Weekly ROBLOX Roundup: October 28, 2012

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Weekly ROBLOX Roundup logoEvery 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: see popular ROBLOX games running on an iPad, a deep dive on our fixes for character-motion stuttering, talking larger-than-life ROBLOX experiences with user Diddleshot, new game templates and more.

ROBLOX iPadPopular games running on an iPad (and a wall of sticky notes)

As we continue to develop ROBLOX for iPad, one of the things we’re doing is helping ROBLOX users optimize their games for play on a tablet. We produced a short video showing a sneak peek of our development effort and some of said games actually running on an iPad. Check it out in the blog post. We’ll have more information about our development progress in the coming weeks.

In case you missed our first “Engineering ROBLOX for the iPad” article, check it out here.

Character in MotionOur fixes for motion stuttering in ROBLOX

Get a group of friends together on ROBLOX and sit down in a vehicle. When there are multiple passengers, you’ll probably notice that your friends — or even the vehicle — stutter as they move. ROBLOX Client Physics and Networking Lead Kevin He recently dove deep into this problem, as it applies to characters and vehicles, and came out on the other end with a bunch of ingenious fixes. We have video evidence and a breakdown of the fixing process. It’s a little insight into how a software engineer approaches and solves problems.

Diddleshot talks about creating larger-than-life experiences

While many ROBLOX games are small, contained experiences, developers like Diddleshot shoot for the stars. (In this case, he actually reaches them with his Space Shuttle Advantage, but I digress.) He’s made games centered on space shuttle launches, giant dumptrucks, massive train demolitions and more. He’s also the Chairman of popular ROBLOX group Pinewood Builders. You can learn about what motivates him in our latest Spotlight article.

New game templates now available

One of ROBLOX’s goals is to improve support for beginning builders and game developers. One of the ways we’re doing that is creating Game Templates — starter levels with basic gameplay mechanics and architecture built in. They give beginners a starting point, off of which they can branch and get creative. Our first round of Game Templates is available now. To learn how to use them and manipulate their individual parts, read our blog story from early last week.

Responding to User FeedbackYou have big ideas, we have big answers

We’ve been collecting feedback and ideas from ROBLOX users over the last couple weeks and, as always, the great, complex ideas continue to pour in. We responded to several submissions last week; we cover ideas for simplified scripting, forum improvements, game statistics, group model sales and more. Take a look here.

You should play this ROBLOX game

I’ve never been a flight simulator kind of person — I don’t think I’ve ever had enough patience to wait so long for the delayed gratification of, well, getting off the ground. Wingz World V is right up my alley; flying isn’t so much an exercise in being a pilot as it is enjoying the expanse of the sky. The game is sprawling, lets you work toward better places, and has built-in mini games and a crafting system, where you find parts to build rare planes.

Wingz World V

Bits

  • ROBLOX user Maxxz reviews games every week for our YouTube channel. His most recent review is of the popular Multi Minigames. Check it out here and subscribe to our channel to see a new review every week.
  • Check out ROBLOXRanks.com to see where you rank amongst ROBLOX’s users. The site was created by user Uuvinu.