TL;DR: A disgrace to the name “Source 2,” standing behind it and barely resembling that amazing piece of technology.

A lot of generative AI content is seeded all throughout the platform, which is actively endorsed by some of the Facepunch developers on the s&box Discord. No biggie because you can ignore all of that, but just something to take note of.

Performance-wise, even on a good rig with the stock sandbox mode, it feels kind of sloppy compared to what you see in other Source 2 titles made by Valve, which run amazingly. The editor feels smoother, but that was just with an empty scene/minimal assets.

It’s kind of deceptively perceived as a “Garry’s Mod 2” by a lot of people in the community, which it’s clearly not. It’s not a replacement, and it’s not a direct successor, but it follows the basic principles of Garry’s Mod - it’s more like something, and sorry for the comparison, like Roblox. From what I’ve seen, you’re put into the C# .NET hugbox that’s wrapped around and above Source 2 here but see no actual Source 2 tooling except for Hammer.

In its current state, I’d stay away from it; give it some time to ripen. Either Facepunch drives this thing against a wall in the long run, or they actually use the potential it has and turn it into something amazing and polished. Facepunch appears to be pretty enthusiastic about the product, which is good, but it also really makes me hope Valve decides to give us an actual Source 2 SDK instead of relying entirely on this.

TL;DR: A disgrace to the name “Source 2,” standing behind it and barely resembling that amazing piece of technology. A lot of generative AI content is seeded all throughout the platform, which is actively endorsed by some of the Facepunch developers on the s&box Discord. No biggie because you can ignore all of that, but just something to take note of. Performance-wise, even on a good rig with the stock sandbox mode, it feels kind of sloppy compared to what you see in other Source 2 titles made by Valve, which run amazingly. The editor feels smoother, but that was just with an empty scene/minimal assets. It’s kind of deceptively perceived as a “Garry’s Mod 2” by a lot of people in the community, which it’s clearly not. It’s not a replacement, and it’s not a direct successor, but it follows the basic principles of Garry’s Mod - it’s more like something, and sorry for the comparison, like Roblox. From what I’ve seen, you’re put into the C# .NET hugbox that’s wrapped around and above Source 2 here but see no actual Source 2 tooling except for Hammer. In its current state, I’d stay away from it; give it some time to ripen. Either Facepunch drives this thing against a wall in the long run, or they actually use the potential it has and turn it into something amazing and polished. Facepunch appears to be pretty enthusiastic about the product, which is good, but it also really makes me hope Valve decides to give us an actual Source 2 SDK instead of relying entirely on this.