Defining a New Genre with ROBLOX “Build and Battle”

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Build and Battle LogoGame creation and game play are two cornerstones of the ROBLOX platform. While they’re usually exclusive activities in separate environments, the ROBLOX Content Team’s newest project, Build and Battle, blends the two to create a team-based game where victory demands strategy and a fierce, competitive spirit.

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How Build and Battle works

Build and Battle is a mash-up of our multiplayer first-person shooter, Base Wars FPS, Stamper-tool building and real-time strategy mechanics. Here’s how it works: Two teams of up to 15 players spawn on an expanse of procedurally generated terrain. Each team has an energy core, which you protect by building and fortifying a base using ROBLOX’s Stamper tool.

Thing is, you have to earn your base. There are gold deposits scattered around the terrain, marked on your handy mini-map. You compete with the other team to own the deposits – which, in turn, lets you build on the surrounding territory – mine as much gold as possible and use your resources to build and fortify your base.

Winning requires a team-wide balance of offense and defense; your friends will have to risk their lives on the frontlines gathering gold and assaulting the enemy base, while others work on constructing the base and defending the energy core.

First team to destroy the other’s core wins.

Build and Battle Screenshot - Turret

Depth of Gameplay

Build and Battle uses the FPS framework we built for ROBLOX Base Wars FPS, ensuring a fast and responsive shooting.

Since you build a base using the Stamper tool, you’re building using terrain. While standard terrain is enough to block enemies from entering, we wanted to give depth to the base-building process. You can not only build using materials of varying fortitude (and expense), but fire from specific weapons also degrades each block over time. Eventually, even a strong aluminum block will degrade to iron, then cinderblock, then stone, then dissipate entirely. There’s no surefire way to win the defensive game; you have to keep a constant eye on the health of your base.

We also let you use the Stamper tool to place and wire up defenses, including turrets, tesla coils and spikes, in and around your base. You can place gold mines and armories at your deposits, as well.

We’ll also be able to continue injecting new content – weapons, defenses and more – after the game officially releases.

Build and Battle Screenshot - MineTry Build and Battle Today

For now, we invite you to give our prototype version of Build and Battle a try. After you test it, head over to our Game Design forum to share your thoughts and converse with ROBLOX developers about your experience. We want to understand how you play the game — what works and what doesn’t — so we know how we can tweak and improve it.

While we’ve got work left to do, we’re progressing toward defining a genre of game you won’t find anywhere else. No other platform or game engine makes it quite as easy to place such a wide variety of terrain and models, and wire up so many contraptions, all while battling it out in a live, multiplayer FPS.

Video music: Covered In Oil (Broke For Free) / CC BY 3.0

132 thoughts on “Defining a New Genre with ROBLOX “Build and Battle””

  1. Cool idea, Great gameplay, and sweet scripting. Sounds like the perfect game to me.

  2. Guys, the game is located under the PLAYER “Games” his actually player name is games.

  6. I think this is a good way to get us roblox users thinking. Its all about battle strategy and working together. If one person is not a team member the whole thing falls apart. Plus there is a role for different kinds of people. Builders get to bluid the fort. Fighters get to attack the other fort. And the rest get to sneak around hoping they are not noticed while they find gold. Thats totally cool! Roblox you really know how to bluild a game!

  8. roblox get it wrong again. People want to play roblox to Build at the moment roblox says “yet again we have made the build tools easier!” well some people dont WANT everything done for them. Roblox is about using imagination and creating something thats yours not something off minecraft or some ufo/bus/car that they already made for you. wheres the fun in that? roblox please listen you cant make things better in this corner of things. roblox was good how it was around here before this stuff. the things you need to sort out are hacking and connection and making new items/hats.

  9. I think this is awesome. P.S. I had an idea about a build/battle game a few weeks before this update came out. It looks really fun. I’m going to check it out :)

  10. Man, so many negative comments.
    “Why are they spending time on this and not fixing stuff?” The people making this are a small fraction of the work Roblox does to make this site better.
    “Rocket launchers will ruin everything.” No they won’t. The Dev team will probably have lower-power, longer-reload-time RPGs put in, so it’s easier for the defenders to kill the RPG-wielder before they do any damage.
    “This isn’t a new genre.” On Roblox, this type of game has never been done before. It’s like a cross between Zombie Defense Tycoons, Terrain War games, and real-time strategy games like the Little Men and the Conquerers.
    “I don’t like how the guy in the video looks.” Seriously? Who cares what people look like?

  11. Sounds interesting.I haven’t really seen any games EXACTLY like this made by other users.

  12. im pretty sure ive seen this somewere…. something starting with a mine and ending with a craft….. OH YA the game im gonna leave roblox for because roblox wont fix anything :D

  13. If you guys haven’t noticed, we’ve ALREADY been making these kinds of games. ROBLOX staff; quit doing things like this. How about you stop advertizing your places via the news site and do important things such as listening to your community more often and FIXING THE BUGS, GLITCHES, AND PATCHING THE EXPLOITS.

    • The staff consists of more than four or five devs.

      This? This points out what you can create NOW in ROBLOX, and bugs are found by creation, and testing this creation. In that way, they ARE fixing the bugs and glitches.

      Go eat a rocket, and if you don’t die, complain about THAT, which is constructive.

    • This will never work well because there will always be shafechatters that you cannot communicate with and the random noob that deletes all of the terrain or TKs.

      • YES. THIS. This place sound like a great idea, but imagine this scenario: You’re on a team that’s kicking butt and taking names, you have tons of gold, a super base, then along comes a guest or SCer and they screw EVERYTHING up. It WILL happen. And when it does, I will proclaim I TOLD YOU SO to the world.

  14. ROBLOX is not only about battles and warfare. It’s about creating something amazing and being able to share that with the world. Around 90% of the updates over the past few years have only been hindering that. Most of all right now though, we need a fix to all of the hacking and exploiting going on. You people at roblox either seem content to just let it sit there, or are too stubborn to admit that their game is FALLING APART.

  15. can you guys get rid of the hackers? thanks.
    this seems cool and i hope the trade system comes out soon!

  17. Looks AMAZING! Awesome scripts in it, and I love the edited stamper tool and the gameplay. Awesome work ROBLOX!

  19. Does anyone not see the errors unlike I? Alike the building problems alone — massive copying, massive deleting, massive usage of explosives, massive usage of objects used to massively kill — there are also fighting problems, although less commonly reported to. Reply to this if you agree.

  23. HA! You call this advance!? Anyone who knows how to use stamper and terrain. And just add weapons into the starter pack.

  24. How about this…..GO THROUGH AND IFX THE CURRENT PROBLEMS WITH ROBLOX INSTEAD OF MAKING NEW THINGS THAT WILL MOST LIKELY CAUSE OTHER PROBLEMS!

  26. i loved it because it was so cool but i was jost playing it and a noob was on it:(

  27. the game is fun, but there’s a metric blockton of server issues with it, and I don’t like that what appears to be a HE rocket can’t annihilate someone with a single shot to the face

  28. If you look at the leader-board towards the end of the game play, you see a name on the blue team. Xaing.
    That’s me.

  31. This looks really epic ROBLOX. If you keep doing what your doing right now, You’ll be more popular then M.I.N.E.C.R.A.F.T and World of Warcraft. :D

    • roblox will never become more populer then minecraft or world of warcraft !

      • It won’t even become as popular as Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing! Don’t know what that is? Google it.

  39. hey could you make this into a mode where its in the reset place script thingy so that we can also engoy this game and make it like diff terane tipes and more wepons and stuff

  41. I was going to make a game with the same theory but A LOT different but I gave up.

  44. I’ve always thought of making something like this but my building skills are way under average. This oughtta be cool!

  45. Could you guys make an update to where it’s impossible to put spikes on the spawn area, there were traitor noobs who were doing that.

  46. When I look at the robloxians and compare them to the turrets, rockets, and power core The turrets, rockets, and power core looks completely different from the regular robloxian I hope roblox could make the robloxians look more um well I can really explain it but I hope they could make them fit together

  47. This game will be terrible once the spammers and trolls start playing it…

  50. Looks cool, can’t wait to try! Hope this means for stuff in the “Experimental” section of the stamper as well.

  52. Now it seems like you are stalling so you dont have to release trade system .-.

  53. This genre is sounding a lot like a game named “Brick Force” But this sounds really cool but someone could just blow up your stuff with a rocket launcher

  54. This isnt a revolution, there are games like this that are better, I really dont think they look at player made games, Have they seen games like Base Wars The Land or Call of Robloxia?
    There much more well made than this, theyre more expansive and more fun.

  55. We’ve always had build and battle games so Idk why ROBLOX is calling it a new type of genre >.>

  56. Reminds me of stealing creation on Runescape, though I don’t see any big similarities.

    • Roblox is nothing like Runescape!I play Roblox EVERY day while my mom is at work for three hours! I have a Runescape accout,but I don’t play it at all anymore. Keep it up Roblox! I can’t wait to try this game out!

  58. It would be nice if the links you give here actually worked. Sure you get the page to go to , but because its a new page you have to log in to play and when you log in the page dissappears and is replaced by login /homepage.
    So now I’m logged in but cant find the first page to play.

  60. I Played! I followed shedletsky there. Everyone was chasing him and shedletsky was running from us xD. And then this guy pwned him :3 The End >:3

  68. Cool! so now a kinda a RTS and a Shooter mixed Cool!, Nice work guys!