Weekly ROBLOX Roundup: May 5th, 2013

May 05, 2013

Seven-day Blog Recap

ROBLOX International Film Festival now open for submissions

A few weeks ago, we announced the ROBLOX International Film Festival and, on Friday, we opened the doors to your submissions. We’re looking for films in five categories and you have until June 2nd at 11:59 p.m. PT to submit your entry. For complete details and a Film Fest FAQ, read our Friday blog announcement. A word of advice: use the time you have available to produce the best film you can. Test it out on friends and see what they think. After all, it’s a prized BLOXY Award and live screening at BLOXcon on the line!

Early masters of dynamic lighting

With dynamic lighting available on GameTest1 during the second half of April, we decided to launch a contest and see how you early-adopters could leverage the feature. You did not disappoint. We received somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 submissions and the quality of entries was so high that we awarded the primary prize, the Master of Light and Darkness top hat, to not just five, but 10 entrants. You can see all of their wonderful dynamic lighting videos in the blog post announcing the winners. They’re also featured on the ROBLOX YouTube channel.

In-game stores and transactions

In 2012, we gave ROBLOX builders the ability to sell Game Passes and gear in association with games and places. Last week, we made it even easier to profit off these features by giving builders an API to sell Game Passes and gear in-game. There are many possibilities in implementing in-game sales, and we’re excited to see how you leverage the feature in your place. If you think you’ve done something particularly exciting or effective, let us know by sending a message to @ROBLOX on Twitter or leaving a comment. For an introduction to the feature and integrating it in your place, see our blog article from Thursday.

Crazyman32 on getting a game-development project off the ground

In what we hope is the first of many builder-authored ROBLOX blog posts, veteran crazyman32 discusses the steps to getting a new game-development project off the ground (see what I did there?) in the context of his upcoming release, Perilous Skies: New Horizons. From building a foundation to sprinkling in the polish and details, his advice will steer you in the right direction as you think about creating your own ambitious project.

ROBLOX at Maker Faire

Like last year, ROBLOX will be at Maker Faire Bay Area 2013. Unlike last year, we’re going to have a large space with a lot of fun stuff to do. Among the fun stuff: collaborative building, a dynamic lighting showcase (using your contest entries) and workshop, play testing new content, and hanging out with ROBLOX admins (most of whom will be at the ROBLOX booth at some point over the weekend. The event takes place on May 18th and 19th in San Mateo, CA. Learn more by reading our full update from Tuesday!

Feedback Loop

We rebooted the long-running but well liked “Responding to User Feedback” series with the catchier and snapper “Feedback Loop” last week. Going forward, we’ll continue to collect questions and ideas from the ROBLOX community using social media and have members of the ROBLOX development team respond with answers and thoughts on where, if anywhere, your thoughts fit into our development pipeline. In this first issue of Feedback Loop, John Shedletsky discusses custom particle-effect creation, improved humanoid manipulation, smart/auto-complete script editing, credits for builder-created catalog assets, individual gear statistics and leaderboards, and more!

You should play this ROBLOX game

There's nothing like a cloud of negative hit points floating above the enemy head.

Avert the Odds II is a well built first-person shooter by Venvious that constantly delivers fast-paced, competitive multiplayer action. What’s really cool is between rounds, players have the opportunity to vote for the next game mode and the player-created map on which the round will take place. Bot Battle is my personal favorite mode; it lets all players band together to fend off waves of increasingly difficult AI opponents. With the ability to level up and put points into your characters skills and customize a weapon loadout, Avert the Odds II has all the bells and whistles you’ve come to expect from modern-day shooters. Plus, it feels responsive and polished. Great work!

Bits

I’m not exactly sure what an “artifcial gravity spacecraft” is, but it looks cool.
We’ve finally finished announcing Fan Art Contest winners on the ROBLOX Facebook page. Would you like to see or submit more ROBLOX fan art? Let us know and we’ll consider re-opening the contest!

Now that it’s in the books, here’s a gallery of all the winning art. Great work, everyone!