Spotlight: FighterAce and the Kestrel Home Store

Spotlight: FighterAceEvery so often, we like to focus our attention on builders who are creating new and innovative things with our platform. This Spotlight is the first of its kind, as it focuses on a builder who has founded his own virtual clothing company, Kestrel. He has not only created a virtual store where you can browse his group’s clothing, but leveraged our in-game purchasing API to sell them on the spot. We talked with Kestrel founder FighterAce about his many accomplishments and his plans for the future of his emerging brand.

Only a few months ago, FighterAce noticed an increasing flow of requests from other users. They weren’t requests to party or join other games, nor were they requests to trade items. They were requests for clothing. Word had started to spread that if you were a builder who wanted a store full of clothing, FighterAce was the guy to do it. Before founding his very own brand, his work could be seen in several popular places—the super realistic ROBLOX recreations of Rome, Paris and Italy all feature clothing stores created by him. He became the go-to builder for in-game stores—though without the in-game purchasing API, they didn’t actually do anything.

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Five Unique Answers to “How Do I Get a Job at ROBLOX?”

BooksOur builders are passionate about creating top quality ROBLOX experiences, and many have asked us via Facebook, Twitter and ROBLOX games what it takes to secure a job here at ROBLOX HQ. The good news? This article will seek to answer that question. The interesting news? There’s way more than one answer. You see, ROBLOX is a unique combination of people from all walks of life, with different amounts of training in different fields. We share the same collective vision, though each of us do different things to achieve it. I thought it would be best to talk to a wide range of ROBLOX employees so that no matter which field you’re looking to pursue, you’ll have an example to follow.

Web Engineer Cullen Reilly (MacLir)

maclirInfluence: I grew up on USAF Missile Bases around a lot of engineers, so I was predisposed to engineering as a profession at a young age. I was exposed to and fascinated by computers, and pushing the capabilities of machines. In high school I started messing with coding–initially working to create more complex Warcraft III maps and behaviors. That’s where my interest in all this started.

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This Plugin Makes Creating In-Game Stores Simple

StoreCreator02Our in-game purchasing API has only been out for a few weeks and we’ve already seen builders use it to sell items in creative and effective ways. It’s not exactly beginner territory, though, so we decided to come up with a way to make in-game stores easier to implement. To that effect, we’ve created a ROBLOX Studio plugin that you can download, drop into Studio and use to build out a GUI-based store interface. This means can you can quickly and easily add a Game Pass and gear store to your place!

To create a store in your game, here are the steps:

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Bay Area After School Initiative STEM Goes Behind the BLOX

BTB1When it comes to developing ROBLOX, we take to heart specific and constructive feedback from our community. That’s why we started Behind the BLOX, a chance for builders to come and play test with us every Friday right here at ROBLOX HQ. In our last visit, we tested with a local group of middle schoolers from Benicia, all of whom are members of an after-school initiative called STEM. The acronym stands for science, technology, engineering and math–so it makes sense that each of them are not only familiar with ROBLOX, but builders themselves.

Andrew Altman is the program coordinator for STEM, and put together the field trip to our office. He tells me that STEM actually uses ROBLOX quite a bit in their curriculum–every Tuesday and Thursday he has professional programmer Carl Edwards work with students to build newer and more complex things in-game. On their last “ROBLOX day,” they learned to script working trampolines. Altman says that ROBLOX is unique in that it’s able to teach kids a wide range of skills, while keeping their interest levels high.

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Six ROBLOX Places That’ll Make You Say “Whoa”

We’re constantly searching for new ROBLOX creations that catch our eye–the recent advent of dynamic lighting has really altered the way many existing places look, and brought forth a wide range of new environments. We enjoy it when we get the chance to share some of the more awesomely detailed and creative places we find on our platform, and love giving credit to the intrepid builders who are pushing ROBLOX boundaries in new and creative ways. To the right, you’ll notice the (dynamically lit) facial expression that stayed on my face while discovering each of these unique levels. Check them out. 

The Fabric of Reality

The Fabric of Reality is a place that completely and dramatically displays our new dynamic lighting system–enter, and watch as cascading, individually lit framed cubes fall from the sky, lighting the area below before disappearing altogether. It’s ingenious in its simplicity, and looks like nothing we’ve ever seen in ROBLOX.

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Our Summer Interns Have Names You May Recognize

Last week, we brought on four up-and-coming engineers to join us in our never-ending quest to make ROBLOX better, faster, and more streamlined. These are names you’ll recognize if you’ve spent some time on ROBLOX–many of them are legends in the community. That’s right, being a power user on ROBLOX can lead to some great things, like an internship right here at ROBLOX HQ. Without further ado: the ROBLOX Summer Interns.

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Spotlight: Highly Detailed Pirate Ships With UlrichStern25

UlrichStern25 has always had a fascination with pirates–like many of our intrepid builders, that passion eventually manifested itself in ROBLOX. Turns out he’s been hard at work creating some of the most detailed watercraft we’ve ever seen on ROBLOX, based primarily on his fascination with the high seas.

Pirates of the Caribbean Ship Showcase is a good place to start–this is where UlrichStern25 painstakingly recreated every major ship in the movie franchise, and the detail in each of the ships is mind blowing. Whether it’s from afar, or right there on deck, these massively detailed ships look like photographs of real life sea craft. Masts and sails shoot majestically into the air, cannons are tucked away in compartments in the decks below, some battle-torn and withered, some new and shiny.  Make sure to use the Teleport tool to move quickly between each ship, and to explore all they have to offer.

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