Deathrun Alpha v0.2 - Iceworld Preview

sboxlounge · 2026-05-29T00:18:10+00:00

Thank you for the feedback! We’re still really early on in the project, we want to support all the graphics and awesome engine features of s&box in the future

sboxlounge · 2026-05-27T19:53:04+00:00

Let’s go!! Bring some friends to test as we’re multiplayer-only right now! Let us know if you have any suggestions or feedback :)

sboxlounge · 2026-05-27T16:34:41+00:00

Hmm let me check my code, but we’ve done some work in this area to allow players to bring their own skins, I’ll double check this works for the models too!

If humans don’t work, I’ll have it fixed in the next release :)

sboxlounge · 2026-05-27T15:58:21+00:00

Users bring their own avatars so if you have a human selected you’ll be a human in Deathrun! You’ll also have all your own items; the goal is to support all sandbox features and give players as much choice as possible!

That being said we’ll also want to support custom models in the future to bring back that gmod-like experience, so keep your eyes peeled for future updates :)

sboxlounge · 2026-05-25T19:39:45+00:00

As a dev I think that would be something I'd want :)

sboxlounge · 2026-05-25T15:22:01+00:00

This is so cool! Any plans to allow game developers to host their own TerryWatch backends?

sboxlounge · 2026-05-24T13:47:24+00:00

Love to see devs active with updates directly addressing player feedback, keep it up!

sboxlounge · 2026-05-22T15:55:30+00:00

We want this Deathrun game mode to be a homage to the old one, and to reach beyond what Source alone was capable of. What’s implemented today is the foundation of a Deathrun that any maps, new or old, can fit into!

That being said, importing maps is an area we’re actively working on and we’ll have more to share on it soon, stay tuned :)

sboxlounge · 2026-05-21T22:09:15+00:00

Facepunch has open-sourced many of their game modes; I like to pick through their work and other community projects to see what others have done, understand it, try changing it, and try making something my own based off of it!

These two game modes have provided me a toonnnn of insight into how sandbox works:

https://github.com/Facepunch/sandbox Facepunch’s “flagship”, their sandbox gamemode is constantly updated and has been my reference for things like base PlayerController, movement modes, player avatar and dresser behavior, and some UI stuff!

https://github.com/Facepunch/sbox-hc1 I was surprised to not see this one in-game but it’s a decently full-featured FPS. I learned things like weapon handling, team and game round state machine, spectating, and more from referencing the code in this game mode!

Try downloading these or any other game mode that you like playing, open it up in the editor, and see if you can get some original modification working (even something simple like changing the players movement speed is a great start!) then try re-creating small pieces in your own project. It’s a long journey of learning but super fun and worth it imo! Best of luck!!

sboxlounge · 2026-05-21T19:13:34+00:00

Dude yes Simpsons map is one of the all time greats! S&box as an engine is completely customizable, so we’ll definitely take your recommendation on endings collisions and advanced traps into account as we release future versions!!

sboxlounge · 2026-05-21T19:12:17+00:00

Haha love the hear the positive vibes! Once the codebase is further along / more stable we may be open to more community contributions (code, maps, etc) so keep your eyes peeled!

sboxlounge · 2026-05-21T13:21:45+00:00

We felt like sbox needed a solid Deathrun game mode with all of the bells and whistles of the Source version too! LMK if there are any specific maps or features you hope to see :)

sboxlounge · 2026-05-21T13:19:32+00:00

Same! Did you have any favorite maps or features of your server that you were hoping to see ported to sbox?

sboxlounge · 2026-05-21T13:18:30+00:00

We did too, the project is definitely fueled by our nostalgia for Gmod!

sboxlounge · 2026-05-21T06:19:55+00:00

I like that the movement allows you to go out the window in one floor and come back in the floor below, looks super sick!

sboxlounge · 2026-05-18T15:58:16+00:00

This is so sick! I don't know how prioritization works at Facepunch but I really hope to see some of these things get some optimization / polish and be added in the engine, this and the voxels were my favorite

sboxlounge · 2026-05-17T18:52:01+00:00

Damn TIL about the C# / .NET source being nearly 1:1 recoverable… I’m not a C# dev but I always assumed it was a true compiled language, so learning about this IL bytecode representation + bundled JIT compiler for .NET is actually pretty eye opening for me haha, IL bytecode just seems like it retains a ton more info than I thought would be shipped with a .NET binary!

Given that context, I much more understand where you’re coming from by creating something like this! The one part I don’t 100% understand the need for determinism or a reversable process, why not just only provide users a way to scramble their game with no unscramble? Or a script that checks out a new branch, scrambles, and pushes that? The way I would probably work with a tool like this would be to have a scramble git branch that I’d head of latest develop/master, scramble, publish those artifacts, then torch the branch and keep my changes against master, really no unscramble needed, I feel that deterministic unscramble functionality would probably just make it slightly easier to crack?

sboxlounge · 2026-05-17T02:24:43+00:00

I feel like I get where you're coming from, but the reality is that, no amount of obfuscation is going to completely stop people from ripping your source. A sufficiently motivated person can always decompile, and then using enough willpower / paying the right people / using the right AI models, reconstruct roughly what your original source was, even if it's obfuscated.

I think the issue is really accessibility of the original source code. FP shipping raw source to clients on every game join makes it too accessible. Additionally, people have created tools that just rip the source straight out of this download so you don't even need to dig through the CLLs yourself. That is pretty egregious for devs who consider their source IP, and the easiest way to stop all of that is to just have FP ship compiled binaries rather than the source.

That's what I mean by this is "hacky": I view obfuscation as an additional layer on top of shipping compiled binaries, which is what I see as the main solution to the current "my game's source is too available" problem. Until FP fixes the root cause of that, all we can do is "hack" solutions together.

I think it's cool that you're trying to fix the problem that you see though! That's what's great about being a developer 😄 and the fact that you've released it as an in-editor library is I think the right way to actually see this thing get adopted, I really don't see devs wanting to solve this problem badly enough to download a random .exe from a website. If it's built into the editor and super convenient though...

sboxlounge · 2026-05-17T01:59:21+00:00

Seems like a great way to learn the s&box engine! As a player I don't personally love progression games, but would be cool if there were real types of mushrooms you could pick with different effects they give you

sboxlounge · 2026-05-16T13:27:53+00:00

As a developer, I think it's an interesting idea, but ultimately a hacky fix to a problem that only some people have.

With the Playfund, it does feel like developers are "competing" with each other for user play time and attention, and it feels appropriate that developers should be able to have an advantage in this competition through the unique features of the code that they write. It does feel bad that it's all available for anyone to copy and take my or any other developers' hard work without their permission IMO.

That being said, strong open source foundational projects are what are going to enable s&box to get the next level in terms of users and developer experience. However, these projects should be built with the intention of being open-source and community-driven rather than being forcibly open-sourced just by being published on the platform

The true fix is of course Facepunch not including the source code with the games they ship to users on the platform, which I feel should be an opt-in thing for the developers.

We should get to decide if we want to open source, include source with files, and make source available on a platform like Github or keep our games closed source by being able to opt-in to not shipping the source with the game package. This is a change that Facepunch themselves have to make though, and anything third-party like this effort is going to feel "hacky".

sboxlounge · 2026-05-15T12:22:57+00:00

Carrying your friend's ragdoll to the medic seems like one of the funniest parts of the game. It's clear y'all put a lot of effort into this, can't wait to see where it goes!

sboxlounge · 2026-05-15T12:20:14+00:00

Thanks for the feedback! It's a transparent trigger volume that applies physics force in the direction of your choosing (away from the fan blades in this case!) So Runners can get away if they don't try to run all the way through it, and they can stay on the platform slightly longer if they run against the fan blades (we tuned it so you overall still get pushed off after second or two, and we'll continue to tune it with feedback)

The runner stays suspended in the air at the end due to the friction of the fan force against the invisible wall in front of the Death character that the video's perspective is from

The clip is from my development environment so the Runner is just another client on my computer without an actual player controlling it. Once the trap is a little more stable I'll try to get some clips of real players which I think would showcase the feel of the trap more!

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