Spotlight: Running for Our Lives With Erikwesley96

By Alan Fackler - December 27, 2013

Deathrun is a fan-favorite game in ROBLOX that has surged in popularity throughout the years. A few months ago, we talked with developer ErikWesley96 about designing Deathrun in a Crossfire article, where he mentioned that his team of developers (who still don’t have an official name, and are open to suggestions) was hard at work on crafting an official sequel. Fast forward a few months, and Deathrun 2 has not only officially released, but has been sitting at the top of the Games page for multiple weeks. I got the chance to talk with him about developing the Deathrun sequel from scratch.

“What surprised me most was that Deathrun 2 reached the front page without the use of ads of any kind,” recalls ErikWesley96. “I was expecting users to like it because the first Deathrun was loved by so many, but the popularity of the title really surprised me.”

Surviving ROBLOX Survivor 2.0

By Alan Fackler - December 21, 2013

ROBLOX Survivor is a staple of the survival genre that many consider to be a classic. The game features a robust and deep wilderness survival engine, encouraging exploration, scavenging, hunting–basically all the things you would need to do in real life to stay alive in the wild. With nearly two million plays, and a wide range of updates since its release, Jojomen56 recently decided it was time to start developing the official sequel. I got the chance to spend some time inside ROBLOX Survivor 2.0, which is in Paid Access beta for 40 ROBUX. Though the level itself is extremely small, the amount of innovative gameplay mechanics it comes packed with is staggering. Jojomen56 has implemented numerous advanced features, and created a dynamic environment that is reactive in nature. First, have a look at this:

Hack Week Sneak Peek: A Few Fascinating Projects

By Alan Fackler - December 20, 2013

Another successful Hack Week completed!

As we mentioned on the blog earlier in the week, Hack Week is an opportunity for ROBLOX staff to explore and prototype their pet projects, and ultimately present them Friday during a company meeting. We thought today would be a great opportunity to take a sneak peak at what our developers have hacked together this year. Remember, these are all purely hypothetical projects — we’re not making any promises here, we’re kicking around ideas in order to form a collective understanding of what projects we could potentially pursue in the future. That being said, we did some really exciting and innovative work in the last week. Check it out!

Presenting the Siege of Quebec by Team Rudimentality

By Alan Fackler - December 17, 2013

The official Communications Team ROBLOX Pulp Fiction shot.

‘Tis the holiday season, and one of our favorite ways to celebrate is with a custom-made game. Alas, our Games team has been fully occupied with other projects and getting a game done in time wasn’t in the cards. Luckily for us, our developer community is full of self-organizers–individual developers came together, brainstormed concepts, and eventually formed teams that competed to submit the best holiday-themed games by the relatively short deadline. We agreed that our Games and Marketing teams would take a look at each of these submissions, choose the most solid entry, put it up on our official ROBLOX Games page, and add brand new hats for earning badges in-game! We’re pleased to announce we’ve made our official selection: ROBLOX presents the Siege of Quebec by Team Rudimentality!

Hack Week Begins Today!

By Alan Fackler - December 16, 2013

Engineers, programmers, and scientists from many disciplines congregate here at ROBLOX HQ in a non-stop effort to better our platform. It is in this spirit of constant innovation that we celebrate Hack Week, where our engineers spend an entire week focusing on projects that live not just out of the box, but miles away from it. For the next five days, ROBLOX employees will be working tirelessly (either individually or in teams) on a wide range of pet projects and maybe-someday features. We’re provided with daily lunches, and for those who stay past the hour of 6:00 PM (see: most of us), dinners as well. On Friday afternoon, each of us will show the entire company what we’ve brewed up, and we’ll consider which of these projects are worth further investigation, and in rare cases, implementation. Hack Week is on!

To celebrate the kickoff of ROBLOX Hack Week, we thought we’d take a look back in time (our previous Hack Week was a year and a half ago) at some of the ideas that actually ended up becoming full-blown ROBLOX features. I got the chance to look through the archives of our 2012 Hack Week presentations and wanted to share with you some of the notes from Keith’s inaugural speech:

Inside Look at Crystal Raider, An Awesome New ROBLOX Title

By Alan Fackler - December 14, 2013

As you may recall, part of the reason the Games Team created Space Knights was to experience firsthand the process of developing a top-quality game and illustrate the possibilities of ROBLOX game development. With that in mind, we took note when Unclear–known primarily for building environments with enough scale to stress even high-end hardware–launched Crystal Raider, a game that felt curiously similar to Space Knights. Turns out, it wasn’t just a coincidence.

Feedback Loop: BLOXcast Edition

By Alan Fackler - December 10, 2013

We’re on a constant quest to address any and all feedback we receive from our community of gamers and developers. We couldn’t possibly respond to the thousands of questions and comments that poured in during last Saturday’s BLOXcast, so we thought we’d take this opportunity to respond to some of the great questions we couldn’t address live. In order to do so, we tapped a gamut of ROBLOX employees in varying departments to respond directly to your questions. Enjoy.

max792: Will you add light glare for dynamic lighting and the sun? Like light that blinds you when you look directly at the sun? I think this would enhance the realism of ROBLOX lighting–it could be a toggle-able option in the Game.Lighting object in Studio.