Weekly ROBLOX Roundup: June 17, 2012

By Andrew Haak - June 17, 2012

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: Build and Battle, ROBLOX’s mock Hackathon, character models, terrain and more.

Build and Battle: A new breed of ROBLOX game

Build and Battle is a team-based shooter where the objective is to take out your opponent’s energy core. Sounds simple enough, right? ROBLOX’s Content team ran with the basic foundation, introducing randomly generated terrain, resource collection, base building and more. You can read all about it and watch a video featuring ROBLOX developer Rohan, or jump right into a match.

Preview ROBLOX’s New Prototype Character Bodies

By Andrew Haak - June 16, 2012

If you’ve been following the ROBLOX blog for the past few months, you’ve probably seen one of our three hotly debated “Character Explorations” posts, in which we’ve shown the ongoing design progress for our version-3.0 character models. Love them or not, your feedback has helped shape the look of the future ROBLOX.

This time around, we’ve taken the new 3D bodies to the next level by creating fully dressed, personality-rich prototype characters and putting them into motion. Check out this post for a video preview from ROBLOX Art Director Jonathan Jahr.

Defining a New Genre with ROBLOX “Build and Battle”

By Andrew Haak - June 15, 2012

Game creation and game play are two cornerstones of the ROBLOX platform. While they’re usually exclusive activities in separate environments, the ROBLOX Content Team’s newest project, Build and Battle, blends the two to create a team-based game where victory demands strategy and a fierce, competitive spirit.

ROBLOX Preps for RGC 2012 with Mock Hackathon

By Andrew Haak - June 11, 2012

Last week, we announced that ROBLOX Game Conference 2012 will feature an all-day Hackathon, where attendees can use their scripting and logic skills to come up with quick solutions to ROBLOX puzzles. We put the idea to practice on Friday afternoon, gathering eight ROBLOX developers for our own mock Hackathon. The winning developers, known on ROBLOX as “QuantumSama” and “HotThoth“, didn’t receive tangible prizes — actual RGC participants will — but a brief Friday evening of bragging rights.

The mock Hackathon gave us a chance to test several challenges, a timer and leaderboard system, and helped us see some ways we can make this event fun for ROBLOX users of many tiers. Watch this video for an inside look at our dry run on Friday, June 8th.

Weekly ROBLOX Roundup: June 10, 2012

By Andrew Haak - June 10, 2012

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: Water, ROBLOX Game Conference updates, potato cannons and more.

Water is running in ROBLOX

By a long shot, the talk of the week was water. We’ve already seen a number of interesting creations using ROBLOX’s physically simulated water, and we’re excited to see more users take advantage of it in the near future. Read on for ROBLOX users’ thoughts on the kinds of water-based creations they’d like to see in the future.

The Water Is Running in ROBLOX

By Andrew Haak - June 5, 2012

Water has arrived in ROBLOX. What many see as an essential, but essentially mundane part of life, we see as a game-changer.

That’s because it’s more than just a texture. ROBLOX’s water comes with comprehensive physics simulation, meaning your ROBLOX character and the physical objects in your ROBLOX world behave as realistically in water as they do on land. You can wade on the surface and dive to the depths, create boats and motorized propellers, design rivers and falls with flowing rapids, and more. We’ve opened the floodgates to new genres of games and given game designers a new dynamic that begs experimentation.

ROBLOX Studio 2.0 Beta Out Now

By Andrew Haak - June 4, 2012

The public beta for ROBLOX Studio 2.0, the latest version of ROBLOX’s game-development application, is now available. You can download it here and give us your feedback on our Studio 2.0 forum. Please note that this beta is for Windows users only; ROBLOX Studio for Mac already uses our new framework and interface. Installing Studio 2.0 will not interfere with Studio 1.0, so you’ll be able to use both at the same time.

Your feedback is the most important part of this beta test. As you experiment with Studio 2.0, make specific, well documented notes that will help us identify areas that still need polish. The following points are a few relevant things to consider.