Now that all three BLOXcons have wrapped (and we’re hard at work creating our Virtual BLOXcon for September, in case you were wondering), we thought we’d take some time to talk with two top Hackathon performers (NickPatella and Ethancomputermad) to seek out tips for future participants. Their insight can help you get a better understanding of the type of skills it takes to win such a difficult and competitive building and scripting challenge.
To clarify, the ROBLOX Hackathon is a series of building and scripting challenges, where each participant is given something to create, and a time frame to create it. The builder must complete their creation (whether that’s a gun with a reloadable clip, a pig that oinks, or a bubble machine) before time runs out, or get as far along as possible. By the end, our panel of ROBLOX engineers scores each creation based on ingenuity, beauty, and functionality. There are a lot of types of contests we could run at BLOXcon, but the Hackathon blends many of our fundamental ideals, including the spirit and passion of creation and the rush of friendly competition.
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We Bid Our Summer Interns Farewell
It seems like just yesterday that we created a post talking with our eager Summer interns about their plans for their tenure here at ROBLOX. Alas, time flies, and Merely, Seranok, MrDoomBringer and Stravant have completed their internships, and are off to continue studying Computer Programming at universities around the world. Before they left, we chatted with them about making the jump from user to employee, and what you can do to get your foot in the door.
Presenting the Third Set of BLOXY, Hall of Fame, Hackathon Winners
After a busy month and a half, the ROBLOX team has successfully taken BLOXcon around the world. Another completed BLOXcon also means another list of BLOXY, Hall of Fame, and Hackathon winners. Though this takes us closer to the end of our annual awards, there is more to come! The very final bunch of winners will be announced at the final BLOXcon of 2013, which takes place everywhere the internet exists on September 21st, 2013. For now, read on to see the creative minds that received awards at BLOXcon New York City!
BLOXcon NYC BLOXY Award Winners
If you’ve been keeping up with the blog, you know that we ran a Film Festival last Spring, and we received almost 500 entries in five categories: Building Showcase, Commercial, City-Themed, Short Film/Machinima, and Trailer. We announced five BLOXY Award winners at each BLOXcon; here are the winners announced in New York City.
Continue reading You Can Now Toggle Outlines
As announced at BLOXcon London and shortly thereafter in a Comments on Comments article, we’ve decided to make the recently launched outlines feature optional for all ROBLOX builders and game developers. While we do see outlines as part of our vision for the ROBLOX aesthetic – and they do look great in many instances (see screenshot at right) – the feedback we’ve received indicates they don’t yet work everywhere. We will continue to work toward a perfect implementation but, in the meantime and with the latest version of ROBLOX Studio, you now have complete control.
Similar to dynamic lighting, toggling outlines works on two levels: you have a global “switch,” which is checked by default, for turning outlines on and off across an entire place, and fine-grain control over individual part surfaces.
Continue reading BLOXcon New York City in Pictures
BLOXcon New York City is winding down as I write, but Alan and I spent a healthy portion of the day running around and documenting it via photographs and video as best as we could. After all, only 1,000 lucky ROBLOXians could actually attend the event in person, and we want the whole community to know what it was like to be here, on a boat, filled with fighter jets (seriously, the event was at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum), for BLOXcon NYC. Check out the following image gallery for a taste.
Crossfire: Crazyblox and Erikwesley96 Talk Course Design
Creativity and sharing are two qualities that fuel ROBLOX, and it’s in that spirit that we created Crossfire, a series where we chat with ROBLOX game developers about their game design choices. For this outing, we interviewed users crazyblox and erikwesley96, creators of Flood Escape and Death Run, respectively. Each game places a focus on dynamically changing obstacles and maps, and each of the two games have been widely popular, with over 7 million combined plays.ROBLOX: First off, thanks for doing this. You guys both have really unique and interesting takes on your basic obstacle course. The first thing you notice right away is that both of you have multiple levels in your game. Do you think having more levels makes more people want to play?
crazyblox: Having multiple levels is a really interesting element because events then begin happening in different rooms, in the same game. But I think it helps to create random gameplay experiences. I also split all the levels into an “easy,” “medium,” and “hard” because the skill level of people on ROBLOX varies quite a bit, from what I’ve seen. By the time you get to “hard” levels, it’s more than just muscle reflex–it’s more of a mind game.
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