Spotlight: Chadthedestroyer2 and After the Flash: Darkness

By Alan Fackler - July 8, 2013

Inspired by other builds he had enjoyed playing on ROBLOX, chadthedestroyer2 decided to give “post-apocalyptic survival” games a shot. The result was a series of popular ROBLOX titles called After the Flash. Though each game looks radically different from one another (“Snowstorm” features a snowed out post-apocalyptic world, “Sandstorm” features a desert wasteland, and “Japan” features, well, you get it), the premise is the same. The world has, for the most part, been destroyed. You are a survivor, sifting through the wreckage of what used to be the town or city you called home.

Ever since we released dynamic lighting and shadows, we’ve been keeping an eye on developers who are structuring games around the feature. Chadthedestroyer2′s latest iteration of the series, “Darkness“, does just that. It’s a far different addition to his series, in that the lights are off, and the only way to survive is careful exploration with a single flashlight.

New “Liquid” Games Page Makes Blank Margins a Thing of the Past

By Alan Fackler - July 5, 2013

The ROBLOX Web Team is always looking to update and improve ROBLOX.com to further empower our builders, developers and gamers. We are on a never-ending quest to ensure that great games and content get as much visibility as possible. Positive and upfront exposure is one of the keys to being successful on ROBLOX, and it’s in that spirit that we’ve begun rolling out a new “liquid” Games page. In our tests thus far, we have received great player feedback and we’ll be incorporating that into the official release in the near future.

Liquid, in this context, means that the amount of games that populate your Games page is dependent on the amount of screen real estate you have. The wider the screen, the more games you can see. The liquid Games page is built to be entirely scalable, as well — if you decide to decrease the size of your browsers’ window, the amount of games available will shrink to fit. This is another step toward realizing our vision of a Games page loaded with fantastic content, and we’ll be sure to fill you in on further advancements in the coming weeks.

Six Amazing Sci-Fi Themed Environments

By Alan Fackler - July 2, 2013

We’re consistently blown away by some of the creations our intrepid builders are able to create using ROBLOX. Their creativity inspires us, as well as those who get the chance to experience their vision in ROBLOX. This may come as a total surprise to you, but our office is home to some pretty hardcore sci-fi nerds (shocking, I know). So we thought we’d compile six of the most creative and detailed sci-fi themed places we’ve seen on ROBLOX. Enjoy!

Metro v0.68 by Zusik

Far and away one of the more subtle entries of this roundup, that certainly doesn’t make it any less impressive. In fact, this map requires close inspection and exploration to really appreciate the amount of work done here. We like that it scales–it takes place in the future, yes, but only 13 years from now. As such, nothing is way too out there. The trains still look relatively normal, and the screens you would normally find dotting the walls are now replaced by virtual projections (some of which blink GUI messages). Great detail, great concept, great execution.

BLOXcon Is Coming! Which Staff Will be Where?

By Alan Fackler - June 29, 2013

With this summer’s BLOXcon happening only two weeks from now in Chicago, we thought it would be a good idea to tell you which of your favorite ROBLOX admins will be at which location (we can’t all go to all three, we have jobs to do here at HQ). In addition, we thought we’d put together a quick video teaser for BLOXcon Chicago, which is taking place at the Museum of Science and Industry.

Spotlight: ManyFireman’s Ro-Scania Trucking Simulator

By Alan Fackler - June 28, 2013

Building vehicles, both in real life and virtual worlds, is a complex process that involves many moving parts and an appreciation for physics. It’s easy to take the process for granted–most games feature them prominently and put you in control and on the road at the press of a button.

But ROBLOX is all about building and engineering, and and that includes vehicle creation. We stumbled across ManyFireman‘s awesome Ro-Scania Trucking Simulator, which features over a dozen trucks he custom built, and a nice, open world to drive them around. We were impressed not only by the vast array of mega-vehicles, but by how realistically they drove. The game plays like an old limerick would read: ManyFireman builds many trucks of many different shapes and sizes.

Crossfire: A Tale of Two Cities

By Alan Fackler - June 21, 2013

Creativity and sharing are two qualities that fuel ROBLOX. It’s in that spirit that we created Crossfire, a series where we chat with ROBLOX game developers about their game design choices. For this outing, we interviewed Nightgaladeld and Juliane14, creators of Washington DC and Rome, Italia respectively. Each of these cities is more than just a detailed recreation; they are tied to their respective groups, where members can join, rank up, and participate in each of their local economies.

ROBLOX: The most obvious similarity between your two places is that they’re both incredibly large in terms of studs and brick counts. Was it a challenge building something that big?

Dungeon Delver Creators Bring New Life to an Old Formula

By Alan Fackler - June 19, 2013

Dungeon Delver is somewhat of an anomaly within the context of ROBLOX. While it’s a re-imagining of the brand of RPG made popular by Diablo, Everquest and the like, it features things we don’t often see: a fixed camera system, a click-to-walk interface, and different classes with different abilities that can be upgraded and enhanced. I got the chance to talk to the developers of the title, Gl0in and Gl0in2 to get the inside scoop on creating a game of such magnitude.

Dungeon Delver is still in its Alpha testing stage, but it’s stable and open to the public. Already, this unfinished title has amassed over 100,000 visits, thanks in part to its striking visual aesthetic. It first manifests itself in the character creation system, which uses a nifty graphic user interface to customize your look and abilities. Once you look the way you like, you find yourself in a lifelike tavern surrounded by wizards with long staffs and warriors with steel swords. Here, you can mingle with other players, purchase items and generally find reprieve from the dungeons you’re otherwise exploring.