ROBLOX Roundup - Feb/8/2013

Every 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 release of ROBLOX Studio 2013 (and subsequent bug fixes), a new, voxel-based prototype for dynamic lighting, the democratization of game development (with litozinnamon), the ROBLOX modeling scene, an RGC 2013 location announcement, Checkpoint Racingby Wingman8, and other bits and pieces. Enjoy.

ROBLOX Studio 2013: the launch and aftermath

Last week, we announced the arrival of ROBLOX Studio 2013, the much more stable and platform-independent version of our building tool. We’ve been soliciting and reading through your feedback, and we recognize we haven’t yet perfected the Studio 2013 experience; thus, we’ve been fixing bugs as quickly as possible and even made an old version of Studio available for download for a limited time.

A new prototype for dynamic lighting and shadows

One of the most hotly anticipated ROBLOX features — and it’s been anticipated for a while — is dynamic lighting. We’re finally getting closer to making it a reality, as our rendering gurus have engineered a voxel-based dynamic lighting system that does not significantly impact performance. You can see four different video demos, with commentary from our own Arseny and Simon, in the blog post announcing this dynamic lighting solution. Need I say more?

No, but I will anyway! It looks amazing.

The democratization of game development, with litozinnamon

10 years ago, it would be almost unimaginable for a teenager to sit down at a computer and, within weeks, have launched a 3D, multiplayer game that attracts hundreds of simultaneous players around the world. Today, it is possible, and it’s known as the democratization of game development. We talked with ROBLOX user litozinnamon, creator of the highly popular Call of ROBLOXia 5: ROBLOX at War, about his experience building a popular game and how ROBLOX enables people of all ages to reach a massive audience. If you’re an aspiring game designer, it’s particularly worth the read.

The ROBLOX modeling (the 3D kind, of course) scene

One part of ROBLOX that doesn’t get a ton of credit is 3D modeling. While models sometimes get a bad rap — some see excessive use of them as lazy — they offer the benefits of expediting game and world creation, and helping spread ingenious scripting and building methods through the community. We took abird’s-eye view of ROBLOX’s 3D modeling scene in this blog post, and found some interesting stuff.

ROBLOX Game Conference 2013

We’re continuing to line up plans for RGC 2013 and, this week, we announced the first two locations: Chicago and London. Stay tuned to the blog and @ROBLOX on Twitter for future announcements!