Weekly ROBLOX Roundup: September 2, 2012

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Weekly ROBLOX Roundup logoEvery week, we’re busy telling the stories behind our platform, our technology, and our place in the gaming and technology industries. For those of you who catch up with ROBLOX over the weekend, the Weekly ROBLOX Roundup collects the best stuff to hit our various avenues of publication in the last week. This time: the revamped ROBLOX Catalog, what happens behind the scenes when you publish a game, our spotlight feature on Fort Borealis and much more.

Our new Catalog helps you find the gear you want, faster

New ROBLOX CatalogA long time in the making, the new ROBLOX Catalog was launched for all users at the beginning of the week. It adds a wealth of new sorting, filtering and searching functions to help you navigate the millions of user creations and find just the right gear for your ROBLOX character. Our blog post offers some background on the new interface and functions, so check it out and learn how you can shop more efficiently than ever.

The not-so-simple process of publishing a ROBLOX game

Publishing a game to ROBLOX appears to be some magical feat of technology, where you go from building a game on your computer to launching a publicly available, multiplayer game in a matter of seconds. It’s simple on your end, but it takes a lot of hidden tasks for your game to go from local file to playable ROBLOX game. This inside-look blog post goes in-depth on the whole publishing process.

Spotlight - Fort BorealisSpotlight on: Fort Borealis

Fort Borealis is a land-and-sea FPS battleground, where members of ROBLOX group RAT (and its allies) defend against a team of attackers. We talked to the game’s creator, Jake Evans, about organizing multiple ROBLOX developers and the value of creating games with unique systems. Read the blog post, our latest Spotlight feature, for some unique insight on game development using ROBLOX.

ROBLOX ClapboardSpecial, low price on video trailers — and a contest!

We’ve not only dropped the price of video trailers for ROBLOX games by 50%, but all game trailers uploaded through September 10 will be entered in a contest to win 20,000 Robux and a virtual trophy. The top five trailers win, so put on your director’s hat and get to work on your masterpiece!

Check out the details of the contest in this blog post.

There’s a new Roblox.com navigation bar

You probably already noticed, but ROBLOX’s Web Team updated the navigation bar that tops every page on Roblox.com. We offered insight as to why we made the changes we did, which you can check out in this blog post.

ROBLOX, elsewhere on the web

Bloomberg reporter Kathleen Chaykowski wrote an interesting article about young programmers helping fuel the booming mobile-game-development industry, with special attention paid to ROBLOX as a launch pad for such careers. Here’s an excerpt from the article, which is certainly worth reading in full.

Lua is one of a handful of languages that are helping kids try their hand at software programming amid a boom in online games and applications for devices such as Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s iPhone. The user-friendly tools are being popularized by sites like Roblox, a platform that lets users create and play games with interactive animations from zombies to medieval fortresses. They could be instrumental in helping fill what companies like Google Inc. (GOOG) and Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO) say is a shortfall in U.S. engineering talent.

See also:

Bits

  • 1.98 billion Tickets have been spent running users ads on ROBLOX since January 1, 2010, according to Creative Director John Shedletsky.
  • A shot from above Fort Borealis, our Spotlighted ROBLOX game from last week:

Fort Borealis

  • Here’s a video of a 30-car pileup in ROBLOX. It’s been sped up 5x because that’s a lot of physics. Destructive.

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Enjoy the remainder of the weekend and, for you Americans, have a happy Labor Day. Sit back, relax, and play some ROBLOX.

34 thoughts on “Weekly ROBLOX Roundup: September 2, 2012”

  1. hi guy can i have a job like a tester say you new gears or place or update can i be your tester that all

  2. Personally, I prefer the old catalog. This catalog is too complex. I used to be able to go to the catalog, type what I wanted to search for, and find it without a problem. Now I have to go through the process of changing the search filters or I will have to search through a bunch of models, shirts, pants, etc. The old catalog was much easier to use.

  3. ROBLOX, you really need to make a transfer system. I have so many limited items on my old account. Some of the prices are getting really high, so I want to transfer them to my new account. If you do make this, please make it for everyone, not just BC members.

  4. I really like reading about the ROBLOX roundup when I have the time I like to hear about all the new updates and things that ROBLOX is doing to make things better(not that it’s already amazing)!

  10. Cool,Cuz I never get to get on Roblox unless my nine year old brother says i can on the weekdays.Stupid,Right!A nine year old sayeing when i can use the laptop over the week.So this helps me.

    • Would using asynchronous code in twetsid make a difference. I just notice that in diesel you are using non-blocking code by using the generator syntax where in the Twisted code you are using blocking code instead of returning a deferred or using a generator. Does this make a difference in the tests?Just to note, twetsid also can use the generator syntax.

    • Wish I found your cards last year when I really nedeed them! Hope I never go thru anything like that again but I will remember your blog if I do and they are not in the stores. I agree they need to be in stores. My local head shop would definitely sell them.

  21. looks pretty cool even though I was on during the week

    the car video was laggy but cool espeicially the barrel roll at the end :p

  25. Why is it constantly front page games and favourited games that get featured – there are many marvelous creations with considerably less visits and I just wish they were featured sometimes…

    I can’t believe I couldn’t see the pileup video on Twitter when it was out or I would have made one to rival xzbob’s :D

  28. That alotofcars2 thing the guy that videotaped it did a good job of taking care of his car he never died!