Weekly ROBLOX Roundup: October 7, 2012

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: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtle Trouble, impressive game conversions and re-imaginations on ROBLOX, how ROBLOX renders shadows, our moderation program and more.

‘Twas the week of the Turtle

On Monday, we announced our Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtle Trouble game. On Saturday, we went in-depth on the making of said game. Indeed, it was the week of the Turtle (and ninja-rat). While you may have already played Turtle Trouble, we recommend you read our making-of article, then revisit the game. We think you’ll see it through a different lens, having consumed our breakdown of why things are the way they are and how they got there.

Impressive game conversions on ROBLOX

The more you search ROBLOX and look back at the games that aren’t topping the Games page, the more you realize just how much interesting content there is to explore. Type “Pac Man” into the search box, and you’ll find pages of Pac-Man games. Of course, they’re not all good; to help you suss out some of the filler, we made a list of five (and then some) popular games — from Portal to Pac-Man to Test Drive: Unlimited — that have been converted or re-imagined on ROBLOX.

How ROBLOX renders shadows

We received a question asking how ROBLOX renders shadows several weeks back. We recently got around to picking the brain of our Client Engine Lead Simon Kozlov, who shared details about our lighting and shadow-rendering methods. We also explain some of our ideas for the future, which include “voxel lighting.” Check out the complete post for all the details.

Still need more? Try this on for size: Moderation on ROBLOX: How It Works.

ROBLOX, elsewhere on the web Tecca recently posted an article about ROBLOX, featuring the thoughts not only of Creative Director John Shedletsky, but also three prolific users: Genius5, Stravant and Hicup789. You can read the full article here. Here’s a cool excerpt to whet your appetite: It’s this capacity to create worlds of their own coupled with the influence of their peers — and the idea that one can influence others in turn — that drives young players to learn new skills, which are also plenty useful in the real world. Unfortunately, Tecca ceased its operations on Friday. We wish them all well. I’m quite positive ROBLOX had nothing to do with it.

GDC Online (October 9-11)

Game Developers Conference (GDC) Online, the self-proclaimed premier professionals-only event for online, social and cloud gaming, takes place next week in Austin, Texas. ROBLOX CEO and Founder David Baszucki will be sharing his knowledge at the event’s Game Dev Start-Up Summit on Tuesday, October 9th. Running from 8:45 a.m. to 6 p.m., the summit consists of sessions covering the “issues, challenges, and realities of a new game dev as it forms and gets off the ground.”

Having built ROBLOX from a two-person operation to a gaming company with more than 60 employees – and in a time when any one social network had yet to cement itself as a go-to platform for online games – David brings unique perspective and knowledge.

You should play this ROBLOX game

This week, for me, was all about ROBLOX Pac-Man, by crazyblox. Human ghosts make the classic nigh impossible, but it’s still exciting and entertaining.

Bits