Update 26.03.25

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

https://sbox.game/news/update-26-03-25

Here's some highlights from the blog.

Public Roadmap

We're getting closer to release, so we want to start being more open about what's coming next. We've put together a public roadmap - think of it less as a strict plan and more as a big wishlist of high-level features we're excited to work on.

It's not everything. It's not a promise. It's the stuff we're genuinely pumped about and want you to know is on our radar.

You can upvote items you care about and leave comments - so if something matters to you, let us know.

Standalone

We signed the new license with Valve this week, allowing us to allow people to export games from s&box's editor and ship them as standalone games on Steam completely royalty free. This has been a bit of a complicated journey, but with a lot of reassurance and compromises, we've got there.

We still have work to do on our end. We need to create a license between Facepunch and the people shipping games, then double and triple check everything is legit, but I wanted to share this progress with the community so they know that Valve did the bizzo.

When it's ready we'll be piloting it with a few select people. The first out the door is likely to be My Summer Cottage.

Faceposer

We've added the first version of face posing to Sandbox Game this week, fully networked, and supports presets!

Summary

There aren't many weeks left until the doors open, so we're heads down making sure everything's ready. There's always going to be things we could be doing better. At some point you just have to say "this is the release" and do it. So that's what we're doing.

Right now the focus is simple - rounding off as many sharp edges as possible from a player's perspective. How do we make that first experience as good as it can get? What games do we point new players to so they have a great time right away, and want to stick around and explore?

Changelog

🎁 Added

• Mounts can create prefabs with PrefabBuilder

• Open the pause menu programmatically with `Game.Overlay.ShowPauseMenu()`

• Cylinder hitbox support in ModelDoc

• `Model.SaveToVmdl` and `Model.SaveToVmdlAsync` APIs for saving models to VMDL format

• Select all support for vertex, edge, and face in the mesh editor

• Lift vertex color under cursor in the vertex paint tool

• Network diagnostic tools with `net_diag_record` and `net_diag_dump` console commands for detailed RPC and sync var stats

• ConVars for maximum incoming and outgoing network messages per tick

• Support for `font-variant-numeric` CSS style property with `tabular-nums`. Thank you @aidencurtis

🧼 Improved

• Smoothstep anti-aliasing for rounded border corners in the UI

• Video player now uses a compute shader for YUV resolve instead of VS/PS

• Updated zstd compression library from 1.4.6 to 1.5.7 for faster shader compilation

• Morph crossfade control between animation-driven and override morphs

• Mesh trace now supports RunAll for tracing all mesh components

• Interop code generation optimizations

• Reduced LINQ usage in hot paths to eliminate iterator allocations

• `ClipScope` is now a ref struct to avoid megabytes of heap allocations per second

• Eliminated array and list allocations in `TemporaryEffect.OnUpdate`

• Asset Browser defaults to sorting by name and fixes context menu for mounted assets

• Demo recording improvements: parent change recording, skeleton bone detection, ragdoll physics fix, and cloud asset references

• RemovedTerrain tool UXopacity slider is now disabled for base layers with an explanatory tooltip