Outlines: The Latest Step Toward a Unified Aesthetic

By Simon Kozlov - July 11, 2013

Many video games and software-based tools have a unified aesthetic. Not only is it visually pleasing, it’s a useful means of distinguishing a product. In ROBLOX, that unified aesthetic can go missing – while everything is built from the same set of primitives and blocks of terrain, there are stark differences in what you see from one game to the next. We want our platform to have a look that speaks to our vision and screams ROBLOX, while still scaling to a wide range of hardware and giving you complete creative freedom to express your own vision. Today, we took another step toward that goal by enabling outlines on ROBLOX parts.

Outlines are a very experimental feature and, accordingly, we’ve enabled them in a very subtle way – thin, light and drawn only in close proximity. In some cases, they’re hardly noticeable; in others, their light touch blends with dynamic lighting and our material shading for a dramatic effect. We believe, across the board, they contribute to a look that ROBLOX can call its own.

Become a More Efficient Builder with These Studio Tricks

By Alan Fackler - July 10, 2013

After mentioning the ability to select individual parts from a model in last week’s Feedback Loop, we were surprised to find how many of our builders were enthralled with, and grateful for, what we thought was a relatively minor suggestion. Alas, there are many small things you can learn that can make your building experience with Studio easier and faster. We decided to talk with Creative Director John Shedletsky and the Studio Team’s Tyler Berg to get some basic building advice. We’ll start with technical advice from John.

Is your ROBLOX level running slowly? ROBLOX Studio has tools to help you figure out why. Check out these three views in the “View” menu: “Script Performance”, “Task Scheduler” and “Diagnostics”. When your level is running (e.g., when you’re doing a Test > Solo visit), these panels are full of useful and telling stats about ROBLOX’s internal operations.

How the Top-Rated Games Earn Your “Thumbs Up”

By Alan Fackler - July 9, 2013

Various changes have hit the ROBLOX Games page in the past couple of weeks. The “Top Earning” sort allows users to see which games are able to rake in the most amount of Robux. The thumbs up/thumbs down rating system gives you the power to vote on the content populating that page, so that the entire community can band together to establish an easy-to-read quality metric. We’re also in the process of rolling out a brand-new layout that shows you a lot more content.

Since the release of our ratings system, we’ve been keeping an eye on the top-voted places on the Games page. We decided to take a look at the top 100 vote-getters, and do a bit of analysis–particularly as to what aspects drive players to cast positive votes.

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.

Weekly ROBLOX Roundup: July 7th, 2013

By Andrew Haak - July 7, 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: the “liquid” layout for the Games page, six amazing sci-fi-themed places, a rousing round of your feedback and our responses, community booths at BLOXcon Chicago, hats and gear bundled with ROBLOX cards in July, Sword Fight and Sink a City, and other bits and pieces. Enjoy.

Seven-day Blog Recap

A new look for the Games page

One of the most popular pages on ROBLOX.com is the Games page. It’s the holy grail for game developers — by far the best means of getting exposure is getting to page one — and the natural starting point for anyone trying to find interesting ROBLOX games. Last week, we revealed a new look for the Games page, allowing us to display a much-increased volume of games and two side-by-side sorts. The end results is a more democratized Games page — more slots means more opportunity to achieve front-page placement and receive that prized exposure among millions of potential players. We’re currently rolling your feedback into our final bug fixes and improvements, and will launch this for all in the near future.

A Look at BLOXcon Chicago’s Community-run Booths

By Andrew Haak - July 6, 2013

In less than a week, we’re going to be packing up, boarding a plane headed for Chicago and setting up the first of this summer’s BLOXcons. But we’re not the only ones coordinating a presence at the Museum of Science and Industry; several members of the ROBLOX community will be on-site to spread the word about their organizations, products and events. Read on to find out what will be on display (and to get prepared for an awesome BLOXcon experience).

First off, a look at what’s going on at BLOXcon

Main Stage Presentation: CEO and ROBLOX Co-Founder David Baszucki and VP of Marketing and Brand Experience Brad Justus will lead a two-hour presentation covering a gamut of ROBLOX news and developments. We’ll showcase new ROBLOX features, give a bunch of awards, do an on-stage interview with celebrity ROBLOXian Merely, and more!

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.