“Terrain” water has existed in ROBLOX for the last year and a half and, while the physics have always behaved in satisfyingly realistic fashion, the appearance left something to be desired. Last week, we turned on a new look for our water, bringing waves, reflections, and blue underwater “fog” to ROBLOXian H2O. The feature is primarily eye candy, but it fits in our grand rendering overhaul that started with improved performance and lead to dynamic lighting, part outlines, and in the near future new building material textures.

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We’ve talked previously about our ongoing effort to build robust joints and motors, and even touched on implementing seats for boats that support rear propellers. We’re still ironing out bugs with our soon-to-be released robust joints and motors, but we decided to release our new boat seat and water propeller support first. These features function independently, letting you experiment with propellers and watercraft today. Though this blog post features some pretty complex ideas in terms of building, we are hard at work on streamlining these building methods in the future so they’re intuitive for all uses. For now, check out what we’ve got so far.

In order to understand the changes we’ve made to ROBLOX’s water physics, let’s discuss how a propeller works, particularly in water. Like tires on a car, propellers convert power into forward motion by rapidly spinning at just the right speed, velocity, and most importantly, angle. The faster they spin, the faster your water-based vehicle should propel forward.

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At ROBLOX Game Conference 2012, Kevin He dissected the steps he’s taken to refine ROBLOX’s water physics, hinges and motors so that vehicles – especially boats – perform more realistically. In this blog post, we’re recapping the key parts of the development process. You might be surprised at how much work goes into physically simulating real-world machines in a life-like fashion.

ROBLOX’s water, released in June, gives you the ability to create a boat that floats based on actual physical properties, rather than lines of Lua code. While the release of water marked a big step forward for ROBLOX, it has its limits; for example, if you want to create a propeller-powered boat, the propellers have to be on the side of the boat, as though they’re mimicking wheels on a car.

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Water has arrived in ROBLOX. What many see as an essential, but essentially mundane part of life, we see as a game-changer.

That’s because it’s more than just a texture. ROBLOX’s water comes with comprehensive physics simulation, meaning your ROBLOX character and the physical objects in your ROBLOX world behave as realistically in water as they do on land. You can wade on the surface and dive to the depths, create boats and motorized propellers, design rivers and falls with flowing rapids, and more. We’ve opened the floodgates to new genres of games and given game designers a new dynamic that begs experimentation.

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Hack Week coverage continues with a unified tech demo by Dan Ignatoff, Erik Cassel and Tim Loduha showing water, buoyancy and ropes working together.

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