Every week, we’re busy telling the stories behind our platform, our technology, and our place in the gaming and technology industries. For those of you who catch up with ROBLOX over the weekend, the Weekly ROBLOX Roundup collects the best stuff to hit our various avenues of publication in the last week. This time: how ROBLOX has inspired young entrepreneurs, robust hinges, motors and vehicles, the inspiration and making of Apocalypse Rising and more.
ROBLOX inspires young entrepreneurs
Sure, ROBLOX users create a lot of impressive games — that’s why our site exists. But there are a few users who have gone above and beyond, and it’s been hard for us not to notice. Brandon LaRouche, otherwise known as CowBear16, is one such example; he harnessed his own motivation to write a book about scripting with Lua and create mobile ROBLOX apps. Now, it’s paying off, as he sells hundreds of books and delves deeper into iOS development under his LLC, Double Trouble Studio. Read about Brandon and two other young entrepreneurs in this blog article.
Follow in their footsteps, and maybe you will be the future subject of a Spotlight article.
Improving ROBLOX vehicles with physics
The further you dig into the inner workings of ROBLOX’s physics engine, the more you realize just how complex it is — how far-reaching each and every tweak can be. Kevin He’s recent physics article brings some of the complexity to light. While the ultimate conclusion is better, more realistic boats, the path to get there included advancements in our water physics and fine-tuning the variables that determine the strength of hinges and motors. If nothing else, it’s fascinating to see just how closely connected seemingly disparate parts of a physics engine are.
The inspiration and making of Apocalypse Rising
ROBLOX user Gusmanak has one of ROBLOX’s most popular games on his hands. He built it using very specific inspiration and, as our blog post says, the desire to “make a full blown game—something with ambition, scope, replayability, and, most importantly, zombies.” You can hear all about his experience, and the ins and outs of the eerie survival/shooter crossover in our recent feature.
Feedback, feedback, feedback
We have nothing but appreciation for our community’s perception and ideas. In fact, we’re still digging through the hundreds of comments you left on our April user-feedback survey and responding to some of the best thoughts. In this, the sixth edition of our user-feedback series, we cover making money off your ROBLOX creations, dynamic “loading” of levels and content, Linux support, multiplayer ROBLOX Studio and more.
Bits
- ROBLOX users, trading up with the trading system.
- You can experiment with some test animations, which use 14 motors, for ROBLOX characters at this place, or just watch this very fashionable video.
Interesting stuff from around the webThe gaming industry never stops moving. Here’s some interesting stuff from the last week. The game Portal, which has coincidentally been recreated several times in ROBLOX, is now being used in select classrooms for educational purposes. If you’ve played some Portal, you can predict its benefits: spatial reasoning, physics, problem-solving — the list goes on. ROBLOX offers many similar benefits, but quite a few more, including opportunities to learn programming skills and even marketing. If you’re skeptical of video games being used in education, a recent Gamasutra feature goes in-depth on video games research and spends some time covering cognitive and real-world benefits that have been recorded in video-game players. |
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