Roblox is a game that never ends, because the community continues to find new games to create and the developers over at Roblox Corp continue to add new toys for them to play with. Roblox’s world creator allows players to create their own game types, enhanced by lua scripting and an ever-increasing number of tools.
In itself, this is more than impressive, even more so considering that the game is free. The folks at Roblox Corp sent over a press release detailing the latest tool to add to the arsenal: Water.
Roblox’s physics teram focused its implementation of water physics on clean architecture. By unifying all the relevant forces- buoyancy, water viscosity, water-flow, gravity, and other external forces – the behavior of objects and characters in water looks and feels like a natural extension of Roblox’s existing physics system.
For a kid’s game, Roblox offers a very complex and enjoyable experience.
If you would like to see our latest gallery of Roblox creations, check them out here.
As the Roblox saga comes to an end (for now, anyway), I wanted to showcase several select creations from Roblox hand picked by myself and a few of the guys from Roblox Corp. It has been a fun few weeks, but the show must go on.
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1. Roleplay City by ConceptDesign
Roleplay City was one of my picks because it shows the Roblox’s potential for my personal favorite activity: Roleplaying. With enough time, a player could create a sprawling play area that falls outside of the regular paintball/shooter/survival/obstacle course themes that many other Roblox servers follow.
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2. Brimstone Garden by Blockrat
Brimstone Garden is a fantastically created building, both inside and out. Its very presence is all the more a reminder that there are plenty of amazing creations out there in Roblox that should be featured in this gallery, but are not due to the sheer number of creations and the inability of myself and my new friends at Roblox to go through them.
This creation was handpicked by the Roblox team as a shining example of their community’s work. I asked Blockrat to offer some thoughts about the creation and the Roblox Studio (world creator) itself.
It’s fast, simple to learn, and moreover very fun to use. Studio offers plenty of freedom, considering that the base structure in Roblox is blocks, you could literally build anything, really.
As for the Brimstone Garden itself, it was my very first attempt to actually build something. Until then, all of my places were games, designed for fun. I noticed that some people would build still snapshot-like places (formally known as showcases) and I decided to give it a swing. The Garden was under construction for over 6 months, but in time I actually spent on it, it took about 15 hours combined, so needless to say, I got quite sidetracked.
Roblox is great, and I’m glad I was able to build what I did and I plan to keep on using Roblox’s great building system, and hopefully even build something better than the Brimstone Garden sometime in the future.
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3. Hidden Valley by TheDarkFireDragon
This gem was also hand picked by the Roblox team. This oasis may be small, but it features a multitude of hidden areas. As with Blockrat, I asked TheDarkFireDragon about his experience creating Hidden Valley as well as his thoughts about the Roblox Studio.
I made that place last summer, and it took me about a month to build. I was trying to join the ROBLOX group EBR, which has some of the best “builders” on ROBLOX in it.
The editor itself is pretty simple to use, you just insert parts and move/resize them as you please.
I also used a ROBLOX Studio plugin by the user Anaminus called CmdUtl; it makes merging, resizing, and rotating parts much easier. Being able to easily add plugins to the editor like this is awesome: They can add a lot of extra functionality to the game when you’re creating a place.
Another cool thing about ROBLOX is the scripting. You can use Lua, which is a very easy to learn coding language, to add practically anything you want to your game.
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4. Imagination By Anaminus
One of my personal favorites, even if I have all the artistic skill of a bull in a china shop. Imagination is a game where players set up their own easels and are able to paint simple 8-bit artwork like the one seen above. I tried to create a Mario, but you don’t want to see how it came out. I don’t know how to throw together Mario’s pants, but I don’t think they are colored sick green.
5. Jet Wars Advanced Battle by Carbon131
Take two battleships and place them opposite ends of the map, then allow players to set up anti-aircraft guns (and aircraft), and what do you get? An all out dogfight. Now, the fight became a little one sided thanks to a bug that caused the blue team’s aircraft to stop spawning, but otherwise shooting down fighter jets provided an enjoyable time.
6. Lost Thoughts Fortress by Jardicel
Another piece of exquisite building by another Roblox architect. Like many of the other people featured in this article, I attempted to contact Jardicel with no response, which is a shame as I was quite interested in how long Lost Thoughts Fortress took to create.
Part 1 of Opening The Toybox was all about Roblox as a game and a company. Hearing about subscription prices, user demographics, and whatnot is great but we shouldn’t lose sight of why MMO Fallout has looked into Roblox: Parents. With the exception of Lego Universe, I have often found (and I’m sure most parents will agree with me) that so called kid-friendly games are overflowing with less than savory players. Coming from the games I play on a regular basis, the community of Roblox is a light in the dark wilderness of the internet. All forms of the hateful, obscenity laden internet seem to die at the borders of this online game, giving way to nothing more than a pleasant community with kids who just want to play games and have a chat.
And Roblox does have a team of moderators and community managers to not only filter out the bad eggs, but to keep the community engaged. Ever since I mentioned the ability to buy Robux in part 1, I’ve had a few parents asking me to clarify on a particular issue of child safety: Buying Robux without parental consent. For its part, Roblox does not keep credit card numbers on file, instead using third-parties such as Paypal to handle processing as well as pre-paid cards in stores. In addition, there are daily and monthly spending maximums to reduce the amount of “friendly fraud” possible. As for building, Roblox allows a much more free-form building mode than Lego Universe, while keeping fairly close in tune with the feeling of building with Lego, Megablox, or similar toys. All players have their own personal area available to them for free, which they can fill to their heart’s content for their own personal enjoyment, or to create their own game for others to enjoy as well.
Roblox offers much of what parents would like to see in an online game: A pleasant community filled with similarly aged players, a staff that moderates and quickly removes any offending players/objects, and the kind of safety that prevents your kid from running off with the credit card and spending a few hundred on hats. Your kids will have fun, more fun for free than many other games offer, and you can rest assured that they are in a safe environment.
This is part 2 of a 3 part Roblox series. Next week for the final issue, I will take a look at some more interesting creations picked by both myself and the Roblox staff.
You often hear about MMOs being referred as “another world,” or “another life,” or even a “second life.” We’ve referred to games as virtual themeparks, virtual sandboxes, and any hybrid of the two. It isn’t often, however, that we hear a game referred to as a “virtual toy box,” and those three words sum up Roblox with incredible accuracy. Odds are you’ve heard of , perhaps even played it at one point, and if you are in the game’s demographic, you may be playing it right now. After all, Roblox is ranked #1 in the US for total engagement time.
Survive disasters with full physics
Roblox is a game where players can mould their own worlds and games and then allow others to play in their creations. At one moment you can be playing a game of paintball (above) and the next, Spongebob could be chasing you through Bikini Bottom, gaining experience to unlock new classes in a Call of Duty style massive battleground, or even raiding dungeons like Indiana Jones.
I had an opportunity to have a chat with the Roblox developers, and we discussed some of the finer points of Roblox.
How popular is ROBLOX? What kind of demographic does the game attract?
Roblox sees nearly 10 million unique visits per month. About 80% of our viewers fall into the 8-16 year old age bracket, and roughly 85% of our users are male. At this time, one of our fastest growing age segments is 14+ males.
The gentleman I spoke with from Roblox Corp. explained that Roblox is more in tune with games like Little Big Planet or Minecraft, where players are given the tools to build, rather than a few sets of pre-built options, and are allowed to let their imaginations go wild. I inquired as to how well ROBLOX would relate to Lego Universe, and his response was positive:
What would be astonishing to the Lego Universe player is that, in ROBLOX, the entire game is built by players. Whereas Lego Universe incorporates building as a side mechanic to the game, ROBLOX puts user-generated content front and center. Roblox users build their games themselves, then invite friends and promote their games on our website to keep players visiting.
Obstacle course.
I spent some time in ROBLOX and found an incredibly diverse and creative array of games created by the community. At the time of this writing, the most concurrently played game is a Call Of Duty/Battlefield style game where players fight on foot, in the sky, and in vehicles in an immense territory control battle.
So where does ROBLOX get its income? Free players view video advertisements before entering games. ROBLOX offers a subscription service in the form of the Builder’s Club, which starts at about $5.95 a month and offers more spaces to build in. In addition, builders receive a daily stipend of Robux, the game’s virtual currency that can otherwise be purchased ala carte by free players. Additionally, builders club members are able to add badges (achievements) to their areas, as well as sell merchandise for Robux to other players. Robux are used to buy virtual goods, namely clothing for your character and toys to spice up your area.
Players are able to utilize Lua scripts to customize their games, making for the diverse assortment of play areas I saw during my visit. There were definite themes, a good number of the top games were usually obstacle course and “build to survive” modes, as well as various shooters themed off of other games. There were also several role playing servers, including a rather humorous map allowing for the role play of a McDonald’s worker. Fancy living.
What really astounded me about Roblox was the community. There are a lot of very creative kids playing Roblox, and I can only describe the community as almost an unbelievable Garden of Eden where evil and vulgarity has never stepped foot. I made a lot of friends during my time spent in game, and cannot in good faith recall a single moment of players harassing each other, using vulgar language or putting each other down, and not a single accusation of cheating. On the contrary, I found myself on the receiving end of many friend requests.
Roblox is a great game for parents looking for games suitable for their kids, which I will discuss more on next week.
This is part 1 of a 3 part Roblox series, with part 2 to come next Friday, the 4th of May. Part two will be a Why Aren’t You Playing, where I take a more in-depth look at the game overall.
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