In gaming, emergence happens when players use a game’s basic systems in a way that is unexpected, unpredicted and unique. It’s built into the entire ROBLOX platform; users have the freedom to create almost any type of game, experience games, moments and physics that rarely – if ever – play out the same way twice, and even discover emergence in ROBLOX’s social space and virtual economy.

Depth of creativity

One of the beauties of ROBLOX is the creative freedom it gives users. Builders start out with a blank canvas and can build anything, from architectural displays to complex vehicle models to competitive, multi-player arenas. While the sophistication of a game or place depends on its creator’s abilities in both construction and scripting, ROBLOX offers users a free-form tool that lends itself to discovery, what-if scenarios and experimentation.

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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.

Our Effort Against Phishing

With ROBLOX attracting more than 7 million unique visitors a month, we’ve started to see a rise in websites that “phish” for our users’ personal information. We’re taking serious measures to ensure these phishing sites don’t last. Remember: If an offer sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Anytime you enter your ROBLOX account information, check your browser’s address bar to make sure you’re on the real ROBLOX website.

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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, Picking Up the Pieces collects the best stuff to hit our various avenues of publication in the last week.

Video and Image Galleries

We just released a feature that lets ROBLOX users promote their games and places with rich media galleries. It’s the latest in a string of improvements we’re making to our website to help content creators better engage players. Read all about it here. We’ve already seen a number of slick video trailers and we’re anticipating many more. Get some tips and ideas at Video Making 101.

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We’ve introduced you to ROBLOX Base Wars version 1.0 and explained how Luke Weber created its highly responsive weapons using raycasting techniques. Now, we’re rounding out the trio of Base Wars development stories with a look at the game’s level design.

Loosely inspired by a classic Counter-Strike level (de_Dust2, to be specific), Base Wars’ map is designed to give each team a fair chance to take control of any of the three capture points. That’s not to say it’s perfectly symmetrical; for instance, the blue team’s base is further from the capture points, but they have the advantage of elevation – particularly conducive to the game’s Sniper class. Each capture point is located in a small, open arena, where combat is almost guaranteed, and connected by narrow, winding paths.

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Last week, ROBLOX introduced version 1.0 of Base Wars FPS. As promised in the post, Luke Weber is spilling the beans on how he achieved its fast-paced, first-person-shooter feel using raycasting techniques and a couple crafty scripts.

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The ROBLOX Content Team is wrapping up version 1.0 of ROBLOX Base Wars, a competitive first-person shooter (FPS).

The concept is familiar: up to 30 players join a game, and each player is randomly assigned to a team. Players contribute to their team’s score by taking out opponents and capturing control points. It’s a little like Team Fortress 2, but without the hats. We created Base Wars to show that an exciting first-person experience is possible in ROBLOX, as well as to give ROBLOX builders a resource they can draw upon for their own FPS creations. The source code for ROBLOX Base Wars is free, so download – or play – the most recent version here.

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If you drive a real-life car into a brick wall, the car doesn’t simply bounce back. With enough speed, it causes the brick wall to come crashing down in a destructive display of physics. (Just trust us on this.)

To make sure these kinds of things happen in ROBLOX, as in the real world, ROBLOX Senior Game Engine Developer Kevin He has made some improvements to ROBLOX’s distributed physics engine. Today, he’ll show us the improvements with a number of video demos.

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