s&box

Garry Gmod doesn't have a marketplace, there is no reason for S&Box to have marketplace with skins ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars. When you can literally get free cosmetics and models from the Garry's Mod workshop. This isn't Roblox or Rust.

I am praying that Garry and Facepunch pull a No Man's Sky and puts in the work to save this game engine from what I can safely call a disaster launch. I heard about this game and got access to it back when it was invite-only. Sure, the game selection was pretty barebones and there was a lot to be desired, but I forgave it because it was in such an early state. I was so optimistic and hoping this would unironically succeed Garry's Mod, and hoping the development experience would rival Unity, Unreal, and Godot because you would reap all the benefits of the Source 2 Engine. Then, I took a look at the reviews post-launch. And they reminded me a lot of my experiences that I was having shortly before the game launched (which may I add, the main reason why I didn't get booted is because I bought cosmetics). What the hell is the point of open sourcing your tooling and your changes to the engine if you can not even be bothered to make a native Linux runtime? That's such a smack in the face because Valve has been pouring in a ton of support for Linux, and considering the amount of involvement that S&box has with the Steam platform, you would think native Linux compatibility is something Facepunch would be doing. This is especially considering the Steam Deck and the upcoming Valve hardware, WHICH RUNS STEAMOS, WHICH RUNS LINUX. And even then, when you focus on the Proton side of things, upstream (Wine) has been improving native Wayland support and it's only a matter of time before Proton gets Wayland support (without GE). And yet, Facepunch developers make smug remarks about how trash Wayland is and how they don't plan on supporting it. Maybe that's why when trying to play S&box on Wayland with Proton-GE, it literally black screens and is unplayable. Even when going with good ole X11 via XWayland, the performance that I experience is abysmal. Many of the slop experiences I can't even join and play because the frame rates are so low they're unplayable. This is the *exact opposite* of what is supposed to be one of Source 2's main selling points: a wonderful balance of beautiful graphics and amazing performance. If what developers are saying are true and they are gutting some of the amazing features in Valve's tooling for Source 2, and can't be bothered to make their tooling feature parity, then what is even the point? This sours any interest I would have for wanting to use S&box for development and making serious projects with it. Considering that S&box is meant to subvert from GMod and offer a UGC-based experience like Roblox, are you sure you want to be getting on the bad side of developers? I'm still optimistic. I am hoping that Garry and the rest of Facepunch take all of the feedback they're getting and they put in the work to make S&box what it was promised to be. Not what it is now.

Look, I’m usually pretty optimistic when reviewing games, especially newly released ones. I try not to immediately trash something that clearly had effort put into it. But after spending a couple of hours with this game, I can confidently say this feels like pure Roblox slop. What really confuses me is why they marketed this as a “Garry’s Mod spiritual successor” when it’s honestly nothing like Garry’s Mod at all. People will say, “But it has a sandbox and a gravity gun!” but that’s not what made Garry’s Mod special. GMod was about creativity. It gave players freedom to create insane scenarios, unique saves, dupes, machinimas, and entire game modes through millions of community-made mods. That freedom is what made GMod legendary. Instead, this game just feels like Roblox with better graphics. And why are basic player models and customization locked behind real money? I got access during the testing phase for free, but knowing people are spending around $20 on the game only to be hit with even more paid cosmetics afterward is ridiculous. Who thought that was a good idea? The sandbox itself also feels incredibly shallow. There’s barely anything meaningful to do in single-player, and the modding system completely misses the point. I don’t want to use some limited “pre-built” mods that barely change gameplay, and I definitely don’t want to dig through game files just to install content manually. Where’s the Steam Workshop? I don't know, I guess they threw it away. The accessibility and endless creativity of mods were the entire backbone of GMod. And that’s another thing people forget: Garry’s Mod was built on Half-Life 2. A huge part of its identity came from Source engine physics, assets, and the culture surrounding Valve games at the time. This game throws all of that charm away in favor of the “new equals better” mentality, without understanding what actually made GMod memorable in the first place. At the end of the day, I honestly can’t recommend buying this. If you want a true sandbox experience built around creativity and community freedom, stick with the cheaper, more enjoyable, and golden Garry’s Mod.

The most popular game is a grass cutting simulator that is identical to a roblox game, and the next runner up behind that has like 8 players.

Мёртвый проект, который никогда не оживёт. Автор поддерживает накрутку ботов в нейрослопные игры

They deleted my forum post about an error I was having with my project. Forum/Discord support for crashes isn't exactly very helpful :| Documentation isn't all there either nor are there many tutorials, so you're kinda forced to just sift through the handful of released, open-source games on GitHub from other devs (not that it's bad, just tiresome). Ended up moving to Godot, for now.

I tried. I tried so hard to find anything in this trashheap, but this, this makes me depressed for the world of gaming as a whole... Whilst Facepunch truly only controls the market, (and the obvious issues about that have been spoken in many other reviews) I instead will be focusing on something mostly out of their control. The games. They are, SO bad. Not like babbies 1st flashgame bad, not someone learning to program or sprite or stumbling on the steps to greatness no. This is nearly every single game, ( with the exceptions of the shameless and direct ripoffs of real games that already exist and like 3 actually functioning semi-original games) is an incremental idle simulator. NOBODY who looked at this platform has decided they want to make something out of it, and nothing is exactly what we got. If there were some way this was financially beneficial I would shrug and assume it's just the same lazy cash grabs that affect the mobile, and increasingly the steam market. I almost wish it was the case, but these games make the creators no money. A horrifying but true statement is that, somebody sat down and WANTED to make "asset flip idle clicker #8731" a lot of somebodies did... What's happened to us, what deeprooted mental failings made someone think any of this would ever be enjoyable?! Perhaps I'm spoiled, my flash game days of "thing thing" and "last stand" and games that weren't much but they were GAMES might have tipped the scales towards enjoying things like, "fun" and "gameplay" but this is so far beyond just being a handful of bad games. Someday paleontologists will dust this file off as some gaming equivalent of the decay of Rome.

For me, the game's optimization remains a primary concern. I can't play this game with such low frames per second and constant stuttering. I sincerely wish Garry and his team achieve good optimization for s&box! Every update I run a benchmark to see how much better the optimization has become. My S&box benchmark results: Date (version) - Score (not FPS. It's more of a performance evaluation. Higher - better) 42 Days Ago (version 26.06.24) - 222; 28 Days Ago (version 26.07.08b) - 200; 21 Days Ago (version 26.07.15a) - 129; 12 Minutes Ago (version 26.07.22) - 144; 5 Minutes Ago (version 26.08.05) - 150; +6 points in last update! As you can see, the game's performance drops with each update, but last updates added some score points back. Good sign. I will continue to do benchmarks with every update.