Be Part of the ROBLOX Maker Faire Experience!

By Andrew Haak - April 5, 2013

One of the best things about being headquartered in San Mateo, California, is we’re a hop, skip and a jump from the grounds of an incredible, annual West Coast event: Maker Faire Bay Area. For the second year in a row, ROBLOX will be showcasing the digital side of “maker” culture at the event. It takes place on May 18th and 19th at the San Mateo County Events Center.

This year, our space will be four times the size of our presence in 2012, giving you more room to talk with ROBLOX staff, meet other ROBLOXians, playtest new product development, and enjoy playing and building. We’re also inviting ROBLOX builders to our booth to showcase and discuss creations that illustrate the limitless possibilities of ROBLOX. If you have built something great (a scripted or mechanical model, a beautiful world or an adventurous game), would be comfortable presenting and discussing it in front of other Maker Faire attendees, and are attending Maker Faire, please fill out this form to let us know by April 21st, 2013 at 11:59 p.m. PT. We’ll choose a selection of submissions and work with you to become your own exhibitor at the event!

ROBLOX’s Browser-Based and Native-Client Gaming Hybrid

By Andrew Haak - April 3, 2013

The advent of broadband internet has revolutionized the way video games are distributed. 10 years ago, the idea of downloading, streaming or playing in a web browser what was traditionally boxed and sold on store shelves was almost unbelievable. Today, it powers video game distribution. Steam does big business distributing games, OnLive and Gaikai have demonstrated that streaming even high-production experiences can be done without sacrificing gameplay quality, and there’s a plethora of free browser and social games you can start playing within seconds in every corner of the web.

Technology has enabled game developers of all shapes and sizes to get their creations to an exponentially larger audience than they could in the past. The question for PC game developers, then, is what’s the best medium: a web-based player or a downloadable client? The industry is still figuring out the answer to this question – right now, the decision hinges on the game’s goals and target audience – but we expect to see some convergence sooner rather than later.

Weekly ROBLOX Roundup: March 31st, 2013 (GDC 2013 Edition)

By Andrew Haak - March 31, 2013

Every week, we’re busy telling the stories behind our platform, our technology and our place in the gaming and technology industries. For those of you who catch up with ROBLOX over the weekend, the Weekly ROBLOX Roundup collects the best stuff to hit our various avenues of publication in the last week. This time: ROBLOX’s presence at Game Developers Conference 2013, the ROBLOX Egg Hunt 2013, rendering changes and optimizations coming next week, a gameplay quality improvement for first-person-playing ROBLOXians, virtual BLOXcon Fedoras for event attendees, a Spotlight on the creator of the City of Rome in ROBLOX, Robloxity, and other bits and pieces. Enjoy.

Seven-day Blog Recap

Turning off bevels and upping ROBLOX’s rendering performance

Next week, we’ll be removing bevels — in basic terms these are the rounded corners of ROBLOX bricks — from ROBLOX’s rendering pipeline. This will not only increase performance, but allow us to focus more energy on implementing new rendering features, including dynamic, voxel-based shadows and lighting. To see before-and-after footage of our upcoming rendering optimizations and new graphics-quality adjustments, and learn more about why we’re making this change, please read this post and provide your feedback.

Weekly ROBLOX Roundup: March 31st, 2013 (GDC 2013 Edition)

By Andrew Haak - March 31, 2013

Seven-day Blog Recap

Turning off bevels and upping ROBLOX’s rendering performance

Get a Stylishly Local ROBLOX Fedora with Your BLOXcon Pass

By Andrew Haak - March 28, 2013

BLOXcon passes have been on sale for about two weeks now and in that time we’ve sold almost 50% of them across all three events. The early-afternoon Main Stage Presentation slots for BLOXcon London and New York City are already booked solid, and other highly desirable sessions are filling up quickly. So, if you don’t want to wake up too early, we recommend you snag your pass today.

But that’s not the real news. This week, we revealed that every pass will also include an exclusive virtual fedora, customized to the city where you’re attending BLOXcon. Better yet, if you purchase your pass by April 5th, you’ll receive a special “early-adopter” version of the hat. That means there will be no more than 3,000 of these fedoras in the ROBLOX market. And that will make you, the proud owner, the envy of ROBLOXia.

Come Meet ROBLOX at GDC 2013

By Andrew Haak - March 25, 2013

There’s been a buzz within the game industry — ROBLOX HQ included — over the past few days’ lead-up to Game Developers Conference 2013, which kicked off today in San Francisco. The self-proclaimed largest and longest-running professionals-only game industry event brings together programmers, artists, producers, game designers, audio professionals, business decision-makers and others involved in game development to exchange ideas and shape the future of the industry.

ROBLOX will be manning a booth at GDC 2013 from Wednesday through Friday. Our primary focus will be meeting potential candidates to join the ROBLOX team, but we’ll also be there to talk technology and demonstrate cross-platform gameplay with our internally developed ROBLOX Battle game running on laptops and iPads. We’d love to have you stop by and learn more about us over a rousing round of frantic fragging and physically simulated destruction. If you have serious skills, you can enter one of our daily tournaments for a chance to win an Amazon gift card.

Weekly ROBLOX Roundup: March 24th, 2013

By Andrew Haak - March 24, 2013

Every week, we’re busy telling the stories behind our platform, our technology and our place in the gaming and technology industries. For those of you who catch up with ROBLOX over the weekend, the Weekly ROBLOX Roundup collects the best stuff to hit our various avenues of publication in the last week. This time: a preview of the 2013 ROBLOX Egg Hunt, our Spotlight on TacoConsumer‘s detailed building style, stress testing the ROBLOX physics engine, a new beta test for multiple-limited-item ownership, quite possibly the most detailed vehicle interior ever built in ROBLOX, and other bits and pieces. Enjoy.

Seven-day Blog Recap

The ROBLOX event of the year is almost here…

Each year, our annual Egg Hunt becomes bigger and more creative than ever before. We’ve got some really cool plans in store for the 2013 installment of this fan-favorite event, and we’ll be revealing all the details when the game launches the week of the 25th. In the meantime, read this blog article; it explains what to expect and features a first look at three of the eggs and the virtual environment where you’ll find all 20+.