Spooky Retextures 2012 Contest Winners!

First of all, I'd like to thank everyone who sent in entries to us. It was extremely difficult to pick to the winners as there were so many great quality entries! After much deliberation however, IBarrageI and I (arbirator) picked three winners and 2 runners up listed below:

1st Place - Exorsus Prime king of the Pumpkins

Exorsus Prime king of the Pumpkins is the winning entry of the Spooky Retextures 2010 Contest! The retexture was created by Turtwigz. The design is made up of a very detailed hood with great shading and lightning shapes. There is also an interesting design on the face area, with glowing orange eyes and scratches/scars on the interior; Exorsus is a very spooky retexture indeed and a extremely suited winner! Turtwigz will receive a trophy and R$500 prize.

2nd Place -  The Messor Warrior

The Messor Warrior is the second placed entry in the Spooky Retextures 2012 Contest! This entry created by DarkGenex sports a highly detailed texture with an emerald-like appearance. The eerie red eyes are placed well on the inside of the helm giving it a demon-like feel. DarkGenex will receive a trophy for his efforts.

3rd Place - Halloween Bandit 

The Halloween Bandit is the third placed entry in the Spooky Retextures 2012 Contest! This entry was created by NARHAR. This retexture employs the use of an effective, simple colour scheme with a detailed pumpkin shaded region with a gradient filled mouth area. A very appealing retexture. NARHAR will also receive a trophy for his efforts. 

Runners Up!

These two entries although not making it to the final three, showed true flare and creatly and thus deserve an honourable mention:

Viridiwrath: The Molded Onee

This retexture by twintowers4u92 makes use of a good colour scheme smooth texture. The slit like eyes add an extra spooky feel to the entry.

The Crown of the Overseer Wizard



Linking with the recent Overseer items released, NonstopEpic (one of our very own staff) has created a real aesthetically pleasing retexture. It's simple recolour of green and added 'Overseer' eyeballs are perfect for any Halloween occasion!


-Arbirator
Editor and Owner of  Roblox News

Retexture Reviews #1

User Item Reviews has taken a leap into a new idea. I will be making reviews on retextures. Seeming you can say so much about them, but not a lot about other user items. For now on there will only be Retexture Reviews.

 The hat that intrigued me the most that was creative and showed so much detail was of the original Chicken Suit. But there's a twist. This hat is a zombified version of the Chicken Suit. Zombie Chicken Suit is an amazing retexture and the artist behind this retexture is warturtle2000. He's a bit of a retexturer, and a darn good one. He took time to make the chicken look historical, yet attractive. From the color to the detail. It just makes you feel like Roblox is still there.

Few people, like warturtle2000, put effort into making the game we all love bearable and puts the meaning to the word creative. A word Roblox was based off of. The hat itself is very creative, and shows skill.The "X" for eyes gives it the historical look as do the bullet holes. The greenish beak stitched on makes the hat blend with the skin tone it has been given.

Well done warturtle2000 and good luck in the future with more hats.

Build A Hideout and Fight RANT Review

Every once in a while you build something that could have been good. Then you dig a tiny bit below the surface and realize that it's really REALLY. Stupid. Then you look back at what you have and think "Well, it's too late to fix everything and I don't want to start over, so I might as well advertise it!" Then, miraculously your really stupid uncreative idea becomes #1 on the games page.

Gameplay 2/10
The basic goal of the game is to kill people. At least, that's all I really understand. You don't even get money for killing people, you get money by being in the game for a certain period of time. You get no weapons to start and no forcefields upon spawning which allow enemies to sit there and laugh at you while they kill you instantly upon entering the game. The "Building" part of the game is based off of the Welcome to ROBLOX Building game which is okay I suppose.

Effort 1/10
Not much effort. The whole building thing is copied from Welcome to ROBLOX. There's a gun shop but half of the weapons don't work. Nothing else is really there.

Creativity 1/10
Tons of these places. This idea isn't new or exciting and there's nothing in it at all that changes anything.

Overall 1.5/10

Suggestions

•  Have more distance between the baseplates.
• Add terrain between them
• Give a forcefield on spawn
• Fix the broken weapons
• Give me a cookie whenever I join

  If you want your place reviewed simply contact Banjobug on twitter or send me a private message on ROBLOX. The next post could be about your place! I'll be glad to give you ideas on your place and help make it better. Also, if you find a place that is absolutely awful and on the front page send me a PM and I might make a RANT about it!

Also, you should follow me on twitter even if you don't have a RANT or review request! Sometimes I invite my followers to go to places with me to help review them.

Place Reviewed: Build a Hideout and Fight
Reviewed by: Banjobug    

Gift Guesses Day 12: The Final Gift!

The Gift of Sinister Ascension is the 13th and final Halloween gift released this month and was priced at R$31,000 in reference to the date All Hallows Eve falls on. With only 526 sales, the gift is the rarest out all 13 gifts.

1. Similar to last year's Gift of the Dominator, the sinister gift's description reads 'This gift contains one of three things - a domino crown, a dominus or a flock of bats.' However, there is one small difference; the Domino Crown is listed first on the sinister gift whereas it featured second last year. The Dominus Messor was inside last year's 13th gift and thus leads us to believe whatever it listed first is most likely in the gift: a Domino Crown.

2. If you count the number of bats printed on the gift's design, you will find that there are the same number of bats are there are dots on the Domino Crown. Thus supporting the idea of a new Domino Crown inside.

3. Further asserting this theory is an interesting development on the forum owned by John Shedletsky, called 'Ironnoob'. On the ROBLOX section of the forum, a user named SharpTH - a well known ROBLOXian, posted a cake hat he had produced with 3DS Max (3D modelling software). He then went on to show John Shedletsky a new Domino Crown hat he had made, complete with a new mesh and texture. The pictures of which can be seen below:

Black Iron Domino Crown designed by SharpTH

The real interesting part however, is what John Shedletsky did next. On the second page of the Ironnoob thread, he posted:




This proves that John did indeed acquire the files for the Black Iron Domino Crown so ROBLOX artists could upload it to the catalog and use it as a gift. He mentions that he had been meaning to make one more for a while; so Halloween would be a perfect time to release this item in the form of the 'big gift'.

This pretty much solidifies the rumours surrounding the Sinister Gift and it's contents, highlighting the fact that the Black Iron Domino Crown is the most likely item to come out. Bear in mind, this is not a retexture - it is a completely new, slick mesh with no parts in the middle joining the three domino sections.

What ever is inside the gift, it is not set to disappoint  So let's all sit back and wait for the mystery item to finally be revealed!

Thank you everyone for following our Gift Guesses series this Halloween. It's been fun writing all these sets of predictions for the gifts. Please leave suggestions and comments below so we may provide even better information next time around. Thanks!

-Arb

Gift Guesses Day 11!

The Gift of Korbloxian went offsale yesterday and was the last available Halloween gift to purchase this year. The gift was priced at R$1000.

1. The gift's description reads 'Korbloxians are mean. They don't give gifts. So I'm not sure how much you'll like what's in there.' This could suggest the fact that the item inside the gift is unusual or unexpected. In the classic ROBLOX fashion the gift may likely be the opposite of what the description leads us to think. The gift will quite possibly be a very desirable item such a powerful Korblox gear.

2. From the gift's design, we can cleary spot the claw and the feet of some kind of bird petruding out of the gifts airholes. These air holes suggest there is some kind of animal or pet inside thus reinforcing the idea of a bird gear. However, the beak and claw of the bird have a sort of undead style to them, hinting that the gear inside may be made up of bones or not part of the living.

3. The gift box is quite small, however it's R$1000 price tag sugests that while the gift may be small in size, it makes up for it in usefulness or power - it could be some kind of small bird that circles around your character and defends you from your foes, similar to the phoenix gear released a month ago.

4. In-game, the gift box is called 'SkeleBirdPresent' reasserting the theory mentioned above that the item inside is some kind of undead bird, either one sitting on your shoulder as a hat, or a defensive gear that flies above your character.

Overall: For the price of R$1000, you should be expecting a high powered bird pet that will aid you in battles much like the phoenix gear. Provided our predictions are correct, then it is definitely worth the money.

-Arb

Programming: Is it Skill or Knowledge?

This is a kind of questiony/answery post. I'm investigating scripting. I am assuming that a lot of you who are reading this now know what scripting means; so I'm going to get on with the post.

It's been debatable by so many people whether being able to write code is an art or knowledge, and if you say "Oh anybody can learn programming". You're wrong. Because my Nan can't even change her home page, she's only 70. But lets get on.
    Knowledge and skill are completely different things. It's like being able to draw, it's not Knowledge, it's a talent you, and you alone were born with. For example, I'm awful at drawing, but my sense of Art is on the computer with Photoshop.

After reading that, what are your thoughts?

I mean, scripting could be knowledge, you learn it, you're not born knowing how to program, are you? But then again, you're not born knowing 1+1. Now you could work that out with your eyes shut. It's like saying that Maths is a skill. Or is it?

Maths has been an ancient subject because it's main, core. You can't have a planet without a core, you can't have a human without a heart, you can't have a Sun without a center. All those examples are things those individual objects need, like us, we need a heart and a brain. Maths is core, and it's also very attendant to programming. I just got a level 7c in my Maths Test, which is on course for A+/A*. Other people in my class got level 5c. So how is it knowledge? It must be skill. But it could be knowledge...

Cleverness, remember, all of you are born with a certain span your brain can learn, as you start to get older, you start to get wiser and it's harder to learn. As I said before, my Nan can't change her homepage on Chrome (You grow older and can't learn that easily).

My verdict is, debatable.
You can't choose between them, because each and every one of those reasons is valid, in their own way. You can't just blame age on bad-grade, and you can't blame skill on high-grade. It's just, you, and it's up to our generation to sort out our Nan's homepage's.

You must remember, we were born into a world of computers, our parents were not (unless you're reading this in ten years time or so!).

Another question for you:
What is the fastest travel?
Social Network..
e.g Twitter. Each tweet (if you're where I am) travels from UK to Canada back to UK every tweet I send, that means it's travelling faster than Concorde, Boeing, and Airbus. It's travelling at the speed of light. And that's what we were born into... The speed of light...

Flingi2 Talks Newsy Stuff

Link to Steam Community: Click Me!

Who Killed Mario Review

umg hous y u so purty

I know what you're thinking already "Oh lovely, ANOTHER Who killed Mario obstacle course, like I haven't heard that before." but before you start going to my roblox profile and hurl fruit at my avatar's head hear me out. This one might actually be good. It's not like every obstacle course is dumb and unimaginative.
Gameplay 8/10
The basic goal of the game is to, of course, find out who killed Mario. The game starts you off with a fellow asking for your help, what I really like about this place is that this character actually follows you from course to course and supplies hints along the way. Also, the obstacles aren't boring "jump over lava. o wait, dis time u jump ova lava but itz in a chekerboard pattern omg origunal!" The jumping challenges are mostly about looking around a room and discovering how you could get out using the furniture. It can be very challenging sometimes. Other times include a Frogger style car and log course. There's also a unique course involving ghosts but I won't tell you about that one. Spoilers.
Effort 10/10
Way more effort went into this than into any other obstacle course I've played. It's not just a straight linear progression. There are twists and turns and puzzles and all sorts of cool stuff.
Creativity 7/10
There are thousands of Who Killed _____ Obstacle courses. This one has more unique challenges though.
Overall  8.5/10
Suggestions

• Add a pony challenge where you have to ride a unicorn over a rainbow.
• More challenges in general would be nice.

 If you want your place reviewed simply contact Banjobug on twitter or send me a private message on ROBLOX. The next post could be about your place! I'll be glad to give you ideas on your place and help make it better. Also, if you find a place that is absolutely awful and on the front page send me a PM and I might make a RANT about it!

Also, you should follow me on twitter even if you don't have a RANT or review request! Sometimes I invite my followers to go to places with me to help review them.

Place Reviewed: Who Killed Mario
Reviewed by: Banjobug    

Digital Halo Hat Review

Hello everyone! I'm back with a new hat review!

"A halo for the people of tomorrow." 

Mesh: The mesh of this hat looks cool from the thumbnail, but when it's on your character, it's cooler! It puts horns on the sides of your character's head, and the disc looking thing surrounded by the Halo hovers above your head. It's futuristic and cool! It's like it's from the game Halo (it is). There could be a bit more stuff on it though. 9/10.

Texture: The texture is extremely cool. The blue of the horns, halo and rim of the disc go extremely well together. The grey/silver on the disc looks very cool also. The shading of the hat in general makes it look very futuristic and cool. Needs a bit more grey/silver to even it out though. 8/10.

Public Opinions: Time to ask Twitter people for their opinions on this hat (If you'd like to participate in these responses, follow @OutspaceLeo on Twitter and I'll ask for opinions when I need them).

@Phantomazing: "The color scheme looks great. The electric blue goes well with the theme of the hat."

@Brassrhino: "It resembles something Lady Gaga would wear. Looks futuristic."

@PlusJack: "It looks not good."

So it seems 1 person liked it, 1 person didn't and 1 person didn't give an opinion. I'm gonna say... 7/10.

Overall: Overall, the hat is pretty cool, futuristic and has cool colours/shading. It gets a 8.6/10. 

Thanks for reading!

Follow me on Twitter: @OutspaceLeo

Link to hat: http://www.roblox.com/Digital-Halo-item?id=93072701

Gear Review: M1 Garand

Gear Review: M1 Garand

Hey Guys, Ulquiorra98 here, and today we'll be taking a look at the M1 Garand, ROBLOX's first-ever 13+ Gear item.

Abilities/Effects: The M1 Garand is a fairly decent gun when it comes to close-range combat, when one is jumping around the opponent, hoping to land a few shots on him. If lucky, you'll be able to finish him off after 3 well placed bullets. There is, however, another cool aspect to this gun. Supposing your enemy doesn't know where you are, and you have enough time to aim for a headshot, and then fire, you'll be happy to know he'll be knocked out in one shot. Headshots count as a 1-hit-KO for this weapon. You get 8 bullets per round, and after you've used them all up, it'll take around 8 seconds for another batch of ammo. So, I'd give this gun an 8/10 in this category.

Appearance: There are many things about this gun that appeal to my taste. First off, I'd like to say that the overall design of the gear is very realistic, from the polished wood finish to the small, metal trigger. One thing that ROBLOX has added to this gear is a recoil mechanism, which allows for a much more realistic experience. To keep track of your bullets, a green-and-black counter GUI pops up on the right side of the screen, which I find quite helpful. Yet another neat thing about this item would be the little scope-like-thing they've replace the cursor with, for improved accuracy. When equipping this gear, the neck of your ROBLOXian tilts down to meet the shoulder, and the hands move to hold the rifle in the way that one would hold a gun in real life. When firing, little golden shells pop out of the rifle, which, again, adds to this more life-like experience. There's no doubt that this gear deserves a 10/10 in this section!

Pricing: This gun hit the catalog at a price of R$1,000, which I'd say is a decent price for an item of it's 'caliber.' (See what I did there?) One of the reasons this item isn't selling as well as I expected it too, however, is because it is exclusive to members that are 13 or more years of age. It was the first gear to be released in such a manner, though I can't see what's so different about this gear that members that are 12 and under shouldn't be allowed to buy it. In this category, I'd give it a 9/10.

Overall: 9/10

Thanks for reading, and follow me on twitter! @Ulquiorra98RBLX

User Item Review #3 Spooky Spider Top Hat

As Halloween is approaching, so are the user item designs! Flooded the catalog, but one item stood out because it was unusual. It had a statement. It meant a milestone. The hat I am speaking of is Spooky Spider Top Hat.

The creator of the hat is SharpTH. It is common among Roblox hats that credit is not shared, because we don't care about credit(the makers), we care about the fact that it is shown to the world. He didn't care for credit, he just wanted it made.

SharpTH made the mesh in 3Ds Max, a widely known 3D rendering and development tool. He developed the texture, then shared it on a forum site created by Shedletsky named Ironnoob. Shedletsky noticed it, and he knew from that point on that it had a chance of it being made. He has been making more and more items with 3Ds Max, and inspired others too, including me. SharpTH made his stamp/mark in Roblox, and it's history.

The hat itself fits well with the style of Roblox. It shows how much Roblox has evolved through its share in the industry of gaming. It's design is simple. It shows something new. Something put together. Something Roblox stood for. It showed creativity. Simple words for a simple item. A milestone so big, yet so small within the community of Roblox. Most users of Roblox don't know about SharpTH's achievement. They just think it's another hat made by a Roblox admin. It's amazing how something so big is small to a community so big. Also note that in the pictures the hat is actually supposed to be a lot bigger then it is. Pics:

Roblox News Contest: Spooky Retextures!

Alas, it the time of year again when ghost and ghouls run amok and the undead rise again. Halloween is one of my favourite times of the year because of the delicious snacks and treats and of course it is the only real time when you can dress up and quite possibly look like a fool.

It is also the time of year when ROBLOXians happen to produce the best retextures so Roblox News will be hosting our second annual Halloween Retexture Contest! Retextures should be spooky or evil themed and sufficient to unnerve the hardiest of souls. The design could consist of skeletons, monsters, pumpkins, mummies - the Egyptian ones, bats, zombies, vampires, werewolves or anything else the sinister side of your brain can devise.

**CONTEST IS OVER**

1.) Create your retexture on ROBLOX and upload it as a model and give it a suiting title. If you are new retexturing, check out this helpful guide. In the model's description insert the tag: 'Spooky Retextures 2012'.

2.) Private message arbirator on ROBLOX your entry. Title your message 'Spooky Retextures 2012' and include a link to your entry in the main message. You can send up to 3 entries, but all must be sent separately.

3) We will group all the entries in a ROBLOX set. From there they will be judged by myself (arbirator), IBarrrageI and Darkfish900. The top three entries will receive a model trophy each and first place place will also receive R$500. 

Good luck to all!

Thanks,

-arbirator

Editor of Roblox News 

Dominus Messor: Now Limited!

Just earlier than 7:00 PM, EST, Dominus Messor went limited. This is the fourth dominus in the series and this dominus will, probably, make the least profit. There were originally a total 241 of the Gift of the Dominator sold. Now, considering that users on ROBLOX will probably get banned and some users might even have quit ROBLOX making the number lower, but this is still the least rare dominus making the sales MUCH, much lower than other dominuses. Fortunately, if you are an owner of this, you can expect to sell this for a strong 100k+ and probably more making this a great profit item. This post will be a review/profit sort of post so I won't be doing everything the same way.

Origin:

In this section, I will be answer very frequent asked questions such as, "Where did this come from?", "How did you get this gift?", "How come it says '0 sold' but people still own it?" Well, these questions are basically the same thing. An expensive gift was released during halloween (like they do every year now) and people were very skeptical to buy it. The description was very clear on what could've been inside the gift: "This gift contains 1 of 3 things: A Dominus, A Domino Crown, or a bunch of icky spiders." The gift was priced at 31k R$ and you can see it here. This is the most common dominus and the cheapest one you can get. Now, LMaDers will probably flame me for this, but in my opinion, it's the coolest looking one, but I'll talk more about that in the Appearance section.

Appearance:

Whaddya know? The appearance section! So I'm gonna talk about why I thought this was my favorite dominus. When this first came out, LMaDers called this the "moldy watermelon". Some LMaDers siggies were even, "There are three dominuses, and a moldy watermelon." Some of them might have been jealous because they didn't get it or just because it was too common. Either way, LMaDers didn't like it. I really like the way they put the red eyes in the middle, it gives a contrast to all the other dominuses. The colors really compliment each other nicely too. The mesh is just a dominus mesh, nothing special. It looks really nice and if I was giving rates for these sections, I'd give this one a 9/10, just because of the amount of hate it got when it first came out.

Tricks:

You may know this and you may not, but when the gift first came out ROBLOX leaked a dominus texture. I have the texture placed to the right and BobCowMan, a worker for SpeedySeat, put together the mesh and the texture. You can find that model here. Everyone in LMaD started complaining and several people didn't buy the gift because of this leakage. This may be a reason why people started to hate the messor because they didn't get it and because ROBLOX tricked them into not buying it.

Pricing:

Messor went limited on the 18th of October and I saw it first go limited when BrightEyes tweeted "Dominus Messor is now limited!" It scared me so I followed the link. There were no sellers at the time, but the first seller put his up for 9 Billion+. I do not remember who this was. There were many price wars and now the dominus is settled for 250k. Let's just say, if you bought this for the price of 31k when it came out of the gift, you will get a lot of good items and trades from this. I'm guessing (don't count me on this) that after Halloween, this will drop about a good 50k just like Darkseed will.

Well, that wraps up another hat review for me! I'd like to make one more announcement. I have changed my twitter username to prevent irl friends from finding my ROBLOX account so now I'm located at @LeDubstepMixr! Be sure to follow so you'll know the latest on any Catalog Review!

Epic Sword Fighters Review

Sword fighting is probably one of the most commonly used things in the history of ever. Just about every group training you'll ever go to will have something about swords in it. Unlike the other classic brickbattle tools the sword has been put into tons of places simply because it's so great. So anyway, on with the review.

Gameplay 8/10
The basic goal of the game is to own everyone else. There's a store system with a ton of unique items. My personal favorite is the Attack Noobs tool that summons a large army of tiny noobs that catch on fire if they're hit with a sword. There are others that allow you to summon a duplicate of yourself and switch positions with it to confuse the enemy. Others give you a lunge that makes you go faster. However, if you die you lose all your tools. You get ten points for each kill.
Effort 8/10
Each map looks really pretty and the swords are all different and special in their own way. In layman terms. "OMG IT LOKZ SO PURTY I LUV IT CUZ ITS NIC AND STUF!!!1one11!one!1eleven"
Creativity 6/10
There are bajillions of places like this. Don't even get me started on it. However, I haven't seen these kinds of swords though so that's good.
Overall 7/10
Suggestions

• More maps
• Unicorn sword: A sword that is a unicorn. 'Nuf said.
• Combo system. For each kill you get in a life the amount you the multiplier goes up. Ex: 10:20:40:80:160 etc. 

 If you want your place reviewed simply contact Banjobug on twitter or send me a private message on ROBLOX. The next post could be about your place! I'll be glad to give you ideas on your place and help make it better. Also, if you find a place that is absolutely awful and on the front page send me a PM and I might make a RANT about it!

Also, you should follow me on twitter even if you don't have a RANT or review request! Sometimes I invite my followers to go to places with me to help review them.

Place Reviewed: Epic Sword Fighters
Reviewed by: Banjobug   

Gift Guesses Day 10!

The Gift of the Fool's Moon is now on-sale for 300 robux. Most people are predicting something werewolf-related is coming out of it, and I'll explain why.

1. Werewolves are said to transform into wolves when they see the full moon. This gift looks like a chunk of the moon attached to a box. Knowing this fact, many believe the gift is werewolf themed.

2. The gift is a bit small in game, not that big. I'd bet that whatever is in this gift is good, but not super great.

3. The description says, "What fool dare venture outside when the moon is full?" Now, the only halloween-related thing I can think of off the top of my head to answer this riddle is a werewolf.

4. It is likely to be some kind of werewolf head or perhaps a elixir that transforms you into a werewolf for a short period of time - granting you extra strength and speed perhaps.  

5. It could also a werewolf pendant, which was apparently leaked by an anonymous user - this is unverified claim however. 

Overall: It's going to be some decent werewolf-themed item. For a price of R$300 - don't expect too much.

- NonstopEpic, Catalog Manager

Gift Guessers Day 9!

So when I first saw this new Sorcus Gift, my first reaction was "ROBLOX  DOES GIFT SEQUELS NOW?!" and this gift really caught me by surprise. Now, from reading NonstopEpic's first guessing post, I'm pretty sure we'd all know there would be a troll gift this year, but I didn't actually think this gift would get published. But what do you know, they make a sequel to one of the best Halloween gifts ever! Now this gift is priced at a cheap 707R$ and you might be wondering, why 707? What's so significant about 707? Well, actually, if you flip 707 upside down, it creates the acronym, LOL, and we all know what that Sorcus is a troll. Already 900 have been sold and if you're wondering if you should buy this, then take my opinion and minimize this tab, and go get the gift right now and then continue reading.

1. Now if you read the description that clearly states "There is definitely not an office chair in here. Not even a little chair." then we can probably assume there'll probably be a chair in here but seeing that ROBLOX already released a "chair" hat, I don't think the chances are very likely. But knowing last year's gift, and knowing our favorite admin and troll, Sorcus, we can't really trust this description.

2. This texture is completely filled with little box troll faces. There really is nothing special about the texture except the fact that there are millions and millions of trollfaces but we already know that Sorcus is a troll and whatever comes out of here is something we won't be expecting.

3. I took the word "surly" into dictionary.com and this is what I found: apparently, surly means unfriendly or hostile (what don't we know about Sorcus) and rude and bad-tempered.

4. I think we should completely disregard the shape of the box because in Sorcus's gift last year, we all expected some bridge or sword or gear of some sort to come out because of the shape but what we got was this pretty funny but awesome trollface. We could be expecting a mask again of some meme or we could also be expecting a gear (because Sorcus specializes in the gear department) that could be like this gear. 

Summary: Like I said before, if you still haven't bought the gift, I highly suggest that you go buy it right now because Sorcus isn't likely to let us down with a bad gift and seeing that this gift is at a low 707R$ and not a 1000R$ like last years was, this is the perfect gift to buy this year! We could be expecting another troll gift such as a troll mask of some meme or a gear or maybe, if the description proves itself, we might even get another chair hat/gear! Why not? But please, take my opinion and buy this now, or you'll regret it.

If you want more info on what I'm writing about, be sure to follow me on twitter @alexkylerock!

Gift Guesses Day 8!

Today the 'Gift of the Cauldron Born' went on sale for R$250. It will go off sale in around 8 days.

1. First of all, the name of the gift and the shape gives us an indication of what the theme of the item inside is likely to be. From the 'cauldron' we can obviously deduce that some kind of witches item is inside. This could include a broomstick, a new witch hat or perhaps some kind of potion which grants your character extra abilities. It could also be a new cauldron - an item that we haven't seen for a while. 

2. The description reads 'Ingredients - 3 cans Witch's Brew, 1 can Bloxy Cola, 1 Haunted Cheeseburger. Mix thoroughly and heat with transumute ray gun'. For those of you don't know, Bloxy Cola and Witch's Brew are classic drink items ROBLOX released way back in 2009. The transmute ray gun was a gear released this month as a Halloween themed Game Card exclusive. The description could suggest that some kind of new drink may come out of this - a concoction of the drinks listed. It also reinforces the prediction that it could be a witches potion.

3. The horned skulls on the gift's texture could indicate that the gift has an item in that is linked with the un-dead. Perhaps it it some sort of skull hat or an un-dead themed potion. It could also be an image of some kind of demon or monster - possible a horned helmet inside.

4. As for the gift box, is is fairly large so it could well contain an actual cauldron or something of equal size.

5. In game, it is simply called 'CauldronPresent' which again suggests it could be an actual cauldron gear. It gives us no further clues however.

Overall: For the affordable price of R$250, it is definitely worth purchasing this gift as it likely to be some kind of gear, i.e a potion or a cauldron.

-Arb

Gift Guesses Day 7!

Well, first off I would like to apologize for not making a post in a while school has been insane!  Anyways this is my first gift guess so, lets see how it goes!

 Does everyone remember our Gift of the Count's Coffin and our Gift of the Jack-O-Lantern Matryoshka? Well both of those gifts have gone off-sale which means they could open today or any day now, yesterday Outrageous Gift of the Undead went on sale for 500 robux but its OBC only. My prediction: A zombie related package like the one that came out of last year’s zombie gift.

1. The description says, "What have the dead to give to the living?" It's hints that it’s going to be some zombie related item.

2. Now, if my predictions are correct and this is a zombie package, ROBLOX already made one that came out of last year’s Opened Cursed Gift of Ramses II gift, it wasn't a big fail... I mean the package that came out of it was decent but it could have been better. I’m not sure how a package can fit into a gravestone shape though so this also could be a gravestone that stands on your head.

3. In Studio, it’s just a plain headstone with a green ribbon tied on and around it. Something decent will come out of this.

4. As for size, it's medium sized with an average price so something pretty nice could come out of this.

Overall: I suggest all OBC member buy this gift because it could be a package or a cool hat inside plus it’s only 500 robux.

Like what I write? Follow me on twitter @Darkfish900

Gift Guesses Day 6!

Today the 'Gift of Turbo Vision' was released. It is priced at R$500 and will go offsale in around 7 days. The gift is exclusive for TBC members (OBC members can also buy it), and sticks to the pattern of BC, TBC, and OBC gifts like last Halloween. 

1. The description reads 'Haunted Hill contains more secrets than initially thought....' which could suggest that the item inside could be some kind of unexpected item. The scheming mind of Brighteyes has been known to trick us before, so that even though the gift is covered in eyes something even more sinister comes out of the gift. The description is in reference to 'House on Haunted Hill' an American horror film made in 1959. The film is about an eccentric millionaire who invites five people to a party thrown for his fourth wife in his rented house. Each guest is promised $10,000 if they stay the night and are each given a pistol for 'protection'. The guests meet their demise to gunshots and acid. The film is full of skeletons, apparitions and ghosts - some themed goodies that may come out of this gift. 

2. The eyes petruding from the gifts mesh highlight that the gift is 'eyeball' themed and could contain the latest new version of an 'eye' hat. 

2. Inside the TBC exclusive gift of last Halloween was a Werewolf package. Perhaps this year the BC gift collection will all contain packages. A theory from TheEasterZombie is that the gift will contain another Overseer package, possibly similar to 'The Overseer' body. It could also be a Crimson Catseye package - either a retexture of the Overseer, or a whole new mesh.   

3. In Studio, the gift is simply named 'ClawedBox' adding no extra clues to what could be in it.

4. Regarding size of the gift box, it is fairly average sized, so this may lead a clue to the size of the item within, it may not.

5. Supposedly, an anonymous user has leaked a piece of eye wear called 'X-Ray vision' which would link to the eyeball theme of the gift. 

Triva: The Gift of Turbo Vision is the second gift to be released this year with an eyeball theme. 

Overall: At the reasonable price of R$500, it is a definite buy for any avid TBC or OBC member. It is likely to contain some kind of eye hat, either an actual eyeball or a pair of shades. It is also equally likely that the gift will contain some kind of package like the year before. 

-Arb

Gift Guesses Day 5!

Hello everyone, we have another Gift Guessers "episode" - the Stylish Gift of Skeletons.

TIME TO GUESS GIFTS.

Well, it does look a bit stylish I guess.

Anyways; 

Theory 1. The description. "Sixty-six stylish skeletons skulk sinisterly.". Hm. Maybe there's a hat like the one a couple Christmases back; the Grotesque Pile of One Hundred Thousand Eyeballs, but instead, it could be the Pile of Sixty-Six Skeleton Heads? I'm not sure.

Theory 2. The name says it's "Stylish", so maybe what's inside could be something stylish? Sunglasses? Headphones? Neon items? Scary neon items? Neon Slenderman? 

Theory 3. The gift itself. It's orange with green and some black. So it could be Something orange, green and black. That's kinda a bad observation, but hey, we're just making guesses here.

Theory 4. It could be a black skeleton package ? Or maybe a skeleton body with sunglasses, hipster-ish, stylish colours and other stuff? Not sure.

5. A skeleton confetti cannon. This could shoot colourful skeleton heads.

That's all I've got, I recommend buying it, for 500 R$ it's bound to be something good. 

Also - (off topic, but still) my Twitter username is now @OutspaceLeo. I changed it from @BillCheesey5 (that account is now an alt) because I felt I needed a change. Anyways; Thanks for reading. Follow me on Twitter if you'd like!

-Leo/BillCheesey5/Outspace

What has Roblox done right, what has it done wrong.

Let's all be honest here, we all love Roblox dearly (or at least I'm inferring that from your reading of this Roblox fan-blog), however, we all know things that Roblox has done wrong or has yet to accomplish. You might not see some of the things I see in this article, and I might not notice the ones you do, so please leave a comment if you want to make me aware of something I didn't talk about.

Of course, before we talk about the goods and bads of Roblox, I have to mention that this is my personal opinion and that you do not have to agree on it (I hope you don't take my word 100%, I don't want to brain wash you). Also, I'll be talking about the pros and cons from a semi-experienced Roblox player's point of view, so you won't see things such as "this game has lots of lag."

It is courtesy to take a look at the good side before I dive into the criticisms. So let's get started!

As you all know, Roblox is a place for kids and teenagers to both have fun and express their creativity, programming skills, design skills, and economic skills. And Roblox nails these quite well, on a basic level at least.

With regards to creativity, there seem to be two types that exist in the game. One which is outside the game, like customizing your character, and one in game, for example, building a dream house. While in-game creativity can be expressed well because Roblox does not have too much competition (Minecraft does not allow scripting), the out of game one is not done well.


Character creation and customization alone is not enough to satisfy my personal hunger for expression. Let's compare this to a similar game (on the "out of game" side at least) Neopets. 

Many of you might have heard or even played this virtual pets game. Although it is aimed at young kids with its adorable art style and cutesy flash games, there is a large adult community present (I would estimate 8-12% of the population is ages 25+). 

The reasons for this could be many things, however, I am here to examine what this game has done right that Roblox has not done. For one, Neopets actually supports communities outside of the actual game; meaning that fanblogs (like this one), forums, and many user designed things actually get frequent spotlights to bring more attention to them. Roblox's not supporting of user-generated content outside of the official game means people are more likely to quit the game, as they have no strong community to fall back on (I don't consider groups strong communities).

Character customization is equally strong in both games, just with different styles. This is one part Roblox has done right: regularly releasing hats. 

The next part I feel Neopets has done that would make Roblox a better game is the economy. For one, Neopets has a stock market, but I don't feel it would be a great addition to Roblox anyway because of the randomness and easy profits (inflating the economy). 

Preview of crafting from
Roblox's blog.

But one things that does need to be in Roblox is the addition of "tradeable" consumable items that can be redeemed for "non-tradeable" hats/gears. This would add tons of dynamic economical shifts to Roblox (something it lacks dearly) and make playing with the economy more interesting and ultimately more profitable. 

The above could be solved with the introduction of crafting though. Soon™

Last thing that Neopets does is having a great deal of community interaction/involvement. It frequently hosts art spotlights, HTML spotlights, etc. while Roblox has NONE of these. The lack of these does nothing good to hold the community together, instead, it makes the community feel non-existent, void, empty.

Overall, I think Roblox is a really strong game that benefits from its unique game engine. However, it really needs more features added  to improve the community around it as well as the economy that drives it.

-yomamadude6

edit: Spelling

P.S. More place reviews will be coming ;)

Pac-Man Place Review

Pac-Man is one of the oldest and most easily recognized games ever created. This game was so popular they even made a TV show out of it. So it's no wonder someone decided to put that popular game into a ROBLOX place. But was it done well? Let's find out.
Gameplay 8/10
One player spawns as Pac-Man, all the others spawn as ghosts with varying colors. The ghosts' goal is to stop Pac-Man from getting all the yellow pellets scattered throughout the maze. Pac-Man's goal of course is to collect all the yellow pellets in the maze without getting caught by any of the ghosts. This can be almost impossible. In  one server there were around 4 ghosts to one Pac-Man. This may be what it was like in the original game, but those were computer AI, these ghosts are intelligent (in most cases) people that know how to trap you. You can also get certain power-ups that makes it so that if you touch the ghosts they get transported back to the center. This only lasts a few seconds so use it wisely.
Effort 8/10
A lot of effort went into this game. There are three different maps and the scripts that were used to make this game must have taken a while but this game could still use a lot more.
Creativity 8/10
Yeah, he based it off of an existing game, but not all that many ROBLOX Pac-Man games are all that good.
Overall 8/10
Suggestions

• Keep a limit on how many ghosts can be in at a time (3?)
• Have some kind of store where you can improve your Pac-Mans speed and lives with the points you get while playing the game.
• Make one of the ghosts a large fluffy unicorn and if it touches Pac-Man he explodes into a bunch of rainbow confetti.

 If you want your place reviewed simply contact Banjobug on twitter or send me a private message on ROBLOX. The next post could be about your place! I'll be glad to give you ideas on your place and help make it better. Also, if you find a place that is absolutely awful and on the front page send me a PM and I might make a RANT about it!

Also, you should follow me on twitter even if you don't have a RANT or review request! Sometimes I invite my followers to go to places with me to help review them.

Place Reviewed: Pac-Man
Reviewed by: Banjobug  

Sword Of The Behemoth - a Walmart Exclusive

For this gear review I was looking for catalog exclusives available for Halloween. Firstly, I just typed in "gamestop" in the search nothing that cool came up. I then typed in "walmart" and this is what came up. It  it had just came out and looked pretty awesome, but then again; what WalMart exclusives aren't awesome?

Abilities/Powers: 10/10

When you left click with this sick looking sword, you basically get two different slashes. The first one starts on your left shoulder and slashes down towards your right waist. The second slash starts behind your head and moves in a circular fashion around your body down to your left waist. Both of them are fatal strikes. They do strike slowly though. The sword doesn't have any "special" abilities but it is very very powerful dealing about 50 damage per hit. I was able to wipe out an entire zombie army and the creator of the zombies with this one sword and leaving me with more that half of my health left over. It would be quite awesome if they made it so that when you hit "q" it makes an earthquake or something of that relevance. One really cool thing that I noticed was that it glows. It glows very slowly. The brightness of it just changes slightly but it is there.

Mesh: 8/10

Now, in the pic above, it may look quite small but don't let this fool you. When holding this "behemoth" in game, it is about the size of a regular ROBLOXian. I don't really think you could call this a sword really. It looks more like an "ax" of some sort. It has a very unique mesh, and it is unlike a Periastron or a Katana. I don't really have much more to say about the mesh. It's just really big.

Texture: 9/10

Now if you look really closely inside the ax (I'm calling it an ax now) you can see very intricate designs. I can't really make out what these are and I'm too lazy to put it into ROBLOX Studio and take a closer look but if you want to, be my guest. Like I said before, you can see a slight glowing effect on it and it gives it a very deadly effect. I kinda wished there would be more color, like some brown or something, but the black gives it a very cold and deadly feeling to it.

Outfits: 8/10

I was just lucky enough to be wearing something that fits this sword's colors. If you like wearing black and white, then I have nothing more to say to you. This is obviously the sword for you to use. I think rainbow would also look good with this sword but I'm not sure and I won't try. But I don't think many other colors will look nice with this. The colors are kinda dull and cold but some of you may like it like that.

User Feedback: I'm going to skip this part because I know that if I ask LMaD what they think of it they'll be all like "Not limited, don't care"

Suggestions:

1. Add some more effective colors

2. Make an earthquake ability

3. Tell WalMart to make their BC Cards cheaper so I can buy this.

Well that wraps up my WalMart game exclusive gear. Feel free to follow me on twitter @alexkylerock to hear the latest on any RN updates!

Darkseed Goes Limited!

After much waiting, Darkseed the Fallen has finally gone limited! Darkseed is a classic recolor of the original ROBLOX pumpkin that is dark black and eerie purple. Every year in October it has gone on sale for 100,000 tix (approximately 10,000 robux) and Darkseed usually causes a huge Trade Currency crash, as everybody wants it.

However, there was much debate as to whether the Darkseed would actually go on sale again this year. Owners of the Darkseed were afraid that if it were on sale again, that it would hit 1,000 sales and not be rare. BrightEyes did indeed say last year that Darkseed will go limited in 2012, and it did. It only has 872 sales, and it is worth a lot right now because it's Halloween season and it's a classic. Also, it's the fact that everyone likes it. It originally sold for around 50,000 robux, but has dropped around 25,000 to 30,000 robux.

 You can read chubbs21's review of it here, that I 100% agree with. I'd suggest that if you own the Darkseed, sell it now before it drops after October, or trade it for something classic and a little bit higher in value.

- NonstopEpic, Catalog Manager

Gift Guesses Day 4!

The Gift of the Ghastly Ghostie has now opened to reveal the Ghost Tie as predicted. The tie has a nice, simple design - but we will get on to that later in a separate post. Today the 'Gift of Clawed Combat' was released. It is priced at R$1000 and will go offsale in around 6 days. It is likely to be a Werewolf themed item due to the use of the word 'clawed'.

1. The description reads 'They're just dying to get out....' which could suggest that the item inside could be some kind of creature i.e a Werewolf. This could imply that the item is a pet gear item - like some of the recent gears we have seen. 

2. The scratch marks on the gifts texture and it's name could indicate that a pair of claws gear could be inside.

2. If you think back to last year's Halloween, another similar gift to the Clawed Combat gift was released; it was named the 'Cursed Gift of the Full Moon'  and contained Leader of the Pack - a Werewolf package. Considering that a werewolf package has already been a gifted item, it is unlikely to be repeated again. This is due to the fact that ROBLOX stated that that they will never do the same gift twice. 

3. In Studio, the gift is simply named 'ClawedBox' adding no extra clues to what could be in it.

4. Regarding size of the gift box, it fairly large and wide. This could indicate something big is coming out of this gift. 

5. Supposedly, an anonymous user has leaked a wolf/werewolf pendant which would likely come out of this themed gift - this not verified however.

Overall: At the fairly expensive price of R$1000, it is likely that the gift will have something large in it. With the gifts name and texture, it is very likely the item inside will be Werewolf themed. It could be a pendant, wolf pet or maybe even a pair of claws.

-Arb