Update 26.02.25

A new update has been released, you can view the full changes on our blog post.

https://sbox.game/news/update-26-02-25

Here's some highlights from the blog.

Editor Splash Screen

The editor loading splash got a new modern look, the key change is removing all the noise and showing you only what you need instead.

You can also override the image with a splash_screen.png file in your project folder.

Sandbox Mode

Lots of Sandbox mode goodies, the physgun has a gravgun mode and glows orange, tools have action hints, remove all constraints is in, dupes have a download progress, weld previews show correctly, and more.

Party Improvements

On theme for improving the platform experience, I've made some party system improvements this week.

• When the party leader starts downloading a game, you'll start downloading the game too in the background.

• When they've finished, you'll go with them.

• I've added some toasts to make it really obvious what's going on.

Changelog

🎁 Added

• Editor splash screen has a progress bar, no longer spews console, is customizable

• Editor Welcome Guide

• Time.NowDouble

• Incremental compiles: smarter processing, syntax tree reuse

• Games can have a dedicated server only launch mode

• If a party leader is downloading a game, party members download it async in the menu

• Mapping vertex paint selection modes

• Updated Scene & Prefab Previews

• Scene.BatchGroup disposable method obsoleting SceneUtility.RunInBatchGroup, also batches network spawns

• Physics out of bounds event

• Selectable abstract AnyOfType

• Gizmo.Control.Rotate now outputs Rotation instead of Angle, added trackball and view based rotation @DrakeFruit

🧼 Improved

• Mapping: Vertex paint traces only on selected surface

• Mapping: Vertex paint shows verts with paint information

• Mapping: Vertex paint can paint backfaces

• mat_toolvis button in in-game console

• mat_toolvis converted to managed from native

• Minor menu style tweaks: use actual logo svg, hide LiveLobbyCard whilst loading, tweak notification badge styles

• Startup background is smaller, lighter and uncompressed UI image

• Several verbose logs moved to trace channel

• Cleaned up main menu assets and transient files

• Dedicated server no longer does unnecessary transform interpolation

• rendersystemvulkan: use SDL_Vulkan_GetInstanceExtensions for surface extensions

• Update Vulkan headers and volk (w/ valve mods)

• rendersystemvulkan: use VK_EXT_surface_maintenance1 make swapchain recreation a bit better

• SceneUtility.RenderToBitmap uses a normal scene instead of an editor scene so components execute normally

• Improve allocation overlay (#4121)

• Allocation overlay

• Avoid StringToken boxing causing unnecessary allocations

• Reduced Trace.WithCollisionRules allocations

• Reduced Action allocations from Component.ExceptionWrap

• Avoid per-frame KeyValuePair[] allocations when using Parallel.ForEach

• Avoid allocations when creating and iterating CommandList

• Remove need for second lightbinner for fog, just do it all on shader, we do classification on the shader itself, edge cases like fog disable are rare to require doing it with an entire new collection of lights

• LoadAllGameResource only loads new resources

• Make sure SeverPackages.InstallAll only reloads packages once

• Close existing project settings window when opening new one

• Use InvariantCulture in various places when parsing floats @MrSoup678

• Don't show Max Player slider if Min players == Max players @nixxquality

• Dynamic splash screen height to avoid stretching @boxrocket

• Verify CreateGameResults cookie before usage @nixxquality

🪛 Fixed

• mat_toolvis convar doing nothing

• Duplicated r_3d_skybox convars

• BlitMode.WithBackbuffer actually respects WithMips setting (#4096)

• physicalDeviceVulkan12Features.bufferDeviceAddress only enabled if hardware supports it (#4095)

• addon type not having ProjectPage

• Shadergraph: Don't generate TextureAttributes for albedo if its dynamic

• Native Resource networking

• PostProcessSystem does not run under dedicated servers

• Custom loading screen not showing when joining to an existing session (#4124)

• Envmaps, particles and light cookies not being marked as used, meaning they can end up evicted out of VRAM

• GameObjectSystem configuration supports collections properly

• Native resource reference networking

• DirectionalLight gizmo line spacing