Blog
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See Exciting Announcements Live from RDC West Next Saturday
One week from today marks the end of the Game Developers Conference (GDC) and the beginning of the ROBLOX Developers Conference West (RDC West). ROBLOX staff and creators from our community will be participating in both of these events, and, for those of you who can’t be there, we’re planning to bring you coverage here on the ROBLOX blog. Of particular note to the ROBLOX community is our RDC West livestream, which starts next Saturday at roughly 10 a.m. Pacific Time (12 p.m. CT / 1 p.m. ET / 6 p.m. GMT). The livestream will feature big announcements about the ROBLOX engine, Studio, and more, plus some other assorted fun. We expect that the stream will run for approximately two hours. You’ll be able to watch it in an embedded player at blog.roblox.com or, if you want to participate in the chat and get hyped up with other viewers, at twitch.tv/roblox . We hope to see a lot of you there!
| February 28, 2015 -
Light Your World with New Surface Lights
Lighting is one of the most important parts of designing a game. Low light and heavy shadows create tension. Bright lights and vibrant colors bring out the cheer in players. ROBLOX’s dynamic lighting engine allows you to achieve these effects – and everything in between – and we have now updated it to include the Surface Light . This new type of light complements the existing Point Light and Spot Light, and gives you an easy way to illuminate large surfaces and vast spaces.
| February 25, 2015 -
The ROBLOX Team “Game Jams” in Just Three Hours
Game jams are events that bring developers together to design and create a game, typically within a ridiculously short amount of time (somewhere between a day and a weekend). We recently held one of our own at ROBLOX HQ – both as a fun evening event for our crew and to experience the product we’re creating just as our community does. We gave it our own unique spin: two or three people per team, three hours only. Turns out, even with such a severe resource constraint, ROBLOX remains a really good platform to create something substantial. ROBLOX lets individuals and small teams turn ideas into working prototypes fast , in no small part because multiplayer networking, physics, hosting, and other such engine-level features are built in. While not every team in our game jam finished a working game, we thought it would be cool to show you what some of the groups accomplished in the mere three hours they were allotted.
| February 21, 2015 -
The ROBLOX Team “Game Jams” in Just Three Hours
Game jams are events that bring developers together to design and create a game, typically within a ridiculously short amount of time (somewhere between a day and a weekend). We recently held one of our own at ROBLOX HQ – both as a fun evening event
| February 21, 2015 -
Secure Your Ticket for ROBLOX Developers Conference West
The first ROBLOX Developers Conference, known as RDC West, is less than three weeks away. We have a small number of tickets remaining, and we’re looking for a final round of creators – either proven or aspiring – to join us for the event in downtown San Francisco from Friday, March 6th through Sunday, March 8th. If you’re available at least part of that weekend (the main event is Saturday) and interested in purchasing a ticket to attend, fill out this survey so we can learn a little more about you !
| February 17, 2015 -
Meet Berezaa, the Creator of 2-Player Gun Factory Tycoon
Berezaa is well known for creating 2-Player Gun Factory Tycoon , a game with classic ROBLOX style but modern twists in its cooperative play and emphasis on combat. He’s also known for laying the foundation for many of today’s most popular tycoon-style games with his free tycoon kit . The kit, which takes the form of a ROBLOX model, has been downloaded from our shared asset library more than 40,000 times and has been used as the building blocks for such games as the newly popular Mars Invasion Tycoon. Needless to say, Berezaa works hard to support his game’s community, the tycoon-developer community, and the deep well of content in 2-Player Gun Factory Tycoon. We hosted Berezaa on the third pilot episode of our new Developer Showcase series and had a great time learning more about him and his games. If you missed the stream on Friday the 13th, we recommend you watch this highlight and, after you’re done, let us know what you think!
| February 14, 2015 -
The Top Games of January, 2015
The sheer variety of ROBLOX games is pretty astounding. If you look at the most popular games on Steam, or in terms of retail sales, the genres and themes are similar across the board. But the diverse community of ROBLOX players and creators makes the popular games list the most varied collection of games around. The top games of January feature everything from murder mystery games, tycoons, and first-person shooters to roleplaying games, survival games, and the ROBLOX exclusive genre: making a bunch of pizzas.
| February 12, 2015 -
ROBLOX Teaches Coding at Bay Area Elementary School
ROBLOX is all kinds of fun, but there’s no doubt that our community members gain valuable life skills by engaging in the creative process of going from gamer to game creator. Coding, digital modeling, communication, entrepreneurship, business savvy – these are all things anyone can pick up by participating in ROBLOX’s bustling creator community. Even educators have started taking notice of ROBLOX’s potential as a learning tool, and we’re working to make that more common – starting locally. A couple weeks ago, five members of the ROBLOX team headed to the E.R. Taylor Elementary School in our Bay Area home to introduce basic coding to a group of roughly 70 third- through fifth-graders. That might seem too young to start building and coding in ROBLOX Studio, but today there really is no “too young” to start absorbing tech knowledge.
| February 9, 2015 -
Friends and Followers Makes ROBLOX More Social, and Even More Fun
ROBLOX has more than 4.5 million active players every month. Many of you have told us that you would like a more comprehensive social experience. You would like to be able to play and join games with your Friends. You would like to be able to gauge how you’re doing, in any game, in relation to your Friends. You would like to be able to create games with these social aspects in mind. Basically, you’ve told us that friends should be able to play and compete with one another – easily. Friends and Followers is a new way of making social connections on ROBLOX, and a feature that lays the groundwork for these exciting social gameplay and game development possibilities.
| February 4, 2015 -
Top ROBLOX Developers Convening in March for GDC and RDC
The 2015 ROBLOX event season is quickly approaching, and we’re getting ready to kick it off with a big splash in March. Not only will ROBLOX have a booth full of staff and community developers at this year’s professionals-only Game Developers Conference (GDC), but we’ll be hosting our own ROBLOX Developers Conference (RDC) in downtown San Francisco immediately after GDC ends. From March 4th through the 8th, and with the help of many top ROBLOX creators, we’ll be showcasing our platform in various arenas and bringing together our virtual community for real-world learning.
| February 2, 2015 -
Top ROBLOX Developers Convening in March for GDC and RDC
The 2015 ROBLOX event season is quickly approaching, and we’re getting ready to kick it off with a big splash in March. Not only will ROBLOX have a booth full of staff and community developers
| February 2, 2015 -
Who Made Mad Paintball? A Chat with the Developers
Our newest Twitch show goes behind the scenes of some of your favorite ROBLOX games, and delves into what makes them tick. We just wrapped up our second episode, in which we got the chance to speak with the creators behind Mad Paintball , loleris and Pyrolysis , about their experience creating one of the biggest games on ROBLOX. Many people might not know that Mad Paintball is made by a team of devs. Loleris is credited with the concept and initial development, but he’s recruited the help of other ROBLOX builders to make maps. More recently, he brought on Pyrolysis, who has been making a lot of the updates and improvements to the game during the first month of 2015. Two of those updates include new game modes, both of which are set to release very soon: Escort and Payload.
| January 30, 2015 -
How Engaging With Players In and Out of ROBLOX Makes Your Game Better
Game development is about so much more than building a game and publishing it. The games you see on the front page of ROBLOX consistently have something in common: the developers continue to improve their games, keeping them fresh with new content and finding new and innovative ways to engage with players. Many developers are using social media and video streaming as a way to not only promote their game pre-release, but also keep the excitement going. You may have seen members of the Mad Studio team streaming the development of new modes for Mad Paintball on Twitch. On Twitter, if you check the hashtag #ROBLOXDev, you’ll find many users posting progress of their builds. And then there’s Taymaster , who has been pulling all the right levers on social media over the last year to keep his games popular and fresh.
| January 26, 2015 -
The Latest and Greatest ROBLOX Twitch Channels
Throughout 2014, we worked to not only launch and grow the ROBLOX Twitch channel, but help you — the gamers of the ROBLOX community — get your own streams up and running. Part of this was the monthly streaming leaderboards, with which we rewarded top broadcasters for entertaining viewers, being active, and doing unique and noble things live on camera. December was the final leg of the leaderboard program, and this post shows you who, of the 2,170 people who streamed ROBLOX to Twitch, topped the charts at the close of the year. We’re going to find new ways to make Twitch streaming even more fun in 2015, so stay tuned to twitch.tv/roblox .
| January 20, 2015 -
Let It Snow with ROBLOX’s Winter Games 2015
Winter is in full force here at ROBLOX, and with it come the 2015 Winter Games ! For the rest of January you’ll have the chance to earn eight awesome ROBLOX hats and gear items. We’ve called upon the talented ROBLOX community to create winter themed versions of some of the most popular games. Apocalypse Rising, Flood Escape, ROBLOX Top Model, and Reason 2 Die headline this year’s event, all dusted with fresh powder, and looking cooler than ever.
| January 19, 2015 -
Tell Us What You Think About Our New Twitch Show
Yesterday we premiered our brand new Twitch show, known simply (and tentatively) as the Developer Showcase. On it we interviewed DevAdrian, the creator of the new hit game, Risky Strats. It’s an ambitious show for us, requiring new equipment and a lot more planning than The Next Level, but it’s worth it because we can simultaneously show off cool ROBLOX games and hear how they are made, straight from the people who make them. If you missed the Twitch stream, fear not; right below is the entire show. Give it a watch!
| January 17, 2015 -
Meet the Mastermind Behind Risky Strats
We got the chance to chat with DevAdrian about Risky Strats and how he went about making a real-time strategy game on ROBLOX. For the uninitiated, Risky Strats is a game where each player controls an army.
| January 13, 2015