and there's no real native way of doing that on Linux that's stable as Linux has no stable kernel API, and measured boot isn't widely adopted so a custom kernel can just lie to the anti-cheat module.
I really hope Valve work on this, whilst it would mean perhaps online play only run on SteamOS in an optional locked down mode, it's better than the status quo.
> I do not mean separate as in separate matchmaking [...] for the weaker Linux anticheat that runs through Proton
This is exactly the problem. Users connecting via Linux are more likely to be cheaters, since the anti-cheat is weaker on Linux, so in order to protect the user-base at large (Windows users), they don't allow Linux clients at all. Allow the less protected Linux clients to connect goes against the very change they did.
When you say that it would "almost be like a punishment for Linux users", I think you're wrong, because it literally would be a value add. There is something interesting about the fact that offering you 10% more value would be taken as a downgrade
What is the value add of letting Linux players play multiplayer, and all the cheaters for that particular game is concentrated on the Linux servers so Linux players end up playing with the cheaters, and the Windows players get cheat-free servers?
Anticheat has to stop being hostile and move to zero trust client server models. Stop giving clients enough data to snipe players across the map. We can probably get someone smart enough to write an model to overlord the server and realize when someone is wall hacking or moving faster than they should be able to pretty easy - we have the compute these days.
Something has to change to move away from these rootkit antivirus like apps looking for exploits.
That is the main problem here. If you only give players the data they can see (zero trust) - then they will walk around a corner and just see a black screen, because the information is not there yet (server needs to calculate and send back info in time).
My approach would be rather better moderation tools.
Meaning .. community run servers, who will just kick and ban cheaters in time.
One can see that clearly in battlefield for example which has (sort of) both.
The public servers are often not enjoyable, if one does not like headshots across the map. The community run are clean.
I don't see how server-side-only anticheat could prevent cheats that simulate perfect input i.e., aimbots on known targets. Yes, you could attempt to heuristically identify cheat-y looking patterns of input, but I suspect that's much much easier said than done for anything other than very simple aimbots.
We're now living in a world where cheating can mean an AI running in the monitor firmware and making decisions based on pixels.
I fear soon the only way is to just avoid playing competitive games with strangers.
Hope that never changes. Linux has enough problems without invasive kernel mode anticheat malware trying to install itself on our systems.
It was bad enough that we had to put up with nvidia's proprietary nonsense if we wanted hardware acceleration. Things have finally started to improve. They have finally started open sourcing things. Now that things are finally getting better this anticheat nonsense shows up. You gotta be kidding me.
Nobody needs a bunch of game companies feeling entitled to full access to our computers. You'd have to be nuts to let game companies run ring zero code on your system. You want their nonsense absolutely contained and isolated, not deep in your kernel.
Here's a thought: they don't own our computers, we do. We own the CPU. We own the RAM. We own the motherboard. If we want to edit their game's memory while its running, it's our god given right as the owners of the machine the game is running on. Any attempt to stop us from doing so is an affront to our freedom. The mere attempt to do so with "anticheating" kernel malware is offensive. The audacity.
Cheating at video games is an exercise in computer freedom. I realize I'm defending scoundrels here and it doesn't matter in the slightest. Our computing freedom is orders of magnitude more important than video games. I want them to suck it up and accept it. That is the price of freedom. If they want to be on Linux, it should be on our terms.
Don't care about this ideological stuff? Here's the sort of risk you're accepting when you opt into this bullshit:
Corporation thinks its the FBI and starts shipping a browser stealer to users to "catch pirates". Bonus points for exfiltrating the data on an unencrypted channel!
I don't agree with your take because it's an example of individual 'freedoms' shitting all over something communal - a caricature of freedom that America has become known for. Cheating ruins online games.
Online games are nothing. They are a literal non-issue next to the loss of computing freedom. Let them be ruined so that we can have the freedom to control our computers without undue intrusion. If online games are the price of freedom, so be it.
Sacrificing freedom for security? I don't agree with it but I can at least understand where the impetus comes from. Sacrificing freedom for fun? For video games of all things? That's pretty disgusting and I want people to be better than that.
Accept this, and you also indirectly accept corporations regulating "your" computer's ability to copy, as well as governments regulating "your" computer's ability to encrypt.
> What is the point of freedom if you have a joyless existence?
> no one is making you install anti-cheat software
You don't see the irony here? You don't see the trillion dollar corporations dangling "joy" in front of us and conditioning access to it on acceptance of their bullshit non-negotiable take it or leave it contracts where "we own your computer now" is a clause?
The powerful choice is to reject the silly binary choice they offer you and take a third option. Refuse their deal and refuse your so called "joyless" existence.
Enjoy your games while also keeping control of your computer. If they try to usurp control of your computer, stop them from doing so. Only malware would try that, treat them accordingly. If you must associate with cheaters and pirates in order to acquire the necessary technology and know-how, then so be it.
It's the same thing with DRM, it's the same thing with ads, it's the same thing with pretty much everything. They give you some bullshit choices, but you can take a third option because you own the machine. That's the power they would take away from you.
> If they try to usurp control of your computer, stop them from doing so.
But anti-cheat software is not doing this? You are free to do whatever you want on your computer as long as it doesn't interfere with the game process. Most, if not all, anti-cheats will also not do anything when the game isn't open.
Some games (including Rust) give you the choice to play with no anti-cheat, too. You'll only be able to play on servers that allow players to join with no anti-cheat but you are not blocked from the game.
I would be more worried about computing becoming more phone-centric where Apple and Google are in control of what you can and cannot do.
> You are free to do whatever you want on your computer as long as
You are not free. "Your" computer is not actually yours. It doesn't do what you want.
> Most, if not all, anti-cheats will also not do anything when the game isn't open.
Stop believing this. For god's sake I just posted an example of a corporation that thought it was perfectly justified in hacking their customers and stealing their browser passwords. There is no line they wouldn't cross.
They could be doing literally anything and you know it. There's no way for you to know unless you reverse engineer the software, and if you try they are only too happy to label you a cheater and permaban your account or whatever it is that they do.
> I would be more worried about computing becoming more phone-centric where Apple and Google are in control of what you can and cannot do.
This is the exact same issue.
Apple, Google, Disney, Netflix, Hollywood, the games industry, the copyright industry, all the governments the world over are all battling for control over our machines.
This anticheating nonsense is just the tutorial boss.
> They could be doing literally anything and you know it. There's no way for you to know unless you reverse engineer the software
Literally anything you run on your computer (running Windows) can take screenshots of your desktop, pull passwords saved in your browser, etc. without running in kernel mode. Even applications that aren't running as Administrator.
That was never in dispute. The point is they cannot be trusted. Not even the "but they wouldn't do that" argument is valid: they would and they have.
Knowing and accepting these risks is a big reason why we run Linux with free and open source software sourced from trusted software repositories.
We put effort into this because we want to control everything that happens on our machines, so that we are not affected by stupid nonsense like that.
Recall what I said in my original comment:
> You want their nonsense absolutely contained and isolated, not deep in your kernel.
We don't want unknown uncontrollable proprietary idiocy running on our computers, least of all in kernel mode.
Ideally that stuff would not even exist to begin with, but since it does we move on to the next best thing: containing and isolating it to the fullest extent. The ideal setup is a VFIO configuration where the host is a Linux system where we have full control and the virtual machine is fully isolated and controlled.
As such we really don't need idiotic "anticheat" software taking issue with perfectly good technologies like virtual machines and hypervisors. Cheaters are using this stuff? I don't care. Just accept it.
> The game runs fine on Linux, the devs just don't allow it.
The native Linux build never worked that well. Something was always broken because Unity's Linux support is/was spotty. Upgrading Unity versions would break random things.
Anticheat is the issue holding back Proton support, though.
I've been following S&box for probably over 10 years at this point. It's been obvious for the last 5+ years that the vision isn't "Garry's Mod 2" anymore but maybe something else, like a Roblox-like metaverse. I'm unsure where this project is going but they seem to have smart developers and a lot of passion so hopefully it works out.
I would caution Facepunch though that what made their past games a success wasn't perfection. In the case of Gmod I would actually say imperfection was the charm.
>Obviously this isn't the Source 2 code, that's up to Valve to open source if they want.
Does this mean you need Source 2 to develop with S&box?
Rust has so many compelling features as a game. It was the first game where I felt like I thought about it while I wasn't playing it, because your character remains "in the game" and your base can be raided even if you log off. I don't play a ton of online games, but that was a very new and different concept when I first discovered Rust.
The game reminds me of sitting down at a poker table in a casino. It's very unforgiving - you grind, invest a lot of time, and make calculated bets as to whether you can win or lose a raid, but you can instantly lose everything in a failed raid.
I wish someone would make a browser-based version that was fun to play, and I've thought about it for some time, but the struggle is scoping an MVP that is as compelling given the constraints (eg a 2d or top-down version makes it harder to do things like build multi-story buildings and raid them).
> Does this mean you need Source 2 to develop with S&box?
Maybe I'm wrong, but S&box is essentially a game developed with Source 2, thats purpose is to expose internal APIs and wrap them for users to build their own games with. So you develop your thing in S&box that happens to be made with Source 2, but you don't care about that. Basically Roblox.
That's pretty shaky ground too, even if you can overlook the foundation being closed source, Valve aren't really known for supporting their engines very well beyond their own internal needs. They're not trying to be Epic or Unity.
The most obvious aspect to that is that Source 2 doesn't support consoles. Valve don't need it, so they didn't implement it.
> Valve aren't really known for supporting their engines very well beyond their own internal needs.
Valve has a long history of supporting the modding community and outside users of Source, not sure where you're getting your information from but I don't think they've worked with the Source engine before. One of the biggest and most popular mods of all time was built on Source, and took the world by storm, with pretty big support by Valve through the years as well. Eventually they even bought the whole IP.
That was then, in 2025 they don't have a public Source 2 SDK, nor do they generally license the engine to third parties, S&box being the sole exception. They barely have their toes in the middleware game anymore.
Even when they were more open with their tech it was on the basis of "you can play with the tools we used to make Half Life and if your idea is sufficiently Half Life shaped then it will probably work", not trying to be a general purpose toolkit a la Unity.
S&B existing and being what it is, effectively makes it the Source 2 SDK, although it's not from Valve. But fair point Source 2 isn't licensed to others, I think the expectation is that if you wanna build a Source 2 game, you have to use S&B. At least for now, who knows what their ideas and ambitions really lie.
>They barely have their toes in the middleware game anymore.
Well they do have Steam Audio but yeah I agree. I think Epic is much better in this space, even though its only source available in practice they do a lot to support engine modifications and also accept external PRs. I think Valve has a lot to gain from open sourcing Source 2 and they should realize how important modding was to their initial success. The issue is now they can just print money with Steam so there is no need to invest in modding support.
There are various internal Valve tools that aren't available in any Valve-published SDK, but are in (accidentally?) within Dino D-Day's, a third party game based on Portal 2's version of Source.
Oh right, that's more reassuring. I guess you'd still have to cut a deal with Valve to use FPs fork commercially though? Which is a wildcard since the licensing terms aren't public as far as I can tell.
that's pretty vague, I mean are there no real licensing terms somewhere? What am I truly signing up for when I try to use this engine? I have to publish my game on steam but in what form? Same price as I do on my own website/store? Same exact form as on other stores? Same exact time, I can't publish first on epic and only later on steam?
It feels like Valve's management changed a few years (decade?) ago. I remember when they were still shipping SDKs and proper mod support, even for their multiplayer games. Today they are just killing everything that could divert revenue from their cash cow CS2 and shipping a half baked js-based scripting engine for their maps. (And in the meanwhile they kill fan projects like CS:Legacy, which is a whole game and not even a mod, with their army of lawyers. I don't think stuff like this would have happened 13+ years ago).
All of their games (Dota 2, CS, and the other ones they hardly maintain anymore) are basically just passion projects at this point, lingering on from a bygone age when they were a game development company.
Their most recent title, Half-Life: Alyx, probably only got greenlit because someone internally was able to convince leadership that it would help sell VR headsets.
Dota2 as well. Like I'm sure CS2/Dota2 are small compared to Steam, but the revenue from these games alone dwarfs what most other companies are making.
Valve's financials are nonpublic, and any numbers you find are rough, indirect estimates.
In any case, my point was not that these games make no money, but simply that Valve doesn't need them. The total number of people buying games on Steam vastly dwarfs the number of people who play Dota 2 and CS2 (even just counting total players - how much more when you narrow down to players who spend money).
I really struggle to wrap my head around how this engine works. I haven’t used it, but I have experience with Source 1 and its systems and I imagine Source 2 is an extrapolation of that. But I really can’t wrap my head around how they’ve turned it into a scene-based game engine when Source 2 is map-based, how they’ve managed to build a completely different editor that still leverages Hammer maps somehow, and all the other stuff.
I've never tried s&box but Source 2 did overhaul the map and asset pipeline quite a bit, everything's a plain mesh instead of BSP and maps are also regular .dmx files, so I'd imagine it's slightly easier to build tools that work on top of it
I don't understand what they got basing off the Source engine. Maybe it made sense when they started 6 years ago - to allow using Hammer and such. But at this point they've made their own editor, networking, scene system... why is it still attached to a giant legacy codebase.
I mean, it is being updated regularly behind the scenes, it's used by Dota 2, CS2 and deadlock.
If you follow the "leaks" space a bit, you'll know that they are working on some kind of new game, and that new engine features that end up in deadlock for example are developed because of this project.
Looks like they’re positioning themselves as an open-source Roblox competitor. That would be awesome. Especially so if they follow through on the promise of standalone mode.
I’m interested in how they’re sandboxing C# code. Seems like an engineering problem full of pitfalls. I’ll definitely be peeking at this!
They were pretty big at one point, though they've been losing traction. Their investors seem to have fairly deep pockets (hundreds of millions). Their software (game maker and client) are really well-developed and excellent. The crypto means you can trade any game assets freely, which is great, but also traditionally made it hard for new players who aren't into crypto (they just added credit cards).
Probably has the same resources as Facepunch, but nowhere near the following or players.
AFAIK this can use both the new Hammer for Source 2 and its own Unity-like editor. Hammer is one of the few editors with actual level-design tools still maintained, most other engine's editors can't do much more than drop static meshes and prefabs around.
Looks like a serious competitor to Unity. Modern C# is really easy to pick up for beginners (that's actually how I started learning programming back around 2010).
What does monetization look like? Can you ship standalone games? Source 2 licensing requirements? Is this closer to Unity or closer to Roblox when it comes to publishing?
You can't ship standalone games yet, they're currently in talks with Valve, lawyers talking to lawyers to try and make this happen. Right now, they have a Play Fund, and pay creators for minutes played, similar to Fortnite. This is definitely closer to Roblox for now, but yeah standalone coming soon hopefully..
I haven't look into it much, but, Source 2 supports all major desktop platforms and even all mobile platforms. Dotnet supports all those platforms as well.
So I'm not certain why S&box is Windows only, but my guess is that's just temporary.
>Once you have access to the developer preview, please use developer docs and discord to figure stuff out. Yes, I hate that every community is moving to discord and no-one uses forums anymore too, but it's the way the world is.
that cute snide comment won't somehow ensure that all of your community discussion isn't lost to discord-rot in a few short years.
Garry literally shut down Facepunch, which was a huge repository of community discussion for GMod, on a whim so I don't think he's in a place to whine about the Discordification of game communities
More like Roblox at the moment. It could compete with Unity/Godot if they arrange a deal for standalone games with Valve, as it builds on top of Source 2.
For those unfamiliar, the studio behind S&box is Facepunch, creators of Garry's Mod and Rust. Facepunch as a company doesn't get much attention but they're wildly successful. Started as just some guy in a bedroom, now ~$100m/year in revenue (all via Steam), $100m in the bank, ~100 employees and almost entirely a company of game developers (maybe 20% of employees are administrative staff). Still owned and ran by the founder, Garry. S&box (and Garry's Mod and Rust) is pure game developers making things they want to make.
Oooo, I remember Garry Newman! I found his UI library GWEN (GUI Without Extravagant Nonsense) when I was still in uni and working on my game engine. It's been abandoned for 9 years now, nice to see he's still working on cool tech.
[1] https://github.com/garrynewman/GWEN
He also made the UI framework used by S&box. It's based on HTML/CSS + Razor but is not rendered with a browser.
https://sbox.game/dev/doc/systems/ui/razor-panels/
The origin story of Rust is classic: they got tired of Day Z and wanted to make it better, so they hired some random contractor to copy Day Z with elements of Fortnite and Minecraft, the developer complains that he's entitled to more money from the success of the game, lawsuit follows, and then Facepunch supposedly claims the original version was so buggy they have to rewrite the whole thing from scratch. Unclear if they were just trying to start fresh so the lawsuit wouldn't follow them forever, but it started out as just a clone of another game and they turned it into a hugely successful business (and an incredible game). Most games have a short shelf life, but I've watched at least over the past 4-ish years, and the rate that they continue to push changes is impressive.
Oh, you mean Rust (the game[1]), not Rust (programming language[2]).
[1]: https://store.steampowered.com/app/252490/Rust/
[2]: https://rust-lang.org/
I occasionally play Rust but I've never written a line of Rust, so almost everyday I do a double-take when reading HN. So its pretty amusing to see HN be the one getting mixed up for a change.
As someone who both plays the game and used the language at work, and used to do cheat development, I always wonder if I can write a Rust cheat in Rust.
I ran a Rust server on an Oxide rack for me and some friends one weekend.
Only Xzibit can do that.
That's an amazing story.
I really like all the cultural oddities that Garry's Mod spawned. All of the indie animation. It was a big piece of machinima / virtual filmmaking / YouTube history and absolutely paved the way for VTubing and Unreal Engine in film.
Any idea if Facepunch or Valve retain rights to "Skibidi Toilet"?
The Hollywood development company that bought the rights to Skibidi and are developing it filed a DMCA strike against Garry's Mod. It got resolved, but no one involved is talking.
Additionally, news came out today that the original creator has lost creative rights to Invisible Narratives. It's looking quite grim all around.
Oh no. I just read up on this, it sounds awful.
https://www.thegamer.com/skibidi-toilet-creator-legal-disput...
Skibidi Toilet was made in Source Filmmaker.
Isn't Rust Unity-based? Was he just too fed up with Unity and decided to roll his own engine?
S&box was based on UnrealEngine 4 until late 2020. I think Garry wanted to use the latest and greatest engine, then Valve continued to be friendly with him, and even though Valve wanted Source2 to be a VR platform, it was clear desktop was going to remain relevant, but the content creation tools on SteamVR Environments were a cut-down version of what was actually used to make Half-Life Alyx, but they gave Garry all the tools, and he moved to Source2, and built a .net "framework" to make it faster to develop and iterate in Source2. So Garry's tools are now an open version of the closed tools that Valve didn't want to release that they used to make Alyx.
Finally there's another serious competitor to UE and Unity.
>even though Valve wanted Source2 to be a VR platform
I don't think this is true. The first Source2 game "released" was Dota 2, and currently it's used for CS2 and Deadlock as well.
Fair point. Maybe I should've said SteamVR environments instead, it never took off like SourceSDK did, partially due to incomplete tools. SteamVR as a whole is very healthy though.
Good, great even. The more the better. Even if the ecosystem gets seriously fragmented I'll take this over your only real choice being UE and Unity (t. Godot enjoyer).
If someone builds an export pathway to console/mobile then I think it could really become a powerful third choice. Even Godot has that!
Yet another one. Along with Stride, Godot, Unigine, O3DE, Flax and tens more. All look like they just want be clone of UE: generic dark UI with inspector, scene hierarchy, asset browser in the bottom and play button in the top. Zero creativity and innovation. Where's Emacs or Vim of game engines which brings its own unique philosophy?
"Where's Emacs or Vim of game engines which brings its own unique philosophy?"
All forgotten in obscurity.
When making a game, people are usually not so much interested in the philosophy of their tools, but shipping things with it as soon as possible.
That means working as expected.
And then the forums and subreddits are flooded with miserable folks complaining about how destructive, inextensible and unpleasant to use those experiences are. This is not the problem of UI in engines itself, it's problem of how long it takes to bring it to acceptable state with all those moving parts. For UE, Unity and Blender it took decades.
Complaining is a lot easier than actually doing anything.
Realise that the people you are slinging mud at are actually busting their asses to provide game engines to the public some of them for free and with the source.
To be honest for most developers editors are much alike. While Emacs and Vim guys debate on their philosophies and config files others just open their favourite editor/IDE and ship.
This take has given me second degree burns. I must have never shipped anything then, what with vim being my favorite editor.
Lol, I haven't tinkered with my emacs config in nearly 10 years now. Most vim and emacs users put together a config they like over maybe a few weekends then get to work. We have deadlines to meet just like all the rest of you.
I don’t understand this take. The abundance of game engines has never been greater, both open and proprietary. As has the abundance of indie games. Some people make a distinction between more batteries-included engines with editors etc. and “game frameworks”, which are supposedly more bare-bones libraries such as Bevy or Babylon.js. Maybe that’s what you’re after?
Complaining about the UI color and button layout of an game _engine_ is a bit like comparing aircraft carriers by the color of the rug in the control room. What about the built-in tools for organizing and connecting assets, format support, how user input is handled, the batteries-included ways to model game state, and all the ways of interconnecting all those things in the code the engine provides? Does anyone have interesting comparisons/notes around those subjects as it relates to the S&box engine?
Who cares about the UI. A game engine is the library code needed to make games, not the editor UI. Just use vim to edit your files if that's what you want.
Not all game files are text and the non-text parts massively benefit from good UI.
I am confused by this as well (not a game developer). The engine is under the hood and has no UI. The UI is in the car cabin.
Non-text file editing is done in a 3d model or image editing app.
The vast majority of non-text editing in game development isn't done in modeling or image manipulation apps, it's done via the game engine's editor. That's true whether you're using Unity, Unreal, Godot, or a homebrew engine.
There are the rare engines with no editor to speak of -- where things are either done programmatically or other textual definitions -- but they're very very very few and far between.
The engine itself doesn't have a UI, but working with any major engine without using their editor is functionally impossible.
Code is code, use a text editor.
3D assets can be made in your 3d program of choice.
Skeletons and animations are also somewhat standard. Use whatever tool you prefer.
Textures are bound to 3d assets, and use plenty of 3rd party tools.
USD makes scenes interchangeable. Use or write tools to fit your needs.
compute shaders are also somewhat standard. Work them out in python until you're happy with them.
Thats alot of it, if you really hate all game engine UIs. But the UI was good enough for the developer of the engine so mabie it's good enough as is.
I think the game engine UIs are very good for hooking parts together, personally.
I would suppose anyone being creative and innovative with their game engines are happily using their creation without trying to turn it into a community or business model to the point where you would have heard of it.
Emacs and Vi were both born from an era when industry standard UX had not yet been developed, so they were both explorations in relatively uncharted UX space. This kind of thing only happens anymore when you get a project lead by somebody ignorant/indifferent to established conventions who sets out to make something new without caring if anybody else uses it.
So the projects you desire almost certainly do exist, but they're languishing in the obscurity they earned with their indifference to convention.
wasd is that, and then 1-9 (tho 9 and such is hard to reach) for the weapons/spells/tools, with keys near wasd for other binds, and the mouse for free look, autorun, shoot, and alt with scrollwheel for swapping weapon, too. This way, you use practically only the left side of the keyboard, but that is because keyboards aren't even an ideal input device for gaming. Something like an Azeron device (think: Orbweaver) would be far better.
BG3 has F5 for quick save and F8 for quick restore. Like the old ways.
As for game engine, who cares how things look in-game? Just make it theme-able and mod-able. Cheaters gonna cheat anyway, no way to hold that back on the client-side.
https://bevy.org/
I'd guess S&box is more an extension of Garry's Mod rather than a reaction to Unity
Could assume that.
S&box was initially developed on top of Unreal Engine, but in a backend-agnostic design. It's more like a framework/runtime meant to be portable to any backend engine. Once Source 2 released, S&box was ported to that.
I wouldn't call it an engine because of that. S&box is open source, but you can't run it without a closed-source backend.
Valve isn't keen on releasing Source 2 as widely as Source, and I feel like soon, S&box will be declared the official API interface for the engine, while the backend remains unstable. Kinda like Win32 vs NT.
i miss the old facepunch. on gmod i have a couple dozen IP mods. on s&box i made call of duty zombies gamemode and was perma banned. all cause they can make more money, but they forget mods like that is why their games are popular
This is cool, though I'm reluctant to give praise when they have been so weird with Linux support on their games.
It was annoying after buying Rust to learn that you can't play on official servers on Linux. The game runs fine on Linux, the devs just don't allow it.
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/survival-crafting/rust-develop...
They're pretty upfront about the reason - their anticheat supports Linux, but enabling it would make it much easier to cheat because it's not nearly as effective on there, and they decided the cons outweigh the pros.
Apex Legends went through the same issue when they enabled Linux support, cheaters swarmed to Linux en-masse because it was so trivial to evade detection even with free/public cheats, and after a year or so the devs threw in the towel and blocked Linux again.
They're not doing this out of spite, they'd be happy to take your money if there were no downside, but unfortunately it is a trade-off for games which are sensitive to being ruined by cheaters. At least for now.
Yeah I'd say it's not accurate to say it's the same anticheat. Only the same name. It's like saying Excel supports iPad. Except Excel on iPad doesn't support VBA, so any more complicated spreadsheet will not work.
I don't think cheaters are swarming to Linux, but part of the issue with Apex Legends is that Linux support is done through Proton, through the Windows version of the game, because there no Linux version of Apex Legends. So now you've got a backdoor for everyone on Windows to run the less secure anticheat.
Solvable maybe by having a separate Linux version of the game, but that's also more supported needed.
> Solvable maybe by having a separate Linux version of the game, but that's also more supported needed.
As someone who would play on Linux then, it doesn't sound like a solution at all. The separate version would just be filled with cheaters then, would almost be like an punishment for Linux users.
I do not mean separate as in separate matchmaking. Just separate ports of the game. So Linux users are not running the same Windows port of the game as Windows users, just under Proton.
That way you don't need a backdoor in the Windows version of the game for the weaker Linux anticheat that runs through Proton. You would just have a native Linux version of the game with native anticheat.
A game can start up native Linux binaries even when the game itself is running under Proton.
But EAC has a kernel driver and there's no real native way of doing that on Linux that's stable as Linux has no stable kernel API, and measured boot isn't widely adopted so a custom kernel can just lie to the anti-cheat module.
I really hope Valve work on this, whilst it would mean perhaps online play only run on SteamOS in an optional locked down mode, it's better than the status quo.
> I do not mean separate as in separate matchmaking [...] for the weaker Linux anticheat that runs through Proton
This is exactly the problem. Users connecting via Linux are more likely to be cheaters, since the anti-cheat is weaker on Linux, so in order to protect the user-base at large (Windows users), they don't allow Linux clients at all. Allow the less protected Linux clients to connect goes against the very change they did.
When you say that it would "almost be like a punishment for Linux users", I think you're wrong, because it literally would be a value add. There is something interesting about the fact that offering you 10% more value would be taken as a downgrade
What is the value add of letting Linux players play multiplayer, and all the cheaters for that particular game is concentrated on the Linux servers so Linux players end up playing with the cheaters, and the Windows players get cheat-free servers?
Anticheat has to stop being hostile and move to zero trust client server models. Stop giving clients enough data to snipe players across the map. We can probably get someone smart enough to write an model to overlord the server and realize when someone is wall hacking or moving faster than they should be able to pretty easy - we have the compute these days.
Something has to change to move away from these rootkit antivirus like apps looking for exploits.
Are you aware that the speed of light is limited?
That is the main problem here. If you only give players the data they can see (zero trust) - then they will walk around a corner and just see a black screen, because the information is not there yet (server needs to calculate and send back info in time).
My approach would be rather better moderation tools.
Meaning .. community run servers, who will just kick and ban cheaters in time.
One can see that clearly in battlefield for example which has (sort of) both.
The public servers are often not enjoyable, if one does not like headshots across the map. The community run are clean.
I don't see how server-side-only anticheat could prevent cheats that simulate perfect input i.e., aimbots on known targets. Yes, you could attempt to heuristically identify cheat-y looking patterns of input, but I suspect that's much much easier said than done for anything other than very simple aimbots.
We're now living in a world where cheating can mean an AI running in the monitor firmware and making decisions based on pixels. I fear soon the only way is to just avoid playing competitive games with strangers.
> I fear soon the only way is to just avoid playing competitive games with strangers.
This has been the winning move for about a decade now.
Hope that never changes. Linux has enough problems without invasive kernel mode anticheat malware trying to install itself on our systems.
It was bad enough that we had to put up with nvidia's proprietary nonsense if we wanted hardware acceleration. Things have finally started to improve. They have finally started open sourcing things. Now that things are finally getting better this anticheat nonsense shows up. You gotta be kidding me.
Nobody needs a bunch of game companies feeling entitled to full access to our computers. You'd have to be nuts to let game companies run ring zero code on your system. You want their nonsense absolutely contained and isolated, not deep in your kernel.
Here's a thought: they don't own our computers, we do. We own the CPU. We own the RAM. We own the motherboard. If we want to edit their game's memory while its running, it's our god given right as the owners of the machine the game is running on. Any attempt to stop us from doing so is an affront to our freedom. The mere attempt to do so with "anticheating" kernel malware is offensive. The audacity.
Cheating at video games is an exercise in computer freedom. I realize I'm defending scoundrels here and it doesn't matter in the slightest. Our computing freedom is orders of magnitude more important than video games. I want them to suck it up and accept it. That is the price of freedom. If they want to be on Linux, it should be on our terms.
Don't care about this ideological stuff? Here's the sort of risk you're accepting when you opt into this bullshit:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/fs-labs-flight-simulator-pas...
Corporation thinks its the FBI and starts shipping a browser stealer to users to "catch pirates". Bonus points for exfiltrating the data on an unencrypted channel!
https://old.reddit.com/r/Asmongold/comments/1cibw9r/valorant...
https://www.unknowncheats.me/forum/anti-cheat-bypass/634974-...
Screenshots your screen and exfiltrates it to their servers.
https://www.theregister.com/2016/09/23/capcom_street_fighter...
https://twitter.com/TheWack0lian/status/779397840762245124
https://fuzzysecurity.com/tutorials/28.html
https://github.com/FuzzySecurity/Capcom-Rootkit
A literal privilege escalation as a service "anticheat" driver!
Game companies give negative amounts of shit. If you trust them you're out of your mind.
I have a feeling that your ideal game, full of cheaters online, would not be very popular.
[dead]
I don't agree with your take because it's an example of individual 'freedoms' shitting all over something communal - a caricature of freedom that America has become known for. Cheating ruins online games.
Online games are nothing. They are a literal non-issue next to the loss of computing freedom. Let them be ruined so that we can have the freedom to control our computers without undue intrusion. If online games are the price of freedom, so be it.
Sacrificing freedom for security? I don't agree with it but I can at least understand where the impetus comes from. Sacrificing freedom for fun? For video games of all things? That's pretty disgusting and I want people to be better than that.
Accept this, and you also indirectly accept corporations regulating "your" computer's ability to copy, as well as governments regulating "your" computer's ability to encrypt.
You don't have to sacrifice anything, no one is making you install anti-cheat software.
> Sacrificing freedom for fun? For video games of all things? That's pretty disgusting and I want people to be better than that.
What is the point of freedom if you have a joyless existence?
> What is the point of freedom if you have a joyless existence?
> no one is making you install anti-cheat software
You don't see the irony here? You don't see the trillion dollar corporations dangling "joy" in front of us and conditioning access to it on acceptance of their bullshit non-negotiable take it or leave it contracts where "we own your computer now" is a clause?
The powerful choice is to reject the silly binary choice they offer you and take a third option. Refuse their deal and refuse your so called "joyless" existence.
Enjoy your games while also keeping control of your computer. If they try to usurp control of your computer, stop them from doing so. Only malware would try that, treat them accordingly. If you must associate with cheaters and pirates in order to acquire the necessary technology and know-how, then so be it.
It's the same thing with DRM, it's the same thing with ads, it's the same thing with pretty much everything. They give you some bullshit choices, but you can take a third option because you own the machine. That's the power they would take away from you.
> If they try to usurp control of your computer, stop them from doing so.
But anti-cheat software is not doing this? You are free to do whatever you want on your computer as long as it doesn't interfere with the game process. Most, if not all, anti-cheats will also not do anything when the game isn't open.
Some games (including Rust) give you the choice to play with no anti-cheat, too. You'll only be able to play on servers that allow players to join with no anti-cheat but you are not blocked from the game.
I would be more worried about computing becoming more phone-centric where Apple and Google are in control of what you can and cannot do.
> You are free to do whatever you want on your computer as long as
You are not free. "Your" computer is not actually yours. It doesn't do what you want.
> Most, if not all, anti-cheats will also not do anything when the game isn't open.
Stop believing this. For god's sake I just posted an example of a corporation that thought it was perfectly justified in hacking their customers and stealing their browser passwords. There is no line they wouldn't cross.
They could be doing literally anything and you know it. There's no way for you to know unless you reverse engineer the software, and if you try they are only too happy to label you a cheater and permaban your account or whatever it is that they do.
> I would be more worried about computing becoming more phone-centric where Apple and Google are in control of what you can and cannot do.
This is the exact same issue.
Apple, Google, Disney, Netflix, Hollywood, the games industry, the copyright industry, all the governments the world over are all battling for control over our machines.
This anticheating nonsense is just the tutorial boss.
> They could be doing literally anything and you know it. There's no way for you to know unless you reverse engineer the software
Literally anything you run on your computer (running Windows) can take screenshots of your desktop, pull passwords saved in your browser, etc. without running in kernel mode. Even applications that aren't running as Administrator.
That was never in dispute. The point is they cannot be trusted. Not even the "but they wouldn't do that" argument is valid: they would and they have.
Knowing and accepting these risks is a big reason why we run Linux with free and open source software sourced from trusted software repositories.
We put effort into this because we want to control everything that happens on our machines, so that we are not affected by stupid nonsense like that.
Recall what I said in my original comment:
> You want their nonsense absolutely contained and isolated, not deep in your kernel.
We don't want unknown uncontrollable proprietary idiocy running on our computers, least of all in kernel mode.
Ideally that stuff would not even exist to begin with, but since it does we move on to the next best thing: containing and isolating it to the fullest extent. The ideal setup is a VFIO configuration where the host is a Linux system where we have full control and the virtual machine is fully isolated and controlled.
As such we really don't need idiotic "anticheat" software taking issue with perfectly good technologies like virtual machines and hypervisors. Cheaters are using this stuff? I don't care. Just accept it.
no it’s not, you can just not do it.
> The game runs fine on Linux, the devs just don't allow it.
The native Linux build never worked that well. Something was always broken because Unity's Linux support is/was spotty. Upgrading Unity versions would break random things.
Anticheat is the issue holding back Proton support, though.
I've been following S&box for probably over 10 years at this point. It's been obvious for the last 5+ years that the vision isn't "Garry's Mod 2" anymore but maybe something else, like a Roblox-like metaverse. I'm unsure where this project is going but they seem to have smart developers and a lot of passion so hopefully it works out.
I would caution Facepunch though that what made their past games a success wasn't perfection. In the case of Gmod I would actually say imperfection was the charm.
>Obviously this isn't the Source 2 code, that's up to Valve to open source if they want.
Does this mean you need Source 2 to develop with S&box?
Rust has so many compelling features as a game. It was the first game where I felt like I thought about it while I wasn't playing it, because your character remains "in the game" and your base can be raided even if you log off. I don't play a ton of online games, but that was a very new and different concept when I first discovered Rust.
The game reminds me of sitting down at a poker table in a casino. It's very unforgiving - you grind, invest a lot of time, and make calculated bets as to whether you can win or lose a raid, but you can instantly lose everything in a failed raid.
I wish someone would make a browser-based version that was fun to play, and I've thought about it for some time, but the struggle is scoping an MVP that is as compelling given the constraints (eg a 2d or top-down version makes it harder to do things like build multi-story buildings and raid them).
> Does this mean you need Source 2 to develop with S&box?
Maybe I'm wrong, but S&box is essentially a game developed with Source 2, thats purpose is to expose internal APIs and wrap them for users to build their own games with. So you develop your thing in S&box that happens to be made with Source 2, but you don't care about that. Basically Roblox.
Ah ok so this is more of a S&box SDK. I misinterpreted this announcement and thought they were basically just releasing S&box for people to fork.
It is S&box, not just an SDK. The only thing is Source 2 is not open source so you only get binaries for it.
Seems this generates some sort of shim that calls source 2 dynamic lib.
I always enjoyed Garry's blog.
It just seemed like a public diary. And a place to vent about dev,life,w/e. He seems to be unapologetic-ally himself.
Although I was pretty sure there used to be more posts (although maybe I'm conflating his posts there with his contributions to his old forums.)
https://garry.net/posts/
Their site appears down, here's the github repository: https://github.com/Facepunch/sbox-public
It depends on Source 2, which is not open source.
That's pretty shaky ground too, even if you can overlook the foundation being closed source, Valve aren't really known for supporting their engines very well beyond their own internal needs. They're not trying to be Epic or Unity.
The most obvious aspect to that is that Source 2 doesn't support consoles. Valve don't need it, so they didn't implement it.
> Valve aren't really known for supporting their engines very well beyond their own internal needs.
Valve has a long history of supporting the modding community and outside users of Source, not sure where you're getting your information from but I don't think they've worked with the Source engine before. One of the biggest and most popular mods of all time was built on Source, and took the world by storm, with pretty big support by Valve through the years as well. Eventually they even bought the whole IP.
That was then, in 2025 they don't have a public Source 2 SDK, nor do they generally license the engine to third parties, S&box being the sole exception. They barely have their toes in the middleware game anymore.
Even when they were more open with their tech it was on the basis of "you can play with the tools we used to make Half Life and if your idea is sufficiently Half Life shaped then it will probably work", not trying to be a general purpose toolkit a la Unity.
S&B existing and being what it is, effectively makes it the Source 2 SDK, although it's not from Valve. But fair point Source 2 isn't licensed to others, I think the expectation is that if you wanna build a Source 2 game, you have to use S&B. At least for now, who knows what their ideas and ambitions really lie.
>They barely have their toes in the middleware game anymore.
Well they do have Steam Audio but yeah I agree. I think Epic is much better in this space, even though its only source available in practice they do a lot to support engine modifications and also accept external PRs. I think Valve has a lot to gain from open sourcing Source 2 and they should realize how important modding was to their initial success. The issue is now they can just print money with Steam so there is no need to invest in modding support.
There are various internal Valve tools that aren't available in any Valve-published SDK, but are in (accidentally?) within Dino D-Day's, a third party game based on Portal 2's version of Source.
> Valve aren't really known for supporting their engines very well beyond their own internal needs
They don't need to. S&box uses a fork of Source 2 that is maintained by Facepunch, with Valve's upstream changes merged in as needed.
Oh right, that's more reassuring. I guess you'd still have to cut a deal with Valve to use FPs fork commercially though? Which is a wildcard since the licensing terms aren't public as far as I can tell.
There is already a deal between Valve and Facepunch. I don't know all the terms but you will need to publish your game to Steam (not exclusively).
https://sbox.game/dev/doc/systems/game-exporting/ (bottom of page)
Not sure if this was added after your comment, but it now says (in a scary red box)
> You can export your game, but you shouldn't distribute your exported game just yet.
That doesn't sound good, maybe they realized after the fact that they haven't actually worked things out with Valve?
that's pretty vague, I mean are there no real licensing terms somewhere? What am I truly signing up for when I try to use this engine? I have to publish my game on steam but in what form? Same price as I do on my own website/store? Same exact form as on other stores? Same exact time, I can't publish first on epic and only later on steam?
I doubt its much of a deal. Garrys Mod and Rust have both been wildly successful (which means Valve has made tons of money off them as well)
My point is, if I were Valve id let Garry run wild with my engine--no deal needed. Hes proven himself more than once. Just a thought!
Dude. People are playing and making Gmod and HL2 mods and maps to this day. How many 20+yo game engines can say the same?
Originally people thought the Source 2 sdk, was going to be released with Half Life Alyx, but it never materialized.
It feels like Valve's management changed a few years (decade?) ago. I remember when they were still shipping SDKs and proper mod support, even for their multiplayer games. Today they are just killing everything that could divert revenue from their cash cow CS2 and shipping a half baked js-based scripting engine for their maps. (And in the meanwhile they kill fan projects like CS:Legacy, which is a whole game and not even a mod, with their army of lawyers. I don't think stuff like this would have happened 13+ years ago).
Valve's cash cow is Steam.
All of their games (Dota 2, CS, and the other ones they hardly maintain anymore) are basically just passion projects at this point, lingering on from a bygone age when they were a game development company.
Their most recent title, Half-Life: Alyx, probably only got greenlit because someone internally was able to convince leadership that it would help sell VR headsets.
CS2 makes an enormous and non-negligible amount of money.
Dota2 as well. Like I'm sure CS2/Dota2 are small compared to Steam, but the revenue from these games alone dwarfs what most other companies are making.
Valve's financials are nonpublic, and any numbers you find are rough, indirect estimates.
In any case, my point was not that these games make no money, but simply that Valve doesn't need them. The total number of people buying games on Steam vastly dwarfs the number of people who play Dota 2 and CS2 (even just counting total players - how much more when you narrow down to players who spend money).
They’re (genuinely) gearing up to release Half-Life 3 at the moment, and not as a VR exclusive
evidence?
https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVINqBTwM=/
They just opened up the source to TF2 with an SDK not too long ago. Explicitly for modding and community driven development.
https://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=238809
I really struggle to wrap my head around how this engine works. I haven’t used it, but I have experience with Source 1 and its systems and I imagine Source 2 is an extrapolation of that. But I really can’t wrap my head around how they’ve turned it into a scene-based game engine when Source 2 is map-based, how they’ve managed to build a completely different editor that still leverages Hammer maps somehow, and all the other stuff.
I've never tried s&box but Source 2 did overhaul the map and asset pipeline quite a bit, everything's a plain mesh instead of BSP and maps are also regular .dmx files, so I'd imagine it's slightly easier to build tools that work on top of it
It is a heavily modified Source 2.
The comments are hilarious. Every file has multiple profanity-filled rants.
omg it's great: https://github.com/search?q=repo%3AFacepunch%2Fsbox-public%2...
https://github.com/Facepunch/sbox-public/blob/8b1d58d524c37f...
Log.Error( "Fucked" );
I'd be interested in calculating the average profanity per-file count for projects that get open-sourced like this.
It’s a lot. And more profanity often means better code.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/03/is-code-that-contain...
Nothing new if you’ve read code from other Facepunch/Garry projects like their Steamworks SDK :D
Searching for "fuck" yields 81 files. Searching for "shit" yields 146 files. Only two files for "cunt" though.
The license: https://github.com/Facepunch/sbox-public/blob/master/LICENSE...
It's built on Source 2 so that license isn't the full story
MIT + copyright retention requirement
Except all third party components that are included in the source, maintain their own license.
I don't understand what they got basing off the Source engine. Maybe it made sense when they started 6 years ago - to allow using Hammer and such. But at this point they've made their own editor, networking, scene system... why is it still attached to a giant legacy codebase.
Didn't they start using Unreal Engine for S&box, then pivoted? Something must have been better for them on the Source side.
It's Source 2, its not legacy
Source2 is the giant legacy codebase I was referring to.
I mean, it is being updated regularly behind the scenes, it's used by Dota 2, CS2 and deadlock.
If you follow the "leaks" space a bit, you'll know that they are working on some kind of new game, and that new engine features that end up in deadlock for example are developed because of this project.
As a web dev, I pronounce that sampersandbox.
S&box huh
I really like the evidence for the bug fix for "VR not rendering" in the "Fixed" section
Looks like they’re positioning themselves as an open-source Roblox competitor. That would be awesome. Especially so if they follow through on the promise of standalone mode.
I’m interested in how they’re sandboxing C# code. Seems like an engineering problem full of pitfalls. I’ll definitely be peeking at this!
I don't understand the point of this thing.
Maybe competing with other engines, but it's hard to know how good enough this will be.
The age of mods is over, we're in the age of engines now, I don't think they will catch up.
Valve is not a game company anymore, they out source everything.
> Valve is not a game company anymore, they out source everything.
Interesting take when they have (at least) one upcoming game and two released games in development.
I really feel like that name is going to cause them issues with the other game builder with the same name:
https://www.sandbox.game/en/
I have never heard of this. It looks like a crypto thing. Can they really hold a candle to Facepunch?
They were pretty big at one point, though they've been losing traction. Their investors seem to have fairly deep pockets (hundreds of millions). Their software (game maker and client) are really well-developed and excellent. The crypto means you can trade any game assets freely, which is great, but also traditionally made it hard for new players who aren't into crypto (they just added credit cards).
Probably has the same resources as Facepunch, but nowhere near the following or players.
I feel the call of the valve hammer editor now (ok, that is a 20 year old memory so hopefully this engine has better map making tools)
AFAIK this can use both the new Hammer for Source 2 and its own Unity-like editor. Hammer is one of the few editors with actual level-design tools still maintained, most other engine's editors can't do much more than drop static meshes and prefabs around.
Woohoo, G man made it to HN! I believe in this project and am very hopeful as new game modes and models are added
I heard Valve was going to Open Source the Source Engine when they launched the Steam Machine.
Looks like a serious competitor to Unity. Modern C# is really easy to pick up for beginners (that's actually how I started learning programming back around 2010).
What does monetization look like? Can you ship standalone games? Source 2 licensing requirements? Is this closer to Unity or closer to Roblox when it comes to publishing?
You can't ship standalone games yet, they're currently in talks with Valve, lawyers talking to lawyers to try and make this happen. Right now, they have a Play Fund, and pay creators for minutes played, similar to Fortnite. This is definitely closer to Roblox for now, but yeah standalone coming soon hopefully..
A major advantage of using modern game engines is the multiplatform support. This seems pretty weak on that front.
I haven't look into it much, but, Source 2 supports all major desktop platforms and even all mobile platforms. Dotnet supports all those platforms as well.
So I'm not certain why S&box is Windows only, but my guess is that's just temporary.
"Looks 20% cooler" What is 1 "cool"?
>Once you have access to the developer preview, please use developer docs and discord to figure stuff out. Yes, I hate that every community is moving to discord and no-one uses forums anymore too, but it's the way the world is.
that cute snide comment won't somehow ensure that all of your community discussion isn't lost to discord-rot in a few short years.
keep your fate in your own hands..
(unless you just don't care)
Garry literally shut down Facepunch, which was a huge repository of community discussion for GMod, on a whim so I don't think he's in a place to whine about the Discordification of game communities
Give how abruptly Facepunch forums went down last time, I'm not sure if Discord is the one to worry about in this equation.
There are several daemons for discord to post all chats for a server into an HTML document.
oh man, I know facepunch for two great things: GMod and Sly Cooper. Both games were a defining feature of my childhood ahah
You're thinking of Sucker Punch for Sly Cooper. They're still around and just shipped Ghost of Yotei.
Is this a competitor for Unity and Godot?
More like Roblox at the moment. It could compete with Unity/Godot if they arrange a deal for standalone games with Valve, as it builds on top of Source 2.
Could it be ported to Source 1 now?
Can we use the team fortress 2 release of source?
Oh. It's a modding sdk.
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/source-sdk-2013
and also source 1
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