Starting today and running through Friday, our team is wrapping up a strong 2014 with five days of exploration — of visionary ideas, process improvements, experimental technology, and other cool things that don’t quite fit our immediate plans for ROBLOX but merit a week of investigation. While there is no guarantee that the things we’re working on this week will become official features, they do make for an entertaining Friday afternoon of demos and inform what we do in the future. This is Hack Week.

It’s not unprecedented for a Hack Week project to become an official ROBLOX feature. In fact, 12 Hack Week projects from late 2013 made it to production this year — and some of them went (or are on their way) directly to our community of gamers and developers.

Solid Modeling / Constructive Solid Geometry

What was arguably the most substantial ROBLOX Studio feature of 2014 actually had its origins at last year’s Hack Week. Solid Modeling, which allows game developers to create single complex shapes out of primitives, started as a mere Friday demo. Since making it to Studio, the feature has also received a big update that brings physics support to complex shapes.

Solid Modeling allows people to create shapes never seen before in ROBLOX, and it all started as a Hack Week project.

AI Pathfinding

AI Pathfinding, released last summer as an API for ROBLOX Studio, originally spawned from a Hack Week project by Sorcus and OnlyTwentyCharacters. You can read all about the feature, which gives NPCs smart pathfinding behaviors, and see a tutorial in the official release announcement.

Smooth terrain

You might have seen it once or twice already, but zeuxcg’s mind-boggling 2013 Hack Week project, known conversationally as “smooth terrain,” is still in progress. We’re all anticipating that one.

While Hack Week is an internal event for members of the ROBLOX team — a chance for us to own and harness our values of self-organization, mastery, and connection — we also encourage our community to take part by exploring an innovative project this week. Come up with a focused concept and an achievable set of goals, and let us know what you create in a week’s time. You might be surprised what you can accomplish in such a short period.

Based on this year’s signup sheet, this week is going to yield some exciting results. We’ll have an inside look at some of the cool things on display at ROBLOX’s Hack Week 2014 in the new year. Stay tuned.