▚s&box/field-guide
field-guide / publishing-shipping
08/10
08task lane

Publishing & shipping

sbox.game store, Play Fund, the whitelist divergence.

guides
P2P peer-hosted servers: from working co-op code to a friend actually joining
The operational recipe for shipping player-hosted (P2P) multiplayer in s&box (lobby mechanics, invite codes, the join handshake liveness contract, replication traps, and the three-rung testing ladder), covering the layer the official docs don't document and where live multi-peer sessions actually break.
✓ 26.07.08e
"A pre-publish checklist for sbox.game"

Org/ident rules, every store-page field is launch-blocking, AI thumbnails demoted: verify as a player after publish.

✓ 26.07.08e
"Cloud assets fail silently under backend load after publish"

Published game boots with error.vmdl placeholders; engine may rewrite prefab refs, no auto-retry; restart editor + republish.

✓ 26.07.08e
"It worked in the editor but broke after publishing"

Whitelist divergence, loose Resource Files, and silent cloud-asset failures after publish.

✓ 26.07.08e
"Loose resource files don't auto-publish"

PNG/WAV/MP3/JSON must be listed in Project Settings → Resource Files without an assets/ prefix: #1 editor-vs-publish break.

✓ 26.07.08e
"Standalone Steam export"

Preview as of 2026-07: Valve approval + Facepunch license; full .NET, lose platform services; clean PackageReferences or startup hangs.

✓ 26.07.08e
"Understanding the Play Fund"

No paid storefront: revenue is clamped player-hours from a daily pool; retention is the monetization feature.

✓ 26.07.08e
"Wiring Sandbox.Services"

Stats.Increment/SetValue, Leaderboards.GetFromStat, Achievements.Unlock: cheap platform polish; total achievement score capped at 1000.

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