The first thing you will notice is that when you touch your trackpads radial menus pop up. These menu’s are for quick access to do a wide variety of things while you build your scene.

Descriptions of what all the menu options do can be found in another section.

Some settings that you might find useful can be found under editor settings, such as setting locomotion to grab, which allows you to resize yourself effortlessly while building your game.

You’ll notice how when your placing one entity if it connects with another entity you can see the shading of the other entity change, working as an indicator that the two entities will be connected together in play mode.

If you had set physics on (a setting in the radial menu), that same behavior happens except the entity your holding will NOT clip into the other, similar to placing blocks in the real world-physics keep that from happening.

Some basic info here:
Delete: delete an entity.

Undo: will revert anything you did. (*Warning* do not undo the moving of a group. Currently there is a bug that will delete your group if you try and do so.)

More Tools: access additional tools from the radial menu.

Physics- On Or Off: physics in edit mode means objects collide with each other. The benefit here is it makes objects easier to place without clipping through other objects.

Clone Tool: a pointer that you can point at anything in edit mode and make a copy of it, along with any modifiers it has and wires attached to it.

Entities: Entities are things you place in edit mode that will either appear in play mode or do something, such as an action when something occurs in the game during play mode.

Group Tool: to explain what a group tool is, first: grouping things does a few things. You could group a whole bunch of things so you don’t have to move them one by one, or group them all so you can upload them to the workshop for others or yourself to use in a different scene in edit mode. group tool brings out a pointer and a menu. In the quick menu you can also select a 3d cube selector to draw a 3d cube over all things you want to group.

Edit Tool: editing entities brings up menus to change the properties and other setttinga. The edit tool is a pointer to select things.
Terrain sculpting tool: the terrain sculpting tool is an intuitive way to “draw” your environment.
Edit Mesh: editing a mesh let’s you grab points on an a physical object and change its shape. It appears in edit mode when you are holding a physical object.

Auto Connect: auto connect is a radial option that shows up when you are holding an entity. If on, it means when you place the object in your hand on or into another physical object those two objects will be stuck together in play mode.

Grid Snap: grid snap appears when you are holding an entity and makes it easier to place entities with precision.

Angle Snap: angle snap appears when holding an entity and will lock the angle you are holding the entity at so you don’t have to hold your hand in such a precise when once angle snap is locked.

Freeze Tool: freezing entities will lock them in their point in space during play mode. A radial menu appears when holding an entity to do this quickly as your placing an entity, or you can use the freeze tool to point at entities and freeze them. You will know entities are frozen bc their outline is blue when your hand is in them or any other time the entity is highlighted.

Wire Tool: the wire tool is to connect one entity to another to do any number of things in the game and make scripted events happen.


Material And Paint Tools: the material tool will change the texture and properties of a primitive entity, of which you can select from a number of materials.
The paint tool lets you change the color and brightness of physical objects.



World Settings:

Play Mode/Edit Mode Button:

Play mode and edit mode are two sides of the same coin. If you start a new “scene”/level you will start in edit mode. Edit mode means you are in a state of building. Physics aren’t on, things you place will be floating if left in the air until you press the play mode button in which case everything will behave as it has beeen set to. You will often times find yourself going back and forth between edit mode and play mode to test out mechanics and make sure your ideas in motion move and behave as desired. In this you will find your moments of zen.



Import:

Here you can bring things such as images, materials, google blocks models, audio, video and more directly into modbox without any knowledge on building a mod or using the sdk/Unity to do it.

A windows browser will pop up and from here you can direct modbox to the file you want to import.
All imported items will show up in an “imported” tab within the entity list.

Images will show up under “imported” and also as a material you can add to primitives.

It should be noted that while modbox does allow you to import .wav files for audio it is recommended that you use .mp3 so your scenes are not too large for other people downloading them.

Primitives: primitives are the basic pieces in modbox for building. They are an empty slate and can be molded or edited to be just about anything.



Controls: You may need a remote control to be wired to remotely control an rc car, or aim a camera on hinges to move around remotely. This list of entities is anything involved with controlling things.



Wiring: The wiring entity list is filled with intermediate to advanced mechanisms involved with scripting your level to do things in a simplistic way that anyone can do without knowing how to program. Advanced events occurring in playmode are because of wiring entities.



Edit tools: Edit tools is fairly self explanatory but basically are a list of entities similar in fashion to wiring in that they are required to do more complex levels in modbox.



Game modes: This list of entities set what type of game your making and also contains entities to control the game mode.



Bases: Basically just a list of floor entities for designing your scene.



Walls: Walls for designing your level.



Ceiling: Ceilings for designing your level.



Misc: Miscellaneous is physical odds and ends to give your level a higher level of detail. Here youll find things like cups, some furniture, latters, treasure chests etc.



Toys: Toys are things similar to miscellaneous except they often come with a means of locking to your hand.



Cars: This is a list of entities to build your own drivable car!



Lights: Lighting entities for giving your scene a realistic appearance and shadows. I highly recommend using the lighting source found in the editor entity list and turn shadows on in the drop down.



Imported: This is a list of any entities you imported that didn’t come with modbox or downloaded off the workshop.



Npc’s: Npc could be a chatbot, enemies, ai team players etc. An NPC is an excellent thing to place in your world when editing it to make the scale of things correct.



Locomotion: Wheel entities



Connectors: Connectors are joints, hinges, ropes, pistols, spinning cogs etc that can connect to things at two points, move things and are often used as a means of scripting things to happen in your world via the wiring tool.

Save early, and save often.

Load things off the workshop and mess around. It’s a great way to see how things work.

Please don’t reupload someone else’s workshop item. Especially when your just getting started.

Thumbs up and thumbs down people’s work. It makes the modbox workshop a better place, and good maps get more visibility.

Every now and then save a fresh copy and don’t overwrite.

VR is performance heavy, placing an indefinite amount of entities will eventually slow your system down to a crawl however there are tools that actually can make enormous levels possible such as the culling tool. The dev also is always actively enhancing the performance. But unless you want you know how to use the culling tool etc keep in mind how you design your early levels and how large they are going to be versus how much detail you put into it.

Get on the modbox discord. Ask questions if you need help.

Play with other regular players, its a great way to visually learn how to make really cool stuff.

Be friendly :)

Use the workshop. Share your ideas, your creations. Try other peoples. Upload useful things to the steam workshop as a group. Little polished things you make here and there can be reused.

If you like modbox, tell your friends. Good games need your help.å

“Add modifier” - what modifiers are:

You may want an object to delete when the player breaks a certain window. Or maybe you don’t want it to delete, but just not be visible and functioning, or perhaps that specific object you decide should have no gravity. Basically anything you want to change from default on a specific object is done by adding a modifier.

The various modifiers:

Delete: adding this modifier will provide you a means of deleting an entity from your scene by one of the various ways you could wire it to delete.

Activate: Adding this modifier gives you a means of turning on or off an entity during play mode. While delete permanently removes an entity, this one will deactivate any entity and make it invisible and dormant, or if it was already deactivated, re-activate it.

Damage on collision: Adding this modifier makes it inflict a set amount of damage.

Platform options: Setting an entity to have platform options makes it a platform that a player can walk on, even if moving.

Climbable: Makes an entity grabbable and players can climb up it. Also allows wiring to be activated if climbed on.

No collision: No collision means the entity will have no physical surface in play mode nor any physical interaction with anything in play mode.

Physics Options: Physics options will add several options available to be tweak in edit mode, such as material type, friction, etc.

Modbox built in Import system is great for importing simple Models
https://imgur.com/VDmoaVg


But if you wanna upload more models, or make a Mod its better to use the SDK
https://vimeo.com/243767049

-Place a culling box. Make sure the things you put in it fit completely.
-Don’t make the culler box any larger than it needs to be.

A visual diagram on building a VHS video player that can be made to do something/activate something.

And I don’t mean what you think, that’s illegal in all 50 states in the good ol’ US.
I mean figuring out how to actualize your crazy contraptions, game scenarios and general ludicrous fun:



Play with other people!