Hack Week: Implementing Rotatable GUIs

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During our annual Hack Week, ROBLOX developers shifted gears, working tirelessly to devise and present ideas fueled more by creativity than priority. This week, we’ll be featuring some of the most innovative ideas to come out of Hack Week. Our second story is about some changes that will be implemented to ROBLOX’s robust GUIs (graphical user interfaces), by Software Engineers Deepak Chandrasekaran and Tyler Mullen.

GUI text boxes

GUIs are the biggest small part of ROBLOX, and for good reason. From text buttons, to text labels, to image buttons, to frames, these 2D bits can add high-impact nuances to your games. Many of the smaller facets of ROBLOX, like our leaderboards, backpacks and our chat system, are powered by GUIs as well.

As it stands now, ROBLOX allows users to utilize two types of GUIs: screen GUIs, and billboard GUIs. Before getting into some changes we’ll be making to both, let’s describe how they work.

A screen GUI is essentially a 2D overlay—users can implant text on top of a 3D game running in the background (like a title of a game). Billboard GUIs, on the other hand, are placed directly into 3D worlds, like the chat bubbles that appear when Robloxians are having conversations. It’s important to understand that both of these GUIs exist in 2D space only¸ and that we’re not planning on adding new types of GUIs. Rather, we’re adding an ability to the existing types.

Though ROBLOX GUIs can be cut, resized, and translated, power users have longed for GUIs that can be rotated. Any user who has tried to create this effect in ROBLOX knows the pain associated with such a task—basically, to make something appear to move or rotate in real-time, you have to flash different images, each rotated outside of ROBLOX just a little bit more than the last. It’s a work-around that we feel is unnecessary, so we addressed it.

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We’re eager to see how our users take advantage of rotating GUIs. We think they will help  with a myriad of things, from producing mini maps, to creating more polished and unique-looking title screens.

This project is well underway, and we’re planning to implement it in the near future. We’d like to hear from you, so feel free to sound off in the comments below. What would you do with rotatable GUIs?

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297 thoughts on “Hack Week: Implementing Rotatable GUIs”

  1. :D Roblox is just getting more interesting. :D Time to start makeing… LOADING STUFF! xD No jk. Just that with tihs, you can make a circle then make one of those pro loading guis. So now it wont be with boxes that are just flat. Now they be a little turned. c: IF I was a wiki writer, I would give this a full tutorial.

  3. At first I thought they were going to implement in-game dynamic GUIs, such as say; an in-game billboard that displays scores but is actually a 3D model with a GUI slapped on top – I was kind of excited with the latter.

    Rotating GUIs are nifty as well but far less exciting ;)

  6. What model/script was from the first picture with the people talking in red gui boxes?

  7. I would use this mostly for titles of my games. I would make the title get bigger as it rotates then it stays for a few secs and then it starts rotating as it gets smaller and as I lower the visivility.

  8. If this is a new update how can speedyseat do it already? But i LOVE the idea!

  15. Out time, too. We developers have been screaming are head off since the implementation of GUIs. Simple but crucial feature.

  17. This is a good feature. Also, adding more things that a 2D GUI can do is pretty cool, if these fetures are added it would make moving a GUI easier because you wouldn’t have to flash an image for a frame then flash the next one to create a moving effect.

  19. Nope, Roblox is horrible now, Not worth playing anymore, MOJANG JUST SUE ROBLOX ALREADY!!!!!!

    • Wow! Roblox is getting better and better every update! i can’t wait to see what you guys come up with next!

    • What the heck dude? Minecraft doesn’t even have rotating GUIs and also this is a feature asked for by the USERS not copied in any way. Not to mention notch even said he had gotten some of the inspiration for making that game FROM roblox…

    • What for?
      Also I think Roblox was made before MineCraft.

      And on a final note,
      Notch isn’t the type of guy to sue.

      • roblox reasons1.there running out of money i think or the 2013 shuttdown was a rumor. 2. mc copied from roblox

      • No One Because There Is No Point, Even If Mojang Wished To Sue Roblox Over Such Things, Technicly They Cant, Yet. I Hope Nothing Happens To Make It Where They Can.

    • you got no ideawhat you are talking about mojang copied ideas fom roblox in the first place where they got there inspieation then they advanced out of roblox old egnine into there own wtich inspired roblox to add some new ideas like terrian mojang in first plce was more of a copie of roblox then it is now who could ben sured but they diddnt they where useing outdated engine intil they could finish devloptmennting theres in 2011 they published it roblox was already out before them roblox ben a site and a game sence 2005 200 was more testing year roblox completly came out in 2006 u got no clues what ur talking about u think it is getting worse well u havent seen roblox in past roblox was going that direction then it would be worse so get a grip learn to deal with change u dont know u never will then somthing bad will happen

  20. What if you could forward messages? Like someone sends you a message and you can forward it to someone else.

  25. I would love to utilize this feature. One problem, Im not a pro at scripts. My best script is a reset script. I don’t really understand how im supposed to use any of this without even scripting? Maybe that could be a feature in the future, Automatic scripts. Just replace certain words? I don’t know. Well, I could use some understanding of scripting because you almost ALWAYS need it for an awesome place. Well ROBLOX staff keep coming up with ideas like these and ROBLOX will be EVEN more AWESOME. Good work Guys.

  29. I think this is a great feature, but what I would like to see first is more sharp-looking decals and image labels and image buttons! They are poor quality right now and I would love to see that be improved.

  30. this looks really cool. i bet many ppl will come up with great ideas. i bet i would too but i dont know how to script

  31. hmm….i would use it to make a working compass….because i really need one for a game i am creating.

  32. Does anyone else think the Fractal Smiles look like pizza when they come together.

  35. Finally, GUI rotation. It’s almost here.
    This should make rotating save icons and GUI games five times better.

  38. Rotatable GUIs could be useful for all types of things! Especially for cutscenes.

  40. Really? This is what you’re working on, roblox?

    I have lost all respect in you.

  45. Why dont roblox do somthing about all the hackers. I thing there to lazy to do somthing. All of them are running around like there untouchable with the hugest egos.

  50. I think what I would make like combination locks for puzzle games but the scripting would be hard but awesome idea go for it!!!

  52. I think what would be better or at least for me is positioning GUIs right. Like instead of putting the exact position on the screen in the properties, I think that there should be like 4 arrows you click in properties to move it around i pixel at a time. So you can hold it down and just easily posistion GUIs. Easiler for younger players.

  53. I’d have a lot of uses for this.. I use other graphics engines for Lua and other programming languages, which are mostly 2D; I wanted to recreate my games in Roblox, but found it would be too much work. If I could rotate my pictures, every one of those games could be made relatively easily, with a lot less work. However, I’d still have to make functions for drawing boxes, circles, etc., so it could be a bit hard to implement still.. :/

    I have another idea as well, if possible: Could Roblox update the GUI’s with an ability to change an image’s colour? Currently, using Ambient in Lighting, this can be done on parts; would it be possible to have this same option for images?

  55. when is the in game character changer coming out? i have been waiting forever for it to come out.

  57. Yes, just yes. Finally a good update.

    I’d use this to either make a minimap that’s rotatable depending on where your camera is in relation to your character, or I would use this to easily make a sort of loading/saving symbol that rotates so it looks like it’s dynamic.

  59. All of these features look amazing! It will be great to see what people come up with using these.

  66. Well I guess this would be extremely useful for compasses and minimaps mainly, there’s not much else I can think of apart from making fancy animations. Still, it’s an improvement nonetheless, and a useful one at that ;)

  67. Make a cframe script that rotates the brick then stick a billboardgui in it. :3

  68. Maybe I can use this for intro-Guis. And KeeganWesly, I think I came across your account once, tried to PG it, but apperantly it like the other older accounts, was already taken.

  69. Lol, just randomly thought of this now, and I know people have done stuff with this in the past, but there is a way to make a Gui out of parts. Make a LocalScript that puts the parts into the player’s Camera (“game.Workspace.CurrentCamera”), and just script the bricks from there. They will only affect the player because all parts in the camera are “Local Bricks” running on the client, not the server so they will only affect you.