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: ROBLOX users as indie game developers, the new Build page, an inside look at popular Catalog items and our thoughts on your feedback.

ROBLOX users as indie game developers

Independent game development hit its stride in the mid 2000s, when technology and distribution got good enough that small teams — even individuals — could develop full-featured games and get them in front of consumers without the help of publishers. In many ways, ROBLOX users function like indie game developers: creating unique, outside-the-box gameplay and distributing content via the web, all with the minimal resources of a small team (or less).

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Ever since we made the request for your ROBLOX “Top Three,” we’ve been combing through the feedback and responding to your most insightful comments and pertinent questions. This week, John Shedletsky, ROBLOX’s Creative Director and Content Lead, elaborates on a variety of topics, including our new LEGO Hero Factory Level, news on our studio mode, dynamic lighting, and more.

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Indie gaming. It might make you think of small teams – even teams of one – holed up in home offices; focused experiences that put more stake in creative game-play mechanics – your Braids and Fezs – than next-generation, video-card-frying graphics; unique aesthetics and memorable styles.

But 10 years ago, you might not have thought… Well, anything. It’s only been in the last six or seven years that the indie gaming scene has exploded. And in the future, we believe user-generated gaming platforms, including ROBLOX, will not only sustain the explosion, but grow it, as more and more people pick up on what it takes to independently develop games well before going pro.

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The ROBLOX Catalog features a vast array of items. Some exist to make you look really, really good; others for the sake of helping you outsmart, outmaneuver and overpower your opponents. Of course, with so much gear to browse, it can be tough to find a good point of entry. We’ve compiled two lists, comprising 10 of the most popular items in the Catalog, with some details into the underlying code that powers them.

5 of the most popular ROBLOX weapons

Name	Damage	Price (Robux)
Zombie Staff	20 per zombie touch (summons 5 zombies)	1000
Sheriff Steve’s Six Shooter	25 per shot	600
Super-G LS33 Disruptor	30 per shot	800
Katana	8-12 per slash	250
Black Hole Bomb	15 per hit	550

Inside look: Black Hole Bomb

The Black Hole Bomb is a unique piece of gear that, upon detonation, pulls all objects in a radius toward it. It does so by applying a BodyPosition object to all parts within a radius of 50 studs, then removes its forces after 10 seconds. For more information, please take a look at the source code for the Black Hole Bomb (click to enlarge).

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Game development and user-generated content fuel ROBLOX, and one of our goals is to make sure all users — not just paid members — know that they can build their own games and create original content. To that end, we recently introduced version one of the Build page, now accessible from the main navigation menu at Roblox.com.

The Build page centralizes all the content you’ve created: games, shirts, t-shirts, pants and models. While it currently serves as the easiest way to view and manage all your creations, separate from your inventory, our vision is for it to become a launch point for game development.

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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: ROBLOX’s virtual economy and how you use it to make money, hack week coverage, the end of bytecode in ROBLOX and developing scary ROBLOX games.

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The ROBLOX economy is booming. Through all hours of every day, trades are in progress, virtual gear is being created and sold, users are marketing their content, groups are created and money is being managed. ROBLOX’s virtual economy is growing at the hands of our users.

The economy can seem like a daunting system for newcomers, so we put together a quick article explaining the overall aspects of our bustling economy. Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll go in depth on many of the sections of this article, for those who have already worked with our economy system.

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