We’ve been keeping tabs on your ROBLOX Mobile feedback, and today we’re happy to report that some of your requests have been fulfilled. Vehicles (cars, trucks, vans, even skateboards) can now be controlled using the standard controls of ROBLOX Mobile. We’ve also added chat functionality to the app on iPhone and iPod Touch, so those of you with such devices can communicate with one another in-game.

Driving a vehicle on a touch interface is a tricky notion–we elected to go with a straightforward solution. You can drive vehicles on ROBLOX Mobile the same way you walk; the virtual joystick on the bottom left corner of the screen. Pushing up on the stick accelerates your vehicle, while pulling back causes it to brake (and reverse). We were able to do this by updating the code in our vehicle seats to recognize different types of devices. We’re very interested in finding out how our mobile builders will utilize this in the coming months.

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–Update–At the time this article was being written, we were informed that three exclusive items have hit the iTunes Store, available to iPad users and (soon!) iPhone and iTouch users as well. The iBot, iFace, and iJet, will turn your ROBLOX character into a jet-strapped robot from the future, with a tablet device for a head to boot. If you want to check them out, pop over to the iTunes Store on your iOS device and pick them up for $0.99 each.

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Featherweight parts, despite their name, have nothing to do with feathers, flying or anything bird-related. They do, however, have a lot to do with weight: while old ROBLOX parts are “heavy” memory users, featherweight parts are “super light,” allowing us to load and render more of them with the same computing power. The first iteration of featherweight parts has now released for ROBLOX on all platforms and it has already proven revolutionary in some ROBLOX places.

The following table shows the number of milliseconds required to render one frame. In a future release, these numbers will improve even further as we featherweight more materials, surfaces, and primitives.

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A few weeks ago, ROBLOX launched a promotion to raise awareness of its impending mobile app release: at random times throughout each day, we put an extremely limited virtual ROBLOX Tablet on sale in the Catalog. Users who own one of these rare tablets when ROBLOX Mobile officially debuts will receive brand new iPad 3s from ROBLOX.

Since we released the tablets, we’ve been monitoring trade activity to see which users purchased them. We were curious to see how many users would simply keep them (to win an iPad), and how many would leverage them to trade for other rare items. Though not every user who got a ROBLOX Tablet chose to flip it, some did–and for some valuable virtual items.

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Throughout the development process of ROBLOX for the iPad, many people across a wide variety of disciplines have focused their efforts on a single goal: build a world-class mobile ROBLOX product that matches (and in the sense of being a tight, unified app exceeds) the quality of its desktop counterpart. We’ve heard about fast-loading in-app web pages, smart optimization of memory and performance and touch-friendly controls. Today, in the last entry of the ongoing Engineering ROBLOX for the iPad series, the Content Team talks about the importance of a high-quality and cohesive user interface (UI).

Some of the UI changes we’ve been developing have already rolled out to users. Regardless of the platform on which you’re playing, you’ll see refreshed versions of a couple of ROBLOX’s key UI elements: the toolbar, backpack and chat (with an updated playerlist and scrollable chat coming soon). While these elements already have a new look, the Content Team is continuing to work toward its ultimate vision for ROBLOX’s UI. You can see one of the mock-ups of the team’s vision below.

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Thus far, our Engineering ROBLOX for the iPad series has focused on iPad development through a performance-optimization lens. It has seen us go into the trenches with several ROBLOX developers to learn about and document their roles in building a stable, smooth mobile gaming experience with the unique challenge of user-generated content as the centerpiece. In the final installments of the series, we’ll stray from the path and look at the development of interactive components, starting with control design.

ROBLOX Game Engineer Ben Tkacheff is an expert when it comes to iOS controls. He’s played a lot of iOS games and cites Gameloft’s titles as examples of consistently good, mobile-optimized controls. First-person shooter N.O.V.A. stands out to Ben; the game is unabashedly reminiscent of the Halo series, but it isn’t just a console game ported to iOS – it’s a mobile game, in large part due to great controls. For example, players can execute a 180-degree turn quickly – that is, without having to flick across the screen more than once – and camera movement is free-form, rather than tied to a virtual joystick that mimics an analog stick. These are both examples of controls that work with touch screens, rather than around them. That was the kind of approach Ben took to designing a mobile control scheme for ROBLOX.

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ROBLOX is in the process of bringing our 9.8 million user-created games to the iPad. The first release of ROBLOX Mobile that supports online play is almost here. To raise awareness in the ROBLOX community of our imminent launch, we’re running a promotion targeted at ROBLOX game developers that will give them an opportunity to win a brand-new iPad 3.

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