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

https://sbox.game/news/update-26-04-15

Here's some highlights from the blog.

Thank you for everyone that has helped us during this period - the developer preview is now closed!

The developer preview has been invaluable to the development of s&box, putting the engine in front of it's core audience from day 1 - you guys telling us what you love and what is shit has turned the engine into what it is today.

We'll be open again on Steam on the 28th April for $20.

Out of 800,000 people who joined the developer preview, 40,000 get to keep it and the rest have been revoked.
Who got to keep it:

• Developers who have published games people have played

• Anyone who has purchased any cosmetics

• Anyone who has played a good amount and actually opened the game this year

We're doing this in batches, making sure it's right, it might take a short while to complete.

I've merged the UI batcher, which means UI will render much much faster now.

You can expect major performance improvements in your user interfaces(which is almost every game) with some users reporting up to 54% more FPS while on the menu.

Previously we would render each panel individually as we traversed the DOM. The GPU would paint each individually which worked fine for a while. But as complexity grew, the number of individual draw that your GPU would execute would affect performances.

We can now, in the best case scenario, draw everything all at once.

Our discover page went down from 1080+ draw calls to only 5.

We've added a parallel / upright joint, so you can keep objects upright reliably.

🎁 Added

• Added `UprightJoint`, which constrains objects to remain upright, useful for characters, vehicles, and other physics objects that should resist tipping. Also has a parallel mode when targeting another body.

• Added on-demand navmesh tile generation API — new `NavMesh.DeferGeneration`, `NavMesh.RequestTileGeneration`, `NavMesh.RequestTilesGeneration`, `NavMesh.UnloadTile`, and `NavMesh.UnloadTiles` APIs for large open-world games that need to generate and unload navmesh tiles at runtime rather than all at once on load.

• Added a search bar to the main menu navbar for quickly finding games and content.

• Added "Convert to Mesh" in the mapping editor — converts a placed model to an editable scene mesh, similar to Hammer's workflow.

• Added `movie` command support for recording Light Components — light brightness and colour changes are now captured in recordings.

🧼 Improved

• Rewrote the UI renderer with a batching system that groups panels into a single draw call where possible, yielding massive performance improvements — up to ~4× faster in benchmarks (40fps → 150fps). Also introduces a new `Panel.Draw.XX` API for custom panels to emit drawing commands directly.

• Improved ambient occlusion performance with various shader and sampling optimisations.

• Improved hotspot tool in the mapping editor — now uses the active material, supports mirror horizontal/vertical, and adds a per-face apply button.

• Improved prefab editor performance when handling large prefabs — faster diffing and reduced initial load times.

• Improved serialization accuracy for prefab and scene files — positions, rotations, and transforms no longer silently drift between saves, eliminating unnecessary prefab instance noise and large git diffs. Switched to lossless `G9` float format.

• Improved `WildcardMatch` performance by replacing expensive regex with `MatchesSimpleExpression`.

• Improved shadow mapper hot path by eliminating array, `IEnumerable`, and LINQ allocations.

• Improved `SetObjectBounds` with minor overhead reductions.

• New s&box installs now default to MSAA 4× anti-aliasing on first launch.

• "Make Editable Mesh" in the mapping editor is now undoable.

🪛 Fixed

• Fixed a VRAM leak where shadow map textures were never returned to the pool when a `SceneLight` was destroyed — in scenes with many lights this would fill VRAM quickly.

• Fixed a transform equality regression where `Rotation.AlmostEqual`'s default threshold was too loose (~1.62°), causing `SetLocalTransform` to silently drop small updates and producing jittery camera movement.

• Fixed `Rotation.AlmostEqual` incorrectly returning `false` for two default (zero-length) quaternions.

• Fixed cascade shadow exclusion culling overculling objects at the edge of shadow cascade spheres.

• Fixed managed textures (prefab-embedded textures) never being present on headless/dedicated servers, which caused missing icons for inventory items, health, ammo, etc.

• Fixed `ScenePanel` being completely reset on hotload — panels that manage their own `Scene` now survive hotloads intact.

• Fixed the `TextEntry` caret becoming invisible after the move to command lists.

• Fixed a ~300ms stutter when first opening the settings panel.

• Fixed `MaterialAccessor` retaining stale material overrides after deserializing new data, causing phantom overrides to persist after prefab instance reverts.

• Fixed `PolygonMesh` writing world-space properties into JSON, which broke prefab diffing.

• Fixed blob IDs regenerating on every save, producing unnecessary git noise.

• Fixed light probe regression caused by an incorrect call to a stubbed `RenderDevice->IsUsingGraphics()` on headless servers.

• Fixed modeldoc wireframe rendering.

• Fixed crash when accessing `MusicPlayer.Title` with an invalid URL.

• Fixed assert triggered on `MusicPlayer` disposal.

• Fixed null `TargetComponent` crash in the Doo invoke block inspector.

• Fixed `SimplePicker` showing cloud assets when searching in the "Local Assets" tab.

• Fixed package modal portal layout regression.

• Fixed several Linux server path and library casing issues that prevented the dedicated server from starting.

• Restored center pivot behaviour in object selection mode.

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

https://sbox.game/news/update-26-04-08

Here's some highlights from the blog.

The Sandbox game itself is now open-source, people can contribute or take the code for their own games.

🎁 Added

• Doo, a simpler visual scripting system for wiring up component events — designed as a friendlier alternative to ActionGraph for common use cases

• Mesh cable tool in the mesh editor for creating cables, working similarly to Hammer

• New games dashboard with a rotating carousel and redesigned game cards

• `lang.showkeys` cvar and editor toggle to display localisation keys instead of translated text for debugging

• CSS `overflow: clip` and `overflow: clip-whole` properties for UI element clipping

• CSS `background-playback-state` property to pause video backgrounds

• `\[ShowIf]` and `\[HideIf]` attributes now support null checks

• Center option added to the pivot list in mapping tools

• `IFormattable` whitelisted for use in the sandbox. Thank you @RumBugen!

🧼 Improved

• Texture editor moved into the inspector - Thank you @boxrocket6803!

• Cascaded shadow map exclusion culling — shadows no longer render beyond each cascade boundary and objects from previous cascades are no longer re-rendered, significantly improving shadow performance

• Networking thread now processes messages at the same tick rate as the main thread

• Particle sprite GPU upload performance — buffer uploads moved into valid Graphics.Scope to avoid unnecessary render context creation

• Network packet byte arrays are now pooled in DecodeStream, reducing GC pressure for large compressed payloads

• Fixed a Steam buffer GCHandle leak where N-1 handles would leak per broadcast packet; replaced with a cheaper memcpy approach

• `Package.MountAsync` now supports mounting specific package revisions, allowing games to pin map versions

• `LoadingScreen.IsVisible` is no longer overridden every frame, allowing games to manually control loading screen visibility

• `Game.ChangeScene` now shows a loading screen for all clients instead of just the host

• Engine overlays remain visible during loading states

• ScreenPanel `Scale` property now works when Auto Scale is enabled, and `Opacity` now correctly affects ScreenPanels

• Undo support for WrapTextureToSelection and WrapTexture operations in the mapping tools

• Pause modal now uses the lighter HtmlPanel instead of a full WebPanel

• Launcher window geometry is saved when auto-closing

• PATH changes are now a no-op on non-Windows platforms. Thank you @MrSoup678!

🪛 Fixed

• Disabling shadows on a directional light now works correctly

• Shader compiler shutdown crashes resolved by properly draining the material system and preventing Steam callbacks after managed shutdown

• Exceeding the maximum light count no longer triggers assertions or causes directional light flickering

• `GetPixels` arguments are now validated to prevent negative values, fixing a security vulnerability

• Referencing a deleted prefab no longer crashes — the editor shows a warning and preserves instance data for recovery

• Creating a prefab from a GameObject now correctly restores the object's position

• Reverting changes on a nested prefab instance no longer wipes all outermost overrides

• Applying changes to a nested prefab no longer regenerates all GUIDs

• Fixed cyclical library references caused by built-in projects referencing libraries

• Fixed a null `AssetTypeAttribute.Name` NRE that silently shut down the GameInstance on editor startup

• Game loading is now properly cancelled on disconnect, preventing background loads from continuing

• Fixed filesystem unmount exceptions when a load is cancelled

• Prop gibs now properly inherit velocity when spawned in a batch group

• `IgnoreSingleObject` trace now correctly checks both rigidbody and collider GameObjects

• Glass shader tint now blends correctly through multiple layers using premultiplied alpha blending. Thank you @Infiland!

• `backdrop-filter: blur` no longer generates excessive mipmap levels Thank you @Infiland!

• Toast notifications (e.g. achievements) no longer persist indefinitely

• Post-game info popup is no longer dismissed on click, so its actions can be used. Thank you @RumBugen!

• Fixed human models having deformed hands with the "holditem" holdtype

• Fixed TextRenderer alignment not updating on re-enable

• Fixed possible NRE in `Button.Text` setter

• Fixed possible NRE in `UpdateMusic`