▚s&box/field-guide
▚ field-guide / getting-set-up
setupchecklisttooling
the symptom, in your words

"First successful Play: what to verify after the skeleton"

✓ verified on engine 26.07lane: Getting set upposted
▸ SYMPTOM

Skeleton "exists" but Play is black, silent, or you're not sure what "done" means for day-one setup.

▸ CAUSE

A new project has several independent gates (manifest, scene, compile, input, logs). Passing one doesn't prove the others. The knowledge-base startup checklist is the minimum sequence that actually boots a game.

▸ FIX

Day-one sequence

  1. Folders — Assets/, Code/, ProjectSettings/, Editor/, optional tools/ (sbox-project-folder-layout).
  2. .sbproj — set Title / Ident / StartupScene; Org: "local" (sbproj-title-ident-startup).
  3. Assembly.cs — globals + razor namespace (assembly-cs-globals-setup).
  4. 4-object scene + Bootstrap (four-object-scene-bootstrap).
  5. dotnet build Code/<proj>.csproj — green before anything else.
  6. Optional — art generators under tools/ (see art-pipeline articles).
  7. Play — console shows your tagged logs.

Every Play session

Prefix all Log.Info with a project tag, e.g. [yourgame] …, and start by scanning the console for those lines. Engine noise to ignore: missing citizen_clothes, sfm sounds, menu-main.scene refs, prop gib materials; Vulkan QueuePresentAndWait / VK_TIMEOUT on alt-tab.

Also verify

  • Camera is main; sun + sky present (not a black void).
  • Bootstrap skipped in editor (Scene.IsEditor) but runs on Play.
  • WASD → Input.AnalogMove if you bound Forward/Back/Left/Right (input-config-bindings).
  • Remember: green dotnet build ≠ whitelist OK (dotnet-build-vs-whitelist).

Build an admin/debug panel early once gameplay exists — it pays for itself on the first playtest.

▸ WHY IT WORKS

Each step removes a different failure class (wrong scene, missing types, no compile, no input, silent runtime). Tagged logs turn "did anything run?" into a one-glance console check.

✓
Verified on engine 26.07 — seen in a real project.
s&box moves fast; an undated fix is a liability. Spot a stale detail?
related gotchas
Getting set up: new project skeleton
.sbproj + Assets/Code/ProjectSettings/tools layout, 4-object scene + Bootstrap, dotnet build before anything else.
Title / Ident / StartupScene fields that bite new projects
StartupScene is what Play loads; Org must be a valid lowercase ident — placeholders break editor bootstrap, not just publishing.
Minimal scene: Sun, Skybox, Camera, Bootstrap
Scene holds four GameObjects; Bootstrap OnStart builds the world in code — hotloads better, no scene/code drift.
Assembly.cs global usings as project bootstrap
global using Sandbox + your razor namespace in Assembly.cs — without it, panels and game types don't resolve across the assembly.
Input.config and AnalogMove for a new game
WASD as Forward/Backward/Left/Right feeds AnalogMove; new Input.config actions need an editor restart — dotnet build is not enough.
dotnet build verifies compile but NOT the whitelist
Headless dotnet build is green while the in-editor compiler emits SB1000 — Environment/IO/Process/reflection are banned in game code.
What hotload does (and doesn't) for a new project
C# hotloads on alt-tab in ms; scene changes and new Input.config actions need Play/editor restart; failed compile keeps the last-good assembly.
Headless dotnet build misses Razor compile errors
dotnet build reports 0 errors on .razor files the in-editor compiler rejects — the headless build doesn't surface the Razor errors the live editor's Roslyn compiler flags.