Last weekend, ROBLOX reached a milestone: 100,000 concurrent users. This achievement inspired us to do some research about where this figure stands in the greater scheme of gaming and online entertainment.

Before getting to the facts, note that “100,000 concurrent players” means 100,000 authenticated ROBLOX users were playing games, building in ROBLOX Studio and browsing Roblox.com at the same time. It does not include every visitor at Roblox.com – that would make it a much larger number – nor does it represent guests (players who are not logged into a ROBLOX account). We estimate there were 20,000 guests playing at the time.

Continue reading

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.

Continue reading

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: we talk with Uuvinu, the creator of ROBLOXRanks.com, we respond to your ideas for ROBLOX, several developers talk about the games they’re playing, the latest entry in our series about the ongoing development of ROBLOX for iPad, ROBLOX FPS Authority, ROBLOX on Google+ and more.

Seven-day Blog Recap

Spotlight on Uuvinu, the creator of ROBLOXRanks.com

User Uuvinu put together a website that ranks users based on a variety of different factors. It’s a very interesting service that’s getting thousands of hits a month. He’s also the creator of The Vortex, a ROBLOX game that emulates Portal pretty realistically. We chatted with him about his work and summarized our conversation in this, the latest Spotlight article.

Continue reading

If the first part of developing a well-performing ROBLOX experience for the iPad is ensuring stability through memory optimization, the second part is improving the frame rate to the point it’s as smooth as it is on a modern desktop or laptop computer. The process is a balancing act: push performance optimization to its limit without noticeably degrading the quality of the experience.

Continue reading

‘Tis the season of gaming, so we thought we’d sit down with a handful of ROBLOX employees to find out what they’ve been playing this holiday season. We’re all gamers at heart, and this proves it. Enjoy. 

Kip Turner (Content Team)

I’ve been playing Orcs Must Die 2–it’s so fun. You defend these massive dungeons against hordes of enemies, and you can place traps all around the map. It also introduces co-op, so you can slay orcs with your friends. From a developer’s perspective, I really get a kick out of the physics system. All the traps have physics parts built into them, and you can use them to send orcs flying off the edge of cliffs into a murky abyss.

Continue reading

When I spoke to user Uuvinu over the phone, he seemed distracted. So much so, that I asked him if something was wrong. I had simultaneously noticed that his website, ROBLOXranks.com, wasn’t loading. This was his response: “Sorry. Our servers in New York City were knocked out by the storm, and I’m working on migrating data to Dallas, Texas. Site should be live in an hour.”

It was back up in thirty minutes. He’s 15-years-old.

Continue reading

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: Halloween at ROBLOX HQ, games that keep players coming back (and the techniques they use), an update on ROBLOX for iPad development, and everything you need to know about Raycasting — including how Paintball! creator daxter33 uses it.

Halloween at ROBLOX: costumes and games

While ROBLOX users dressed their characters with the Halloween-themed attire and gear released throughout October, ROBLOX developers got into the spirit, too, and we have photos to prove it. On top of that, we reported four useful tips from members of the Content Team as to how to “Halloween-ify” your ROBLOX games. Sure, Halloween has come and gone, but many of the techniques described, such as zombies and atmospheric lighting, are good all year long. Check out the blog post for the gritty details.

Continue reading