Last month, we talked with ROBLOX Engineer Yunpeng Zhu about prototyping and testing our new streaming parts system in our test environment. After gathering a ton of useful feedback we’re proud to announce that this new feature has been implemented on ROBLOX, and you can enable it in any one of your places or games starting today. This means other players will be able to enter your game at lighting-fast speeds, and will allow players with older hardware to run large games more smoothly. To start, we thought we’d walk you through how to implement this exciting new feature in ROBLOX Studio. We also got the chance to talk to a pair of builders about their experiences with part streaming and how it’s changed their mentalities.

Enabling streaming parts in Studio

To begin, open your place in Studio. Select your Workspace from the Explorer panel (View > Explorer), and you’ll notice a brand new checkbox in the Properties (View > Properties) called “StreamingEnabled”. For most games, enabling this feature is as easy as checking that box. If you have a game that depends heavily on LocalScripts, you might need to make some adjustments to those scripts in order to make them work properly. You can find out how to do this, as well as a ton of other useful information and tips, at the ROBLOX Wiki. We’ve also given you the tools you need to immediately test part streaming in your game to ensure that everything is working properly before you upload it back to ROBLOX.

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Over the past couple of years I’ve spent on ROBLOX, I’d like to think I’ve come up with some pretty crazy ideas for games. With the release of dynamic lighting, I was able to create games that looked precisely as I had imagined them. Then, with the recent release of uploadable sounds, I  was finally able to bring scenes to life with audio.

As soon as sounds were released, I knew immediately I wanted to create a cinematic work. I saw the announcement when I was doing my math homework, and, well, math homework suddenly seemed less important. I flipped over a piece of grid paper and started to plot a storyline. Once I had some general ideas on paper, I wrote a title above my notes: Nuclear Simulation. With some scribbled notes and a general idea of what this was going to look like, I jumped into ROBLOX Studio and started building the first “scene” of the game.

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We have really exciting news to share with you today. We at ROBLOX are putting much effort into enabling, encouraging, and rewarding our developers and creators — and we think you’ve only scratched the surface of what can be done. Today we’re launching Developer Central, a hub on ROBLOX.com for all things development-oriented.

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Hey guys, I’m TheGamer101. You might recognize me as the creator of several popular ROBLOX games, including Sword Fighting Tournament, Ultimate Assassin’s Creed, and King of the Hill (the latter of which is the subject of this article). I’m here to share my personal development process for a complex map generation script that automatically builds a new map with every round of King of the Hill. Creating this was a real learning experience, and hopefully you’ll be able to pick up a few ideas I present and use them in your own unique development strategies.

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Dungeon Delver is somewhat of an anomaly within the context of ROBLOX. While it’s a re-imagining of the brand of RPG made popular by Diablo, Everquest and the like, it features things we don’t often see: a fixed camera system, a click-to-walk interface, and different classes with different abilities that can be upgraded and enhanced. I got the chance to talk to the developers of the title, Gl0in and Gl0in2 to get the inside scoop on creating a game of such magnitude.

Dungeon Delver is still in its Alpha testing stage, but it’s stable and open to the public. Already, this unfinished title has amassed over 100,000 visits, thanks in part to its striking visual aesthetic. It first manifests itself in the character creation system, which uses a nifty graphic user interface to customize your look and abilities. Once you look the way you like, you find yourself in a lifelike tavern surrounded by wizards with long staffs and warriors with steel swords. Here, you can mingle with other players, purchase items and generally find reprieve from the dungeons you’re otherwise exploring.

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UlrichStern25 has always had a fascination with pirates–like many of our intrepid builders, that passion eventually manifested itself in ROBLOX. Turns out he’s been hard at work creating some of the most detailed watercraft we’ve ever seen on ROBLOX, based primarily on his fascination with the high seas.

Pirates of the Caribbean Ship Showcase is a good place to start–this is where UlrichStern25 painstakingly recreated every major ship in the movie franchise, and the detail in each of the ships is mind blowing. Whether it’s from afar, or right there on deck, these massively detailed ships look like photographs of real life sea craft. Masts and sails shoot majestically into the air, cannons are tucked away in compartments in the decks below, some battle-torn and withered, some new and shiny.  Make sure to use the Teleport tool to move quickly between each ship, and to explore all they have to offer.

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