Presenting the Winners of the Dynamic Lighting Video Contest

Block Town with Dynamic LightingAfter a weekend of voting and a couple days of internal deliberation, we’ve narrowed the pool of more than 200 dynamic lighting video contest submissions to the top 10. Because the quality is so high across the board, we’ve also decided to give the creators of all 10 submissions the “Master of Light and Darkness” top hat and placement on the ROBLOX YouTube channel!

Without further delay, here’s the moment you’ve been anticipating. The winners of the dynamic lighting video contest are…

Continue reading
     
 

Make the ROBLOX Presence Known at Maker Faire 2013

Maker Faire Bay Area 2013 BadgeThere’s been a lot of talk about BLOXcon – our now-sold-out summer events in Chicago, London and New York City – but we’re not forgetting our hometown crowd. If you reside along the U.S. West Coast (or you have a private jet, in which case we’d love to take a ride), you have an opportunity to experience some of the excitement of BLOXcon and hang out with us in person for a day at Maker Faire Bay Area 2013, coming up in just over two weeks.

Maker Faire Bay Area 2013 takes place on Saturday, May 18th and Sunday, May 19th at the San Mateo County Events Center in San Mateo, CA. We’re looking for as many ROBLOX builders as possible to join us throughout the weekend and make the ROBLOX presence known! Why spend some time at our booth?

Continue reading
     
 

Feedback Loop: Particle Effects, Script Editing, Gear Stats and more

Feedback Loop99% of the content available on ROBLOX is created by our passionate community of builders. In Feedback Loop — the spiritual successor to the long running Responding to User Feedback series – we respond to builders’ grand ideas for ROBLOX and questions about the past, present and future.

In this, the inaugural issue, John Shedletsky discusses the ideas of custom particle-effect creation, improved humanoid manipulation, smart/auto-complete script editing, credits for builder-created catalog assets, individual gear statistics and leaderboards, and more.

Continue reading
     
 

Weekly ROBLOX Roundup: April 28th, 2013

Weekly ROBLOX Roundup Logo, V2Every 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: how to “win” at ROBLOX, a trading system strategy guide, a day in the life of a web developer, a Spotlight on manops5 and his virtual home, your chance to vote on our dynamic lighting contest, nostalgic ROBLOX memories, Aiedan Kemaneska, and other bits and pieces. Enjoy.


Seven-day Blog Recap

Five ways to “win” at ROBLOX

In ROBLOX, there’s no real “endgame.” There’s no victory screen, nor final credits. So, how do you “win?” As it turns out, you have a lot more options here than in a traditional game.

Continue reading
     
 

The Vote Is On! Choose Your Favorite Dynamic Lighting Video

Glass Houses Top-downLast week, we enabled dynamic lighting on GameTest1, a testing environment for new releases of ROBLOX gameplay and ROBLOX Studio. In conjunction with the beta test, we launched a dynamic lighting video contest to see how builders leverage the much-anticipated feature – for both aesthetic and interactive purposes. We collected roughly 200 submissions, all of which are now on display on the contest website and waiting for you to show some love with your votes.

You can cast a vote for up to five entries. The voting period lasts through Monday, April 29th at 4:00 pm PT, so watch as many as you can and choose your favorites wisely. Don’t forget to leave comments of support, too.

Continue reading
     
 

Trade All the Things! A Guide to the ROBLOX Trading System

Chart IllustrationAbout a week ago, we loosened up the ownership restrictions on limited items to allow users to possess multiple copies of the same item. One of the effects of this change is it is now much much easier to make trades with other players. In the past, if a player wanted to send me a trade, he would have to have items I didn’t already own. For a lot of our power users, this can be really difficult!

Since implementing this feature, I’ve personally seen my number of incoming trade offers triple. A quick look at the database confirms that there are now roughly 55% more trade offers flowing through our system. It’s been about eight months since we published our last guide to the Trading System. What better way to usher in the trading renaissance than to provide some tips and tricks for would-be traders?

Continue reading
     
 

Spotlight: The House That Manops5 Built

Here’s one of the stranger ROBLOX stories I’ve heard lately: in order to create his virtual world, builder manops5 found himself stopping mid-creation, walking outside, glancing at different angles of his house, then walking back inside to get back on Studio.

He builds from memory, as photos of his subject simply don’t generate the depth perception needed to build his virtual world accurately and to-scale. Oh, his virtual world? It’s a recreation of his home in Santa Barbara, California. He’s built it again and again and again, each time adding new details and more complex parts. And now, it’s becoming one of the most detailed houses I’ve ever seen in ROBLOX.

Continue reading