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””

  5. Omg this stuff is amazing! And it all leads up to people playing a GREAT GAME!
    Btw if anyone reads this and heard of a guy named Guestkiller556, tell that the friends he used to know want him back.
    P.S. FREE HUGS!!!
    JK

  6. It Is Cool The Main Frame I Wonder What Bran It Is And Roblox Is Fast On Xp Ultmate,Windows 7, And Vista But It Will Lag On A Xp 2001,2003 Ok Lol And To Try To Lower Lag Download The Latest Grapihis Card Dirver From You Graphis Manufacture I HAVE Intel And They Have A Driver Scaner That Will Up Date It Automaticly Or Just Get A Driver Updating Softwere Like “Driver Robot” Pm Me In Roblox If This Helps User Name “harvest109″ =D

  7. im trying to play roblox and I press play it goes into a window and but it keeps making me download it what should I do?

    • Seen that on gametest… are you on gametest1? The address is gametest1.roblox.com.

    • Complety Remove All Roblox System File ‘In Local Settings” In ‘Program File” And Apploation Data And Make Sure It Is Comptly Uninstalled And Remove Restart Your Pc And Save The Roblox Download To Your Desktop And Run It. Roblox User Name’harvest109″ Pm Me If Helped

  8. Alright, now I side with roblox with builders club. That has to cost tons of money…

  9. yah but when ip press play it says Getting the latesst Roblox and keeps saying it forever all the time im having probs playing roblox and when i get on a game it says ” Failed to connect to game. ID=17

  10. I know this happens, and I’ve always wanted to know what the Roblox server room looks like.

    • 32 bit is why you lag. without getting technical 64 bit is a better computer the 32 bit.

  14. Whens Roblox going to realease Maxplayers 100? We’ve been waiting almost 2 years already.

  15. I wish they could find out how to make even the slowest internet connections faster but it’s not their fault it’s the company who supplies the connection. Anyway I play ROBLOX on 2 comps my old laptop from year 2000 with just under 1.5 GB of RAM and a catch for the screen and this newer one of my aunt’s with about 1.8 GB of RAM and sometimes the older 1 is faster than the new but (Suprisingly a little less frequently) it’s reversed. Other times both comps are so fast U wouldn’t believe and sometimes they’re both slow as molasses runnin’ down a hill in mid-December.

    • Not sure if a faster internet connection would help with the client lag. If your computer is from the year 2000, it may be your computer that is lagging, rather than the server.

  17. roblox is awesome i play it everyday all day good work for whoever made this awesome game dont forget to search me wardrobe227

    • David Baszucki (Builderman) Made roblox. (With help from other web developers and such)

    • I’ve played ROBLOX for 6 years since i moved and its great :D LOVE IT!! oh and the workers/people who made ROBLOZ keep the games coming and also let NBC people have BC, TBC or OBC for a day every Friday because my mum will never get OBC lifetime for me or any other BC but its just I want to have a day where EVERYONE is BC, TBC or OBC for the day on every Friday so please accept my idea and do it.

  20. I LOVE ROBLOX but ther is this one thing i hate !LAG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I HATE LAG

  21. I wish on ROBLOX,You guys can lower the price of builders club so that way you can make more money because if it is cheaper more amount of people will buy Builders Club.

  22. I think ROBLOX is a good game, minus the NOOBS that DELETE YOUR STUFF and SPAWN/TEAM-KILL, and PLUS the graphics and stuff. So I reject AND applaud artjom2′s opinions at the same time!

  24. Wow… how much money would all that cost??? i though it was just a simple online game O_o

  27. roblox is cool an all but i like war and building games acept the fact those game takes a long time to load ;(

  31. You administrators really need to work on the lag problem. I have Windows XP and wherever I go, I lag. I don’t know what to do! I thought about quitting recently if the lag wasn’t fixed. If the games stay laggy in the future, I’m quitting roblox. I could be doing other things than lagging everywhere.

    • if roblox is lagging,it is both roblox and your computer,first defragment your c drive,this will speed up your computer,then buy more ram,if you have 2gb,upgrade to 4 gb,then try getting faster internet,this will reduce lag,it works for me

      • i agree that will speed up the compter but roblox is getting rely laggy latly and its not my compter i have just got a new compter and its got like 15mb it goes rely fast on other games i play but on roblox its lagg lagg Laggg…

  32. I really wish ROBLOX would work faster on slow computers like mine… :T
    I got windows XP and when I go into a place… with a lot of cframe… I lag left and right…
    It takes me 5-10 minutes to stop lagging on some games XD

      • Its the fact that if your internet is slow the game is cause my computer is an alien aroura a 5000 dollar gaming computer and when im board i play roblox but its slow so the only fact to take in mind is that my internet is slow.

      • The problem is if you download something the computer loads everything at the same time

      • I reserved 4GB of an 8GB Flash Drive for System Speed and I keep it in my Aunt’s computer. Then I reserved an entire 4GB Flash Drive for System Speed and I keep it in my computer. So far it’s working, but sometimes only barely.

  33. mai roblox account is luke1801 and i just realised how much it takes to play a game :D

  34. wow i just thought my comnputetr was acctualy just slo but now i know it dose all that

    • So agreed. Roblox is the ONLY game I play on my computer… well mostly. I also play “Sidmire’s Civilization4″

  38. This is the best game ever! But I don need some help. I don’t know how to play a game!!!!???? Someone please go to my profile! Thanks!

  41. I’m a HUGE fan of Roblox. Most people who play Minecraft are insulting Roblox. I bet they’re just jealous because whoever insults Roblox are just plain NOOBS :3

    • I play Minecraft, I dont insult ROBLOX. I play ROBLOX, I dont insult Minecraft.