Sand Saga Insider: May 2025

Patrik Harag, 2025-06-03

In May, a few interesting things happened in the development of Sand Saga once again, also the game crossed some interesting milestones worth mentioning. The total playtime has now exceeded the average human life expectancy in the richest countries – so we can officially say that at least one human life has been fully wasted on Sand Saga. A life well spent, of course. Another milestone: the number of completed scenarios has passed one million! Just a reminder – a sandbox scenario is considered complete after simulating 10,000 iterations, and scenarios can be completed multiple times (for example, after a refresh or returning later).

May Additions

Humans
An unseen feature in games of this genre – and there's a reason for that. It's far from easy to implement something like this in a falling sand game.

As previously announced, this is the first version, and it will still take some time before they feel truly complete. In this early experimental phase, they are fairly simple and lack a number of expected interactions with existing elements and entities. Interactions and behavior will gradually improve over time. And it's already happening – in the second update of the month, I fixed collisions with machinery entities, so they no longer fall through and also the Grinder can finally do its job ;)

One big question mark is animation. Since I use a custom engine, I have to solve everything from scratch. The real challenge lies in integrating animations into the simulation – including interactions with the background particles – which brings a range of unexpected challenges.

I need to carefully choose the complexity and scope of animations so that I don't make things overly complicated and keep it all realistically achievable.

Fluids
After a long time, I returned to the core of the simulation and made improvements to fluid behavior. The main motivation was to improve the slow spreading of liquids. This goal was achieved – the improvement is clearly visible. Of course, it's still not perfect, but it's a decent compromise for now.

While experimenting with different approaches, I noticed some interesting behavior that resembled viscosity. I decided to formally introduce it as a property for certain materials where it made sense. Later, I also added density, which affects how quickly a fluid flows.

Modding
The capabilities of JSON mods have been expanded, and several examples were added. It is now relatively easy to configure your own tools, and even create a new material for them – for instance, by taking an existing one, changing its colors, and tweaking its behavior (like turning Thermite into a gas).

I'm really glad to see creators picking this up and experimenting with different combinations and ideas I hadn't thought of. The results have been very creative. Personally, I try to keep the base game minimalist, with each tool being unique and purposeful. But in mods, it's totally fine if authors go wild and unleash their imagination.

As for JSON modding itself, there are still some missing features – mainly better tools for defining scenes (especially layered templates), and options for defining templates (for use in tools or scenario setup). So that's something to look forward to in future updates!

Conclusion

In the next month, I'll likely focus on improving the humans. See you next month!