Sandboxels
neal.fun102 points by 2sf5 7 hours ago
102 points by 2sf5 7 hours ago
Created by R74N, not Neal. Has been live on http://sandboxels.r74n.com as an independent project for several years. Just now hosted by Neal. Important distinction.
Falling sand games bring back a lot of nostalgia. If you're interested, you should check out dan-ball's version which is one of the progenitors of the genre. Over the years he's added a ton of features, elements, and interactions, to the point where it now has a fluid mechanics simulation for air!
Ha55ii's powder game is perhaps the best of the genre, and the ease of sharing made for a pretty cool online community circa 15 years ago. I remember various calculators / computers created in powder game, along with a bunch of more artistic efforts.
As a fan of both Neal and R74n this was an unexpected collaboration!
I can highly recommend building your own falling sand simulator. It's really fun to see how such simple rules create emergent behaviors. Sand pixels tries to move down, then diagonally down. Water does the same, then tries sideways.
Me messing around with it eventually resulted in a game I'm now working on full time (think Noita meets Factorio): https://store.steampowered.com/app/2764460/Sandustry/
Minecraft introduced me to the idea of tuff. This gives me more ways to play with it.
I still don't know what it is.
It's a rock formed from volcanic ash.
Sort of igneous, because it came out of a volcano, but sort of sedimentary, because it starts out as an accumulation of powder that becomes a solid piece.
for context, this game was first built in 2019 by R74N. it looks like neal.fun has taken over maintaining/hosting its web version, while the Steam version continues development
Wow, this is... kinda like the Noita engine but without the exploding yourself every 5 seconds. Probably going to spend the next several hours getting zero useful RL tasks done now, thanks again Neal.
Here's the official announcement about the move to neal.fun:
https://sandboxels.r74n.com/new-home
It doesn't explain why though, which is the most obvious question.
My geology classes certainly did not mention sedimentary layers consisting of glass, quicklime, ash, salt, gingerbread, melted butter, and toast, from bottom to top.
I've seen a lot of cellular sandbox simulations but this one really dials things up to eleven!
Awesome. Eagerly awaiting Line Rider.
I feel like I've played multiple versions of this game, but I can't remember the names of any of them... powder... toy? Might be one?
i remember playing one similiar a lot as a kid, the one i played at least is called dust by dan-ball [1]. It seems to be still playable
always enjoy neal's stuff. is he part of R74N?
Thanks Neal. Is fun.
this is cool.