Personal Build Servers launched just under a year ago and, since then, have spawned creations impressive for their colors, senses of place and especially scale – many are home to tens of thousands of parts. At the time of this writing, there are 283,000 servers anyone can join and, at the least, explore.
Personal Build Servers can be the work of one person, but that misses one of their primary purposes: cooperative building. The biggest, best creations often result from the owner allowing other ROBLOX users to contribute to the building effort. The key, then, to a successful server, where multiple users collaborate to build something great, is control.
What’s out there?
I browsed some public Personal Build Servers yesterday (they’re separated into their own tab on the Games page) to try to get a feel for how they’re used. I entered servers as either a “Visitor,” which allowed me to explore the world but not contribute to the building effort, and as a “Member,” which gave me access to building tools and the freedom to start stamping out parts.
I even entered a couple servers where the owner was present and happy to dole out building privileges to anyone who asked.
Lesson learned: liberally giving out building privileges to anyone who visits your server leads to chaos. I saw a blown-up house floating in a gravity-defying column of water (wrap your head around that), single-voxel-wide towers that pierced the sky, and layers of terrain stacked on top of one another. These servers were a fun diversion, but not exactly time well spent.
How to run a successful Personal Build Server
Personal Build Servers are a Builders Club feature. You can read up on how to create a personal server here.
If you spend any time at all working on your Personal Build Server, it’s worth your while to have control over it. We save server data automatically, every 15 minutes, so giving privileges to one bad apple can quickly ruin any building progress you may have already made. (That C4 is pretty powerful.)
1. Do some social networking
If you want to build something cooperatively with ROBLOX friends, you need to meet some fellow ROBLOXians and establish some friendships. You can start on the ROBLOX forums – let people know, specifically, what kind of project you have in mind. Rather than announce your intention to create a cool place, let people know you’re looking for builders to help construct a medieval city. Get to know respondents and create a small team.
You can also reach out to other social networks. If you’re a Twitter user, for example, put out a call for experienced builders to your followers.
ROBLOX’s Creative Director, John Shedletsky, has some experience running Personal Build Servers. He believes the “magic number” is 20. If you can create a circle of 20 friends, there will likely be two or three people online at any given time, ready to join you in building.
2. Give privileges to people you trust
Once you network with enough ROBLOX users, you’ll need to decide who can do what. This is a key to a successful Personal Build Server. You should only give building privileges to people you know and trust to contribute, not work against you.
To set privileges, click “Configure” from the dropdown gear on the Build page. You can give building privileges to individuals by adding them as admins or members.
3. Multiple servers? Use group-based privileges
If you run multiple Personal Build Servers, you can create a ROBLOX group and use its settings to give privileges across servers. This is much easier than setting individual privileges for each server.
4. Create something that’s fun for visitors, too
If your server is interesting – even if it’s just nice to look at – visitors will be less likely to beg and plead to have access to building tools. They’ll be content to explore your world and see the sights.
You can take this a step further, though, by adding customization to your Personal Build Server. To do these things, you need to create a new place first as a standard game, edit it in ROBLOX Studio, then upload and configure the place to turn it into a personal server.
To change between game and personal server, click “Configure” from the dropdown gear on the Build page then adjust the settings using the menu shown above.
You could, for example, add a script to your workspace (Insert > Object > Script) that damages players when they’re exposed to sunlight. When you change your game into a Personal Build Server, players will be encouraged to go underground and group-build a subterranean city. Here’s a sample script, which checks that it’s daytime, then uses raycastingto determine whether there are any objects above the player blocking the light. Click the script to download a text file containing the raw code.
You can also give yourself (and other administrators) access to special commands. Okay, this might not inherently make things interesting for other users, but it does help maintain order and let you create excitement. The below script shows how you can let admins change the time of day by chatting “time/XX”, where XX is the hour of day. Click the script to download a text file containing the raw code.
Magic of Land, by Tiranin
What would make Personal Build Servers better?
There are things we’d like to do to make Personal Build Servers better. The process above, where you have to start with a standard game and later turn it into a personal server to add custom scripts. It would be great to let users enter someone else’s personal servers and save/export something they built in it. What ideas do you have?
can sombody tell me how to expand or enlarge water blocks in a personal server? and how you can make blocks move, like a t-rex you made you can control it yourself?
Personal server’s can be good for group collaboration. Now you don’t have to trade models with people. They can just enter your game and build. The only problem is that we can’t use scripts in there or some necessary studio features.
I think you should be able to put lava in the stamper tool and there should be animals that could walk around randomly.
When creating your personal build server, you should be able to add water. You control on how it spawns. (Editing what the max height it is for it to spawn, how frequent it can spawn, etc.)
In order to make it more popular,ask some friends to help build or script.
How do i maintain order?
i sell the tools. :P
All I want for a PBS is the ability to add scripts to it without having to change the server back to normal.
We should be able to modify the Stamper by adding our own models to it somehow. That would be useful. And also drag delete. Like you would have for the Stamper, except it’s a delete, so that we can delete masses of Terrain quickly.
I agree with this.
Return the classic insert tool and add it to the rest for a better combination with stamper tool.
All I ask is that the bricks that come with the stamper tool is anchored… I’m tired of adding in my own brick that are anchored so I don’t have to worry about the bricks moving whenever I resize.
There should be more stuff in the confirgurable parts section when you use the stamper tool
It would be nice if you could lock certain areas of the map, without going through the hassle of locking everything
i’ve got a great personal server free build 3 700+ visits :D
I just had an idea (Well, I’ve had this idea). I’m going to make a personal server with zombies. :D
Let us be able to put our own stamper parts into the stamper tool.
If it’s already possible, then make it easier for us, please. I’ve looked through the stamper script and I couldn’t figure out how to change things in it.
This isn’t much of an idea, i’m actually thinking of this as i’m typing, but..
Maybe for group-restricted PBS’, maybe a group join button? That way it will make it easier for people to join the group and build? And maybe even group icons to recognize if they’re in the group or not?
Let members of servers be able to script in game.
Add Studio for personal build servers. Then people can script togather and save the work to their models.
Why don’t you release 100 Player Servers? You could make personal servers into festivals and events! Like a christmas festival, or a carnival with various events and rides that people could use! It’s a suggestion that needs to be put through.
Considering my latest project is an amusement park out of stamper bits, I want this. Want it so bad I’d buy a ROBLOX card for it.
I made a Personal Server that is completely built without Stamper tools. You are in a massive map and given classic build tools, as well some other unique advanced tools such as anchor, transparency, lock and much more. I’ve have many people build great things there.
Gravity-defying column of water?
Well, there should be an update in which water can flow.
It would make building a lake easier
There already is an update like that.
He means where the water blocks move or change position, not where they move players.
Go Tiranin!
My personal server had 20+ people in it.
I was like, aww yeah. ;D
Make it so that if it is one of those games where you hire people to help build, before you add it to another… You must approve of what they build before it gets saved. Maybe also allow scripting.
Add in C-Frame tools, transparency tool and a collide tool (CanCollide).
Yeah, in-game studio for personal servers would be great. But only for owners and administrators. Personally I don’t like the stamper blocks at all. So I’d like to build with friends and have them add in stuff they think is cool from free models.
Personally, I feel that personal servers should not be a BC feature. I’m not just saying this because I’m NBC, I have my reasoning. The main reason is because good builders that are NBC don’t get the privilege of being able to experience hosting a personal build server. More “good” personal servers will come out if more people get the chance to make them. Please at least think about this idea because one day I’d love to host my own PBS.
Let people invite a few trusted friends to build in Studio Mode at their places. Everyone gets the power to use explorer/toolbox/properties/tools, but only people selected by the owner can join the server. It’s actually not on a server, because it’s Studio Build Mode, except with multiple people, chat enabled, and a few little things extra–like the owner being able to kick one of the people from the build.
I could go more in-depth with this, but I don’t think I should.
Why don’t you release personal servers to everyone?
Or maybe after you’re finished BETA testing MEGA servers, release it to everyone. I am tired of everything that changes your game being BC only…
The end is similar to my idea. I would like to export/import. But I would like to be OWNER-ONLY option so that owners can go directly into Roblox Studio without changing it to a mega place.
You can use models on a personal server by clicking edit on the build tab on desired place.
Agreed.
They keep on telling you to use Roblox Studio to do something, but could you guys just make a tutorial on how to use Roblox Studio and how to script because I have no clue.
Use Roblox Wiki, search it up sometime, it helped me alot.
it would be perfect if ROBLOX Studio was built into this. Then i would consider getting BC again :).
Make a configurable gear dispenser, and fix the current ones so they don’t glitch and spam tools everywhere and break as easily. Also allow user-made models, not just admin-made ones. This could allow more ways to edit them. And add more wiring objects and configurable objects as well as ones in other categories every once in a while.
Creator has access to Roblox Studio and can disable C4s on command.
Ideas:
-Unlimited terrain
-Blocked items for stamper in PBS
-Studio in-game (owner only)
Those are things I want! :DDD
Maybe add speed boats, row boats, canoes and a life jacket maybe? For looks or it could have a special purpose.
Make it so the creator can access Roblox Studio in-game. It would be a lot easier for the owner.
I want that! I wanna add my planes and cars I made in my personal server while playing it.
Yeah, it would be waaaay easier.
Yes, I agree.
That would be fun & easy
That would be awesome. I could change a place without needing to leave and shutting down a server. :D
There IS a solution. Make your personal server have an extra stamper that only YOU can use. Change the stamper to whereit stamps stuff in your sets, and there you have it. (It’s VERY easy to change whose sets you want to use in a stamper)
Yes I’ve had a very successful personal server called Atlantis.
Yes it has been C4′d any times but all you need to do is bring it back a save. I love ROBLOX minigames, personal servers and much more. :D
I finished it with the help of someone named AADV123, he was very helpfull, trusted, and he would never lie to me.
A major problem is that people keep deleting eachother. If they could fix that, it would be amazing. I also know there are scripts to disable C4, but what if there was just a button in the ROBLOX studio that disabled it?
Something that would make it better is a way to create custom cars and wedges for going upward on roads in vehicles.
agreed,see I’m the FIRST robloxian (I think)to make roads that go uphill but i use basic building long wedges which get destroyed when you drive on them with all cars the Jeep is the only car that can go up cause it is the only one with enough wheel clarence
Finally!
I was waiting for this reply, dear ROBLOX, you really did a great thing!
It’s kind of upsetting to some kids though, because they sometimes get upset when the game kicks them out, and then there’s the owner, AKA the usual “Admin Abuser”, as I recall my son saying.
Anyway, I don’t think there should be a ban feature unless you guys upgrade it to be like
- Warning
- Reminder
- Second Reminder
- 1 Day ban from personal servers
- 3 Day ban from personal servers
- 7 Day ban from personal servers
- 14 Day ban from personal servers
- 1 Month ban from personal servers
- 3 Month ban from personal servers
- 6 Month ban from personal servers
- 2 Year ban from personal servers
Sure, might seem a little harsh, but some people really cannot stop abusing!
My son once came to me crying because he built a huge house, and some child came over and deleted it! Yes, I think they should do this, sure this took a long time to write, but I think it’s worth it – for you people working hard a ROBLOX, keep it up.
I totally agree. A person C4′d my house as well. And I feel the same way, when you work very hard on something.
Good idea!
Well, you forget about solo build. Your son can build by himself and not have his place deleted. Then he can show off his work to his friends in play mode.
Good idea, but instead of “2 Years” it could be “Lifetime ban from the personal server.”
E.g.: I was building a house, and somebody who has 6 warnings comes up to my house, and deleted it all. Since the person has had 6 month ban already (from that personal server), he gets a lifetime ban from the personal servers he abused, it’s like “Account Deletion” from normal ROBLOX website, on a game.
i totally agree with you
That’s amazing! One question though, could you add something to ban specific things like C4, cars, etc.?
Strongly agreed.
Doesn’t look simple.
Awesome, looking great Roblox.
Very useful information for anyone who wants to run a PBS, I’d say.
Awesome!
What would make it better is to have an option to ban people from using C4 or any tool used to destroy something quickly (rockets, bombs, etc.).
There’s actually a C4 banning script which you can use to ban any block or item.
Add Studio. For administrators of the personal build server, they can have an option in there Menu to open up studio. Thus causing TRUSTED builders to add scripts and certain models easily. With this added, all the admins of the server would be able to add there own code, add there own models, add anything they like.