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: a new articulated physics engine demo, preview the improved Studio dragger tool, a gallery of beautiful builds, the Virtual BLOXcon Game Contest, a swordfighting Crossfire, the Labor Day Weekend Sale, Jeep Obby 2 and an airport simulator, and other bits and pieces. Enjoy.

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Seven-day Blog Recap

This week we had a great blend of content: exciting ROBLOX updates and impressive creations from the building and development communities. We’ll start with a pair of previews.

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It’s been a while since we told you anything new about ROBLOX Studio, but it’s a constant work in progress and a focus of our engineering core. In fact, we recently added a senior software engineer to the Studio team, dedicated a web engineer to Studio development, and are seeking to add a couple more positions. Good things are in store for those of you who build and develop using Studio.

Since the launch of Studio 2013 in February, the team has been hard at work making it a more stable and efficient product. Today, we have a much-improved “dragger” tool to preview. This update will drastically improve the speed at which you can move large groups of parts – for example, skyscrapers, houses, castles, etc. – around your ROBLOX worlds.

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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 Battle goes open source, a Virtual BLOXcon contest (and other news), the binary file format rollout, the technology behind outlines, a great new Feedback Loop article, a Spotlight on the creator of Sandbox, Coastline Highway and Sea Breeze Home, and other bits and pieces. Enjoy.

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Seven-day Blog Recap

ROBLOX Battle goes open source

Over the past couple months, we’ve been covering the development of ROBLOX Battle, which has transitioned from a classic deathmatch arena to a game loaded with play modes, tactical choices, social spaces and more. Most recently, Sorcus — who’s been leading the charge on the game’s overhaul — explained how everything the Game Team did to the game has been informed by player metrics. In particular, the team used an in-game statistics GUI, which tracks player behaviors and is now available for you to try as part of the entire ROBLOX Battle now-open-source code base.

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Three months back, we announced our transition toward a binary file format and explained how the technology has achieved a 100x reduction in the file size of ROBLOX places and a 5-10x reduction in load/save time. We have been rolling out the new format transparently and carefully, starting with the temporary files created for “Play Solo” and “Start Server” sessions in ROBLOX Studio. This week, we finished applying the format to all of ROBLOX, including Personal Build Server saves, and local place saves, loads and uploads via ROBLOX Studio.

You can look back at our original tech article about the binary file format to understand how re-arranging data makes it work and see the results of a couple tests we ran to prove its efficacy. If you’re the anecdotal type, however, you can simply experience it for yourself by loading and saving places in ROBLOX Studio, looking at the reduction in local file sizes, and uploading content to ROBLOX.com. In general, you should notice that files are smaller and saving/loading/uploading is faster – especially when you’re working with a place built out of tens of thousands of parts.

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Our Games Team has been spending significant time making ROBLOX Battle as robust and feature-rich as it can be. We’ve already covered some of the more interesting updates, including the core gameplay mechanics that have been introduced recently and level design. Today, we had the chance to chat with Sorcus, the Games Team Lead, about using metrics to inform and gauge infrastructural changes made to ROBLOX Battle. Oh, and ROBLOX Battle is now open source. Read on for more.

Making the decision to completely overhaul ROBLOX Battle was challenging–as the Lead of the Games Team, I’m tasked with thinking about the big picture. Whereas Dan worked on gameplay specifically, and Luke was tasked with designing levels, my job was overseeing every single update to ROBLOX Battle. Early on during talks about revamping our flagship title, one thing became abundantly clear to me: if we’re going to do this, we want metrics.

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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: BLOXcon New York City media and awards, the upcoming Virtual BLOXcon, complete control over outlines, two game designers talk about creating dynamic obstacle courses, what’s working for Paid Access, a goodbye to our summer interns, a guided tour of New Hellenic Republic: City of Naxos, a pile of videos and art, and other bits and pieces. Enjoy.

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Two-week Blog Recap

We skipped last Sunday’s Weekly Roundup in light of BLOXcon New York City. Now that it’s done, we should be back on an actual weekly schedule! Here’s what’s gone on in the last couple weeks.

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Every month, we release a new set of exclusive virtual goods you can only obtain by redeeming ROBLOX cards from particular retailers around the world. That means when you’re turning your prized red slice of ROBLOXia into a Builders Club subscription or Robux, you’re snagging yourself a stylish virtual good at no extra cost. For August, we’ve released a robust set of medieval-themed, armored hats that will go great with your grand RPG quests and the most epic of battles.

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