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arrow_back All tutorials· Beginner· Editor

🎓 Freaks Beginner Resources

A comprehensive beginners resource collection helping you getting started with game development in s&box.

Frxxks · update Updated 1 Hour Ago· visibility 36 views
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Frxxks
🎓 Freaks Beginner Resources

Welcome!


In this guide you will find a collection of helpful resources that will get you started with the basics of developing a game for s&box.
This is just a personal list of things I found really helpful when I just started developing for s&box. I hope these resources will help you just as much as they did help me.

Before we head into the thick of things, be aware that...

Facepunch  provides their own "Getting Started" documentation. You should check it out first!

 
Furthermore, as of April 2026, the S&Box Docs have been made officially open source. You can check out the Github Page here.

I will make heavy use of links in this guide that directly brings you to the relevant docs sections.


Other Beginner resources:



Launching the Editor


As outlined in the Download & Install Documentation the editor can be found in the Steam Tools Section called "s&box editor".
Just install it and launch it trough Steam. Simple right?

If, for some reason, this shouldn’t work, there is a Workaround for this!
Simply start the sbox-dev.exe from within the game folder. Make sure it’s the game folder you’re looking in and not the editor folder. 
( Just right-click the game in Steam > Manage > Browse local files and double click the sbox-dev.exe file )


Once the launcher is started, you can create a new project or open the default "Sweeper" project for reference.

Setting up your Project Locally


After clicking the "+ New Project..." button, you will be greeted by a new window where you can select which Project Type you want to create and what name, identifier and the location on your drive it should have.

Currently there are 5 types of projects:

Game - Empty

  • Use this if you want to create a Game for s&box.
  • This is your full "Game" Editor tools, very similar to Unity and Godot.

Game - Player Controller

  • Contains prefabs for various PlayerController such as: First Person, Third Person and Top Down.

Addon

  • Use this if you just want to make a general purpose Map or a Model and upload it into the s&box cloud.
  • These can then be accessed by game developers via the cloud asset browser or by people in the Sandbox Mode's spawn menu.
  • Addon Projects cannot contain code yet, however Actiongraph is available for them.

Map

  • Use this if you want to make a Map for any  Game.
  • Perfect for when you just man to make a generic map that can then be used by developers or as a map in Sandbox.

Sandbox Game Addon

  • Use this if you want to make a Custom Scripted Entity specifically for the Sandbox Mode.
  • Contains example Scripted Entities for Sandbox.
  • As of now, you can only create Scripted Entities (sents) spawned through the spawn menu. You cannot currently use this to create custom tools. 
 
 
This guide is assuming you're using the "Game - Empty" project type, since all other project types share the same editor environment as "Game - Minimal" but only differ in their restrictions on what type of features you can use.

# Setup your IDE
Make sure you have an IDE installed.
There are currently 3 officially supported IDE's available: Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code and Rider. You can change the selected compatibility from the "Edit > Preferences" Menu.

However if you know how, you can still set up any IDE of your choice to code for s&box, but you might run into issues. As you can read in this handy guide ( thanks @braxen ) , there may be further setup needed for the IDE of your choice. Make sure to follow these instructions to get the best experience.

Learn "C#"


s&box API reference


Other helpful API documentation 



 Components

  • How to set up a Custom Component:
/// <summary>
/// My cool custom component description here.
/// </summary>

[Title( "My Custom Component" )]
[Category( "My Custom Category" )]
[Icon( "settings" )] // https://fonts.google.com/icons?icon.set=Material+Icons
[Alias( "Cool Component" )]

public partial class MyCustomComponent : Component
{
// Your component code goes here...
}

Property Attributes

Property Attributes (Custom Inspector Elements)

Buttons in the Inspector
[Button] public Class ButtonCode 
{
// Code to execute when Button is pressed
}

Notable Doc Pages


Learn Razor


Learn Flexbox


Other Helpful Links


Helpful Open Source S&Box Github Projects


Linux



New Beginner Tutorials: (04-2026)




Older Helpful beginner videos (may be out of date)






Other helpful channels