Weekly ROBLOX Roundup: May 12th, 2013

May 12, 2013

Seven-day Blog Recap

Dynamic lighting has arrived (and is quickly changing the look of ROBLOX)!

This week’s top story, by a long shot, was the official release of dynamic lighting. That’s not a surprise; dynamic lighting is a feature you’ve been requesting for years and we’ve been prototyping and developing for several months. Our announcement provides a detailed guide to enabling and implementing dynamic lighting in your ROBLOX place, so it’s worth taking a few minutes to learn the steps. The payoff is huge — in just the first 24 hours of dynamic lighting’s official existence, many cunning ROBLOX builders harnessed the feature to breathe new life, style and dynamics into their games and places. Keep up the great work and don’t hesitate to share your dynamic lighting creation with us and others — here or via ROBLOX on Twitter.

A day in the life of the ROBLOX Content Team

In the second edition of our “day in the life” series, Alan followed members of the ROBLOX Content Team — you know, the group responsible for creating internally developed games, inventing and scripting gear, working on ROBLOX’s back end, and much more — to find out how a typical day on the job looks. Read through the article for insight on the importance of communication, the variety of projects tackled, the challenges that come with the territory, and more. Plus, you’ll get to see a few photos of this good-looking bunch.

Top first-person-shooter developers talk game design

In our third edition of Crossfire, we had two of ROBLOX’s most seasoned FPS developers sit down and talk about why their game is the way it is. Litozinnamon and Spookyfox, builders of Call of ROBLOXia 5 and Authority, respectively, discuss such topics as the possibilities of dynamic lighting, what features and techniques keep players coming back, and their favorite parts of one another’s games. As with every Crossfire article so far, it’s an in-depth conversation packed with information that should be useful to every ROBLOX game developer.

Have you played Strobe?

If not, you should. It’s one of the fastest, most stylish ROBLOX shooters on the market. We got a few of the builders behind the project to sit down with us for a conversation about the design and development of the game, which you can read in full by checking out our report.

Robot-themed hats bundled with ROBLOX cards in May

As is the case every month, we recently swapped in a new set of hats that you can only obtain by redeeming ROBLOX cards from specific retailers. This time, they’re robot-themed; you can see a complete list in this blog post.

You should see this ROBLOX place

In a move surprising to absolutely no one, this week’s featured place is a dynamic lighting showcase! What I like about The Old Town by Aonux is how it demonstrates the flexibility of dynamic lighting and shadows: the outside environment features the ambient lighting of an evening sky, while the insides of houses are shrouded and shadows and dimly lit by candles. Not only is it well built, it makes effective, tasteful use of a hot new feature. Well done, Aonux. You deserve some place visits.

Bits

We’ve received more than 150 entries to the ROBLOX Film Festival. You’ve got until June 2nd at 11:59 p.m. PT to submit your film for a BLOXY Award!
ROBLOX will be present at Maker Faire Bay Area 2013 next weekend (May 18th and 19th). Stop by booth 338 in the Expo Hall to hang out with ROBLOX admins and join us in playing and building!
RoGo Magazine recently released its 18th issue, covering a bunch of recent ROBLOX features, games and gear.

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