This is it, folks: your last opportunity to enter your BLOXcon-themed place or game in the Virtual BLOXcon Game Contest. Whether you’ve got a work in progress or are going to challenge yourself to build something from scratch in roughly 32 hours, it’s time to get down to business. The submission period ends promptly on Sunday, September 8th at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time.
In case you’ve been hiding under a rock for the past couple weeks, here’s how the contest works.
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We knew when we first experienced Galaxy Wars that developer Oysi had something going, but that turned out to only be the tip of the iceberg that is his backlog of projects. Oysi is an interesting developer because he’s created several sort of “platforms” for games that focus on pushing the boundaries of what you can do with ROBLOX. Instead of focusing on one particular game, we decided to take a look at some of the creations (that’s plural) this intrepid developer has managed to build, and how he’s leveraged our platform to realize his grand visions.
Oysi has an impatient mind. He is constantly moving between projects–picking up and dropping new experiments at the drop of the hat. That’s because his experience with ROBLOX is constantly evolving–he is constantly learning new things and then finding ways to apply them to projects he’s already started. It’s an interesting give and take. The first game of his that caught our attention was Galaxy Wars, a space simulator with a very interesting control scheme and simulation of gravity.
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We all share a passion for gaming and game development here at ROBLOX. While we pour our energy into making our platform more robust and feature-rich every day, many of us also seek inspiration and entertainment from the wider games industry in our free time. We thought we’d check in with some of our gaming enthusiasts to find out what’s happening outside of ROBLOXia and offer a little insight into our tastes.
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We recently updated our font engine to make it easier for developers to create high-quality GUIs with legible and sharp text, and implement them in their games. Our previous font engine code was very limited–only two text sizes rendered without extra scaling, so the majority of text looked slightly out of focus. Rendering Engineer Arseny Kapoulkine explains these changes, and what you can do to utilize them. ROBLOX’s updated font engine is more robust, both in Studio, and in game. Join any game that you love playing and take a look at the letters in the text of any GUI–they are sharper and easier to read. That’s because we’ve upped the number of natively rendered font sizes from two to six. Other sizes will still be scaled during rendering and appear blurry–keep reading for guidelines on maintaining crisp text.
Along with six native font sizes, our font engine now performs kerning, which is a process that adjusts spacing between characters. This makes long sections of text more readable as letters are properly spaced based on the width, length, and shape of each character.
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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. For September, we’ve unmasked an assortment of ninja gear that’ll be perfect as you sneak, spar and sword fight your way through ROBLOXia.
We’ve already announced a whopping 16 Hall of Fame 2013 winners, but there’s so much fantastic stuff being built on ROBLOX that we’re going to announce another six winners (in six new categories) at the Virtual BLOXcon later this month. The Hall of Fame 2013 will ultimately span four BLOXcons and 20+ awards, making it our biggest celebration of your work yet — and a veritable who’s-who of building and game development.
Best of all, each of the final six categories will be decided by you. We came up with a list nominees; now it’s your turn to cast your vote with this quick survey!
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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 new articulated physics engine demo, preview the improved Studio dragger tool, a gallery of beautiful builds, the Virtual BLOXcon Game Contest, a swordfighting Crossfire, the Labor Day Weekend Sale, Jeep Obby 2 and an airport simulator, and other bits and pieces. Enjoy.
This week we had a great blend of content: exciting ROBLOX updates and impressive creations from the building and development communities. We’ll start with a pair of previews.
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