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: inside the brain of d4rk886, creator of Base Wars: The Land, the ROBLOX Studio splash screen contest results, earning Robux by selling Game Passes and promoting gear, users tell us what compels them to build, LEGO® Hero Factory: Brain Attack, Deadzone, and other bits and pieces.

Seven-day Blog Recap

Inside the brain of d4rk886

He’s created what is probably the most popular game of all time on ROBLOX (and definitely the most popular game of 2012), but he was a bit of a mystery to us blog writers. That said, we got in touch with him to find out how he built Base Wars: The Land, what he’s planning to do with it in the future, and what other games he’s working toward releasing. Get inside the brain of d4rk886, as well as a sneak peak of his upcoming RPG, The Mystic Land.

Winning ROBLOX Studio splash screen contest entries unveiled

For the past week, a few ROBLOX staffers have been sifting through roughly 3,000 entries in our ROBLOX Studio splash screen contest. After narrowing the field down to about 100 submissions, they picked 10 winners, each of which will enjoy the fame of having their name and image display every time a user launches ROBLOX Studio 2013 on their computer. Congratulations to all the winners. Here’s my personal favorite (by Metanight1896):

Who’s making Robux, and how are they doing it?

In this article, the first in what we expect to shape into an ongoing series, we look at the pros and cons of earning Robux via Game Pass sales and harnessing the Add Gear to Game feature. After that, John Shedletsky explains how you can measure your success using Robux earned per visit (rather than sheer popularity) and shares the top 20 ROBLOX places in terms of Robux earned per visit. We hope this gives you some direction when it comes to profiting off a game that’s still developing popularity, and using Game Passes and Add Gear to Game.

Why do you build?

That was the question of the week. We asked our Twitter followers to fill out a brief survey explaining why the build on ROBLOX, and their answers became the foundation for this article. We’ve also received a couple hundred responses in the post’s comments, so check those out for more and add your own.

LEGO® Hero Factory: Brain Attack now live on ROBLOX

On Friday, we launched our second LEGO® Hero Factory game, Brain Attack. The five-on-five, capture-point style game features melee combat in an environment that dynamically changes based on which team is winning. By winning games and earning badges, you can rack up exclusive hats — the heads of playable characters Furno and Pyrox, to be exact — and gear, so get to it if you haven’t already!

ROBLOX Studio 2013 is the new standard

Finally, we released a significant update to ROBLOX Studio with the release of ROBLOX Studio 2013. The latest version of our standalone building tool brings much-improved stability, performance and some cool new features; check out our article to learn more.

You should play this ROBLOX game

I’ve already done enough to fuel the fire of the Apocalypse Rising vs. Deadzone debate, so I’ll leave it at this: they’re both well crafted zombie-survival games. Deadzone pits you in the middle of a world where vehicles are burning, towns are abandoned and zombies dot the expansive landscape. It’s your job to scavenge the land for protection and supplies, all the while fending off the zombies you attract and desperate humans. It’s not easy. Supplies are spread pretty thin, and in my experience I never felt like  I had enough ammo, food or drink to be comfortable.

The game’s developer, DeadzoneZackZak, has clearly put a lot of effort into the game’s details. The inventory display is clean and its functionality is pretty easy to learn, character movements — from basic running to consuming supplies to changing gear — are all represented with unique animations, and the camera bounce gives your character a sense of weight — appropriate, considering the number of items you eventually (hopefully) accrue.

Play this, and play Apocalypse Rising. Best of both worlds.

Bits

• Check out this video review of last week’s featured game, The Stalker
• Microsoft will be ending development on its XNA Game Studio in 2014; many indie developers used the studio to develop games for Xbox 360, Windows and Windows Phone
• Game design consultant Mickey Blumental offers 10 ways to keep players coming back to your game; while it’s mobile-centric, the concepts may apply to any type of game, including those on ROBLOX
• This (by user Dayren) is funny:

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