Spotlight: Jake Evans’ Fort Borealis

By Alan Fackler - August 30, 2012

At ROBLOX, we continue to take notice of those who are tackling new and different challenges within our platform. On this edition of “Spotlight”, we’re checking out Jake Evans’ Fort Borealis, an ambitious, popular and innovative shooter.

Jake Evans spent a lot of his time on ROBLOX forums when he first started out–he undertook small projects here and there, mostly minor tasks for the forum community. He didn’t know that he’d eventually end up working as the lead scripter for one of ROBLOX’s most popular titles, Fort Borealis.

A Look Behind What Happens When You Publish a Game

By Alan Fackler - August 28, 2012

When creating a game in ROBLOX Studio, the scope, playability, and overall enjoyment of it is entirely in your hands. We’re here to give you the tools you need to build, and ensure that you can share your games with others. But hitting the “publish” button kicks off a series of events that are remarkable. And, like our “Play Button” article we wrote previously, we’d like to share with you the complexities behind publishing a game using ROBLOX.

So you’ve finished your game, and you’re ready to share it with the ROBLOX community. You hit “Publish”. Now two parts of our system–the web side, and the client side–begin working together to rocket your game into our cloud based storage system, backed ultimately by Amazon S3.

Student Code Jockeys Sum Up Summer at ROBLOX

By Alan Fackler - August 22, 2012

We’ve talked previously about how many users can use ROBLOX as a platform for starting lucrative careers. Speaking to that effect, we decided to check in with some of our summer interns, who are approaching the end of their times here at ROBLOX, and see what they’ve been up to over the last couple of months. Turns out they’ve been working on some big projects. Check it out.

Garrett Fleenor – Senior, Oregon State University

I got the chance to work on the LEGO® Hero Factory: Breakout game, alongside fellow developer Zach Linblad (fusroblox), and it turned out to be a really fun game. Outside of our overall goal, which was to create a scavenger hunt-type-game, we were given quite a bit of creative freedom. Zach created the basic drop zone code, and John built the city. We continued iterating the game until we arrived at a rewarding, immersive 3D experience.

A Look Behind What Happens When You Press “Play”

By Alan Fackler - August 16, 2012

You know the routine: you find the game you want to play, you click play, and within seconds, you’re transported to a virtual realm of soldiers, mages, farmers and race car drivers. Simple, right?

On your end, it really is. But in those few seconds it takes for your game to load, computers are transitioning commands into IP addresses, data is being transmitted, received, and filtered, and computers, some of which are hundreds of miles away, are having separate and unique conversations to get you into a populated game as quickly as possible.

Spotlight: The RoWars Revival

By Alan Fackler - August 15, 2012

At ROBLOX, we continue to take notice of those who are tackling new and different challenges within our platform. On this edition of “Spotlight”, we’re checking out a new project from users BlabVoid and SharpTH, who are using ROBLOX as a platform to develop a full-blown sci-fi mini-series.

In 2008, ROBLOX user Are92 did something with ROBLOX that nobody had ever seen before: he used it to create a full-length mini-series called RoWars that would transcend the machinimas previously seen on the platform.

The Beginners Guide to the ROBLOX Economy

By Alan Fackler - August 4, 2012

The ROBLOX economy is booming. Through all hours of every day, trades are in progress, virtual gear is being created and sold, users are marketing their content, groups are created and money is being managed. ROBLOX’s virtual economy is growing at the hands of our users.

The economy can seem like a daunting system for newcomers, so we put together a quick article explaining the overall aspects of our bustling economy. Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll go in depth on many of the sections of this article, for those who have already worked with our economy system.

Gusmanak Returns to ROBLOX With Apocalypse Rising

By Alan Fackler - July 25, 2012

17-year-old Gus Dubetz, or Gusmanak, started using ROBLOX in 2008, due primarily to a life-long fascination with physics. By 2010, Dubetz decided to take a short break to focus on clay and wood sculpting.

It wasn’t until two years later, shortly after the release of Day Z, a hugely popular add-on to ArmA 2, that Dubetz, with long-time friend and scripter Ethan Witt (aka ZolarKeth) asked, “what if we went back?”