We are pleased to announce compatibility with all leading browsers. ROBLOX games can now be launched from Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari on both PC’s and Macintosh (Internet Explorer is not available on Macintosh). All you have to do is press Play on any ROBLOX game from any one of these browsers.
We’re almost finished porting ROBLOX Studio to the Mac! ROBLOX has had Mac player support now for several months, but up until now, Mac users haven’t been able to leverage ROBLOX Studio, our professional place and model building tool, to create high quality ROBLOX games. This is about to change…
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Asphalt. Iron plate. Gravel. Concrete. Cinderblocks. Gold. These are the materials I’m using to construct the new underground mansion-bunker in my personal build server today. If having a solid gold blast shield in your underground mansion-bunker is wrong, I don’t want to be right.
ROBLOX has increased the number of terrain-based materials we support from 4 to 16. This is the release that ROBLOX users have been waiting for since we first released the Terrain object on October 7. The ROBLOX team has been anticipating this release since we first unveiled Terrain at the ROBLOX RALLY on August 1. Our ultimate vision for ROBLOX is for there to be many many more materials. This is a great start.
Currently Supported Materials
High Scalability Parts
When you can, you should always use terrain materials when you build. They are high scalability, meaning that you can have millions of them in your place without incurring high rendering or level load penalty (lag). Simply put, from a part count perspective, ITS FREEEEE!
Use Materials in ROBLOX Studio
This release features version 1.0 of the previously experimental terrain material painter plugin in ROBLOX Studio. Simply select your material and paint an existing terrain object.
Use Materials in Personal Build Servers / Solo Build
Building with High Scalability parts allows you to build massive worlds within your Personal Build Servers without creating a lot of lag.
New Multi-Axis Stamper Tool
Another great reason to build using these new materials is the new multi-axis stamper tool. Stamping out huge castles a single block at a time is a real drag. Now when you click and drag inside of a Personal Build Server, when you have a high scalability part selected, you can go 2D or 3D in your drag by pressing “C” (there is help on-screen, so you don’t need to remember this part).
Watch as I stamp out a giant granite block in 2 seconds
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More Updates for Personal Servers Coming Soon
These new materials are a substantial update to Personal Build Servers. There are even more updates for Personal Servers coming out very soon. Watch this space.
- Telamon
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A new ROBLOX release went out late last night. It contained a lot of important performance improvements, but it also included a secret feature that some ROBLOXians have already discovered… atmospheric fog!
How to Add Fog to Your Place
Currently our default is that fog is turned off in your place until you turn it on. Luckily, enabling fog in your place is super easy.
What the properties do:
FogColor – This is the color of the fog. For best results, use light grey or the background color of your skybox.
FogEnd – This is the distance at which the scene is 100% fogged.
FogStart – This is the distance at which the fog begins. Inside this distance you will not see fog.
Fog Settings: Getting Technical
A lot of ROBLOXians out there are programmers, so for those of you who are curious, let’s get technical for a second. To remain compatible with older graphics cards that use a fixed-function rendering pipeline, ROBLOX’s fog uses linear interpolation between FogStart and FogEnd. Other fog falloff functions are possible if you are using shaders; some of these are show in the graph below. ROBLOX is using GL_LINEAR – the red line. FogStart on this graph is 10 and FogEnd is 20. At a distance of 15, fog is at 50%. This means that a pixel in your scene that is 15 distance from the camera will be 50% it’s normal color blended with 50% of the fog color.
Fog Settings: Getting Artistic
Builderman, the ROBLOX client team, and I decided to expose the lowest level fog properties to users, allowing them maximum customizability in their places. We hope place builders will get really creative. Here’s one effect you can achieve if you make it night time in your place and set the fog color to black..
Dark levels can be really fun. I whipped up a quick demo based on the original Sword Fight on the Heights – check it out!
- Telamon
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We’re pleased to announce ROBLOX Gift Cards, perfect for giving the gift of ROBLOX! These printable gift cards come with a PIN that can be redeemed for ROBLOX Credit. The PIN can be applied to any ROBLOX account.
Here’s how…
It is possible for anyone to purchase a gift card even if they don’t have a ROBLOX account, making it easy to give the gift of ROBLOX.
The release of Gift Cards are great news for the holiday season!
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If there is one thing we believe here at ROBLOX, it is that power should be put in the hands of the players. Based on this idea we have built one of the largest gaming sites on the internet. Today, we are giving ROBLOX Builders Club members their own personal servers. Talk about power!
What Is A Personal Server?
A personal server is actually more like your own personal world. YOU are in charge of this world and control its evolution*. You control who can enter this server, and what they can do there. Your personal server is always running – when you leave your world, everything in it is saved. When you return, it’s there waiting for you.
The ROBLOX web team first unveiled personal servers at ROBLOX RALLY 2011. Here an in-depth look at this feature, in their own words:
How to Create a Personal Server
How to Setup Admins, Members, Visitors, and the Banned List
After you follow the steps above, you have a personal server that you can build in. By default, no one else can even enter your place unless you invite them. On the place configuration page for a personal server, there is a box that looks like this:
This shows you all the access levels that your place has. For each level, you can add specific users (by typing their name and clicking add), or with a single check you can extend privileges to your friends or best friends. Note: changes to this list don’t save until you save your config changes!
Access Levels
You can also set access levels in-game, by either clicking on a person’s name in the leaderboard:
Or by clicking on their actual avatar:
Anyone Can Play in a Personal Server
While owning a personal server is a BC-only feature, any one can play in personal servers, if they have access permissions. The best way to find a personal server to play in is using the new tab on the Games page.
Mods and Leet Hacks
There are a lot of ways to set up a personal server. You can even customize your personal server in ROBLOX Studio (by setting the place to a normal game, uploading a new level, then making it a personal server). Here’s a screenshot from my own personal server – you’ll notice I have some fun special powers that my friends don’t get…
Share your Personal Server mods in the Scripters forum – I’d love to see what people come up with!
- Telamon
* The ROBLOX legal department would like me to remind you that you are still required to follow all the rules of conduct of ROBLOX in personal servers, regardless of who controls its evolution. Please see our terms of service. No warranty expressed or implied. All rights reserved. Patent pending. Use of this product signifies your acceptance of the dictates of the Telamon Chaos Institute. ROBLOX Corp is not liable in instances of force majeure or in any case where we don’t feel like it. What’s wrong with you; why are you still reading this go play in a personal server.
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ROBLOX has released version 1.0 of our hotly anticipated terrain feature! Since the time it was first announced at the ROBLOX RALLY on August 1st, the ROBLOX team has been focused on driving terrain across the finish line. There are a ton more features we want to add, and you guys will see terrain improvements rolling out over the next several releases. Enough talk. What’s in version 1.0?
What is Terrain?
ROBLOX terrain is a super scalable voxel-based grid. Currently, it can be up to 2048 x 512 x 2048 studs large, containing up to 16 million 4x4x4 terrain cells. Anything built using terrain cells is extremely high-performance. You can uses all 16 million cells to build with no graphics slow down. Even better, terrain integrates seamlessly with the normal ROBLOX building parts.
Play With Terrain Right Now
To show off some of the new gameplay possibilities afforded by terrain, I’ve uploaded a simple demonstration level. All players start with overpowered weapons that cut through terrain like a hot knife through butter. At the same time, floating bots are launching rockets at the players. The level is uncopylocked – grab a copy and check out the scripts!
Make Your Own Terrain
You can very easily get started building your own terrains in ROBLOX Studio. We’ve added a slew of tools to help you create and sculpt your own terrains (warning: this is very fun). The first tool you’ll want to try is the Terrain Generator. It’s got some sliders that you can play with to generate different types of terrains. Here’s one that I made in 30 seconds:
All the other new tools help you modify an existing terrain that you have generated. The best way to learn what they do is by messing around with them. ROBLOX team members Gemlocker and bjdeck gave a presentation at the ROBLOX RALLY that showed off some of these tools.
Quick side note:
ROBLOX Studio pros know that there’s a lot of ways to move parts around with ROBLOX Studio. ROBLOX recommends that you use these tools for manipulating parts that you want to connect with terrain. For example, if you are inserting a large building, use the arrow tool shown above to weld this object to the terrain. If you use the old arrow cursor tool, the building will not create welds with terrain. This will cause two bad things to happen: 1) the building could be moved if something heavy hits it in-game and 2) your game may run slowly because you have a large object making many many surface contacts with the terrain. We will be cleaning up ROBLOX Studio and making this less confusing in the near future.
Scripters Paradise
Guess what scripters? All of the new terrain tools we have provided in ROBLOX Studio are actually plugins scripted in Lua – 100% modifiable by you! Make your own terrain generators! Make your own tools! Show off your 1337 creations in the scripters forum!
What’s Next for Terrain
Currently the ROBLOX terrain object only supports two types of materials: grass and sand. There will be many more coming in future releases. We will also continues to improve the quality of terrain plugins provided in ROBLOX Studio. Plus a bunch of other stuff that’s still under wraps!
- Telamon
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