With the release of ROBLOX Mobile, you have the power to distribute your creations – whether character clothing, models, virtual worlds or hardcore games – on a new platform and potentially to a new audience. We’re only a few days into the release and, at the moment, the mobile ROBLOX gaming and game development scene is a bit like the Wild West. Everyone is still observing and learning about what makes a game work on mobile, and there’s an opportunity for you to help define those qualities.

What we do know is that what works on a desktop computer doesn’t necessarily translate one-to-one to a touch screen device. That’s the nature of different screen sizes and input methods. Still, there are a few things you can do today, in addition to your own experimentation, to design your game to adapt to multiple devices.

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Updated 12/14 at 3:37 p.m. PT: We’ve released an update to ROBLOX Mobile that improves performance and in-game control, and makes the White Earbuds accessible via the mobile catalog on all iOS devices.

I’m excited to announce to everyone in the ROBLOX community — new members and old — that, as of today, ROBLOX Mobile is no longer in beta and all users can play ROBLOX on their iOS device of choice: iPad 2+, iPhone 4+ and iPod touch 5th Generation. First off, there are a few ways you can get the app:

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Every so often, we ask our users to let us know what they’d like to see in ROBLOX, then respond to some of the most insightful comments and pertinent questions. This time, John Shedletsky, ROBLOX’s Creative Director, focuses on our upcoming mobile release. He responds to questions about mobile optimization, a future where ROBLOX and Android can play together, and security concerns, to name a few. The topics for this User Feedback session were submitted to us from users at LuaLearners, a ROBLOX scripting group/website.

Mobile Game Play

Orca101: Will games need to be as optimized as possible to run well on mobile?

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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: our chat with the owner of the LuaLearners group and website, supplementing your trades with Robux, useful ROBLOX Studio plug-ins, our web developers’ gaming tastes, ROBLOX Tablets moving through the economy, your characters in one word, and top-down shooter Underscore.

Seven-day Blog Recap

LuaLearners.org: a scripting haven

We’re often asked, “How can I learn how to script in ROBLOX?” We have a couple go-to resources — the ROBLOX Wiki and user cowbear16′s “Basic ROBLOX Lua Programming” book — but now we can add LuaLearners.org and the LuaLearners ROBLOX group to the list. The site/group exists for the sole purpose of helping ROBLOX users of all levels learn to write in Lua and enhance their creations with scripts. We talked with the group’s leader, Coolbob44, about the LuaLearners site and community and put together a blog feature to increase exposure of the great work happening in both.

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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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A few weeks back, we asked our Content Team what video games they’d been spending their time playing. From platformers to RPGs, their answers were as varied as the types of games you’d find here on ROBLOX. This time, we decided to ask the Web Team what games they play after work and over the weekend, and the answers were pretty surprising. Check it out. 

Toby Teel – Web Team Lead

Wing Commander Saga is a free game that is actually a fan remake of a series from the late 80s. Basically you have dog fights in space with disgruntled aliens. It’s always great to see games that keep the spirit of their predecessors alive while adding new and unique features, and that’s exactly what this fan-made game does. It’s a single player campaign with a story arch that is epic and deep. And little touches, like the realistic and often hilarious banter between pilots keeps me super entertained.

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Plug-ins are useful tools for building and creating games in ROBLOX Studio. They’re tailor-built to make easy work of specific tasks, and members of our Content Team have created several to help expedite their work in day-to-day work. Talented users have also come up with some creative and helpful plug-ins to better their building experience. We’re working on migrating plug-ins into our Catalog so that users can download them directly from our website. For now, here are a few user-created plug-ins, as well as some plug-ins our very own Content Team has built. Enjoy.

Tara Byars: Visual Artist

I use the Anaminus Command Utility plug-in. It features tools for precision building and is really helpful for rotating objects. One of the most useful features is the ability to move objects on a granular scale, all the way to the decimal (i.e., a tenth of a stud). It’s really helpful if you want super precise control of an object in Studio. You can also use the plug-in to put bricks inside each other, meaning you can create more complicated shapes with ease.

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