What is your workflow?

[garrynewman]

Let me as you something.. when you're working on your game.. what's your workflow?

• How do you start a game?
• How do you restart a game?
• Do you have keys bound to console commands that you commonly use? What are they?
• Do you find you have to restart your game often? Why?
• Do you find you have to restart the entire engine often? Why?

[yuberee]

• How do you start a game?
  I make a lobby for it.
• How do you restart a game?
  I have it binded to a key.
• Do you have keys bound to console commands that you commonly use? What are they?
  Restart bind, Noclip bind, Kill bind, Reload the UI, Game specific binds for testing.
• Do you find you have to restart your game often? Why?
  Yes because of the game logic I'm working on right now, usually I don't have to unless I'm adding something to the map or when the game starts.
• Do you find you have to restart the entire engine often? Why?
  I only close the engine when I'm done or it crashes.

[NotGaylien]

For me Modeller / Coder

---

1 - i open my games by just going to the little local addons icon next to all games on the menu and finding what i need to open a game from there.

2 - usually i will quit it from the menu and do what i did above.

3 - only really kill, noclip, game specific shit i will have type in the console. very rare i will want to myself, i prefer using console commands for my stuff and using arrow keys to find my recent commands (most mine are usually related to messing with models, so i have to type them either way)

4 - i like to, mainly because it helps me testing to see what happens on start-up for players to find any issues, and also to clear out entities and such, its much better to give me a certain "This is a clean slate" feel than manually clearing stuff

5 - i do myself, get away and think how to solve issues (personal preference sort of deal), sometimes software like marmoset toolbag will crash sbox for some reason when i bake textures, so i just close it out of habit, and ofc normal sbox crashes and when im not doing anything.

[DevulTj]

How do you start a game?
Click the game I want, new game, start game.

How do you restart a game?
I use the restart concommand

Do you have keys bound to console commands that you commonly use? What are they?
I've got kill, that's about it. I end up just hitting in on accident though all the time.

Do you find you have to restart your game often? Why?
Any net related changes, seem to break the data table for an entity, though this could have been fixed recently but I've just not changed my workflow to suit it.

Do you find you have to restart the entire engine often? Why?
This is a good one. I've experienced that when wanting to test the s&works version of a game, I'll have to disable the addon, close the entire engine, boot it back up then it'll download properly. That's one of my bigger pain points. I end up just working around this most of the time and run the game on my Deck to test it out.

I've also noticed that the new asset inspector doesn't delete files when they're deleted by the OS (either by explorer or other means), meaning when for example I copy a game resource & rename it, the "my cool game resource (copy 1)" sticks around for a while.

[Adesii]

• How do you start a game?
  click the Local Addon button and Create a lobby and press play. (sometimes select a different map, if i don't have it defined in the .addon)
• How do you restart a game?
  i got the "restart" console command binded to the key U
• Do you have keys bound to console commands that you commonly use? What are they?
  restart( U ), noclip( X ), bot_add( , ), Game specific Commands most of the time on J,K or L
• Do you find you have to restart your game often? Why?
  most of the time when i got a Null Ref error i have to restart, if i can't respawn the entity through a command.
• Do you find you have to restart the entire engine often? Why?
  Only if the game Crashes or i manage to get a Infinite loop in my Code which basically crashes the game after some hanging.
  The Crash that happens the most to me is when i accidentally try to network a list that is too big.

[garrynewman]

That's kind of as I suspected.. the way we're starting games now is pretty horrible. I'll work on making that less embarrassing. It's a relief to hear you don't have to actually restart the whole engine that often though.

Playing the "live" version vs playing your local version is quite annoying too. I think we can fix that.

[Redhacker1]

How do you start a game?
From the menu or for some games, using console commands
How do you restart a game?
I just typically type restart, but I probably should bind it to a key
Do you have keys bound to console commands that you commonly use? What are they?
Not really.
Do you find you have to restart your game often? Why?
I typically have to restart whenever editing the constructors of entities, which I do quite a bit, not that it is typically a big deal.
Do you find you have to restart the entire engine often? Why?
Not typically, I have experienced a lot of crashing though, especially with tools addons and messing around with the UI stuff, adding buttons and little fun windows. Even that though is most of the time fine.

[ArgoniumCode]

How do you start a game?

• By openning sbox -> local games -> start game.

How do you restart a game?

• restart console command.

Do you have keys bound to console commands that you commonly use? What are they?

• Basically most keys to control rounds, menus, restarting UI and gamemode.

Do you find you have to restart your game often? Why?

• Kinda. Everything [Net] related bugs out on adding new values; sometimes the game loses pointer events making the window stuck; lag on certain maps (construct in particular); map resetting sometimes being faulty.

Do you find you have to restart the entire engine often? Why?

• Almost never, sometimes crashes occur with no traces, just restarting can crash the game rarely.

[xezno]

How do you start a game?
Using the menu, selecting a game, making a lobby, starting the game.

How do you restart a game?
I have restart bound to F10.

Do you have keys bound to console commands that you commonly use? What are they?
I use I, O, P, J, K, L, B, N, M as "scratch keys" for some commands sometimes - usually related to whatever I'm working on at the time.

For more permanent stuff, I'll usually create a "developer menu" as in-game UI - just a bunch of buttons that you can click to execute certain commands. It helps make things a lot easier for new contributors & for people that don't want to remember a bunch of commands.

Now that I think about it - it's something where having core support might be a good idea. Like being provided with something in the menu we can hook into and add console command buttons to.

Do you find you have to restart your game often? Why?
I don't have to do it super often, but I do it for stuff in constructors, or if I've really fucked something up, or if networking isn't doing what I expect it to.

Do you find you have to restart the entire engine often? Why?
I don't do it unless I have to, i.e. the engine crashes, or doesn't recognise a new asset, or if I move an asset from one place to another.

[GunnarKafel]

How do you start a game?
I launch my gamemode through the main menu, or use the gamemode command before my map finishes compiling.
How do you restart a game?
I use the restart console command.
Do you have keys bound to console commands that you commonly use? What are they?
No, I wound up making an extra tab for the pause menu with commands I found myself repeatedly typing.

Do you find you have to restart your game often? Why?
No, once I have a game loop implemented I don't have to restart often.
Do you find you have to restart the entire engine often? Why?
Only on crashes

[gvarados1]

How do you start a game?
Usually I'll make a lobby. It's annoying if I want to use a test map that I don't have a separate addon for because I have to:

1. Make a lobby on a different map or enter "gamemode x" in console
2. Type "map x" to manually load the map.

How do you restart a game?
restart command. Not bound to a key.

Do you have keys bound to console commands that you commonly use? What are they?

• kill
• noclip
• various host_timescale settings (this is annoying because some functions do not respect host_timescale)
• game specific binds. For zombies I have binds to force zombie states and delete all zombies

Do you find you have to restart your game often? Why?
Not unless I really messed something up

Do you find you have to restart the entire engine often? Why?
Hammer & the tools have a few issues that crash or require restarts but I never have to when coding.

[BlockBuilder57]

• How do you start a game?
  Made a .cfg file to set the gamemode and launch my devtest map, so I just exec that
• How do you restart a game?
  Launch the devtest map again or restart with other maps
• Do you have keys bound to console commands that you commonly use? What are they?
  0 is kill, mouse5 for noclip, two binds for timescale, and to spawn an item in my gamemode
• Do you find you have to restart your game often? Why?
  Not unless something core in the gamemode changes. Used to be client connections/disconnections, but I made a command to simulate that by calling the methods.
• Do you find you have to restart the entire engine often? Why?
  Only on crashes, not that often