Weekly ROBLOX Roundup: January 13, 2013

By Alan Fackler - January 13, 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 most popular games and gear of 2012, Creative Director John Shedletsky responds to some user feedback, our splash page contest is a go, we follow up with our recent release of ROBLOX to mobile and crunch the numbers, and Graphics Engineer Simon Kozlov shows off some prototype footage of a new potential look for ROBLOX.

The Most Popular Games, Gear, and Items of 2012

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.

ROBLOX Mobile Stats and Some Exclusive iOS Items

By Alan Fackler - January 11, 2013

–Update–At the time this article was being written, we were informed that three exclusive items have hit the iTunes Store, available to iPad users and (soon!) iPhone and iTouch users as well. The iBot, iFace, and iJet, will turn your ROBLOX character into a jet-strapped robot from the future, with a tablet device for a head to boot. If you want to check them out, pop over to the iTunes Store on your iOS device and pick them up for $0.99 each.

Fame and Glory! Help Us Design Our ROBLOX Studio Splash Screen

By Alan Fackler - January 10, 2013

We’re in need of some graphic designers! That’s right, if you’re proficient with Photoshop, Illustrator, GIMP, Paint, or any other design/art software, we have a project for you. We need a new splash screen for ROBLOX Studio, and like nearly all facets of our platform, we thought it’d be cool to ask you to build one! How would you artistically represent your experience with Studio?

We’re looking for images that are no larger than 600 x 300 pixels in PNG format. We’ll provide you with a few standard PNG files to get started–you only have to use one form of a ROBLOX logo, and it can be as small or big as you’d like. Also, make sure that somewhere in your graphic you have the word “Studio”. Outside of that, we aren’t keen on setting a lot of rules with this contest–design what personifies Studio to you, and be as creative as you’d like!

Fame and Glory! Help Us Design Our ROBLOX Studio Splash Screen

By Alan Fackler - January 10, 2013

Responding to User Feedback, V13

By John Shedletsky - January 9, 2013

Every so often, we ask our users to let us know what they’d like to see in ROBLOX, then respond to some of the most insightful comments and pertinent questions. This time, John Shedletsky, ROBLOX’s Creative Director, talks about a variety of ROBLOX topics, including expanded terrain dimensions, enhancements to ROBLOX GUI creation, vehicle seat functions, server-based data persistence, script protection, group moderation and 13+ groups, dedicated image hosting and a feed for updates to items in the ROBLOX catalog. You can read previous entries in this ongoing series here.

Building

Unknown: Larger terrain maps. Currently, you can make terrain a maximum 526 by 526 voxels. I wish this would be expanded so I could make more with my friends! I also would like to see terrain strength, or the ability for it to withstand “X” damage before being destroyed (e.g., grass is 100 strong and cement is 500 strong).

The Most Popular Games, Gear and Items of 2012

By Alan Fackler - January 7, 2013

2012 was a big year for ROBLOX and our users. Along with the many product releases and events that came along, we released a bunch of new gear and saw our users create a bevy of new and unique ROBLOX games. We thought we’d take a look back at the top 15 most popular games of 2012 and, while we were at it, dig up some item and gear statistics as well. Remember, we’re only counting data from 2012 — some of these popular games have millions more visits when you consider their lifetime stats.