When Boredom Strikes

S&Box: A sequel to Garry's mod

A few years back, I got word that Garry Newman, the founder of Facepunch Studios, was working on a sequel to Garry's Mod. As time went on, I waited patiently for any news on this new project. It wasn't until 2018 that I discovered the name of the sequel.

S&BOX

"Our intention with Sandbox is to take a powerful game engine (UE4 right now) and build a hotloading C# layer on top of it. The idea being that you will never have to touch C++, you never have to wait for things to compile, you never have to close the game while developing.

We're hoping that what we're making is engine agnostic. Our goal was to build this on top of Source 2, but that seems unlikely now - as it's doubtful that would have any actual benefit over what we're currently doing."

~From the main site, sandbox.facepunch.com

I didn't know much about it until I began watching videos detailing it by Crayz. When viewing them, my eyes shot open at one particular video. It was information on the importer for the game, which sent me into a state of excitement I haven't felt in years.

Their game importer will allow you to import files from any game of your choosing, which is a huge cut above Garry's Mod. The reason is that Garry's Mod ran on the Source Engine, which require you to convert any and all assets into proprietary formats that it could read, which made the learning curve too steep for modders. With S&box the list is infinitely expanded. Here are some of the potential formats:

-obj

-dae

-fbx

-b3d

Here are some of the importers currently added:

-GTA5

-GTA San Andreas

For a preview of S&box's importing capabilites, I have provided the following videos:

For me, I can only imagine what kind of content I'll finally get to play around with. Here are some of the following I hope for:

-Gauntlet Dark Legacy

-Ratchet & Clank

-Dead Rising

-Elder Scrolls

-Fallout

-WWE

-Tony Hawk's

-Theme Park Roller Coaster

-Red Dead

-The Suffering

-Army Men

-Star Wars

S&box also has an official development server on Discord, but be careful. It has no rules section and will ban without warning.

I really look forward to this game. Do you?

Copyrights and patents are the enemy of creativity and progress

I've ranted about this millions of times and I'll rant about it again. Copyrights and patents are basically put in place to protect someones designs and ideas. However, the one thing that doesn't go through anyone's mind is the fact that its killing creativity and slowing the progress of new technology.


Allow me to start with patents. Patents protect the design of an invention. In example, you might look at the bladeless fan from Dyson. What everyone doesn't know is that since the creation of patents, innovative progress has slowed down greatly. Believe it or not, if these laws were never invented, we all could of had flying cars and UHDTV's by the 1990's due to the fact that everyones designs could be worked on and improved. I think that is just wrong on unimaginable levels.


Now let's turn our heads to copyrights. These laws came into play approximately during the 1400's when the right to knowledge was first becoming infringed upon. People had easy access to information which made books cheaper. Then, the press decided to throw this right out the windows and copyrights followed in later years. Now, of course, copyrights don't only protect literature, but every form of media including music, movies, games, photos, etc.

The truth is, though, these laws weren't supposed to come into existance. Intellectual property is nothing more than a free-roaming thought, which can spread from person to person with no price tag. All these things that are projected from the idea are but mere objects. They're made to look like the thought, but they are never the thought itself. Why claim ownership of something you cannot physically touch? My opinion is that if something can travel to everyone with no cost, you can't claim ownership of it. However, you can claim authorship in which you will be covered by plagiarism laws.

In conlusion, don't put a price on something you can't control. Because all they're doing is paying for a plastic figure, CD, digital photo, or book. But they are never paying for the thought itself.

Let me know what you think in the comments,


Noah Bangs

What has the USA become?

The title says it all.


I am a US citizen. I am also one to complain that with all this recession, inflation, foreclosures and so. It's no wonder that our founding fathers are turning in their graves.

One of the things that get under my skin is how they messed with the 2nd amendment. We can't carry weapons outside our pockets. If we did, we'd get arrested. If all states could have unconcealed weapons, nobody would mess with anyone. What makes Texas so special? Another thing is how the rich lose interest in helping poor and middle-class americans. You might have a different opinion, but I just think they've grown to not care anymore.

Despite all this, we still have a ton of freedom. However, it's only a matter of time before that fades. Would you believe that not only has the Pledge of Allegiance been banished from schools, they're also trying to take away our national anthem. I absolutely abhor this. They can take our patriotic staples out of the country, but they cannot take the red, white and blue out of our veins.

I had stumbled upon cryptocurrency in 2013, and I must say how impressed I am. If the dollar collapses, this is one of the currencies we can use. The current price at the time of writing this post is $300.

What do you think about what our government is doing? I personally think that there should be some changes.

Noah Bangs