129 replies to this topic

[ShaunS]

Hello everybody!

 

Sadly the now rather old YoYo Games Sandbox located at: http://sandbox.yoyogames.com/is finally going to be closing its doors. The sandbox is now very much a deprecated and legacy part of our website and in many ways functionally replaced by the Player: https://player.yoyogames.com/ 

 

We appreciate that many of you still have content hosted on the Sandbox, if you wish to preserve your content it will need to be backed up before the 8th of April before the Sandbox is closed as the content will not be archived.

 

Let me know if there are any questions!

 

 

[TsukaYuriko]

rip

[rmanthorp]

https://www.youtube....h?v=nSz16ngdsG0

[Rusty]

Just so we're clear, you mean the 8th of April 2016, right? I mean, we wouldn't want to make that mistake again now would we?

Oh a serious note, the Sandbox has been dead for quite a while. It's pretty much been a warning corpse since it was closed and the remaining devs who used to post their content there were forced to move elsewhere. I'm kinda happy YYG is finally getting rid of the defunct corpse smell in this year's(?) big spring clean.

[ShaunS]

Just so we're clear, you mean the 8th of April 2016, right?

Yes.

[Yal]

I had the impression this happened ages ago. *manically back-ups all the old games I don't really care about anymore*

[Juju]

Three weeks isn't very long. Have you contacted the Internet Archive?

[NakedPaulToast]

Three weeks isn't very long. Have you contacted the Internet Archive?

 

This would be true if the Sandbox was currently in an active and supported state, as it was a few years ago.

 

The sandbox has been in an abandoned state for years now, it closing should be expected and nobody can reasonably claim that they haven't had enough lead time to do whatever you're implying they need more time for.

[Lukan Spellweaver]

I thought that the Sandbox was to close when the Player was fully released.
As it stands now, we still don't have Mac or Ubuntu/Linux versions of the Player...

 

I hoped this meant they had been released, but the site says coming soon on both.

Also, your link has some kind of typo in it for the player site, Shaun.

[RekNepZ]

[lolslayer]

My Game Maker Player doesn't work somehow so this is a problem for me :/

[Juju]

 

The sandbox has been in an abandoned state for years now

 

There's a big difference between "stasis" and "being deleted".

 

 

it closing should be expected

 

Not necessarily, no and, furthermore, specific time scales cannot be assumed.

 

 

nobody can reasonably claim that they haven't had enough lead time to do whatever you're implying they need more time for.

 

See above. The Sandbox should be backed up, if not by YYG (which is fair), then by a charity specifically set up to protect this kind of digital archaeology.

[Rusty]

The sandbox has been in an abandoned state for years now

There's a big difference between "stasis" and "being deleted".

It's amusing that you think this was "stasis".

it closing should be expected

Not necessarily, no and, furthermore, specific time scales cannot be assumed.

Better product out, check (sort of), no more company support for it, check, no real demand for it's return, check. You're not a very perceptive fellow if you couldn't figure out that YYG wasn't going to waste the resources keeping this deadweight in it's servers forever.

nobody can reasonably claim that they haven't had enough lead time to do whatever you're implying they need more time for.

See above. The Sandbox should be backed up, if not by YYG (which is fair), then by a charity specifically set up to protect this kind of digital archaeology.

Nobody cares about the twelve thousand catch the clown games dying here due to the destruction of their environment. They're not an endangered species.

If you're a developer worth the time of day, you'll still have the source files at hand for any games that you give the slightest damn about. I have like three of my GMC Jam games still in source because I don't really care if the rest of them are wiped from the internet entirely.

[alexandervrs]

https://www.youtube....h?v=r2-PJRYHx60

[Mr. RPG]

Hopefully this means that the forum upgrade is happening soon too, right?

[JeffJ]

I remember the day I had my very first game I uploaded to the sandbox featured - 1.000 downloads in one day, I was so excited, and it was the biggest day in a long time. This, of course, was long before Studio and the time where I actually had any idea that in a matter of relatively short time, having a commercial game out on Steam would be the reality, so everything is relative.

 

Still, though, even though we've moved on to bigger and better things, and the few good games that were on the sandbox drowned in constant troll uploads, I shall forever remember the sandbox with a warm and wholehearted nostalgia. <3

[Mercerenies]

If you're a developer worth the time of day, you'll still have the source files at hand for any games that you give the slightest damn about. I have like three of my GMC Jam games still in source because I don't really care if the rest of them are wiped from the internet entirely.

Most of my Sandbox games are really old, but there are a couple whose source code is on an old computer that's at my parents' house.

That said, I really appreciate the couple of weeks' notice. I'll be getting all my games now to re-host them elsewhere.

[roytheshort]

I need to download all the Click The Clown viruses I can before it's too late!

[Honno]

Hey, I'd like to recommend YYG to send a mass email to all registered accounts from the sandbox, if they haven't already (I can't check), to suggest to developers to upload their games to GameJolt/itchio/IndieDB. Wouldn't want to lose out on history.

 

Man, what a sad day.

[Rusty]

I need to download all the Click The Clown viruses I can before it's too late!

It is now our civic duty to ensure we burn the bodies.
 
Edit:
Wanted nay, required, more emphasis.

Edited by Rusty, 18 March 2016 - 09:49 PM.

[Kahvana166]

 

 

The sandbox has been in an abandoned state for years now

 

There's a big difference between "stasis" and "being deleted".

 

 

it closing should be expected

 

Not necessarily, no and, furthermore, specific time scales cannot be assumed.

 

 

nobody can reasonably claim that they haven't had enough lead time to do whatever you're implying they need more time for.

 

See above. The Sandbox should be backed up, if not by YYG (which is fair), then by a charity specifically set up to protect this kind of digital archaeology.

 

 

I agree with Juju. The current archive (archive.org - 2016) does have a backup of the website, but some functionality (such as previewing images on larger scale or downloading games) do not work.

 

Especially the download function important. Even sandbox has some valuable resources, projects & games (even more valuable when decompiled), which still work in GMS and ofc in GM8.

 

 

 

The sandbox has been in an abandoned state for years now

There's a big difference between "stasis" and "being deleted".

 

It's amusing that you think this was "stasis".

 

it closing should be expected

Not necessarily, no and, furthermore, specific time scales cannot be assumed.

 

Better product out, check (sort of), no more company support for it, check, no real demand for it's return, check. You're not a very perceptive fellow if you couldn't figure out that YYG wasn't going to waste the resources keeping this deadweight in it's servers forever.

 

nobody can reasonably claim that they haven't had enough lead time to do whatever you're implying they need more time for.

See above. The Sandbox should be backed up, if not by YYG (which is fair), then by a charity specifically set up to protect this kind of digital archaeology.

 

Nobody cares about the twelve thousand catch the clown games dying here due to the destruction of their environment. They're not an endangered species.

If you're a developer worth the time of day, you'll still have the source files at hand for any games that you give the slightest damn about. I have like three of my GMC Jam games still in source because I don't really care if the rest of them are wiped from the internet entirely.

 

 

See above. Sandbox still have valuable learning resources and fun games (example ever played http://sandbox.yoyog...-gray-and-greenor messed around with http://sandbox.yoyog...-engine-demo?).

 

Besides, I lost my copies of my source code when my harddrive's partition became corrupted. Luckily I was able to download the most of it from Sandbox.

 

 

 

Just so we're clear, you mean the 8th of April 2016, right?

Yes.

 

 

Oeh, thats not much time (busy with studying and such). Hopefully it's enough to download everything I need. Will there be a community archive with all the featured games to download in one bundle?. Would be epic if it happend .

 

ShaunS thank you for informing us about it's closure.

[Juju]

The utter disregard that people show towards the thousands, if not millions, of hours of work that people have put into their games is distressing. These games meant something to people. They're as much a part of 21st Century youth culture as punk was in the 70s. If they're not protected - and I'd like to remind you that there is a specific organisation that deals with this - then that's a part of history that is literally being deleted. We don't get to dictate what is and isn't important to the historians of the future nor should we. All we have to do is store what we have.

Edited by Juju, 18 March 2016 - 10:56 PM.

[Rusty]

GG is/was a pretty solid game developer and if he still cares about his games, he will simply post them elsewhere, if he hasn't done so already but anybody can realistically make a visual novel engine. It's basically a regular RPG speech system with longer pathways.

Honestly, I'm more surprised to learn how many of my fellow devs only kept a single copy of their source files. I keep mine in Dropbox across two laptops and I have a thumb drive back up. It's going to take a lot more than a partition failure to stop me from working, nevermind to erased all my data.

In either case, there is no real reason to archive the thousands upon thousands of entries to the sandbox that didn't even get traffic while the place was active. YYG no longer supports the previous versions of Game Maker and they no longer support the previous version of the Player either. It's just a needless expense now.

Edit:

The utter disregard that people show towards the thousands, if not millions, of hours of work that people have put into their games is distressing.

If you don't have the files for your games, I don't see why I should care about them more than the author does. It is your duty to protect your content, not mine, not YoYoGames, just yours.

They're as much a part of 21st Century youth culture as punk was in the 70s.

The YoYoGames Sandbox is as big an influence on 21st Century youth culture as punk in the 70's? Are you sure that's the statement you want to go with?

If they're not protected - and I'd like to remind you that there is a specific organisation that deals with this - then that's a part of history that is literally being deleted.

They're getting rid of the defunct sandbox not performing a panda extermination. I'm sure the future generations will find a way to survive without the YoYoGames Sandbox.

We don't get to dictate what is and isn't important to the historians of the future nor should we.

I admire your enthusiasm and sense of self importance but I'm sure public schools are suffering enough already without having to try and fit in the YoYoGames Sandbox between teachings of William the Conqueror and the Egyptian Pyramids.

Edited by Rusty, 18 March 2016 - 11:07 PM.

[Debels]

 

 

The sandbox has been in an abandoned state for years now

 

There's a big difference between "stasis" and "being deleted".

 

 

it closing should be expected

 

Not necessarily, no and, furthermore, specific time scales cannot be assumed.

 

 

nobody can reasonably claim that they haven't had enough lead time to do whatever you're implying they need more time for.

 

See above. The Sandbox should be backed up, if not by YYG (which is fair), then by a charity specifically set up to protect this kind of digital archaeology.

 

 

[chance]

I'm puzzled by calls for someone to backup the Sandbox -- or for the Internet Archive to do so.  

 

These games are copyrighted property.  Their authors gave YYG permission to host them.   If someone else wants to create their own archive for their own use, that's fine.  But they can't offer that archive for public use, without the authors' permission.

[Wixu]

All we have to do is store what we have.

You, my wise archaeologist, are absolutely correct.

 

Forgive me, but I have a quest for you.

 

Please store my special game stash, I have 1.95 petabytes of games that I wish to delete, but I'd say you need to store them for me first =)

 

Hint: it will only take 340 billion years with my internet connection.

 

ps. don't worry about the sandbox, I already archived it in my secret stash of secretness

[Loaf]

I'm puzzled by calls for someone to backup the Sandbox -- or for the Internet Archive to do so.  

 

These games are copyrighted property.  Their authors gave YYG permission to host them.   If someone else wants to create their own archive for their own use, that's fine.  But they can't offer that archive for public use, without the authors' permission.

 

Exactly!

Nobody is allowed to download games from the YoYo Games Sandbox and begin hosting / distributing them without the authors permission. It doesn't matter if you try and justify it as an archiving practice. 

 

It is not the responsibility of anyone to decide whether or not a game hosted on the sandbox should be re-uploaded for other people to play, except the person who has the distribution rights to that game, which in most cases will be the developer. You can not speak on behalf of those developers, it may be that they would prefer their work is not re-uploaded. 
 

[Greenhawk]

Had some good times on the sandbox, back in the day. Crimelife 2, Mario Kart and all that stuff! RIP old friend

[crozza]

I still use gm 7-8.1 so will miss the sandbox as I still pop back now and again to download example programs when I get stuck.

studio is fine but programs are too large when compiled and as a retro game fan gm7-8.1 is fine and fast enough for me as well as making non profit games which I make purely for fun and to keep my brain active.

 

At 59 maybe i'm just getting to old to change, anyway RIP sandbox.

Edited by crozza, 19 March 2016 - 10:30 AM.

[NAL]

Any chance there is an easy way to archive comments on games, even if just through some link that lists them all RSS-style? I'd love to be able to keep all the good, bad and unrelated crap people posted on my stuff throughout the years!

Either way, rest in piece sandbox. Thanks for getting me my job at YoYo, my first taste of communicating with other game devs, my first exposure as a game developer, and that one time Instant Play was a thing and never really worked that well.

[Awesomen3ss]

The Sandbox is my childhood. I remember going on there before I even knew what GameMaker was and looking through all the amazing RPGs where the HUD shifted when you moved and the Platformers where you stop a few pixels before you hit the ground because they put move_contact_solid in the collision event which defeats the entire purpose. Memories 

 

I don't know what it is, but I just can't get used to the whole idea of the Player. Maybe it's the fact that there aren't that many games (I really haven't used in a while though) or maybe it's the fact that it has good games. I remember that most of the glory of the Sandbox was that it was, indeed, a sandbox. You could literally upload anything you want, whether it's complete and utter horse crap or actually somewhat decent. It was fun to play the games with good graphics and sound and gameplay, and even funner to search "Minecraft 2D" and see all the instance-based 2D Minecraft clones and make fun of them or try to play them seriously. I still think, though, that the best game on the YoYoGames Sandbox of all time wasn't that well known. In my opinion, the amount of work that I've ever seen get put into a Sandbox game award goes to a game called "Planet of Battle". It's a third person shooter with an actual decent art style. I wouldn't say the graphics are amazing, but the art style is unique and I don't know how many other games on the Sandbox let you fly space ships, ride motorcycles and shoot purple aliens that take 10 years to kill. Sure, it had crappy collisions and the slowest camera movement than any game I've ever played, but it was original and had good gameplay.

 

Anyway, I'm currently in the process of backing up anything good. I've already backed up Slayer64 and Petrik09's entire library as well as many 'hidden' ones that I don't think got a lot of attention (3D terrorists, Klode, filulilus' 3D RPG Test), but as others have stated, I can't release them publicly and they will stay in my Dropbox and Mega accounts for the rest of eternity. I suggest that anyone who really cares should do the same and preserve as much as they can.

 

R.I.P YoYoGames Sandbox, since I was 9 years old - 2016.

[Mocgames998]

Keeping the sandbox up another year means that it would turn10.

[roytheshort]

 

R.I.P YoYoGames Sandbox, since I was 9 years old - 2016.

 

With this information I can work out your age!

 

2016 - 9 = 2007

 

You're 2007 years old!

[Rusty]

R.I.P YoYoGames Sandbox, since I was 9 years old - 2016.

 
With this information I can work out your age!
 
2016 - 9 = 2007
 
You're 2007 years old!

He clearly states that he is nine years old in 2016, it is 2016 so therefore he is nine years old.

[roytheshort]

Does that mean he was 2016 in 9 AD?

[Awesomen3ss]

Does that mean he was 2016 in 9 AD?

Nope, you were right the first time. I'm 2007 going on 2008, probably the reason I still use GameMaker 8.1 and 39dll. ;D

[Rusty]

Does that mean he was 2016 in 9 AD?

Nope, you were right the first time. I'm 2007 going on 2008, probably the reason I still use GameMaker 8.1 and 39dll. ;D

Either something really bad happened back in '14 that drove a somewhat immortal being into a technological stasis or GameMaker 8.1 must be way older than I thought it was.

[roytheshort]

Either something really bad happened back in '14 that drove a somewhat immortal being into a technological stasis or GameMaker 8.1 must be way older than I thought it was.

 

[Lukan Spellweaver]

That is a surprisingly good photoshop...

[roytheshort]

That is a surprisingly good photoshop...

 

Yeesh, ok, you don't need to shout at me!

 

[Lukan Spellweaver]

That is an expectedly bad photoshop.

[johnboy]

I've delved into the sandbox for resources on the odd occasion, but haven't checked out the games. Given that YoYo are closing it would anyone like to point out some games worth checking out before they do? Maybe here, or start a thread somewhere on the community to draw people's attention before they're gone.

 

EDIT: Any Metroidvania type stuff, or shooters would be my interest

EDIT EDIT: Plus anything with really cool idea's that I could, ahem, "appropriate" for myself

Edited by johnboy, 20 March 2016 - 05:36 AM.

[Honno]

Any idea what the total size of uploaded games in Sandbox came up to?

[Yal]

Download all games sequentially and check how much hard drive space you used?

[TsukaYuriko]

That's not going to fit on any hard drive that has been manufactured so far. You should probably count it in hard drives of a unified size instead.

[chance]

- under "complete games" I count 3947 full pages with 20 games each (plus 11 more games on the last page).

- under "WIP" I see 1012 pages of 20 games each (plus 12 on last page).

- under "beta" I see 527 pages of 20 games each (plus 10 on last page).

 

That's a total of 109,753 games.  Assuming each had the minimum (say) 2 MB zip file, that's about 220 GB.

 

Of course, many of the games are 10-20 MB size, or larger.  So the total size is probably closer to 1-2 TB.

[Mike.Dailly]

Last time I checked....(a good while back)... it was about 800GB for the back up.

[RekNepZ]

Somehow, I assumed it was a lot more than that.

[Lukan Spellweaver]

Also, the title of this topic says "GameMaker Sandbox"... It was the YoYoGames Sandbox, no?
At least call it the GameMaker: Sandbox. Jeez, Shaun, get with it.

[Rusty]

I don't really understand why you'd want to back up 800GB of games when you're probably only going to play less than 20GB of if you really go for it. You can't distribute them, you can't (and mostly likely don't want to) play them all, you can't get back the money you've wasted on a TB hard drive to store them all on. Download the games you actually want to play and don't get all Skyrim over the ones you don't want. Pointless hording doesn't help anybody.