The ROBLOX website is a constant work in progress, as evidenced in the last week alone by launches of a mobile site (at m.roblox.com) and a new and improved ROBLOX Catalog. Despite reaching those major milestones, we continue to work toward a cleaner, leaner, easier-to-use web experience, and today unveiled a refreshed navigation menu.

The key goals of the redesign were reducing the amount of real estate used by the navigation and implementing stylistic changes that gel better with the rest of the website. As you can see below, the three standard elements – account statistics, site navigation and account navigation – are condensed into two spaces.

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Our Catalog has undergone many changes over the years, and we continue to develop it so it’s easier to use, navigate and ultimately find the gear you need for your ROBLOXian. Today, an overhaul of the Catalog launched on Roblox.com, bringing new functionality and a better user experience to shopping on ROBLOX.

New Search Engine and Filters

Powered by Solr, an open-source search platform, our new Catalog’s search engine is more robust than ever before. We took advantage of wide-table search, a touted feature of Solr, and included new search filters, including extra pricing options, genres, gear categories and creators. The new gear category filter allows users to to search gear by type (i.e., “melee weapons” or “explosives”), and the new creator filter allows users to see what kind of models and items ROBLOX users are creating.

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The goods: a new ROBLOX account and $20. The plan: trade like a maniac. The goal: accumulate tons of loot using nothing but trades.

Last week, I related the first 2 days of this experiment. During those two days I curried a brand new account starting with 1057 R$ worth of items into an account with a total value of 6567 R$. In the next five days, the trading really took off and I ended up just south of 200,000 R$. I learned a lot of things about trading along the way, and I’ve distilled them down to seven pro tips for would-be trade masters…

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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: the ROBLOX’s new mobile site, our primer for the beginning ROBLOX game developer, our summer interns’ projects and experiences, part two of the seven-day trading system challenge, and some interesting thoughts on what you’d do with a million Robux.

ROBLOX. Anywhere. Everywhere.

This week, our capable and nimble Web Team launched version one of ROBLOX’s mobile website. You can test it now at m.roblox.com, and let us know what you think on our Mobile forum. We’re happy to see that users are enjoying the mobile site, wherever they may be, on a lot of devices, from iPhone and iPod Touch to Android and Blackberry to Nintendo 3DS. Check out the full story to see what you can do on the mobile site today, and what we plan to add in the future.

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ROBLOX is a big platform. While each of our development teams has its own areas of focus, goals and projects, there’s been an overarching objective in recent months: make ROBLOX a more mobile-friendly platform. Today, we took a step forward by launching a mobile ROBLOX website at m.roblox.com.

M.roblox.com is not yet the default landing page for mobile traffic, but it’s now available for our dedicated blog readers to try. We’re seeking your feedback regarding what works well, what could work better and what features you’d like to see in the future. You can let us know in this article’s comments or on our dedicated mobile forum; just remember to note the mobile device you’re using when feeding back.

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We’ve talked previously about how many users can use ROBLOX as a platform for starting lucrative careers. Speaking to that effect, we decided to check in with some of our summer interns, who are approaching the end of their times here at ROBLOX, and see what they’ve been up to over the last couple of months. Turns out they’ve been working on some big projects. Check it out. 

Garrett Fleenor – Senior, Oregon State University

I got the chance to work on the LEGO® Hero Factory: Breakout game, alongside fellow developer Zach Linblad (fusroblox), and it turned out to be a really fun game. Outside of our overall goal, which was to create a scavenger hunt-type-game, we were given quite a bit of creative freedom. Zach created the basic drop zone code, and John built the city. We continued iterating the game until we arrived at a rewarding, immersive 3D experience.

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A couple weeks ago, I expounded on the similarities between ROBLOX users and independent game developers. I hope, if nothing else, it empowered some readers. In the article, I cited Base Wars: The Land, Apocalypse Rising and Natural Disaster Survival as examples of indie development happening in ROBLOX. Of course, those games fall into the upper echelon of popularity and quality, and represent a standard that few ROBLOX games reach.

It might seem like a lofty goal to create the next Base Wars: The Land or Apocalypse Rising, but you can get there. It probably just won’t happen on your first try.

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