I've updated the citizen. They now have a default non frowny face and they can have a neck. We have sliders to alter other aspects of the body like their chest, waist, neck, and nose size. You can choose their eye colour too. So if you liked having no neck, you can bring that back with a slider.Let me be honest here. I love the citizen, I love how he looks, I love that he has no neck. But the feedback we've consistently got is that people hate them. They hate everything about them. So we're going to fidget around and change things to see if we can change that.
We're going to keep trying to make it work a bit longer, we're going to keep tweaking and trying to get it less divisive, but at some point we might have to hold our hands up and say okay, yeah, it didn't work, and flush him down the toilet and have a generic humanoid instead.
Of course, this isn't what "fixes" s&box on its own, but it something that comes up consistently in our many many many negative reviews, so it's something that we are addressing along with all the other feedback we receive.
You can now reshape a model with a ModelDeformer component. Add one as a child of a model, use its volume to choose the affected area, and inflate, squash, stretch, transform, pull or project that part of the mesh. Deformers can be stacked with an explicit priority to control their order.
These are all GPU, they're shit hot fast, and can apply to any model. They are purely visual - they're not going to change the positions of bones or hitboxes or collision data.This is what gives Citizen 2.0 its neck and new body-shape controls, but it can also be used for your own characters and effects.
We've moved some stuff around, and moved the friends list so it's all up in your face on the right side of the main menu. We want to make it as simple as possible for you to invite your friends, and see what they're up to.All party controls show up at the bottom right of your screen now. It'll be clearer as to what's going on, if everyone's downloaded a game, or if you're waiting for the host. These party controls stay on-screen on other pages, including overlays!
We've also added a new player card, that shows when you click on one of your friends. It shows their avatar too!
We've refreshed the game overview screen. A lot of info that players didn't care for is now gone, but we've also added some new stuff that will make finding games that are suitable for your party much easier.The latest update for a game is also visible at a glance. We encourage creators on the platform to use this feature, as it's useful to show players what's new and what to expect.
The loading screen's looking dated, so we've refreshed that too. It'll show a game's last update for you to read a blurb for, as well as show you how many achievements you've unlocked.When opening the loading screen, you'd notice stuff got stuck on-screen while everything was warming up. That is also fixed, so things will feel smoother going forward.
The main menu has a new music track from Carson. And if you don't like that I've also added a separate menu music volume setting, so you can turn it down or off independently of the rest of the audio.
Voice chat now uses SDL for microphone capture and Opus for compression. You can select your microphone directly in the in-game audio settings, with a live meter to help set the voice activation threshold.This also fixes garbled voice when running multiple instances of the game. Each playback stream now owns its decoder, and custom voice playback can use SoundStream.WriteVoiceData.
You can now add your own profiling scopes inside command lists. They will be visible from in-game GPU profiler (overlay_gpu 1) and external tools. This should be useful for measuring performance cost of specific sections of your rendering code.
This is how you can add a profiling scope:
static readonly ProfilingSampler MyProfilingScope = new( "My Profiling Scope" );
// inside the command list execution code:
using ( _commandList.ProfileScope( MyProfilingScope ) )
{
// do something here...
}
Nested scopes work as well, like on the screenshot above. Here's a setup example for it:
using ( _commandList.ProfileScope( ParentScope ) )
{
using ( _commandList.ProfileScope( NestedScopeA ) )
{
// something here...
}
using ( _commandList.ProfileScope( NestedScopeB ) )
{
// something here....
}
}
These code snippets are also available in s&box docs.
You can now compile scene meshes and models into combined static geometry and collision using Scene > Compile Scene. This is similar to the map compiling in hammer, another step closer to bringing map editing over to the scene editor.You should see a good reduction in draw calls if your scene has a lot of meshes.
Depth of field now has a focus picker: click an object in the scene to set the focus instead of finding the distance by trial and error. The focal-distance and range controls have also been expanded for larger scenes.
Blur size now scales relative to a 1080p render target, so changing resolution keeps the effect a consistent size. We have also fixed bright HDR pixels leaking through rejected depth-of-field samples.
The longer it takes to get into a game, the more players give up before they see it, so we spent some time getting them in faster.
Downloads
Downloads used to run through the main thread, so on a fast connection they were partly capped by frame rate. They now run on the thread pool, and dependencies download in parallel instead of one after another.
Cherry picked from our benchmarks:
On average hardware with a 200 Mbit/s connection, a game with lots of small files downloads about 50% faster
Games with lots of other package dependencies benefit the most, one went from 19.4s to 6.6s
The faster your connection the bigger the gain, slow connections were already mostly network bound
Loading
Most of the load time was spent on overhead rather than the actual loading:
Files were mounted one at a time
Package dlls were downloaded again on every load
Backend calls waited on each other instead of running in parallel
Loading sandbox on flatgrass:
Cold load (first load after starting s&box): ~20s to ~9s
Warm load (loading it again in the same session): ~7s to ~5.5s
We have fixed several causes of GPU crashes, including depth-normal work on some AMD cards, cubemap filtering, render input layouts, and cleanup when maps unload or the renderer shuts down.
There are also fixes for replacing DLSS upscalers and initializing or sharing FSR3 upscalers. When VRAM is over budget, the texture pool now shrinks by the amount it is over, including in tools. GPU crash reports include more information about the failing call, shader and memory budget to help track down remaining problems.
We've had a database service on the backend for a while but not really exposed it. Well now it's exposed via Sandbox.Services.Database. There are a million ways you can use this and I'm sure we'll expand on it in the future.
This allows you to save data in a database for your package, on the backend. The data persists between sessions obviously, and can be public or private. You can get all entries for a particular group etc.
var messages = Database.GetTable( "player-messages" );
// The message and its world position.
var data = Json.Serialize( new
{
Text = "That chest has teeth.",
Position = new Vector3( 120, 450, 32 )
} );
await messages.Create( Guid.NewGuid().ToString(), data, "dungeon-01", true );
var records = await messages.List( "dungeon-01" );
There's a new player insights page under your game's metrics, at sbox.game/<your-org>/<your-game>/metrics/player-insights. Only members of the game's organization can see it.
It focuses on two topics:
Player Retention
How long players stay during their first session
How many come back the next day, a week later and a month later
Whether that's getting better or worse over time
Discovery & Onboarding
Where the menu showed your game and how players got in
Whether the thumbnail, description and video convince them to press play
Whether the first 5 minutes keep them engaged
There's also a small section on loading, since a big download or slow startup is where players give up before they've seen anything.
Everything is compared against similar games, so you can tell whether your numbers are actually good.
Player count, co-op/versus and map settings have moved from the website into project settings and the publish wizard. Players should see which games they can play alone or with their party, and that only works if every game has this information set. So the publish wizard now asks for it.
Terrain holes and outer edges are now clipped before pixel shading. This restores early depth rejection and lets MSAA smooth the cut edges, while avoiding shader work on terrain that will be discarded.
We also fixed the terrain depth prepass writing incorrect surface data. It now outputs the proper normals and roughness, restoring ambient occlusion on terrain.
26.09.29
26.09.29
29 September 2026
Areas
97 changes in this update
add
Added
18 changes
Characters & Models
Citizen 2.0 - refreshed the default face, added shader-based eyes with editable color, and added neck, head, chest, waist, nose and chin adjustmentsPR #5909
by
@garrynewman
Model Deformer - added volume-masked inflate, squash/stretch, transform, pull and project operations with ordered stacking and inspector controlsPR #5894
by
@garrynewman
Editor
Scene compile reports - added Make All Static on non-static exclusion groups, marking the affected objects static in one undoable editf83dad0
by
@aylaylay
Game settings - edit recommended player counts, co-op/versus modes and map settings in Project Settings; the publish wizard now includes a Players step with a game-card preview38113fd
by
@lolleko
Scene compilation - explicitly bake eligible static meshes and props into aggregate geometry and collision with Scene > Compile Scene, retaining the scene path, GUID and editable sourcePR #5590
by
@aylaylay
Component eyedropper - choose from a dropdown when the picked object has multiple matching componentsPR #5921
by
@bakscratch
Edge cuts - create a single vertex with a single-point edge cutPR #5923
by
@bakscratch
Depth-of-field focus picker - click a scene target to set the focal distance, with expanded distance and range controlsPR #5874
by
@antopilo
Rendering & Shaders
Managed scene renderer - added the opt-in C# scene renderer through r_managed_scene 1; disabled by default37baa6c
by
@handsomematt
Renderer comparisons - added SceneLab parity/benchmark tooling and r_managed_scene_compare for comparing managed and native rendering37baa6c
by
@handsomematt
Command-list profiling - added nested GPU scopes through CommandList.ProfileScope, visible in overlay_gpu and external profiling toolsPR #5807
by
@wheatleymf
ViewSetup controls - added RenderTags, ExcludeTags, EnableUI and EnableDebugOverlaysPR #5891
by
@garrynewman
Audio
Menu music volume - added a separate setting for the main-menu music level7554054
by
@garrynewman
Microphone settings - added in-game input-device selection and a live voice-activation threshold meter using SDL capture and OpusPR #5915
by
@devultj
Voice playback - added SoundStream.WriteVoiceData with a separate decoder per streamPR #5915
by
@devultj
Main Menu & Parties
Friend cards - view citizen avatars, achievement scores and current/recent games from the refreshed friends railPR #5927
by
@devultj
Game jam voting - added live voting bars, finalists and standings screens for the next jam phasePR #5903PR #5899
by
@garrynewman
Services
Database service - added Sandbox.Services.Database for package-scoped, player-owned cloud records, with public/private visibility, groups, pagination and revision-checked updates95bc339
by
@garrynewman
Scene compile snapshots - build from an isolated copy of the saved scene so later editor changes do not alter the captured job72cb1d1
by
@aylaylay
Scene compile work - build models, collision and aggregate data in single passes and avoid repeated mesh scanning9f476466835ca111af099d582fba
by
@aylaylay
Compile status - show when edits need compiling and use the editable scene for editor play until it is compiled againdef6fb263be38e
by
@aylaylay
Scene publication - publish compiled scenes and their runtime dependencies through ordinary resource handling87df9c7
by
@aylaylay
Rendering & Shaders
Terrain clipping - cut holes and heightmap boundaries before pixel shading, restoring early depth rejection and MSAA on cut edgesPR #5930
by
@sampavlovic
Clutter - reduced scatterer allocations, batch rebuild work and GPU batch upload timePR #5887
by
@antopilo
Terrain culling - reuse meshlet culling results across passes of the same view1d77bb4
by
@handsomematt
Camera hooks - reuse the render-stage delegate instead of allocating one per camera per frame980dc78
by
@handsomematt
VRAM budget - shrink the texture pool by the full budget overshoot, including in toolsb23702c
by
@lolleko
GPU diagnostics - tag crashes with GPU vendor, failing call, fault type, shader and VRAM-budget information5ba7ed5e95bd0c
by
@lolleko
Loading status - display Loading Scene before the synchronous scene load beginsd424788
by
@lolleko
Startup screen - added a coloured Facepunch logo, blue background and loading progress barPR #5935
by
@garrynewman
Party dock - replaced the footer party deck with a floating party/join-status overlay that stays accessible in modal viewsPR #5927
by
@devultj
Jam browsing - show live nomination counts on game cards, entry counts on filter tabs and active-player sortingPR #5899
by
@garrynewman
Menu suspension - preserve the menu scene, navigation and scroll state while pausing its updates, rendering and spatial audio during gamesPR #5904
by
@garrynewman
Frame-rate defaults - game and main-menu frame-rate caps now default to uncappedbc2e016
by
@garrynewman
Downloads & Networking
Map prefetching - fetch the selected map and its dependencies alongside the game package so later mounting can use cached files4381b9f
by
@lolleko
Assembly caching - reuse package DLLs from the asset download cache after validating their checksum5d7ca72
by
@lolleko
Shared downloads - reuse in-flight package-info requests and manifest downloads across concurrent callerse5ac631
by
@lolleko
Cached asset mounting - resolve cached package files off the main thread and update mounted-symlink resource mappings in a parallel batch1f65e0e7f393d7
by
@lolleko
Achievement loading - start games without waiting for the achievement list and queue early manual unlocks until it arrives64dfc02
by
@lolleko
Load-step pacing - yield a frame between loading steps instead of adding fixed delays34a1d7d
by
@lolleko
Package transfers - download files off the main thread and mount completed files on the main threade9ac2ef
by
@lolleko
Dependency downloads - prefetch package dependencies in parallel9f2077f
by
@lolleko
Party preloading - cache the game and its dependencies without mounting them until joining2e462b8
by
@lolleko
Download handling - retry stalled downloads and accept compressed responsesbadce7f
by
@lolleko
Network files - avoid redundant filesystem lookups when preparing files for transfercb9298f
by
@handsomematt
Navigation
Disconnected targets - avoid exhaustive searches when the destination is on another navmesh island and return a partial route toward itd1ff911
by
@lolleko
Agent routes - repair existing routes when agents drift or are repositioned instead of always replanningf18fd6f
by
@lolleko
UI & CSS
Painter - reduce CPU submission work and temporary allocations for paths, lines, curves, polygons and aligned strokes, with reusable batch storage and shared contoursPR #5866
by
@garrynewman
Platform
Load diagnostics - record teardown, reset and scene-loading stages and log the duration of each load stagedc78677
by
@lolleko
Session diagnostics - report menu discovery, game-load timings and session end reasons8c5d138
by
@lolleko
check
Fixed
42 changes
Editor
Deleted scene output - recreate missing compiled scene files from an existing bake, or fall back to editable source when generated bake data is missing505742d
by
@aylaylay
Scene compile reports - keep reports available while there are unsaved changes so multiple exclusion groups can be fixed before saving9d09054
by
@aylaylay
Source-less scene status - handle scenes without local source files when checking compile status7d49ad5
by
@aylaylay
Prefab compile settings - only read scene bake settings from local scene assets, avoiding prefab compile errors5823f8f
by
@aylaylay
Camera piloting - correct framing guides when desktop scaling is not 1PR #5883
by
@metapyziks
Multi-object editing - stop copying embedded-resource values from the first selected object into the othersPR #5898
by
@carsonkompon
Undo - preserve bone identity when undoing object changesPR #5892
by
@aylaylay
Scene compilation - support cloud assets without requiring their source filesPR #5924
by
@aylaylay
Edge tools - correct open-edge indicator alignment and scalingPR #5922
by
@bakscratch
Rendering & Shaders
Terrain ambient occlusion - write correct normals and roughness in the terrain prepass instead of invalid G-buffer dataPR #5930
by
@sampavlovic
Editor environment maps - apply the isolated cubemap view-rendering scope in the editor as well as in gamePR #5929
by
@sampavlovic
Camera rendering - avoid holding the camera lock during RenderToTexture and fix CameraComponent command-list racesPR #5889
by
@garrynewman
Depth of field - scale blur size relative to 1080p so its apparent size stays consistent across resolutionsPR #5882
by
@sampavlovic
Depth-of-field highlights - fix bright HDR pixels leaking through rejected samplesPR #5876
by
@sampavlovic
AMD depth normals - fixed crashes affecting SSR and other effects using depth normals on some AMD GPUsPR #5901
by
@sampavlovic
Sprites and text - correct bounds for non-billboard sprites and sorting between TextRenderer and SpriteRendererPR #5897
by
@carsonkompon
Material cache - evict destroyed materials and replace dead wrappers instead of returning them for reused native addressesf1b2fd8
by
@handsomematt
SceneObject model lookup - avoid crashing when an object has no mesh data070ab3a
by
@handsomematt
SceneObject transforms - read transforms of native-created objects correctly and update child transforms when their parent moves4e43b77cafd5d5
by
@handsomematt
Dynamic input layouts - synchronize first-use layout construction so render jobs cannot use partially built layouts142f9fc
by
@handsomematt
Cubemap filter initialization - create the filter shader before rendering rather than inside a render-stage callback0fc2e3e
by
@handsomematt
Cubemap rendering - isolate cubemap view rendering and fix filtering GPU crashes by avoiding scratch memory and reducing thread-group sizesPR #5911
by
@sampavlovic
Async compute synchronization - graphics-queue semaphore waits now cover every stage that can read compute resultsd204677
by
@handsomematt
Input-layout collisions - fixed heap corruption when input layouts collide173ac32
by
@wheatleymf
Vulkan UAV slots - correctly size UAV bookkeeping so slot 8 cannot overwrite the push-constant bufferc6cd590
by
@lolleko
DLSS replacement - reference-count NGX initialization so retiring an upscaler cannot shut it down beneath its replacement06439d1
by
@lolleko
FSR3 stability - initialize scratch memory and prevent dispatch through uninitialized or concurrently used temporal upscalers4fc5380
by
@lolleko
Map unload - clear lighting references before deleting world objects that may render for one final framePR #5932
by
@sampavlovic
Renderer shutdown - release leftover GPU fences before destroying their owning render threadPR #5932
by
@sampavlovic
Audio
Voice chat - fixed garbled audio with multiple running game instances by separating voice playback decodersPR #5915
by
@devultj
Audio device lifetime - keep SDL audio initialized while a device still owns an audio stream5892816
by
@lolleko
Main Menu & Parties
Friend invites - clicking Invite no longer opens the friend popup and gives clearer feedbackPR #5886
by
@devultj
News images - do not stretch HtmlPanel images by defaultPR #5886
by
@devultj
Jam voting - keep voting snapshots fresh and prevent listener failures from turning successful votes into errorsPR #5899
by
@garrynewman
Services
Package statistics - resolve the calling package from compiler-written assembly metadata instead of its assembly name95bc339
by
@garrynewman
Downloads & Networking
Manifest failures - allow a failed manifest download to be retried instead of leaving an empty manifest cached as a successful resulte5ac631
by
@lolleko
Server browser - share and refresh Steam discovery requests to avoid false empty server lists after repeated queries; use the running Steam AppID for standalone games too#11869PR #5907
by
@garrynewman
UI & CSS
Filtered text - fixed text compositing in UI masks and filtersPR #5853
by
@xezno
Bound values - ensure initial values with a hash of -1 are synchronized into controlsbc2e016
by
@garrynewman
Engine
Assembly access checks - reject assemblies declaring IgnoresAccessChecksToAttribute5ba6aa3
by
@lolleko
Geometry helpers - fixed closest-point calculations on zero-length linesPR #5894
by
@garrynewman
remove
Removed
3 changes
Editor
Compile on save - removed automatic geometry baking on save; use Compile Scene explicitlye53e34e
by
@aylaylay
Detached compile history - scene compile reports now follow the active scene instead of retaining detached historical reports4e30b1f
by
@aylaylay
Main Menu & Parties
News card - removed the main-menu news card as part of the friends rail refresh; news remains in the launcherPR #5927
by
@devultj
Wishing GAMMA TEAM the best of luck, hope you take 1st place! Separate thank you for the insight game stats, map compilation in Map Editor, and FINALLY new music in the main menu.
I just loved the citizen from the first day and i really hope it will stay in s&box forever. we already have the ability to switch to human model so whats wrong with it ?
As for the new Terrys, let’s give them a chance 💖
we already have the ability to switch to human model so whats wrong with it ?