Hey Sandboxers!

News time again 📰! And this news will be about presets / sample projects and the huge particle collection directly included in the sandbox.

Are you ready for a beautiful day in the sand? Hop in! 🌞

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I already talked about the Project Hub in the past and that you can load or create projects with it. But there will be also sample projects and presets available here - right from the start. This means you can load a particle effect for example and then learn how this particle effect was created to build your own.

This is how it looks in the project hub:

There will be more sample projects on early access release!

What you are seeing in the video is the section where you can load whole sample projects. But you could also load specific elements of a project. Like a particle effect for example and directly use that in your own project.

This should make it easy to jumpstart your project ideas or quickly create your scene.

Here is the newest sample project "Waterfall":


At this point i'm proud to say that the Mercury Particle Sandbox will contain over 170 [!] royalty free particle images. Yes, they are directly included in the sandbox - right from the start.

Big thanks to "Peter J Rigby" who created this awesome collection and allowed me to include it completly for free in my sandbox! He develops a particle effect editor called "TimelineFX". Go check out his website Rigsoft[www.rigzsoft.co.uk].

The currently available particle image categories in the sandbox are:

• Bubbles
  
• Electric
  
• Flames
  
• Glows
  
• Halos
  
• Liquids
  
• Nature
  
• Rays
  
• Smoke
  
• Symbols

This means Ø17 particle images per category... nice, huh?

You can use them as static or some of them animated (SpriteSheet) images within the Mercury Particle Sandbox. An animated smokeball effect looks pretty nice for example :)

But I will be even more curious what the community will create with all those beautiful images, effects and general possibilities of the sandbox.

Of course you can also create and import your very own particle collections and share them with the world if you like to! There are no limits...

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The next step is to create a trailer for the steam store. This one will be difficult, because I can't rely on user generated content for now. This will change for the final trailer happening after the early access phase. Then I will have alot more content to show. But I already have something in my mind. Just wait and see...

There is still alot to do. But many of the things I want to do for the Mercury Particle Sandbox will happen during the early access phase.

I'm trying to reduce myself to just the important stuff in the moment. And with "important" I mean things, which generally raises your sandbox experience you will have the very first time.

In the last weeks it was possible for me to go big steps into the direction of early access, so it shouldn't take too long anymore from this point 🚨.

Don’t forget: I will release this application COMPLETLY FOR FREE here on steam! My only “currency” is YOU - following and whishlisting this sandbox:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/838870/Mercury_Particle_Sandbox/

I would also love to get your follow on my steam developer site:
🎮 https://store.steampowered.com/developer/Sandbox_Blizz 🎮

Things like that helping me immensely to get visibility and to spreading the word.

I've got already a nice amount of wishlists. So, big THANKS for your ongoing support!

Thanks for reading and I am hoping that you like the progress so far.

Have a sparkling day! ✨

:: Marcel DBA Sandbox Blizz 💖

Follow me and read more here:

• IndieDB
  
• MonoGame[community.monogame.net]

---

Thank you 👌

Hey Sandboxers!

News time again 📰! And this week is fully packed with great improvements, fixes and features.

Are you ready for a beautiful day in the sand? Hop in! 🌞

---

It's nothing new that you can create pretty nice particle effects with the Mercury Particle Sandbox and you already know that you can control your particle effects with profiles and modifiers. But what if you could control them even more with an event system?

Let me show you something different first:

This is a simple particle scene I created for demonstration purposes.

It contains an object called "Anchor" and a particle effect called "Car". The Car particle effect is made of 2 emitters; one emits car-lights and the other one emits the car itself (yeah, you don't have to use only particle textures in this sandbox 😎).

On both emitters are "Follow Object Modifier" placed. This means they will stick to a pivot-body generated by the particle effect entity.

This is how it looks in action:

Below the yellow pivot you can see the anchor-body. Using the node editor of the anchor body we can melt the pivot-body onto it.

Then it moves altogether like this:

The pivot gets invisible in this process.

Now that we have this "package" of entities, the real magick comes into play. Because when we now place additional nodes like event-nodes on the object, it will trigger for the whole creation!

In this example we stitch a "Gamepad Action [Push]" and a "Gamepad Action [Fire]" onto the anchor-body.

The push action will just apply a force to the anchor body, which moves it to the desired direction. The fire action on the other hand does... nothing. But why?

Well, pushing things is easy (pun intended) and self-explanatory. The sandbox just automagickally knows what to do here. But what is a fire action? Yeah, it could be everything, right?

This is why we need to add one of the new sandbox-event nodes. Like the "Draw"-Node.

The "Body Pick"-Node is connected with the car particle effect and traverses the corresponding entity to the draw node. In the property grid you can see that the fire action is set and that it will trigger on emitters with the name "Light".

This means that every time we press the fire button on our gamepad, the light emitter of the car particle effect gets either drawn or not drawn.

This is how it looks:

The "Fire" action now has a meaning in our sandbox world, because it was connected to a sandbox-event.

Together with the "Push" action (where we don't need to do any extra work) it looks like this:

I bet this is the most fancies way you ever saw a car moving, right? 🤣

But you got the point. This is how "Deeply Controlable Particles" work and maybe you now have a clue why we don't just named our sandbox "Mercury Particle Editor". Simply because it is more than this.


You are hearing me saying things like "Fire" and "Push" instead of "Button-X" and "Left-Thumbstick". The reason for this is that we are using SteamInput under the hood, which makes nearly every input device available for the sandbox.

It's possible to do your very own configurations and action-sets for your very own sandbox experience:

It will be possible in future updates to select different action-sets with the node editor system, so that you can create completly new experiences for a particle scene.

Of course this will be compatible with the Steam Workshop integration later.


Before I close this devlog, I wanted to mention 2 further things, which found their way into the sandbox. They are small but they can have a big impact on your sandbox experience.

The first one is the possibility of setting the background color of the render window to a color of your choice:

In this example it is the color dark gray, which makes it easier to see the lights of the car.

The second one is a direction marker which becomes visible when you move the camera of the particle scene:

This arrow is always pointing to the center of the world. The center of the world is where every user typically starts to create things.

So, it should be way easier now to find you way back "home" in case you got lost in the deep wide space of the sandbox... 😮

---

There is still alot to do. But many of the things I want to do for the Mercury Particle Sandbox will happen during the early access phase.

I'm trying to reduce myself to just the important stuff in the moment. And with "important" I mean things, which generally raises your sandbox experience you will have the very first time.

In the last weeks it was possible for me to go big steps into the direction of early access, so it shouldn't take too long anymore from this point 🚨.

Don’t forget: I will release this application COMPLETLY FOR FREE here on steam! My only “currency” is YOU - following and whishlisting this sandbox:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/838870/Mercury_Particle_Sandbox/

I would also love to get your follow on my steam developer site:
🎮 https://store.steampowered.com/developer/Sandbox_Blizz 🎮

Things like that helping me immensely to get visibility and to spreading the word.

I've got already a nice amount of wishlists. So, big THANKS for your ongoing support!

Thanks for reading and I am hoping that you like the progress so far.

Have a sparkling day! ✨

:: Sandbox Blizz 💖

Follow me and read more here:

• IndieDB
  
• MonoGame[community.monogame.net]

---

Thank you 👌

Hey Sandboxers!

It's me again, but this time earlier than usual. The reason for this is simple yet satisfying - the Pre-EarlyAccess-Work! And because it's nearly about time, I am trying to push out news more often 📰.

Let's dig into the Sandbox, kid! 🌞

This animated gif was entirely made with the Mercury Particle Sandbox! (despite the font; that one I made with Inkscape 😎).

---

The first impression is important, right? Maybe this is true - maybe not. Anyway, polishing in game- and software development is key... I think 🤩

However, I decided to spend some hours into that topic and made sure that the sandbox doesn't look that bad. And what's a better way for a software to look polished if not by icons, colors and seperators!?

The "View" element allows you to hide or show specific entities from the rendering and to reset the camera. To make this obvious on the first sight, I implemented the corresponding symbols from the scene manager and I also added a small camera icon (cute, hu?). The shortcut keys (F1, F2 etc...) are showing to you, that you can also use your keyboard for the same functionallity.

The shortcuts are also respecting your checkmarks. For example: you disabled kinematics, so on keypress the rendering panel will show or hide the dynamics, statics and sensors. The kinematics stay always hidden.


Yep, the scene manager also supports custom icons for entities now! Add whatever you want to symbolize what the corresponding entity should stand for.

In this picture the hill icon symbolizes the terrain entity. The flame icon symbolizes that the particle effect entity is made of fire. Simple as that!

But you could also create a figure with object entities and then just put a symbol of Super Mario or Pikachu on that. Or you create a Dragonball particle effect and put a Dragonball icon on it and so on... it's YOUR decision!

And yes this will be also compatible with the steam workshop integration, which comes in a later update.


As you can see, it is totally possible to create more than just 1 particle scene per project. You can create as many as you need.

In the moment each scene gets differently loaded, which means that only one scene at a time is visible. But it's imaginable to extend that functionallity to a scene configurator later, which could make it possible to merge scenes together to have more space for entites in the scene manager and have everything in order at the same time.

Just right-click on a scene tab and click on "New Scene"!

You can also refresh entities, remove test entities, delete the scene or rename the scene here.


I recently added probably one of the most important features when it comes to exporting things from the sandbox; Json-Export!

Export your particle effect creations to the json format and use it everywhere you want. You could use it natively in your MonoGame project for example. You just need to import the Mercury Particle Engine libraries. You are free to do so - for fun or commercially!

This is how a json file for a particle effect looks like:

In your code you just need to call:
And you are done!

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This news came out a little bit longer than expected, but fortunately I could work alot on the sandbox in the past week. I hope it will be the same for the next week.

In the next week I will push the first couple of versions to the steam backend and create seperate branches for it. I already got press inquiries (🚨), so this will be perfect for directly testing stuff on steam.

Don’t forget: I will release this application COMPLETLY FOR FREE here on steam! My only “currency” is YOU - following and whishlisting this sandbox:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/838870/Mercury_Particle_Sandbox/

I would also love to get your follow on my steam developer site:
🎮 https://store.steampowered.com/developer/Sandbox_Blizz 🎮

Things like that helping me immensely to get visibility and to spreading the word.

I've got already a nice amount of wishlists. So, big THANKS for your ongoing support!

Thanks for reading and I am hoping that you like the progress so far.

Have a sparkling day! ✨

:: Sandbox Blizz 💖

Follow me and read more here:

• IndieDB
  
• MonoGame[community.monogame.net]

---

Thank you 👌

Hey Sandboxers!

In the last devlog I talked about the "New Project"-dialog and that it needs an overhaul (which was soo damn right... 🤪).

But instead of just replacing colors and forms, I re-thought the whole thing, because I was simply not satisfied enough with just a small and simple dialog - the Project Hub was born!


The Project Hub combines creating new projects or loading existing ones. In a later update you will find a Steam Workshop tab here, where you can download user created particle scenes and particle effects.

The preview images of the projects are pre-rendered APNGs (animated png's). They are also supported within the Steam Workshop. This means that you will get nice preview animations of workshop items directly inside the Mercury Particle Sandbox - Hallelujah!

This is how it looks when you load a project from the projects folder:

Do you think we cut the video during the loading process? Well, think again! Because what you saw in the video are the actual loading times - it's nearly instant. This also counts for very large scenes which including many different entities. Each entity can be of physical or particle nature and each of those entities can have its own node graph with many different nodes.

The reason for the fast loading times is a BINARY serialization system, which works together with a JSON serialization system in our sandbox. Imagine it like this: we have a json "MetaData" file and many small binary files. All the binary files are written into the json file by reference and they will be loaded in a specific order guided by the very same json file. A binary file is for example a node graph or a mesh file. A mesh file is a physical system like a 2D Matrix. So, the loading process is like a chain of data from very small to big. But size doesn't really matter in this system, because a saved scene gets re-constructed in a procedural way.

Okay, this should be enough for the first. Are you still here? 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦

Then maybe you are also interested in this APNG thingy!? Well, there is nothing much to say besides that APNGs are like GIFs, but better 😎


The biggest advantage is that the APNG supports transparency - the GIF doesn't. The file size nevertheless is often the same or even less. It all depends on the frames and the Mercury Particle Sandbox gives you full control over it!

This makes APNGs way more beautiful than GIFs. It simply supports more colors because of the transparency, which makes it look ultra soft and vibrant. Look at the texture of the left cube and the transparency effects, aren't they nice? 🎨

I want to write some Steam Guids in a later development stage to explain things like that in more detail, but in the moment i'm busy with different things like writing devlogs before going early access ... 😉


Ohh, yeah... the numbers... I nearly forgot to talk about the numbers. I promised to talk about it in the last devlog, so... here they come! ... I think...

This will be not a deep analytic but it should give you an idea how we are currently standing with our sandbox on steam.

Timespan: 19. April 2018 - 7.April 2021 (3 Years)

• 835 Wishlists
  
• 108 Followers

You need to substract 1/4 of the page-views and impressions, because they are generated by bots coming from somwhere in the internet. It's so called "Bot-Traffic" and pretty normal nowadays 🍪.

Here is the exact value:


We need to fix some critical bugs and do steam backend tests as well as some paper work before going early access. And... yeah, small things like that! Early Access is nearer then ever before and I hope that everything goes well. 🚨

Don’t forget: We will release this application COMPLETLY FOR FREE here on steam! Our only “currency” is YOU - following and whishlisting this sandbox:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/838870/Mercury_Particle_Sandbox/

We would also love to get your follow on our steam developer site:
🎮 https://store.steampowered.com/developer/Sandbox_Blizz 🎮

Things like that helping us immensely to get visibility and to spreading the word.

We've got already a nice amount of wishlists. So, big THANKS for your ongoing support!

Thanks for reading and we are hoping that you like the new Project Hub idea.

Have a sparkling day! ✨

:: Sandbox Blizz 💖

Follow us and read more here:

• IndieDB
  
• MonoGame[community.monogame.net]

---

Thank you 👌

Hey Sandboxers!

Some parts of the Mercury Particle Sandbox are still affected by old themed windows forms controls.

However, we are already using ImGui in some panels to create clean and fresh looking widgets. Espacially pop-up windows (floating panels and dialogs) need to be traversed to this clean and fresh look mentioned above. At least this is our goal for the early access release, because it makes everything so... user friendly 🤪

Long story short; here are some pics showing the progress of the current GUI-Modernization:

This is the PostFX-Widget. You can create sprite sheets here and mix & match them with post effects to create your special design for animations like particle effects and banners.

As you can see we are removed the old and clunky windows forms frames and borders with ImGui components in the past, which makes everything more clear, obvious and user friendly, right?

This is what we want!

Let's take a look at our latest modernization:


Left: New, Right: Old

Instead of using horizontal and verticals lines, we are just using horizontal ones in different colors to give widgets its structure. It's easier for the eyes and more clean.

On top of this all modernized controls are fully themeable 🎨. You can choose from various themes and make it as nice as possible for your eyes.

Other additions are new inline pop-ups like a color wheel picker, which makes it ultra easy to pick your favorite colors. The sandbox supports RGB, HSV, HEX and FLOAT ratios.


The "New Project"-dialog needs an overhaul. Further we need to adjust some cogs here and put a little bit machine oil there. After that we will hit the early access button 🚨

Don’t forget: We will release this application COMPLETLY FOR FREE here on steam! My only “currency” is YOU - following and whishlisting this sandbox:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/838870/Mercury_Particle_Sandbox/

We would also love to get your follow on our steam developer site:
🎮 https://store.steampowered.com/developer/Sandbox_Blizz 🎮

Things like that helping us immensely to get visibility and to spreading the word.

We've got already a nice amount of wishlists. So, big THANKS for your ongoing support. In the next devlog we will be happy to talk about numbers. Stay tuned! 😉

Thanks for reading and we are hoping that you like the GUI modernization ideas.

Have a sparkling day! ✨

:: Sandbox Blizz 💖

Follow us and read more here:

• IndieDB
  
• MonoGame[community.monogame.net]

---

Thank you 👌

Hey Sandboxers!

This is our first month on Steam and also our first devblog on this platform *hurraay* ːsteamhappyː

Check, check... ok, this is working. Now the only thing we need is an interesting and catchy topic.

Ah, yeah, how about...


The howly grail of life and existence, right?

But before we are starting to re-create life itself, we should maybe take a closer look of how we can "stich things together" to create a surreal but authentic experience.

The answer is: a Node Editor System.

Everything starts simple; even the most complex things. But as time goes on and on, they suddenly start to become chaos. They start to become incredible. They start to become... life. 🧬

We definitley need that!

Look at this node graph:
Simple and clean. We are adding a "starter" node, a particle effect and emitter node, defining release parameter and color and finally modifying the result with a "hue interpolator" to create a rainbow-like particle effect or how I like to name it: "Potpourii".

Just by using this system you could create countless different particle effects. However, particle effects alone are not "smart" enough to create something more complex. Something like life...

So, what we really need is a nice and easy way to create CHAOS, right?

How about...


A physical system is just right to throw particles around like in the fireball video at the top. Can you imagine how it looks, if someone throws many different particle effects at the same time in the air?

It is insane.

But this is just a side note. We are interested in creating a new world. So...


Terrain prevents physical objects to go through. So, this is an importan ingredient of life (we believe).

Another really important ingredient of life is...


Because without creativity, what would we create?

And finally creativity allows us to be ourselfs.

And this leeds me to the last important ingredient of life...


Because without you: who would read this?

Because without you: who would WISHLIST and FOLLOW this application?

Because without you: the Mercury Particle Sandbox would look like this:
(even if it runs 24/7 @ 60fps)

And this is exactly why we need YOU. Come and fill our space with life! 🌌🌠

Worlds are waiting to be created. 🌎

Are you in? ▶️

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So, this was our first news. I cried a little tear (and instantly thought to create a particle effect out of it).

From now on I plan to write news here frequently. Maybe with less tears. Maybe with more.

Feel free to follow our story drama!

Have a sparkling day! ✨

:: Sandbox Blizz 💖

More videos on Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/MercurySandbox/

Even more stuff on IndieDB:
https://www.indiedb.com/software/mercury-particle-sandbox

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Thank you 👌