Ideas for s&box as a Platform

[trundlr]

s&box as a platform

In the council, garry has suggested we aggregate ideas for the platform. This thread will allow anyone to submit their desires or ideas for s&box as a platform, and issues can be created or linked and then brought back to FP to consider.

An old discussion I started for platform related issues last year (but never went anywhere): #3695

• Improve the game experience
  • Encourage games to fix their errors
  • Hide the error banner unless the player is part of the org
    • Hide the error banner in games for players that do not belong to the organization #6188
  • Make it easier for developers to find and fix errors
    • Error stack trace lines do not match up in files where codegen has occurred #6180
    • Web: Long package errors stack lines get cut off #6175
    • Web: Ability to mark package error entry as 'fixed', so it'll disappear/get snoozed until it shows up again #6174
    • Allow developers to report their own "errors" and logs to the backend #6185
    • Web: Errors are not coalesced properly #6173
• Allow party hosts to invite their friends
• Asynchronous multiplayer - utilize sbox.game and allow information to be published in game as part of the API?

Community Suggestions

Lobby data (suggested by many)

• Store realtime server data #4709
• Allow private Steam lobbies for dev sessions #5089
• Lobby Information Properties are Inaccessible to Change #5275
• Allow developers to store data in the lobby itself. When lobbies are queried, this information can be accessed so that we can give better lobby selection experiences to users. For example, allowing a player to set their game as private so that nobody joins them, and the lobby can be filtered out by the developer of the game.

User Library (suggested by @Retroeer)

• Be able to download games in the background and see the games you have downloaded or favourited in a "Library" page in the main menu
• Allows users with slow internet to download games before sitting in a lobby for minutes/hours.
• Gives users an easy way to get back to games they already love and wanna play again.

More package operations (suggested by @badandbest)

• Allow renaming and deleting packages, and allow packages to be transferred to another org
• sbox.game: Delete packages. #5852
• Transfering games over to another org #5646
• Additional thoughts: rename orgs too?

Edit and Delete Stat Entries (suggested by @Asphaltian)

• Allow stat entries to be edited and deleted
• Editing Stats #4814

Allow the console to be hidden entirely by developers (suggested by @Retroeer)

• Add a way to completely disable the console for players
• Disabling the Console on a per game basis #6190

Allow storing data per player on the backend (suggested by @MD485)

• [Platform] Per player data store. #6191

[Nolankicks]

I think some sort of view model solution should be prioritized. I know there are other ways to have it work. But the solution now is far from ideal.

[trundlr]

This discussion is about the platform, not the engine.

[Nolankicks]

Ah sorry.

[badandbest]

I think renaming, moving and deleting games could be a very good feature.
#5646 and #5852

[trundlr]

Added!

[Nolankicks]

This is stated as planned. But I think it would still be a great feature for the platform. #3042

[trundlr]

I just updated the OP to include a discussion I made last year that includes this issue. Thanks!

[Asphaltian]

Editing stats pretty please 🥺 #4814

[trundlr]

Added!

[Retroeer]

Console being integrated into every game, while being very Source, is not desired by everyone, having the ability to hide it would be nice. Can't imagine I'll have too many people to rile behind me for this one though :p

[trundlr]

Can you make an issue for this?

[Retroeer]

#6190

[trundlr]

Added!

[MD485]

Many complaints have been levied in the discord over the limitations of the leaderboard system.
Things like top all time, top per map, top per month, having different values as opposed to just a float, wiping the leaderboard, etc.

While this personally doesn't interest me too much, having a small data store per player per game I believe will have a strong benefit.
Something similar to cloud saves, but maybe not something expressly for that purpose, which would allow developer auditing of the data.

If as a developer I want to know how many people complete the first boss for example, I don't think there's a way for me to tell right now, outside of maybe forcing an unconventional exception to trigger after that boss is defeated.

Obviously there is a bit of a cost benefit analysis to memory, if you let people store even 1 MB of data per player, if a developer uses all that space and their game mode has 1 million players then that's 1 TB of data for one game.
It could also be that that game doesn't use that memory at all, or only uses 1 KB of it's per player space, so it's a bit of a toss up.
Even a relatively small store of 10 KB can still hold a lot of data though, so long as it's not stored as json.

I'm sure Facepunch can figure out what numbers are reasonable internally, I just think this would be a very useful feature for developers.

[trundlr]

Would you be able to link or make an issue for this? I would be happy to add it to the OP 👍

[MD485]

#6191

[trundlr]

Added!

[badandbest]

I love this idea so much

[bub-bl]

Added the ability to reference a library A to a library B, etc. The current library system is not viable.

[trundlr]

Garry has already stated many times he does not want this, I do not see it happening.

[bub-bl]

Find a way to transpile C# code to C++ like Unity does with IL2CPP. This will improve performance and avoid decompiling gamemode / standalone version .dll files.

[ogterry]

Definitely agreed.

[trundlr]

This isn't really a s&box platform issue.

[bub-bl]

Rebind keys in hammer (This is a pain for AZERTY keyboard)