A New Game Project

When you first boot up the s&box editor you'll be greeted with the Welcome screen.

The first step is to create a Game Project. You can do this by clicking "New Game Project..." in the top right.

You'll be presented with Create New Game window. Choose the template type "Shooter Game".

Pick a name for your project and choose where you'd like to store it.

Shooter Game

The shooter game project gives you the basic code that you need to make a first, or third person shooter game.

Once you create your game you'll be put in the menu for it.

To play the game you can either use your game's menu, or you can click "Start Game" in the game window. You can click the "Show Game Menu" button to return back to your game's menu.

Editing The Code

To open the solution in Visual Studio, go to File > Open Solution in the S&box Editor. The solution will contain a project containing your game's code, but will also include projects containing common code for the game and editor. You might wish to right click your game's project in the Solution Explorer and choose Scope To This to isolate just your project.

For the most part the templates are designed to act like tutorials. They are heavily documented to help explain what's going on.

Glossary

We might use some terms that you don't understand, so here are a few explanations.

• Client - A Client is generally a human that is connected to the game
• Entity - An Entity is usually an object that exists in the world. They are usually synchronized between the server and client.
• Pawn - A Pawn is an entity that a player owns and controls - this could be a car or a humanoid
• Panel - A Panel is a UI element
• RootPanel - A RootPanel is a panel that holds a bunch of other panels. The HUD is usually on its own RootPanel.
• GameManager - each game has one game manager. The GameManager is actually an Entity
• Tick - one server cycle. A tick is independent of the frame rate. The tick rate is adjustable.

Shooter Game Overview

When the game starts, the MyGame GameManager entity is created.

When a client joins, ClientJoined on GameManager is called. From there a Pawn is created for that client.

Each tick, Simulate is called on the Pawn (automatically). This method takes client input and acts on that. The Pawn's current weapon is also simulated here too.

On the client only, each frame GameManager.FrameSimulate is called. This method is used to position the camera.

Testing

If you want to test your multiplayer game, you don't have to publish it. If you start a server, people will download everything they need from you.

If you edit code, the code changes will be sent to them as you make changes. If you edit UI and stylesheets, they will be synchronized to your remote clients too.

Publishing

To publish your game go to your game's Project Settings and choose Upload To Asset Party from the menu on the left.

From there you will be guided through the process of publishing your first release. Once you make your game live, other people will be able to discover and play it.