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: Add Gear to Game feature, connecting with ROBLOX, Spotlight on NXTBoy, developers’ picks, GDC Online and more.

Add gear to your game, make money off sales

Last week, we launched a feature that’s beneficial to all ROBLOX game developers who want to allow gear in their games. Here’s how it works: you decide what gear you’d like to allow in your game — even if it’s just one weapon. That gear is then available for sale on your game’s page and anyone who purchases it can use it in your game. If they use the “Buy” button on your page, you get 10% of the sale. Not only do you have more control over what gear is allowed in your game, you stand to turn a profit. Read this post for more information on adding gear to your game.

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Feeling nostalgic after posting an article about popular console and arcade titles re-imagined in ROBLOX, we got to wondering: What are some of our very own software engineers’ favorite games on ROBLOX? We asked four members of the Content team and, in spite of spending hours every day in close proximity, they all had very different responses.

Paintball! by daxter33

Paintball! is consistently among the front-running games on ROBLOX, and for good reason: it’s responsive and intuitive. The game simulates real paintballs, which, unlike traditional shots in first-person shooters, lose momentum and fall to the ground as they would in the real world. This adds a challenge to hitting targets, especially across long distances. Plus, the weapons are so responsive that Zach Lindblad, who chose Paintball!, describes them as “as close to a retail game I’ve seen” in ROBLOX.

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Since he was a kid, user NXTBoy has been interested in building. An award-winning robotics builder by the time he was a teenager, he’s also made some innovative games and services for ROBLOX, including an Exchange Statistics website that tracks the exchange rates of ROBLOX currency.

The website is essentially a chart that updates itself. NXTBoy originally launched it in 2008 as an excuse to re-learn SQL (Structured Query Language), a special-purpose programming language.“Basically, I created a cron-job that scrapes the currency exchange page every two hours,” recalls NXTBoy. “I used XPath selectors to extract info, and stored the data in my SQL database.”

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Game Developers Conference (GDC) Online, the self-proclaimed premier professionals-only event for online, social and cloud gaming, wraps up today in Austin, Texas. ROBLOX CEO and Founder David Baszucki was there on Tuesday to take part in the event’s day-long Game Dev Start-Up Summit, which featured panelists from around the industry and covered topics ranging from how to start a game company to how to exit the business. Here’s a short report from the event.

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ROBLOX uses a number of channels to give you a voice, listen to your feedback and help you network with other users. While the ROBLOX forums are (and will continue to be) a particularly popular and active place for ROBLOX users to chat, we also maintain a presence on three of the big social networks: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. We can’t respond to all of the feedback we receive via those media, but rest assured that we – and other connected users – are reading your thoughts.

All of our social media accounts have been growing since their inception. Since new users sign up for ROBLOX every day, we invite those of you who are new to the platform to join us around the web.

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We’re proud to announce the “Add Gear to Game” feature–all users can now allow specific gear items from the ROBLOX Catalog in their game and sell those gear items directly on their game page. If users choose to buy an item from your game page, you’ll earn yourself a 10% commission. It’s like Amazon’s “Associates” Program, and it’s mutually beneficial. It will help us increase the reach and scope of our Catalog, and we’ll let you keep some of the sales.

Adding gear to your place could actually lead to turning quite a profit, while simultaneously introducing users to gear they may have overlooked previously or never seen. Even if your place is set to “No Gear Allowed,” you can still allow specific items in that particular game. The benefit of this feature is twofold: you make money, and gain more granular control over your game.

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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: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtle Trouble, impressive game conversions and re-imaginations on ROBLOX, how ROBLOX renders shadows, our moderation program and more.

‘Twas the week of the Turtle

On Monday, we announced our Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtle Trouble game. On Saturday, we went in-depth on the making of said game. Indeed, it was the week of the Turtle (and ninja-rat). While you may have already played Turtle Trouble, we recommend you read our making-of article, then revisit the game. We think you’ll see it through a different lens, having consumed our breakdown of why things are the way they are and how they got there.

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