FAQ

A list of questions we've been asked and the answers too them
This is still an FAQ as the order of the questions and answers will be rearranged periodically based on the frequency they've been asked

General

The game starts up, and closes shortly afterwards
This is sort of an ambiguous situation, read carefully

A1: If you saw a message similar to, could not load core textures, you're trying to run the bin directly, or in the wrong directory. please use the sandbox_unix bash script, or the click_me_to_start batch, or the Launcher.

A2: You might have broken/corrupt drivers. Please install the newest ones provided by your GPU's manufacturer, specially if you use windows, since Microsoft's default OGL (WGL) implementation is horrible and is hardly capable of running sandbox.

Editing

How do I make sloped "roofs" like those in house?
Note, this refers to sloped geometry in general

A1: Hold the middle mouse button, and selected the vertices (point were 2 or more edges meet) you wish to edit, and scroll up/down to deform the cube

A2: Select 1 or more cubes, and hold in Q. Scroll while hovering over a vertice to deform that specific vertice in the whole selection

A3: select 1 or more cubes, and hold F. Scroll the wheel to deform the whole face (collection of 3 or 4 vertices, note computers are limited to triangles and quadrilaterals, a circle for example is a series of triangles).

The lights aren't working

A1: Check if you placed any lights inside mapmodels or geometry

A2: Did you calculate lightmaps? ie, the /calclight and /patchlight commands

A3: Does the light have a very small radius, or RGB values of 0? ie light 256 0 0 0 won't make any light, light 256 200 100 50 should emit a relatively bright orange.

How do I create grass?

Hold the Y button down and scroll with the mouse wheel until you come to the texture that includes the 3D grass. To change what texture the grass is linked with check /data/default_map_settings.cfg

Type /grass 1 in the console to make sure the grass displays

Type /grass 0 in the console to hide it

How do I create rain?

To add a rain-entity to the map:

Type /newent particles 10 300 256 868 1000 in the console

I can't see my custom mapmodels

A1 Check that the mmodel command of the model you're trying to load points to a valid object, relevant to packages/models, if you use windows, just invert the slash

A2 is there a tris.* present? or a md*.cfg or an obj.cfg loading the current model if it isn't named tris.*?

A3 note that mmodel is directed to a directory, not to the model file

How do I add creatures such as butterflies to my map

Type /newent creature, and play around with the attributes

note if you're using 2.2.0 or older, it's /newent monster

Other

Are there any sandbox user groups?

in short no, if there are any, we're not aware of them

Can I use sandbox maps in (insert fave game here)

in most cases this can't be done, unless the engine you're using happens to be cube 2, or has support for the cube 2 octree map format.