99% of the content available on ROBLOX is created by our passionate community of builders. In Feedback Loop — the spiritual successor to the long-running Responding to User Feedback series – we respond to builders’ grand ideas for ROBLOX and questions about the past, present and future.

In this issue, John Shedletsky discusses updates to dynamic lighting and shadows, offers advice for ROBLOX Studio builders, talks about the specularity of parts, considers the idea of place subscriptions, reflects on the rise of ROBLOX, and a whole lot more. Check it out.

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We’re consistently blown away by some of the creations our intrepid builders are able to create using ROBLOX. Their creativity inspires us, as well as those who get the chance to experience their vision in ROBLOX. This may come as a total surprise to you, but our office is home to some pretty hardcore sci-fi nerds (shocking, I know). So we thought we’d compile six of the most creative and detailed sci-fi themed places we’ve seen on ROBLOX. Enjoy!

Metro v0.68 by Zusik

Far and away one of the more subtle entries of this roundup, that certainly doesn’t make it any less impressive. In fact, this map requires close inspection and exploration to really appreciate the amount of work done here. We like that it scales–it takes place in the future, yes, but only 13 years from now. As such, nothing is way too out there. The trains still look relatively normal, and the screens you would normally find dotting the walls are now replaced by virtual projections (some of which blink GUI messages). Great detail, great concept, great execution.

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Every month, we release a new set of exclusive virtual goods you can only obtain by redeeming ROBLOX cards from particular retailers around the world. That means when you’re turning your prized red slice of ROBLOXia into a Builders Club subscription or Robux, you’re snagging yourself a stylish virtual good at no extra cost. This month, we’ve got a variety pack of options, with an emphasis on headphones. Because when you’re out and about in the summer sun, you just have to have the appropriate soundtrack.

Oh, and did I mention there’s a new Periastron in the mix?

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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. This time: dynamic lighting illuminates ROBLOX Mobile, player engagement at popular games, paid game access beta, TheGamer101‘s random map generation script, a BLOXcon update and teaser, a Spotlight on a ROBLOXian truck aficionado, Notre-Dame De Paris and Broken Bones, and other bits and pieces. Enjoy.

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Seven-day Blog Recap

Dynamic lighting in the palms of your hands

As promised, we recently delivered dynamic lighting to ROBLOX Mobile. In this story, we take a behind-the-scenes look at all the technical hurdles — from shading to CPU architecture — our Rendering Team had to overcome to make the beloved feature work well on hardware-constrained mobile devices. To all you mobile ROBLOX players, enjoy having the power of dynamic lighting in the palms of your hands!

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With this summer’s BLOXcon happening only two weeks from now in Chicago, we thought it would be a good idea to tell you which of your favorite ROBLOX admins will be at which location (we can’t all go to all three, we have jobs to do here at HQ). In addition, we thought we’d put together a quick video teaser for BLOXcon Chicago, which is taking place at the Museum of Science and Industry.

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Building vehicles, both in real life and virtual worlds, is a complex process that involves many moving parts and an appreciation for physics. It’s easy to take the process for granted–most games feature them prominently and put you in control and on the road at the press of a button.

But ROBLOX is all about building and engineering, and and that includes vehicle creation. We stumbled across ManyFireman‘s awesome Ro-Scania Trucking Simulator, which features over a dozen trucks he custom built, and a nice, open world to drive them around. We were impressed not only by the vast array of mega-vehicles, but by how realistically they drove. The game plays like an old limerick would read: ManyFireman builds many trucks of many different shapes and sizes.

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If you’re a game developer, the one thing you probably want more than anything else is a devoted following of players who can’t get enough of your game – we’ll call them “core players.” These are the players who will sustain the success of your game by ensuring there’s always a lively server, thereby catching the eyes of both existing and prospective players. They’re also the people who are most likely to support you by buying into advanced features (e.g., Game Passes) and spreading the word.

In this article, we’ll look at several ROBLOX games, dig into fluctuations in player engagement, and try to draw some conclusions about what works among players. We’ll use a bunch of charts, which show trends in how many gamers have played a title once, twice, five, 10 and 20 times in the previous month (30 days). What’s important is the ratio of people who play multiple times to people who play once (and move on to other games). The better the ratio, the more “sticky” a game is. It keeps players coming back, and stays near the top of the Games page.

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