We go out of our way to keep our users in tune with all of the changes happening in the world of ROBLOX. In the last couple of months, various national publications have begun to notice that ROBLOX is a huge user-generated content site with millions of active players. As the press begins to catch wind of who we are and the mark we’re leaving on the gaming industry, we think our platform will spread to an even larger demographic. Check out some of the articles written about ROBLOX in the past three months, starting most recently with an article published today on the New York Times’ “Motherlode” blog.

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Let’s look at the facts: if you want to play or build games using our platform, it’s free. While it takes a lot of computing power to keep hundreds of thousands of gamers playing ROBLOX games, we want all our users to be creative and express themselves. But if you’re reading this blog, you probably know there’s a whole lot more to ROBLOX than that. Using the features bundled into Builders Club is essential to experiencing everything ROBLOX has to offer. When you purchase Builders Club, a lot happens behind the scenes at a very fast pace. We had ROBLOX Technical Director Matt Dusek explain what happens when you purchase Builders Club, and Creative Director John Shedletsky pick out some key benefits for newer users.  

A lot of engineering effort has gone into making the ROBLOX payment-processing system bulletproof. We can process payments from a variety of providers (such as credit cards, gift cards, iTunes, PayPal and SMS to name a few) with financial-grade encryption and data security practices. Furthermore, our payment processing is 100% transactional–sales will be faithfully completed even in the face of hardware failures in our billing system.

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‘Tis the season of gaming, so we thought we’d sit down with a handful of ROBLOX employees to find out what they’ve been playing this holiday season. We’re all gamers at heart, and this proves it. Enjoy. 

Kip Turner (Content Team)

I’ve been playing Orcs Must Die 2–it’s so fun. You defend these massive dungeons against hordes of enemies, and you can place traps all around the map. It also introduces co-op, so you can slay orcs with your friends. From a developer’s perspective, I really get a kick out of the physics system. All the traps have physics parts built into them, and you can use them to send orcs flying off the edge of cliffs into a murky abyss.

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When I spoke to user Uuvinu over the phone, he seemed distracted. So much so, that I asked him if something was wrong. I had simultaneously noticed that his website, ROBLOXranks.com, wasn’t loading. This was his response: “Sorry. Our servers in New York City were knocked out by the storm, and I’m working on migrating data to Dallas, Texas. Site should be live in an hour.”

It was back up in thirty minutes. He’s 15-years-old.

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Raycasting is a method of plotting the trajectory of in-game items, like bombs, lasers, explosions, and bullets. Though it isn’t entirely necessary to make a successful  game, certain users have found ways to leverage the system to create innovative gameplay mechanics. We thought we’d explore the concept by talking to Daxter33, creator of the ever-popular Paintball! 

Here’s how raycasting works: every weapon that features projectiles has a trajectory or, more simply, a path to travel. When you shoot a gun with instantaneous speed projectiles (as opposed to guns with slower projectiles that are physically simulated objects), you create a vector, which is determined by finding the gun in 3D space, the point it’s going to hit, and subtracting the two. Basically, you find a direction for your bullet to travel. A raycast can determine that path for you, as well as identify objects that appear in the path of the traveling bullet. You’re tracing a beam of light through 3D space.

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Building a popular game on ROBLOX requires various elements to work together complete harmony. To put it simply: it’s not easy. A big part of this harmonious chemistry is getting your game to stick–meaning users want to play it again and again. We decided to take a look at the “stickiest” games on ROBLOX, and postulate theories as to how they keep getting users to come back. 

In order to determine which games on ROBLOX were the stickiest, we studied game return rates, including one day return rates and one week return rates. You can check out which games on ROBLOX have the highest return rates in the graph below.

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With Halloween right around the corner, we thought we’d chat with members of the ROBLOX Content Team to see if they could provide any insight or advice as to how to “spook” up your games for Halloween. Here’s what they came up with. 

Intermediate – Creepy Lighting with Kip Turner