As much as I am not a fan of the monetization model or Roblox-like route this has taken, s&box is still something that has a lot of potential to become a great creative outlet and tool for people to build, explore, and have a good time with their friends. But s&box is also a game that relies on its community to make that happen, which means the tools it provides to its users have to be in an acceptable state for them to create content. Right now, it is not making the cut.
The Game
I'm going to keep this section brief. My focus is going more towards the editor, but there are some things that need to be mentioned in a compiled list.
1) Crappy Hotbar - The hotbar for sandbox at least is atrocious and a serious downgrade from Garry's Mod. There's only six open spots and no sub options within them. Right now it's not the biggest problem since so few things have been made, but it's too minimal and will become more problematic as the game grows.
2) Construct Lighting Errors - I was trying to leave out content specific items, but I want to include this because Construct is a beautiful map with amazing detail that suffers from flickering lighting errors. While the foliage material has a problem with turning black from certain angles and the water is something left to be desired, I think I can speak for all of us in saying; please fix it. This map is a gorgeous remake and we want to experience it in the best way possible.
3) Game Crashes When Switching Maps In-Game - Title says it all.
4) Poor Selection Menu Design - The way you start or enter a game of your own is very backwards. The maps tab shouldn't exist as a standalone tab and should come secondary after you select a gamemode. This is confusing and buggy, even the game can get stuck loading, confused- probably not knowing what to do. Also when you go to the games tab, at the top should be the Facepunch official gamemodes.
5) Not Enough Items - I don't know what's going on here. There's absolutely not enough built-in items in the spawn menu. What's striking about this is that you guys have made so many official models and stuff you can use in the editor, but not spawn from the menu in game. There's only around ten built-in things you can spawn in. What the hell.
6) Broken Particles - Explosion particles are broken and there are no water splashes or really anything built around water interaction.
7) Missing Light Tool - Currently, there is no light tool that people can use from the sidebar.
8) Missing Physical Properties Tool - Currently, there is no tool to alter the friction or other properties of an object. Give us back our "Super Ice."
9) Missing Particle Emitter Tool - This was a really fun tool in Garry's mod, it's a shame it hasn't been developed sooner to further show off source 2's particle systems.
10) Character Creator Lighting - It's not great and mutes the colors of everything. Just a blank white space with a natural strong white light would be preferable. Right now it feels like I have cataracts no matter what option I pick.
11) Character Creator Color Selection - Please don't be limiting, be fun. Instead of forcing a range of color options for skin, hair, etc. Let us pick any value from a basic HSV slider.
12) Camera Tool Stinks - I don't know if there are ways to change these values and if there are then there needs to be something that is displayed for a short period of time that tells you the controls for them, but the camera tool in-game is awful. It's stuck on a harsh depth of field that I'd rather just turn off.
The Editor
The editor has a great design, it's sleek and easy to understand at first glance. However, it is littered with bugs and technicalities that deeply hinder our abilities to learn and use it.
1) Construct is Not an Editable Map - There is a version of Flatgrass that is editable, but not Construct. Unless there is something not documented or translated well, editing a preexisting built-in map is not possible. This should be open so people can learn from what you guys have created as a template! Users that are trying to learn the editor are going to want to see how you created the built-in maps. I wanted to explore the inner workings of the map so I could learn the build style you guys used to make it in the first place. There are many things that I still don't know how you did in your maps because I can't simply go in and learn how.
2) Compiled Materials Can't Be Edited - I wanted to see if I could go into the floral material you have that's used on maps like Construct and Flatgrass and see if I could fix it for use in my own maps. Unfortunately, editing compiled materials, even just a simple alpha change, cannot be done. I've tried to do research on this, but there isn't enough documentation and whether or not you can decompile materials. For all Facepunch official materials, they should be easy to edit and manipulate so people can learn from them.
3) Material Loading Problems - Because of the cloud format this game follows, it's a constant strain on my internet even though it's pretty good. Materials have problems with loading, sometimes objects/models do too. When this happens, there isn't a way to reload them while in the editor and I've found myself constantly saving and exiting a project and opening it back up to fix these issues and sometimes others I can't explain that I chalk up to just be strange bugs.
4) General Material Problems - Materials or really just creating them, is incredibly finicky and littered with bugs when ran through the engine, it took me an hour to make something glow white without it completely corrupting when I saved the material. Because for some reason that's how that works... In any sense, it shouldn't.
5) My God, The Undo Button - I get what you were going for, I really do, but it's awful. I was anxious to perform any big actions and/or make any experimental changes because of how awful the undo button is. Please just make it a general undo or add the option to do so instead of a tool based undo. User control aside, it's littered with bugs and constantly sends errors about simple things like a single transformation not being undoable because of a vague problem the user isn't responsible for. Working in the creative industry I have experience with many different software's, ranging from Clip Studio Paint to Houdini FX. Out of all of them, none have ever had an undo button this problematic.
6) Scaling Issues On Play - I've had a lot of experience in Unity so I know what you're trying to accomplish with the scaling options for the preview window, which as of right now doesn't work as it should. Multiple monitors may affect this, I'm not sure- but testing in full screen is pretty much impossible and too much of a chore to bother.
7) UI Scaling Issues On Play - The UI often bugs out after stopping the player, especially the Object Select panel which will stretch across the screen and be stuck that way unless you change to a different tool and back.
8) Broken Clutter Tool - The clutter tool does not seem to work or doesn't have enough/correct documentation on how to use it.
9) Missing Decal Tool - There is no decal tool to paint effects onto surfaces.
10) Missing Eye Dropper Tool/Lack of Visible Mapping Material - Blocks created by the Mapping tool do not display their current material and since there is no eye dropper, any time a material needs to be used again, you have to hunt for it in the files or search for it again in the cloud assets. The material pallet in the Mapping tool should instead be a preview for what material is set for the selected face or object (if applicable) and can be right-clicked to copy and paste to other surfaces/objects/models.
11) Can't Organize Assets - Right now there is no way to save user/cloud assets into a collection which seems to be on the horizon for implementation as it's visible but grayed out. This should have been one of the first things added to the editor. If there is already a way to use these collections, then it needs to be improved. This should be as easy as right-clicking on an asset in the browser and saving it to a collection.
12) Can't Search By Author - Since there is no built-in collection for Facepunch official assets, it is a royal pain to locate them since you cannot search by author.
13) Hierarchy Issues - Moving things inside parent objects is not always easy. It's too picky and demands you drag the item directly on top of the parent object for it to become a child, rather than dragging the item somewhere into the list of preexisting child objects.
14) Missing On/Off Button in Hierarchy - There seems to be room for one, but there is no on/off switch for items in the hierarchy.
15) No Easy Way To Test - Unless there is a way and just a lack of documentation, there is no way to test out a map or feature in game and not the editor without publicly publishing the item. This is a fat problem and why there are so many issues with peoples creations not working in-game. Especially when there are so many display and render issues in the editor.
16) Lighting/Rendering Inaccuracies - The lighting and sometimes rendering of material properties such as "Self Illum" between the editor preview and game preview, are completely different from one another even after placing in the "Envmap Probe" that I suspect users didn't know about when discussing this issue. I've also found that having your project set to "Walker Sim" (The Default) in the project settings instead of "Sandbox", creates rendering inaccuracies. The game preview itself also seems to have rendering issues with lighting, contrast and brightness, although I wouldn't be able to confirm this since there's no way to test maps and other creations directly in the game without publishing them publicly, which I and most others are not going to do with a project we just started especially if it's a private project.
Conclusions
This game is not ready for release in its current state. I would not be satisfied paying for and receiving this product, purely intended for fun with this many problems and missing features. There is a lot of potential for s&box but all of it needs more time in the oven, especially the editor. I wrote this very long post because Garry's Mod was my first PC game, same goes for most people, and I care for what it is that you guys are trying to make here. It's not exactly what a lot of people wanted, but what is here are the stepping stones to be something different and something special and I hope that this game improves and becomes an amazing outlet for creators.
P.S.
The cap for the thread titles could really be a little larger,
I feel like I am creating a name for a Nintendo Switch profile here...
