Roblox Outlines: Not-so-clever

As many of you may have been notified; reminded of, ROBLOX have now implemented an outline for every brick and terrain on the graphical side of ROBLOX. These updates can, to an extent, annoy many of us users who prefer the normal, signature style of the graphics ROBLOX possesses.

ROBLOX have been trying to make a style of graphics that gives the site a unique 'identity'. For example if you see an advert on the Television you would instantly tell it is ROBLOX because the graphics; style is the normal look you are used to. In my point of view, the new outlines aren't a necessary update; I could think of many updates that could take it's place: fixing the dynamic lighting & shadow lag; a new personal messaging system; fixing the online system so that as soon as the person signs off, their status is set to offline. Things like that are needed, unnecessary outlines that are completely irrelevant to the classic style of ROBLOX are certainly not needed.

Here is a picture of this not-a-clever-move update:

As you can see, this update is a lot of the time unnoticeable; on this picture I enlarged it so if you look carefully - you can see the outline. Personally I think it's like something that ticks away in your sub-conscious, but either way it will still get on your mind. Sometimes it is a lot bigger and a lot more noticeable. That's why many people are fed-up with updates that aren't helping us view things on a different level.

While I can see why they added this aesthetic update - individuals can clearly identity the graphic style as being a ROBLOX game, ROBLOX is about letting the users build whatever they want. Restricting the style of bricks is counter-intuitive to this ideal. Plus, if you're going to put the time into making a visual upgrade to the game to create a form of site identity - at least make it noticeable (to, you know... identify the product).

I went on Trade Hangout, and I went to the kestrel shop. When you are looking at a plastic building or a building with Block Meshes in it, it is very well visible; I do not find it possible to ignore the lines, it's like my fathers HDTV, it has a line through the middle of the screen.

Thanks for reading my view and rant about the new ROBLOX outlines.

~Zakary Wilson

Edited by arbirator

Taking A Look Into The Dynamic Shadows On GameTest2

Well, yes they've been spoken about, yes they're epic, yes they're dynamic shadows/global shadows. The shadows are beautiful, and very, very appealing. Me and our project coder, Zinc707 couldn't stop looking at how amazing those shadows were on Skype. We just were so amazed and we both can't wait to have it on our games.

The global shadows are doing quite well, and the picture above is my step into crossroads to check them out. They are amazing. I tried 2 of my own games out with the Dynamic Lighting on, and they looked perfect; I wouldn't have wanted better. In conjunction with the ambient shadows released 2 years ago, they make the game so real, it's unbelievable. Although we can't see the ambient shadows in Studio, we can see the global shadows, and they make a real effect with floating objects. Here's a picture of my game, "Quest" with the global shadows enabled.

If you look at the floating cave on the left, the dynamic shadows have really taken an effect on it, and not only does the shadows appear, the game seems to have a very effective bloom. And I asked Zinc707 whether the shadows needed increased GPU capability, and he said "no, surprisingly they can run on lower-capable GPUs too". Maybe, with any luck those who can't run Ambient Shadows can run Dynamic. Can't get any better. Best. Shadows. Ever.

Recently, Merely tweeted a photo of a game with Dynamic Shadows, I went to that game and it indeed looked wonderful! I got a screenshot too!

If you look carefully, they really do take an effect on things a few meters off of the ground, which makes them look really good when you character views them.

I praise ROBLOX for this, and I cannot wait until they bring them out to us on ROBLOX.com.

If you would like to view them early, go to gametest2.roblox.com.


Thanks for reading!
-Zakary99

On iOS, ROBLOX opens all games to those without membership

You've been living under a rock for the past month, Roblox has recently released its mobile version onto the iOS platform and you can get your hands on it if you have a iPad 2+, iPhone 4+, or a iPod Touch 5th generation. You can download it for free by searching the word "Roblox" in the App Store.

The app allows you to join games which are normally only accessible on a PC and play with your friends. However, since it is on a mobile device, it has some limitations as far as performance and the complexity of games go. Shedletsky recently posted on IronNoob about this and said that the mobile version can handle up to "15k non-moving blocks and  200 moving blocks, otherwise performance will suffer."

All this sounded good until the release day came. Roblox announced that NBC members will only be able to play 8 selected games. This surprised me very much as they have never attempted to limit the games users would be able to play (except Builder's Club only places, which were a failed experiment) and them doing it on the iOS just seemed to be really out of the ordinary.

Good new came in today though, as Roblox just made a blog post announcing their decision to allow everyone to play every game. I'm actually really surprised by this considering their past actions regarding "BC test features" *cough* packages *cough* which still have not been released to the general public even though they have clearly been out of testing.

For me, this is less of an issue about being to play games on the go, but more about Roblox's bettering of their business practices. If you remember from some time ago, a user accessing the "Upgrade" tab of the Roblox site would have the cheapest option of Builder's Club hidden. And they would have to press a tiny button to reveal it. This really showed their greed as they hid the cheapest membership option, driving the less knowledgeable folks towards more expensive options they perhaps do not need. This was thankfully reverted.

They proved with this update that they are still a reputable company who actually keeps their consumers in mind, even if it is just once in a while. I applaud them for this and hope they continue to prosper.

-yomamadude6

Roblox pushes out new "featherweight" update, new era of Roblox?

As everyone who has ever played games on Roblox knows, the lag from a large amount of parts will drop your FPS like a brick dropping off of a building (get it?). However, that is all about to change as Roblox recently pushed out the new "featherweight" update which will render bricks much faster, giving a 10 to 20 time increase in performance.

The featherweight was recently hinted by ZolarKeth, co-creator of the famous zombie-survival RPG Apocalypse Rising, in a recent interview done by Roblox. If you remember a while back, Apocalypse Rising sported a larger map for a couple of weeks, however, the map was shrunken due to complaints from players not being about to handle the enormity of it. In the interview, ZolarKeth mentioned his plans for version 4.0 of his game: a better inventory system, vehicles, and "new scenery and points of cover to get behind, as well as more detailed trees and buildings."

What surprised me about that statement was that Gusmanak previously mentioned that he will not develop vehicles into the game due to lag issues, and that the only way for this addition to happen, Roblox had to dramatically decrease lag cause by parts. ZolarKeth's statement, however, mentions the addition of parts to add detail to buildings and terrain, in addition to vehicles. This hinted that the "featherweight" update was quickly approaching.

Preview of Apocalypse Rising Vehicles

Soon after on December 4th, Shedletsky (formerly Telamon) posted a thread on IronNoob (a Roblox forum) that showed his major FPS improvements when playing EBR's Block Town, all the way from 20 FPS to 300 FPS. A demo was also available to download.

At first, the demo of the "featherweight" update had many bugs, including disappearing meshes, not being able to work on some computers, headless Robloxians, etc. However, most have been ironed out for the live release of this update. The update works on all parts that are anchored, attached to an anchored part via welds, without meshes, are not made of the material "Corroded Metal." That means it will not work for meshed parts, but don't worry, Shedletsky confirmed the Roblox development team is working on it.

What Does This Mean for You?

Whether you like developing games or simply enjoying them, you can now do it more efficiently and at a higher graphical fidelity. Although the update did not directly improve the graphics by adding more shaders or better textures, it gives the content creator the option of using more parts. More parts = more detail = better looking games.

How Do I Take Advantage of the Update?

As a player, nothing much. But as a builder, there is much to do to optimize your place for the update. Here are a few questions I want you to answer.

1. Does your place primarily use bricks with "BlockMesh"?
2. Does your place use lots of "Corroded Metal" bricks?
3. Does your place have lots of unanchored parts?

If you answered "Yes" to question 1, I have a possilbe solution for you. You first need take out all the "BlockMesh" out of the bricks. Then, you can smooth out the ugly bevel edges using my tutorial and then even add a material to make it look better than before.

If you answered "Yes" to question 2, this is the solution. You could just replace the material to another material. Or you could make a texture of rust and put it on all your bricks, although it wouldn't be bumpmapped and wouldn't look so well. I recommend just sticking with it and waiting for an update to fix this.

If you answered "Yes" to question 3, there might be something you can do. If most of your unanchored parts are not moving and not attached to an anchored part, ANCHOR THEM! Quite simply really. If they need to be moving however, you have little you can do.

Have fun with a lag-free time playing the new Roblox update! And look forward to Apocalypse Rising v4.0 because it looks really fun.

-yomamadude6

New Profile Feature: User's Sets!

Recently, ROBLOX added a new section to the profile page: user sets! This shows a person viewing a user's page, which sets they own, but also which sets they are subscribed to.

This is a useful feature for seeing what models and scripts a person approves of. It can also show what game creators put into their places as some users compile models they have been working on, all in the one set.

When you go to a user's profile, by default it will show the sets they own:

You can then click 'View Subscribed' and it will immediately switch to the sets the user is subscribed to:

In my opinion it is a very useful feature and can be put to very good use; providing easy access to user models to help with their own games or to expand their own ideas.