A Look Behind What Happens When You Press “Play”

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ServersYou know the routine: you find the game you want to play, you click play, and within seconds, you’re transported to a virtual realm of soldiers, mages, farmers and race car drivers. Simple, right?

On your end, it really is. But in those few seconds it takes for your game to load, computers are transitioning commands into IP addresses, data is being transmitted, received, and filtered, and computers, some of which are hundreds of miles away, are having separate and unique conversations to get you into a populated game as quickly as possible.

The amount of technology behind keeping ROBLOX online, stable and secure is staggering, so we thought we’d take some time to tell you a little bit about how it works.

We have two remote “farms” of computers that handle every facet of ROBLOX gaming. One farm consists of hundreds to thousands of computers, each of which can handle running multiple games at a time. These computers are “ant”-computers of sorts, taking orders from a “queen” computer, whose entire purpose is to allocate the most work to the machines doing the least. This is all part of a process known as “grid jobs”—the overall notion of taking a task, and farming it out to other machines to exponentially increase work-allocation.

The other “farm” of computers differ from the ant-computers—they’re a hard-hitting combo of web server computers and database machines. Though this farm is substantially smaller in size, each of the machines is decked out with a ton of dedicated memory, or RAM, for ultrafast (we’re talking 200GB fast) computing. These computers’ primary job is to handle bandwidth—take any commands from roblox.com, turn them into an IP address, and ship the line of code off to our Load Balancer, which finds the right web server to achieve each of the millions of tasks that are constantly coming in.

RGC 2012 - Luke R&D

Both computer farms are following one of three primary functions to keep ROBLOX running:

  1. Run games
  2. Generate thumbnails (or images of 3D content)
  3. Ad hoc jobs

Just as there’s no computer big enough to handle all the traffic we receive, there’s no single computer powerful enough to run all the instances of ROBLOX games. The challenge we continually face is one of scale. As ROBLOX continues to grow, both in page views, and in-game traffic, we have to learn to scale with it, by adding more machines to handle the bandwidth. The trick, however, is utilizing systems like the Load Balancer to give the illusion that it’s communicating with one, centralized, all-powerful machine. This stream-lines the user experience both in-game, and online.

Running games is obviously the most important facet of the three, and doing so is done by allocating different tasks to the ROBLOX game cloud. The cloud is divided into a huge array of different sections, each working to stitch together tasks and functions into a single, seamless cloud.

Computer Farm Pull QuoteBasically, if you’re running a game on your machine, that game is running on one of our thousands of machines. When you join a game, our game grid knows which machine is running an instance of that game, and it re-directs you to the first instance of the game with an open slot. Once you’re in, our game grid keeps tabs on who is coming and who’s going, so there’s a constantly updated roster of open games for potential players to join, at any given time.

Our system models, both for handling in-game traffic and web traffic, were built specifically to be as simple as possible. It puts us in a great position—if our business grows, we can grow with it by adding machines to handle the workload. The sheer numbers of running computers also ensures that if one, three, or even ten of them over heat or blow up, our system knows to route around them. Essentially, our system was built in an on-going effort to eliminate single points of failure.

490 thoughts on “A Look Behind What Happens When You Press “Play””

  2. aw man, i spilled my oreos since my brain exploded like a nuke creeper after reading this. FEAR THE MIGHTY PLAY BUTTON

  3. really thats amazing i wish i could be be bc but im not alode :/ to make staff and ads really cool

  8. Not true..Every time I click “Play” it loads then says Error….So I cant play anymore….

  11. I never new roblox was so complex. I just thought they would run the website,not the games.

  14. Im going into high school soon and I’m going to be takeing a computer programming class. This information is key. I love roblox and it’s amazing what the science of computers can do.

  18. The way roblox works with its computers is very advanced but if you want something on a scale out of this world look into googles hardware drives i work in they’re Plug-Through matrices.

  20. Holy FRICK. This program of computer farms must definetally run up thier electric bill and Internet payments. :P Guess lots of the money comes from Roblox popularity, Robux purchases, BC, TBC, and OBC purchases, and much more like RGC. This whole article blowed my mind about technology, thanks for making it cause it may help me in tech classes and colledge later. :3

    • o wow i only knew deleting noobs and when it tells u bricks and connecters this blew my mind

  27. That totaly blew my mind i was reading and i was like WHATTTTTTTTTTT and then i came down here :3

  28. this is epic.im really into computers and robots and tech in general.so when i saw the first few words my mind went into computer mode.IM TELLING U.EEEEEPPPPPPPPPPPPIIIIIIICCC@!!!! I LOVE ROBLOX.ITS AWESOME

  29. THIS IS AMAZING! I’VE ALWAYS BEEN INTERESTED IN COMPUTERS BUT THIS IS INCREDIBLE! I NEVER KNEW SERVERS WERE SO COMPLEX! I AM STUNNED!!!

    • A server is simply a computer with external responsibilites, running a completely different set of hardware, a different OS and such. There really isn’t anything too complex about it unless you’ve never studied computers.

  30. Well…. Now i feel bad about playing a game…knowing how much work it is….

    • Well you dont feel bad about using a computer when months of work go into them do you?

  31. Dude. We’re kids. 99/100ths of ROBLOX players won’t know what the heck you’re talking about.

    • o.o THIS SEEMS HARDER THAN PAINTING ON MY DESKTOP! no really when i draw on my computer it looks like from like a 3 year old -.-

  32. Yes…The few seconds…Turning into a few minuits…That make my page go non-responsive…That…Make me have a very dull opinion on changing guis instaid of fixing lag and lock up issues…When studio is fine but locks up every time you get a free model why make a hard to use one that locks up every 5 seconds?
    This is on my new super computer created last year bought this at the end of last year…

  34. Whenever i play roblox on my computer it wont let me play if there are either a lot of poeple in game or mostly cause theres a lot bricks! PLZ HELP ME PM ME ON ROBLOX I JUST WANNA HAVE FUN PLAYING thx

    By:Talemonstinks

  38. I’m betting that the electric bill is around $1,000,000. Also I have major lag on my HP desktop that goes away for about two or three seconds and barely any lag on my Dell Inspiron laptop. Could someone tell me why?

  39. A few seconds? More like several minutes. Or is that just me on my decade old computer.

  44. ive got an idea for roblox to give us another insight how about what happens when someone makes a new account

  47. Wow.The only thing I thought when you join a server was plain old simple:
    Point&click.
    This is complicated.

  49. Yes, the robox server bar does top other MMO`s.

    ~~Cheetosrevenge, christian of robloxia~~

  51. Omigawd…..Wow….Thats amazing,so many crazy things to do with wires and stuff.Like,why are wires like,so thin?

  52. Its amazing to know that Roblox is always hard at work like this, and is so dedicated to making this smoother.

  54. now i no y Roblox made Robux because thing much money it would you would need to buy the computers not to mention the staff and the electricity bill

    • They save all information in coded stuff. Open your .rbxl files with notepad. You can see your whole game in scripted style.

  56. Wow… just wow. I’m literally speechless, how many computers it takes just to play a game blows my mind. I have to give them credit for the amount of effort it takes to run an entire network of players. Good job Admins, good job.

  57. I wonder if Roblox maintains their own server, or if they use a cloud service to run software on. From the article, it sounds like they build and maintain their own server farms.

    • probaly that us dongle(its a small memory stick that cost money to go on the internet) users have to pay more then broadbanders.it cost 100 of 1025(£10)

  63. Wish I could be a mod when I’m older, even though I’m on the other side of the country. Wish I could just be a mod that made sure people didn’t break the rules or something, not one that helps with coding and stuff. I would even work for half salary maybe. :P

  65. Imagine the amount of electricity the computers use up to follow through with the commands of ROBLOX. With that in mind yo can see why BC is really needed. :D

  70. WHEN MY 2.4 GHZ PC FREEZEZ UP ON ROBLOX A COMPUTER PROBABLY EXPLODES…wait a sec MY PC FREEZES ALL THE TIME WITH JUST SIMPLE 3D :D:D:D:D:D:D:D:DXDXDXDXDXDXDXD