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: streaming join technology and testing, the games that made bank over Summer 2013, new Virtual BLOXcon information, the start of our foray into groups, two classic first-person shooters done ROBLOX style, and other bits and pieces. Enjoy.

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Seven-day blog recap

Let large levels faster and on more devices with streaming parts

ROBLOX’s Client Networking Team has tasked itself with an ambitious three-pronged goal: decrease join times into games, allow builders to make more complex places and creations, and offer support for all types of legacy hardware and mobile devices. We are taking a big step forward toward all three goals with a new technology we unveiled last week known as streaming parts. In the most basic sense, this technology allows you to play games while they load and play larger games on limited hardware (e.g., mobile devices) by streaming parts in and out around your character. You can learn more about the technology and, if you’re an existing developer, how you can help us test it by reading Wednesday’s full article.

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Virtual BLOXcon is now just one week away! The online event will give everyone in the ROBLOX community a chance to experience our annual fan conventions via a livestream from ROBLOX HQ, recorded BLOXcon footage, and a lineup of great games. On top of that, ROBLOX staff will be playing games and chatting with you all day, so you could very well get to meet us – virtually, at least.

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As is the case with ROBLOX developers, we blog curators listen to our readers’ feedback and try to produce content that interests you. We’ve long been asked to better represent the world of ROBLOX Groups, and today we’re launching a series to do just that. Group Dynamic will be dedicated to reporting on and engaging with groups of all sorts and sizes. For this, the inaugural entry in the series, we’ve chosen to focus on the competition that occurs between groups–intense rivalries, training, patrols and raids that are unfolding all hours of every day. We talked with members of all sorts of groups, big and small. We participated in surprise raids and fought alongside (and in some cases, against) groups of all sizes and abilities.

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Our Client Network Team is focused on getting players into games as quickly and efficiently as possible. Their top three goals: decrease join times, allow builders to make more complex places and creations, and offer support for all types of legacy hardware and mobile devices. The idea of real-time part streaming has been kicked around as a solution that is in keeping with our goals. Soon you will be given the option to enable streaming for your place or game via a new Studio setting. This brings about several ramifications we will discuss in this article, and ROBLOX Engineer Yunpeng Zhu will provide the details.

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On ROBLOX, content creators stand at a path to success that forks in myriad directions – from traditional building, coding and game development to more niche routes like film-making, character asset creation and advertising. What drives someone to succeed at any one thing is wholly individual, but many are fueled by the social capital and wealth that can stem from a great ROBLOX creation. In this article, we’re going to dive into games and worlds that have earned their creators both fame and riches using three features we’ve launched in the last year.

To start, let’s look at the games that have most effectively monetized players. These are the games that have earned the most Robux off of Game Passes, Affiliate Gear sales, and Paid Access. Making it this high in the rankings requires a blend of the right items at the right prices, and an underlying game that attracts players in the first place. This list dates back to May 1st and is current as of yesterday, September 9th.

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You saw the wit and skill of ROBLOX’s film-making community this summer at the Film Fest, which gave us the chance to give BLOXY Awards to 15 brilliant films of five varieties. But BLOXY-caliber films are not a once-a-year phenomenon; the community of storytellers that creates them is always active and always putting in long hours to create great videos. We got much closer to ROBLOX’s filmmakers in the process of running the Film Fest, and have since stumbled upon a number of other fantastic creations, made for the fun of it.

Videos by Dayren

To start, here is a trio of recent videos by one of ROBLOX’s most prolific filmmakers (and owner of the ROBLOX Film Makers group), Dayren. The third one could very well help those of you who are just getting into video — watching it certainly helped me.

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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: a font engine update, our Spotlight on Oysi, it’s the end of the Virtual BLOXcon game contest, ROBLOX devs talk free-time gaming, voting on the final Hall of Fame 2013 categories, Cloud Movement, video corner, and other bits and pieces. Enjoy.

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Seven-day blog recap

Updated font engine makes text clear and crisp

We recently launched an update to the engine that renders text in ROBLOX, making characters and words easier to read, and more efficient to draw. We’ve also given you additional font selections, which some developers have found useful for refreshing their interfaces and establishing a more professional look:

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