Yesterday morning we shipped one of the biggest releases in ROBLOX history. At ROBLOX we do big releases and small releases. Small releases are full of fixes – big releases change the game. Some big releases in the past include the release that allowed users to make their places multiplayer, the release that introduced tools and character animation, the release that introduced ROBUX, and the release that featured hats for sale. This is the first release featuring code by Wookong. And, yes, it is a big release.

Wookong joined the ROBLOX team three months ago. Since then he’s been quietly hacking away on a new graphics engine that will allow us to greatly improve the visual appeal of ROBLOX. Our changes thus far are very modest, but Wookong has laid a solid foundation to build on. In the coming months, you will see ROBLOX begin to look better and better. In the meantime, we will have to be content with better lighting, texture filtering, and explosions!

“Telamon’s playing some sort of cruel joke on me,” you might say, “I don’t see any cool explosions in-game 🙁 “. The new graphics engine is highly experimental and untested, so by default it is turned off. If you want to help us test it, it is easy to turn on.

How to turn on the new graphics engine

1. Open ROBLOX Studio
2. Click Settings
3. Select the Rendering tab
4. Change graphicsMode to Direct3D Experimental
5. Restart ROBLOX

If the new graphics mode doesn’t work well for you, you can always change graphicsMode back to Automatic and ROBLOX will work like it did before.

A great place to try out the new explosions is the Original Wizard Wars map, by SonOfSevenless.

Other Cool Stuff We Crammed in this Release

• Windows Vista support greatly improved. Vista users can now launch ROBLOX games directly from their browsers. Install and update experience has also been streamlined. You guys can thank Erik.
• On Vista machines with poor OpenGL drivers, the experimental graphics engine will be launched automatically.
• Matt and Erik have used their technowizardry to wring another huge website speed improvement from our servers. The site is noticeably faster during busy periods.
• Models can be deleted from your Stuff page.
• Steps have been made towards a working first person camera mode, though much work remains.
• The camera behaves much better when the character is on a moving platform.

– Telamon