Garry has asked anyone who's able to, to go and play the sandbox mode and ask for what exactly you'd like to see within the gamemode on s&box. This is your opportunity to leave suggestions in this forum that could be added to the mode. USE IT.
Please make sure to be detailed in exactly what you want and also specify not just what's apart of GMod's sandbox mode already BUT also things that you feel would be apart of it that even the GMod version doesn't have.
Hopefully this thread can be helpful as Garry does frequently go and look at the forums. You can link videos showing or concepts for the menus describing in detail what you'd like to see. Hopefully we can see some cool stuff come from this thread!
I know it’s not the most important thing, but I really miss having more weapons, NPCs, maps, and other basic props and items. I know those are exactly the kinds of things that players made and added to Garry’s Mod over the years, but I think having more of that content would make Sandbox mode a lot more fun. It would be great to build proper houses and bases, sit down with a friend, and just shoot or blow each other’s bases to pieces. 😂 Or have huge NPC wars, fight against NPCs myself, or just set up NPC vs. NPC battles and watch the chaos unfold. I think the foundation of Sandbox mode is already there. Now it just needs a ton of extra content on top of it. But of course, that’s just my opinion. I still see a lot of potential in S&box.
If half life 2 was the base for many props npcs weapons etc for Gmod I dont see how it can be too bad if Rust was S&boxs half life 2 so to speak. Having assets and weapons, props, npcs and such being borrowed and added to S&box would be a great idea and add more content to the base experience maybe even food you can eat like rust for example or helis or scrapys to fly in S&box it just seems like a fun idea but thats just my thoughts if the custom can be a placeholder I dont mind it being added to the full experience as its own weapon again the foundation is nice for sandbox but more content and a few more features from gmod would really bring it to the next level
Sorry but S&box sandbox will never be as good as Gmod sandbox because of the avoidance of using other IPs. There's not much that can be done about that and it's a dark stink cloud lording over this entire game that no one will acknowledge because they're blaming the log of "sausage" sitting on the floor.
basically, we can build a Lua interpreter in C# that acts as a C# runtime wrapper around Lua (using something like MoonSharp or NLua), so s&box can execute all scripts originally written in Lua at runtime. This lets us create a "gmod asset -> s&box asset" conversion mode, where the wrapper automatically imports all existing assets from gmod into s&box Sandbox mode
Lua scripting. I'm not asking to replace C#. I mean a lightweight Lua layer that players can use ingame in Sandbox, the way GMod had lua_run, E2 and Starfall. Right now anything scripted means opening the editor and publishing a package. A sandboxed ingame Lua chip/tool would let people make contraptions, gadgets and small game modes on a server without ever touching the editor.
Also Mounting is great, but mounted content is runtime only, so you can't share anything you build with it. Let us publish Sandbox saves, dupes and maps that reference mounted assets without packaging them and they should only load or see them if the other players have access directly to those game assets. So if I want to share a half life 2 game level in sandbox I should be able to with other people that own the game and not make money off it. Those packages would be excluded from the Play Fund, so nobody makes money from third party IP. Nothing gets redistributed and nothing gets monetized, but we get back the thing made GMod great.
Also lastly: Official drag-and-drop WYSIWYG UI editor Right now all UI means writing Razor and SCSS by hand. it's a wall for beginners and artists. The community has already built at least three separate drag and drop UI just to fill this gap. When multiple people build the same missing tool, it should be first party.
Let me start with that i am not the most avid player of Gmod, i've enjoyed the Multiplayer / Singleplayer with mods but i am very simple and don't really go deep into tools like the tool gun or cameras for instance.
Imma keep it light and quick with what i noticed.
Let's start with Content. My Three most important tabs were always Guns / Npcs / Cars so If i am gonna play Sandbox it needs a good amount of native content in these three. For example, in Gmod without any Mods i can roleplay some massive wars for fun with the combine / rebels and the cars / weapons etc etc. All of these activities made me stay and have fun even though i had no mods.
On the other hand S&box offers very basic weapons / Npcs, it doesn't have a good amount of different Enemies or Friendlies just one ugly dude called army man and science terry. Guns are well animated but lack the Interesting factor (Like the crossbows for example).
Replayability. Here i am talkin about mods, It's non existent basically. Personally i can't think of many ways to incentivize community creation other than getting more people to play the game by fixing the core issues of why they left in the first place. I can't talk about it from the view of a creator but rather the consumer so i won't be of much help. Hopefully you can figure it out!
Aside from these two core issues Performance was abysmal a few weeks ago when i purchased the game but i've noticed that after replaying the Sandbox mode that the performance is way better in Npcs. So bravo facepunch.
That's it, there's smaller issues like the big killfeed and getting confused on what map works with sandbox (Marble Racers for instance bugged out) and maybe the small text above npcs, i would rather it be voice acted but it's all personal taste i guess. Goodluck facepunch!
The biggest things for me that I feel like make the mode feel immediately lacking is the visual problems, the stuff that is apparent immediately after loading into the game and set the tone for the play session.
The two iconic maps, Construct and Flatgrass, are more impressive and modern, but that makes the visual bugs stand out even more. These are obviously going to be the go-to for most people because it's what they know.
The first thing you see in Flatgrass is ugly harsh shadows from grass meshes that taint an otherwise great looking map.
Loading into Construct is like cranking these up to 100.
Construct introduces a lot of new visual issues with it, however, such as the foliage and water rendering. (Garry did say good water is coming soon though)
For me, these first impressions after I load in kind of taint the rest of the experience, and make it feel like a cheaper experience and make every small bug feel like they are adding up faster.
Spawn Menu organization/hiding the stuff that makes it feel cheap
I also think that the spawn menus, while great that we can spawn in anything, anywhere - also make the experience feel cheap, with the lack of content and lack of filtering putting stuff like this almost immediately in your face. This somewhat ties in with first impressions I guess, as it's the first thing people see when they open the spawn menu.
I think separating community stuff away from the official content, maybe in a separate 'browser' tab would help. Having them so close together I feel like cheapens the experience and makes it harder to visually filter out the good stuff as a player.
The lack of content is also a problem which I think will come in time and be solved a lot with mounts, especially if there is a Source 2 one coming.
Creating content/addons and presenting it to users
I personally would also like to know a bit more on how to create content for the Sandbox game - I know that I can create entities in the editor and upload them, there is a tutorial on that, but how about other things like weapons? How would I go about making more complex addons comparable to some that Gmod had?
If I want to add a new custom tool in the tool list, can I do that, and if so, how?
If I want to make a pack of entities (thinking back to wiremod, Spacebuild, Stargate, etc.) - how would I be able to organize stuff like that? Can I add custom tabs? Can I add a custom category, or some way to subscribe to the entire collection? How would something like Wiremod effectively be organized and presented to users in the spawn menu we currently have?
Sandbox at least feels less moddable than Gmod from the get-go. So I mostly just want to know if it actually is, or if we just don't know how or don't have anyone doing it. Are 'gamemodes' as we knew them as in Gmod even possible? If I want to have a Sandbox-based game with extra gameplay things (eg. Spacebuild), how do I achieve that? In order to make some silly little thing like Melon Racer, do I really need to go and make a whole project and publish it?
Character Models
I know you said the sausages are going, but I'm adding this here anyway.
I think the biggest factor when it comes to the sausage hate really comes down to the fact that you don't have a choice - even though there was a human character added a while ago to the platforms main menu. You can pick a human in the main menu, but the Sandbox game will always use the sausage.
Having a server setting to limit/lock character model type, or let players use whatever they have in the main menu. That way, if the server owner hates sausages, they can opt-out. If they don't care, then they don't need to do anything and the game will use whatever the player has picked in the main menu.
Alternatively (or in addition) - give players the options to pick an entirely new player model from the cloud.
It feels very odd to me that Sandbox never used the human characters even if you had chosen one.
I feel like this kind of feature would have reduced a lot of the sausage hate from the start.
Built-in weapons
Audio across the board could do with some love, both the weapons themselves and surface impact sounds. There are several (or just about all of them, in my opinion) weapons that have unbalanced audio. Most of the weapons outside of the Ironwood .357 feel like they need their audio levels bumped up, it makes the the M700 sounds like it's an airsoft gun.
The UP-45 and the Heritage .45 use the same sound sets, including reloading.
The Ironwood .357 uses the same ammo reserve as the UP-45, the Heritage .45 and the SG-5 - 'pistol ammo'.
The M700 (sniper rifle) doesn't have a spawnable ammo type.
The Ironwood .357 doesn't have any reload sounds.
The Ashford R-7's rocket flying audio still doesn't loop. It's rocket exploding audio also sounds like it doesn't play half the time as seen in the video below.
All the dropped weapons use the same metal hitting something sound that sounds really out of place for them. In general weapon handling doesn't feel fantastic, with many guns feeling like they don't have enough recoil.
The 'recoil' of the crowbar has a very unnatural screenshake, along with the above mentioned impact sounds not being great.
Walking down a small slope will result in the player sliding down it, which doesn't feel correct. Weapon models shadows break when standing in front of a wall. The flashlight goes into the wall when you stand too close.
The Roller NPC doesn't explode, break or gib when it is destroyed/killed, it just disappears.
Killing an NPC leaves a model of the gun they were holding attached to their body.
I really want press c to choose player model. playermodel in sbox, benefit from source 2 updated render pipeline, should look better than gmod, but player can not use them in sandbox mode, only developer can do.
speedometer half life 2 like player movement more weapons from deathmatch fix the lag when switching guns easy model changer so outfitter likes would become obsolete commands to change player movement for example example vehicles vehicle system ala glide
Sorry I gotta' make a new post cause editing my old one is starting throw me to the bottom of the page when I try and edit it.
I don't know why, but when I spawn an NPC into the game, it feel like my game starts running at half the frames. It gets all jittery when I move and look. Hopefully the video captures it - I also included profiling info but I couldn't see anything out of the ordinary. But it definitely feels like my game is dying the moment an NPC is spawned in. The game immediately gets smooth again once I undo them. Sorry I feel like I've kind of just turned this into a bug report thread now, but for me it's all these little things that don't work as well as they should adding up over time which leaves me walking away with what I feel like is a bad experience.
Now that I take a closer look at the profiling, it does look like my frames start hitting red for a fraction of a second when the NPC is spawned in.
Thanks to yuiikale on Discord, they were able to both recreate the issue and provide some extra information on it.
The performance dips only occur on Construct with Army Guy and the friendly variant. Scientist does not have this same issue, nor does performance tank on the Flatgrass map.
I have made an issue for this specific problem here - let me know if it would be helpful to make issues for each item on the issue tracker for everything else I have mentioned.
I always loved the technical side of the game. Building a submarine, plane, train, car, spaceship, elevator as realistically as possible. For that I wish we had more neutral building props. Like cubes, sheets, scaffolding, beams, gears, rails, etc. made from different materials in different sizes. So pretty much everything under Spawnlists -> Builder Wiremod or something like it is also a must. I want logic gates, relays, sensors, flip-flops etc. Kids build them out of Redstone these days. So I don't think they are too niche.
But the most important thing is being able to host a stable 24/7 dedicated server. At the moment sandbox is complete chaos. Pretty much every server becomes unplayable within minutes of someone joining it and spawning random entities. There is no way to restrict what can be spawned as far as I know.
The SG-5 (MP5) weapon has an alternate fire that fires literal hand grenades.
There is no ammo counter for these alt fire grenades, nor is there a way to refill them when you seemingly run out. (They don't use grenades as their ammo, nor can you spawn in a new MP5 to refill them)
After you run out of ammo for them, there is no sound to indicate that you have run out. For whatever reason, alternate fire now acts as a secondary reload button and will reload the weapon whenever you press it and don't have a full magazine.
The Tool Gun cannot be spawned in at all. It just gets auto-equipped when you pick a tool.
Bullet hole decals get projected onto the player/weapon model when you stand too close to the wall with a weapon held.
The Physgun beam currently feels really weird. It isn’t straight—it wobbles. I think the idea itself is fine, but the wobble is way too pronounced, to the point where it almost makes you involuntarily focus on it. I still much prefer the straight beam from the early days of Sandbox.
As for dupes, the icons for them don’t show up at all for me, and the authors are all displayed as “Unknown.” I’m not sure if this is a network issue on my end or a bug. Also, when I try to spawn a large number of something at once, it just stays stuck on a loading circle. I know this will probably be replaced by the Steam Workshop or something similar in the future, but I still wanted to mention it just in case.
As for FOV, there doesn’t seem to be an option for it in the game settings—or at least I couldn’t find one. So I have to set it through the console every time, and sometimes the FOV seems to reset when I launch or enter a game, meaning I have to manually change it again. Even after setting it, the difference doesn’t feel very noticeable. In most other games, 90 already feels quite wide, but in Sandbox, even 90 still feels surprisingly narrow.
The current lighting and shadows feel really strange to me. Everything looks quite heavy, grayish, dark, and highly saturated. Personally, I still prefer the look of Sandbox back in 2023, before the Scene System update. It felt much brighter and, to me, visually closer to CS2 or Alyx.
We really need support for custom playermodels, so players can use models they’ve made themselves. I don’t hate Sausage Man, but I don’t particularly like using him either. I’ve also spent hundreds of RMB on cosmetics, and I’ve even gifted cosmetics to friends. You can check my inventory—I’ve genuinely put real money into this game, and I still want the ability to use a custom playermodel. The playermodel selection interface should also be more advanced and flexible. In GMod, you generally have to select a different model and then kill yourself before the change actually takes effect. That’s why one of the mods I always subscribe to in GMod is “Enhanced PlayerModel Selector Fesiug's Edit”. It provides a much better interface and gives you more options for customizing and managing your playermodel. I think s&box could benefit from having something similar built into the game.
The way flying works has now been changed to double-tapping Space. Some players may be more used to the way flying works in GMod, with a dedicated keybind. It would be great if we could have both options and let users switch between them. Giving players the choice is what matters most.
GMod also allows you to change server settings directly in-game, and s&box currently seems to be missing some of those options. For example, things like realistic fall damage or changing the gravity, or even being able to change limits in-game like you can in GMod. In Sandbox, you currently have to change those limits before starting the game.
The camera/viewmodel shake also feels really strange. For example, when jumping or swinging a weapon, there’s a very noticeable GoldSrc-engine-style camera movement. I really hope there will be an option to disable these effects, or at least have something closer to how GMod handles them. Sometimes the shaking can genuinely be quite uncomfortable.
More administrator tools would also be really useful. The feature I personally need the most is teleportation. When playing on a map with friends in GMod, we often lose track of each other and have trouble finding where everyone is. This is especially frustrating in story or scripted maps, where sometimes only the host gets teleported after reaching a trigger point, while the other players are left behind and can’t experience the next part of the map. Having proper administrator teleport tools would make these kinds of multiplayer experiences much easier to manage.
How about adding a dedicated Favorites list to the spawn menu? In GMod, when you have subscribed to a large number of addons, finding the specific things you need can become quite tedious because you have to scroll through everything over and over again. Having a dedicated Favorites section in s&box would make this much more convenient. For example, when right-clicking an item in the spawn menu, there could be an option to add it to Favorites. The next time you want to use it, you could simply find it in the Favorites list instead of searching through everything again. It would also be nice if Favorites could be organized into categories, making it easier to manage a large collection of saved items. The same idea could also be applied to tools. We could right-click any tool and add it to Favorites, making our most frequently used tools more visible and easier to access—either by placing them near the front of the list or by having a dedicated Favorites section for them.
Some tools, such as the hoverball, require a model to be selected in order to create them. By default, the tool does not have a preset model, meaning if you pull out the hoverball tool and try to spawn one, it does nothing, making it feel broken. If a tool requires a model, give it a default one and remove the option to clear the model.
Hoverball previews are white.
The way the resource selection menu works (like choosing a hoverball model) feels unpolished. When you click on the resource, it highlights but then menu remains open. You then need to click 'Select' for your selection to actually apply. This, in conjunction with the previous selection remaining highlighted until you mouse over it makes using the menu unpleasant. I would much prefer a menu where I can select something and it auto-closes and saved my selection, along with the clear button.
Both sprinkler emitter models appear as errors in the selection menu, however work in-game.
Buttons are spawned upside down when placed against a wall.
All forms of removal do not work on spawned gibs (the couch is a good example - it can be spawned in and 'broken' into cushions, after it is broken it cannot be removed via the remove tool, undo, or via the cleanup operation.)
One of the button models have some fairly obvious clipping when pressed. The other clips too far in when pressed and looks odd to me. They could both do with dedicated pressing animations to make the pressing smoother and less snappy.
Options for pressed and released sounds would also be good.
I would like to know if there is a way to expand these tools, bot by adding new entirely new tools, and by adding new models for things such as hoverballs, buttons, etc.
It would be good if emitters could be expanded to also support sounds and playing audio, otherwise adding a speaker tool that can emit sound and be wired to buttons like the current emitters can be.
Sprinkler models do not emit from where you would expect them to.
binding an action in a thruster or the like should just accept pressing a key, not having to hunt for it in a nested dropdown. it should also allow pressing any button, not just actions.
