Prototyping the Future Look of ROBLOX Part 2

By Simon Kozlov - January 12, 2013

A few months back, we showed off some prototype videos that detailed what the future look of ROBLOX might be. We discovered a lot of interesting facets of our platform and took many of those tidbits of knowledge with us moving forward. Previous designs have taught us a lot about what we think could make ROBLOX look great in the future (particularly our growing understanding of lighting and shadows). Our previous ideas for our future look featured extremely realistic parts that required some serious computational lifting, and we wanted ensure that mobile devices, like the iPad (or any other mobile device we develop for in the future), would be able to handle the load. These new visual prototypes reflect our efforts to drastically alter the appearance of ROBLOX in way that’s smooth and playable on any device.

After seven iterations between the ROBLOX staff and our Technical Artist, this is a look at what we believe is the best step in the right direction.

Featherweight Parts: One Million Parts, One ROBLOX World

By Simon Kozlov - December 21, 2012

Featherweight parts, despite their name, have nothing to do with feathers, flying or anything bird-related. They do, however, have a lot to do with weight: while old ROBLOX parts are “heavy” memory users, featherweight parts are “super light,” allowing us to load and render more of them with the same computing power. The first iteration of featherweight parts has now released for ROBLOX on all platforms and it has already proven revolutionary in some ROBLOX places.

The following table shows the number of milliseconds required to render one frame. In a future release, these numbers will improve even further as we featherweight more materials, surfaces, and primitives.

Shadows on ROBLOX: Past, Present, and Future

By Simon Kozlov - October 3, 2012

We got the chance to sit down and chat with Simon Kozlov, Client Engine Lead for ROBLOX, about the implementation of shadows, how they came to be, and where he hopes they go in the future. What do you have for us, Simon?

People take shadows for granted. The placement of shadows on 3D models is integral for your brain and eyes to understand how large something is, how heavy it is, and how close or far away it is from you, just to name a few things. So creating realistic shadows in ROBLOX is very important to us.

RGC 2012: Prototyping the Future Look of ROBLOX

By Simon Kozlov - July 18, 2012

Over the past several months, Client Engine Lead Simon Kozlov has been working on some prototype videos that showcase the potential look of ROBLOX in the future. He shared them at ROBLOX Game Conference 2012, and now we’re showing them to the community at large. It’s important to note that these videos are prototypes and there is no projected release date, but the differences are staggering.

“We spent a lot of time talking about what kind of look is right look for ROBLOX,” said Kozlov. “We looked at a lot of different types of effects to determine what works and what doesn’t.”

ROBLOX Users: An Essential Part of Our Development Team

By Simon Kozlov - April 19, 2012

We recently explained our extensive testing infrastructure and showed how various systems are checking ROBLOX’s code for errors and regressions at just about all hours of every day.

But get this: that wasn’t the full picture.

Tech Demo: Dynamic Lighting Exploration

By Simon Kozlov - January 20, 2012

My hack week project was to explore rendering styles and visual effects that would take ROBLOX to the next level. The ROBLOX rendering engine works in a difficult environment compared to traditional games –

ROBLOX places are made by our users
(rather than by hired-on level designers)
Usually game companies can control their content. They can impose a strict set of rules about how many polygons are used, how to place particular items, and how much of a level is static. ROBLOX is different – builders can come up with anything, with no restrictions and no budgets.
ROBLOX places are very dynamic
In ROBLOX, any part is physically simulated by default – so it could move or change every frame. Even anchored parts could be changed at any point in time through scripting (they often do). Terrain is a great example – although it’s always anchored and cannot move, scripts and tools change it all time.
ROBLOX runs on wide range of machines
ROBLOX works on 10 year old computers with a 32MB video card, as well as on the latest monsters with gigabytes of memory. Any rendering effects we use must gracefully scale down and up immensely.

Whenever we think about improving the look and rendering effects on ROBLOX we need to keep all of this in mind.