New Site Theme Overview!

Hello readers, RayMan36 here with the reason I'm a god among men. I'm talking about the brand spankin' new Roblox site theme, which only 20% of the community has. There is a screenshot below:

I'm kidding.

Surprise!

Roblox News App for Windows 8.1 has been submitted to the Store. (ALPHA Version)

Player Points and Clan Points: The Issues

Player Points can be now seen on your profile.

Notice: Please observe that this article was written 4/28/14, since then, some updates have been made to Player Points.

Player Points and Clan Points are among the most recent updates to the ROBLOX site and platform. At first, the idea shined with a sort of potential - but the more that users like myself hear about the feature, the more we see this as being another failed project, a fad. At best, it could go the way of BC games, used solely for the abuse of making more TIX and out-casting the Non-BC members of ROBLOX from your game. The sad thing is: that for such an idea that may actually benefit the ROBLOX platform and game, this feature is already in it's death state. It is more than certainly on it's death bed, and the potential for it is slowly diminishing in value and interest. It's almost destine to reach a natural death, and here's why.

Roblox News Updates

Hello Employees,

I have not made a post in some time, and there has been a lot of changes here at Roblox News. Firstly, I would like to welcome all the new employees, congratulations on being selected to be part of the Roblox News team. I am writing this article to inform of you some upcoming changes and things you must follow when writing articles.

An Update on Due Articles

Dear ROBLOX News -

It's been about three weeks since my return. I spoke briefly with some admins before posting this rather irregular message.

I want to apologize to RN for several things, among the first is an article I promised to have out this week which I will not have time to immediately work on regarding to "The Most Anticipated Games of 2014."

I also want to apologize for a more than less informative 'teaser' (hardly informative and for decent reason) for a new series i'm working on via YouTube called 'choices' - and while I am still going to go ahead with it, I have recently decided to add more things, more additions to the film's composition.

I'm going to be soon writing a set piece of series on 'getting organized' not only on ROBLOX, but everywhere. It could have the potential to give some insight to your potential and work from someone who does a lot of it on a professional basis with hundreds of people daily.

With that said, most of the reason for this less than predictable delay is Averate, my online internet communicate for creatives, gamers, content producers, and more. It's a serious work in progress right now, but we've reached 50 registrants in a little under 48 hours and we're heading forward to get 100 very soon.


With all said and done, I won't promise a precise date of release for anything. But if you have any questions regarding my 'getting organized and creative' series, I will write it here and publish to other places.


Thanks and sorry again,
^Noah (itsfutur)
noah@studioare.net
+FUTURTOPIA
@futurtopia on Twitter

PhireFox's View on New Site Layout!

Hi there! Today I bring you a video from the well known ROBLOX machinima creator: PhireFox. In this episode, PhireFox discusses his view on the new site layout. The new site layout has been rolled out to roughly 1/10 of the ROBLOX community as the developers wish to gradually implement the new design, test for bugs and to receive valuable user feedback.




Thanks for watching and look out for more content from the PhireFox soon!

Disclaimer: Roblox News and PhireFoxRBLX are in partnership to provide dual content and promotion of each other's media. Video content was used with permission from the respective owner. The views discussed in the video are not endorsed by Roblox News and are solely PhireFox's personal views.

DevEx: The Problem

UPDATE 1: Since this has stirred some questions on Twitter I think it's time that I speak what i'm thinking since some people don't understand.
When I said, "do the math" I'm seeing users all over ROBLOX ignorant enough to change to OBC in what I find to be ROBLOX's greatest marketing ploy for my entertainment. These people don't have money, they aren't marketing games and to be honest, the only currency they get is their daily value of sixty-five ROBUX. They aren't going to achieve that minimal value that is required to get DevEx to affect them, and even if they got the one-hundred thousand ROBUX, they still would neglect to make any money should they had paid for OBC monthly, as they would make only one hundred dollars, and OBC/monthly for twelve months would be the equivalence to roughly two-hundred and forty dollars. So the moral of this story is, if you're genuinely wanting to make money on top of paying your OBC, I suggest LifeTime OBC and to make something that people will both love, and continue to invest in (aheheheh I could list a lot of people but lets just say; TheGamer101, TheAmazeMan, Merely, and of course, ROBLOX)
Hopefully that clears up some question.

-----

DevEx; a long awaited and much beloved idea presented by John Shedletsky in early 2013 on Twitter. The idea of course, being to give "good developers" a source of income to develop on the ROBLOX platform. I'll won't deny telling you that DevEx's hype was nothing more than a bunch of positive thoughts from people thinking it was going to be simple, and easy to make lots of money from ROBLOX. Except here's the catch.

It's not quite as good as it sounds.

DevEx is a great idea and the hype was well deserved until ROBLOX had brought the feature to a screeching halt with the statement that you must belong to OBC, a complete waste of money to even exchange for it; because if you did the math, one-hundred thousand ROBUX a year for some users can be great. But users buying OBC are spending twenty dollars a month. It's ROBLOX's genius way to take money from people that won't do the math in advance and find that if they only make one-hundred thousand a year, that the one-hundred will never balance the twenty dollars they pay monthly. So it's essentially the most genius marketing ploy I've seen from a children's game (despite the awful memberships and stupidity of the developers at Club Penguin; representing the second biggest joke in online gaming this year) that actually works. This is not only made for my own hilarity, it's made for ROBLOX's very own gain; and what's even better is that people that buy OBC just for this are never going to see a return, they'll only "feel" a return is made.

I took to the forums and asked some people some honest questions, and the smart minds of ATR spoke their own words. My question being why does the Developer Exchange only benefit users that make profit? Users that own huge clothing groups gain profit from the work of others. I won't list specifics or names because that wouldn't exactly be fair, but I think you get the point. There are people out there more talented than the people that make money. A good example would be Kestrel in this case. The operators will benefit more from this than the actual designers, won't they; and not just groups like Kestrel. Operators like Tiger and Kiwi will likely cash in just the same.

DevEx has the potential to be a great ROBLOX feature, but the issue with it is that it isn't open to talented individuals who are trying to build for their own audience. They're not being compensated for work that reveals the true spectrum of ROBLOX creativity, and once we reach a point where there is a way for the creative who aren't recognized to be compensated, we're going to see a completely different Developer Exchange, and some more extensive abilities for the unrecognized ROBLOX community to make real money from their ROBLOX work.

~ Darwin12

Price Floors: Combating Copying?

The latest update from the developers at Roblox is quite interesting. We've seen Roblox tinker with the economy before (Ie: Instituting game passes, allowing users to sell gear, trading currency/items etc.) That being said, ROBLOX has been very lenient in the past about what their users can and cannot do in terms of manipulating the economy. The latest update takes away some of that freedom by instituting a 'price floor' with the sales of clothing. This is an unwise update, as it will cause more harm than good. This update will promote pumping more Robux into the economy via users purchasing Robux, decrease visibility of clothing, and promote copying even further.

One of the principals of economics is inflation (Prices going up because there's more currency in the economy.) The clear and concise reason of Roblox implementing this update is because they want to increase revenue from users purchasing Robux. When a government (Take Roblox, for example) pumps currency into an economy, the value of that currency drops (This is known as inflation.) Inflation results in higher prices for goods, and the value of that currency dropping. This happened in Zimbabwe, when the government tried to pump money into the failing economy in an effort to fix it. The result was disastrous, the value of their currency dropped rapidly, and more money was pumped into the economy to try and fix it. This resulted in a viscous cycle, which is why Zimbabwe abandoned their national currency, and uses the currency from other countries. If the floor was set relative to the growth rate of Roblox, then there wouldn't be an issue.

One hundred billion dollars worth of Zimbabwe's currency is enough to buy three eggs.

The concept of how fast goods sell is based on something called price and demand (It's why the gas prices fluctuate randomly.) The higher the demand for an item, the higher the price. Less demand equals lower prices to try and drive demand. When gas isn't in demand, the price goes down. When gas is in demand, the price shoots up. Another factor (In my humble opinion) is visibility. If lots of people drive Ford's, the visibility of Ford's products increases, which results in more potential sales. If a lot of people are wearing a shirt in Roblox, they may say, "Hey, I like that shirt - I'm going to go in your inventory and buy it from whoever made it." With higher prices, it takes longer for users to purchase items, and users will likely hesitate and consider if the item is truly worth 25 days worth of login bonuses. This will decrease visibility for that item, and hinder sales overall (Which outweighs the benefits of increased profits.)

Copying is an issue that has plagued Roblox for a long time now (Copying of places, clothing, and models). The update is increasing the minimum that items have to be sold at - copiers that previously sold items cheap to make their items the obvious choice vs. the original creator selling it at a higher price have their potential revenue multiplied by a massive percentage. This will encourage copiers to steal clothing and sell at the new minimum, which increases their profits overall.

Some say that this update will bring higher quality items to the catalog, that it will discourage copying, or it will increase revenue.

@Rbx_tt911 Catalog assets will be of higher quality (possibly, it could go either way)
— zerois (@ZeroisRBLX) September 24, 2013

I agree there, people will obviously be more conscious with their money. However, I believe those higher quality items are going to be copied and sold at the minimum price.

@Rbx_tt911 no point in copying clothes anymore unless the original creator doesn't have BC
— Lilly (@lillyrblx) September 24, 2013

I disagree there, I believe copying will be increased due to the higher quality clothing being appealing to players (And the new price minimum being raised up.)

@Rbx_tt911 because it lets less people buy your assets in trade for a smaller revenue
— Cody Buchanan (@MetaSlunk) September 24, 2013

I partially agree, I think that the concept of supply and demand is going to come into play and reduce sales to the point of where creators are making less money vs. what they were previously making.

Roblox has an interesting idea about setting price floors to assist with the economy. However, there are far too many things that have to be set in place/corrected before price flooring can be implemented. It has potential, but for now, it's a bad idea that needs to be removed from the site until the other supporting factors are put into place.

The "Price Floor" Update: An Economist's Point of View

Hey, IBarrageI here.

With this new Price Floor update on Roblox, it's forced me to actually use my A-Level in economics to good use. Of course that's not a bad thing. (I think)

In this post I'll be looking at the benefits and drawbacks to this update, in a detailed and economic way. This means I'll be using a lot of words and confusing diagrams (All of which I'll be explaining as we go along). Sit sit back relax, and let me do all of the work.

First off, I'll say this right now. This is not all bad, despite the negative comments. The point of a price floor (Which is more commonly known as a minimum price) is to stop the demand of, lets say a high quality shirt, going down without as many competitors trying to under cut prices. Because, as a consumer, you are more attracted to lower prices it even doesn't matter if you're rich or not, because lower prices in a common consumer market, lower prices get more sales.

With low prices leading to more sales, this means that players who price their clothing according to quality, lose sales due to an amazingly high amount of cheaper competitors. The price floor acts as an equalizer.

The adding of a "Price floor" is actually something that is used in real life as a form of government intervention, an in our case, the government is ROBLOX.

Benefits

Despite the complaints, there are many benefits to this. But many of which are limited.

The Builders Club Incentive

Ok, this update is an incentive to purchase Builders Club. That fact is proven in the blog post about this update.
Although this might seem like a drawback at first, once I explain.

It may sound like an scheme set up by an evil corporation, but it is essentially a way to push users to experience the benefits of Builders Club. And believe me, there are plenty of benefits. This fact alone is one whole benefit.

The Leap into Graphic Design

Once again, this is a benefit about incentives. The increase of prices makes users want to make their own clothing. And for this, I shall explain with the power of diagrams.

The above diagram is one that shows how the market works under the price floor.

At the top of the diagram shows a gap, this is "excess demand", which essentially means, that there are people who want the clothing, but can't afford it or just don't want to purchase it for that price.

This excess demand is what makes people try to fill their own demand, this means more graphic designers.

This incentive to create is what will make players understand the true sense of inepenance. The added idea that there is no-one to undercut their prices is an added incentive to create their own content. Though, this of which requires builders club. Which will move me onto the drawbacks.

Drawbacks

There are quite a lot of drawbacks to this update many of which are already apparent.

Needing Builders club

Before, I mentioned that the incentive to buy builders club was a benefit. This time it's a drawback.

As everyone knows, Roblox is a free to play game (to an extent), and character customization is something any user can do. I'm sure many of you remember the first time you bought your first shirt. And probably buying a Visor or the free Red Roblox Cap, and getting a shirt to match. With this update, new users will be unable to experience much of the character customization due to the prices of everything being out of their reach. A big downer indeed.

Sales dropping

This one is annoying to the ones who actually make a large amount of R$ and Tix from clothing, e.g. Kestral

Here's the diagram from earlier:

"Q1" represents the market average sales. With the price floor in place, quantity sold decreases to Q2. This decrease is what causes the problems. It's alright selling at this price, but if your main market is aimed at new players, then sales will be completely diminished.

Meaning an income for a player who markets like this, has completely dried up.

Entrepreneur? What's that?

This is a big problem for me to a sense.

A long while ago, Roblox posted this to their blog. Although that post was directed at place building, it was the same for clothing. "If people like it, they'll come back for more".

The entrepreneurial side of clothing was about thinking "What price will get me the most profit?", "How could I increase my prices without losing sales?", "How could I be the next big clothing brand?". These are all questions that players are faced with when selling their clothing. This was what the post was making reference to.

Though, with the price floor, the entrepreneurial side of clothing has now diminished and has been dumbed down. As now it feels like now all clothing is now at a completely set price. No need to do anything, just put it up for sale, leave it and hope for the best. This is what upsets me the most.

All of these drawback do appear to outweigh the benefits in the fact that  it all goes against the idea of ROBLOX being a free game.

The price floor itself is rather redundant in the fact the intervention it is supposed to do, has turned itself into a marketing tool for Roblox.

Although the price floor is a good idea, a lower value should of been chosen 5 - 10 R$ would of been more reasonable, but the sheer fact that one builder club member can't even afford 1 piece of clothing with only their daily R$ seems too outrageous.

Thanks for reading.

IBarrageI

ROBLOX Changes: Minimum Prices

Hello, I have written this because there have been numerous complaints, forums and comments on the clothing itself about the new 'Minimum Prices' on clothing. I support getting rid of this new update and will be talking about it here.

NBC's Problem:

People with no Builders Club could only narrowly afford to buy some people's ridiculous prices as it was, the new changes make that even more ridiculous. 10 Robux is roughly 110 tix  which means 11 days worth of saving, if the t-shirt is Robux only. If the t-shirt is tix only then you have to save 12 days worth. If the t-shirt is both, you have to decide if you will use tix (which you get every day) or Robux (which sometimes costs more tix sometimes less - 100 tix can be 10 Robux but so can 110 tix). Plus shirts are 25 robux (270 tix) or 300 tix and ditto with Pants. That's between 27 days and 30 days saving for a Shirt and then another 27/30 days for Pants.

Uniform Problem:

Same as the above problem except if you don't buy the uniform you may end up being exiled, especially when there is suddenly a new uniform. To make matters worse, for most groups you must buy a Shirt and Pants for 300 tix each Not much else to say in this point of view except that you always see those few in group training's, they look new so could barely afford clothing anyway but they always say this when asked why they aren't wearing the uniform = "I can't buy the uniform, it's too much". To this, most High Ranks in groups go on to say, "Buy it for tomorrow", most likely if they don't have enough today they won't have enough tomorrow because of the increased prices.

Reasoning behind it:

Quote from their blog post on it all, 'Talented artists aren't making a ton of clothing because they can’t make money doing it.' 
If people want to make money they will sell their clothing at the price they choose, many people sell clothing for cheap for the buys not for the money, anyway. They say they have 3 main reasons behind it all, I will go through them all.
1. Raise the quality of items in the catalog.
Insane. People who can make good clothing, do because they like making clothing and normally they sell the clothing anyway, it won't raise the standards because if people make bad quality items it's not because they don't want to waste their time for no money but because that's the highest quality they can make clothing. Kestrel and Tiger prove this, expensive items but for great quality, people with bad quality items sell stuff for reasonable prices usually and if they don't then people don't buy their clothing.
2. Reward makers and sellers of clothing.
It doesn't reward them in the slightest, they have control over what prices they put the clothing, if it is good quality people buy it whatever the price (Unless it is insanely stupid). NBCs make good clothing too, but now not only can they not sell anything but they can't buy anything too.
3. To incentivize non-paying users to buy ROBUX.
Greedy, I want to work for Roblox when I get older, but not for the money but because they are all kind and they have good working days. If they want people to buy BC they make good reasons, all this will do is make people angry at Roblox and make them choose against BC and choose to Protest and hold Petitions.

Things to do:

• You can read the Preview of this for a start, and later the actual article.
• You can go here: Tiger and Kestrel Appealing against the update
• And here: [Petition] Put clothing back to 5 tix minimum
• You can join this group Robloxians Against Price Floor
• This is how bad it's got: NBCers may as well quit now

I agree, it is extremely bad, but some of the complaints are getting offensive - so please tone down those. Every 5 people wanting it, it seems there are roughly 1000 hating it. Not exaggerating, just look on the forums.

If they want to do a major change, it should be how much tix NBCs get a day, or if they should get 160 per week (Example). Just not this. This means the end of most businesses whether they may groups or people.

This isn't in my opinion, it's everybody's.

-Bennyhill44

The iPhone 5S and ROBLOX Mobile: How 64-Bit Mobile Gaming will change EVERYTHING.

It's a computer in your pocket.
A supercharged computer in your pocket, that is.

Apple's most recent announcement of the iPhone 5S and 5C should come as no shock to technology journalists (like myself) anywhere. The era of Apple's growth and maturity as an expanding and choice-filled brand is a genius product lineup. Not only a great idea for everyone who shows interests in a particular brand, but also a great way to have a "phone made for every kind of person there is."

Images courtesy of Apple.

Apple is no exception to that, with the most recent announcement of a killer industry first, 64-bit phone, the iPhone 5S. However, the question is not how people will use it, the question is when will they change everything in mobile gaming?

I think it's important to know before we start that this is an article for people that understand the concept of mobile gaming, operation of computers and more. If you aren't very knowledgeable on any of those things, I suggest you look up some information on 64-bit, 32-bit, the iOS software (iOS 7, particularly) and the iPhone 5S. Information can be found by clicking on any of those terms listed.

64-bit allows the world to grow. There is no cap to how much you can process, there is nothing too slow about 64-bit (maybe except a rubbish computer) but Apple begs to differ with the release of their new A7 and M7 chips for the iPhone 5S. This jump to processing power has changed the entire smartphone industry in one release and ROBLOX adapting this would be relevant to making their app potentially stronger than most 32-bit computers with only two or four gigabytes of RAM. There is no dotted line there at all; and having more resources to build games on is something that app developers and curators of games, medias, and more will need out of a phone.

The iPhone 5S appears to be that call to action; with a billion transistors, two times the general-purpose registers and two times the floating point registers. It sounds quite technical but is the peak of performance improvements. As I said, the 32-bit CPUs are limited to as much as four gigabytes of RAM. While that is not bad, 64-bit CPUs are open to addressing that limit (my computer has ten gigabytes of RAM, as it is a 64-bit desktop) and this makes for two times increase in performance. This means that cameras will focus faster, apps will load faster, safari will search and look faster, and libraries of data will as well. But what this means for ROBLOX is that they can finally run ROBLOX on a desktop-like CPU. The only difference being that this is a phone.

The potential for ROBLOX having this 64-bit architecture release could mean that ROBLOX could utilize even more RAM for it's game and reach a point where mobile gaming is essentially the same as desktop gaming except on a smaller device and this could mean possibilities are endless for the gaming company looking to make their games on mobile devices and that could mean anything can happen in a world looking for entertainment, creativity, and of course: a better phone.

~ Darwin12

iOS 7 and it's potential for ROBLOX's Mobile Applications

My home screen.

So in case you haven't figured by now, I am a proud PC user, a self-proclaimed technologist and media mind. The only thing "Apple" about me is my phone, an iPhone 4S that I've had for almost a year now.

Set aside this being 9/14/13 (four days before iOS 7 really releases) when I am writing this, I've already had the demonstrative ability to test a variety of iOS7 features for a good five days now, as well as be spooked by the foolery of a "3D perception" in this particular version of iOS (where the background literally appears not to move, but the icons do.)

It started to hit me some more, that ROBLOX has some absurdly high potential to utilize iOS7 to a superb advantage of mobile game development.

Here are three ways ROBLOX can use iOS 7 to make a new era of mobile gaming.

1. Light Design
ROBLOX has a very discoloured design right now. It's app is highly blue (not to forget an annoying colour of blue) and it hasn't yet been optimized for something like iOS 7. The entire design is solid. It isn't transparent, and there is no harmony in colors. But on the home screen, you see perception; this perception is the clearest way to give a totally nice and completely elegant new design to the ROBLOX game application as well as match the wonderful aesthetic already put up by iOS7. An example of the transparency is another iOS 7 feature to the left. The new "Mission Control" has a sort of blurring beauty to it that is both great at the same time just as helpful and it fits right into the operating system.

ROBLOX has not adapted that yet; and it would be great to see that happen.

2. iOS 7 Auto-Update
This is more of a choice for users, but iOS7 has presented a new feature where apps will auto update when plugged in or connected to WiFi. It's a great feature, and if ROBLOX had it's users using this; they could get valuable updates to their users immediately when needed; instead of waiting for all users to catch up on it.

3. Multitasking

Introducing the new Multitasking on iOS 7 to an app as gamer-friendly as ROBLOX is essential. If you had the ability to be playing your ROBLOX game and lets say you got a text, or an email, you should be able to use the multitask to continue your game in the background and respond to that text or email immediately. It's a must-need.

Lets say I want to upload a screenshot I just got from my ROBLOX game; but I don't want to leave that game on mobile. I want to send it via text to a few friends and get a link for the upload to send to my friends on Steam. What i'll want to do is use the multitask feature (double click on home button) and go to the text, and send it to that person then use my favourite upload program (puu.sh) to upload it to the cloud so I can send that link to my Steam friends.

Multitasking is a must-have for this new era of iOS7 gaming and applications and if ROBLOX fails to adapt to continuation of gaming in the background, it's going to be very difficult to do things you need to do at a certain time.

While iOS 7 isn't released (at least at the time this is being written) all you fine people will acquire the update and update on the eighteenth and get to try new things for yourself. Updating now just to play ROBLOX isn't worth it, as the ROBLOX app usually crashes; but I will do another article on the "post-iOS 7 release ROBLOX application" when that time comes.

Soon, I will also be launching another article on how ROBLOX (and other mobile games) can be seriously affected by 64-bit phones (iPhone 5S) and you'll see that soon!

Thanks for reading, and as always, have a good day.

~ Darwin12

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

ROBLOX Contests: Making a Comeback!

The ROBLOX staff stated at the beginning of the month that this year they wish to bring about more community involvement and discussion to the site. They said they will listen to users more and will play a significantly larger role on the ROBLOX Forums.

The ROBLOX team now have a growing community team dedicated to discussing ideas and suggestions with users within the ROBLOX Community Staff and Forum Users group. The group is host to a friendly environment in which users and staff can chat casually, but also home to a number of Personal Build Servers built for the community enjoyment. These servers are owned and managed by users within the group and are open to all with building privileges given to member's of the 'forumer' rank or above. 

Visiting one of the many Personal Build Servers 

Now, this an excellent step forward for the ROBLOX corporation. But how will some of the less aware users become more community involved once again? 

The answer to that is simple: contests. 

Back in 2010, ROBLOX unveiled the first official Contest System. It had it's own page, leader-boards  prizes and even sponsors. Contests were hosted regularly, each with a different theme and aim. 

Originally, there was talk of ROBLOX Contests being based around several different areas of the ROBLOX site; Places, Shirts, T-Shirts and models, but this most of these ideals were dropped in favour of the classic building contests. These contests ran until early 2012, then suddenly were abandoned.

Why was it abandoned?

The contest system, while being enjoyable for some users, was heavily exploited by a large majority. This exploitation took shape in the form of the notorious 'Free Model'. If you were to take a peak at the leaders of each contest you would notice a sinister pattern emerging; every single place looked the same. 

You may ask: how? Surely users did not share their work with others and make their creations available to the public domain? And you would be correct. The problem is that early on in after the contest's launch, one user would find an old model that matched the theme of the place. Often this model would be an entire place  uploaded by a user (perhaps stolen). The user would then upload this to their contest entry and voilà; a quality place that would surely win votes that required no effort. 

What made matters worse was the fact that these games were purely voted for based on their aesthetics. A large percentage of contest entries had no gameplay elements, no tools and no objectives. You would simply enter the place and have absolutely nothing to do. Entrants would also use the infamous '+2/3/4/5 voting accuracy' tagline on their game, trying to persuade users to vote for their game.

Both of these habits had a very negative effect on the contest ethic and with each subsequent contest, less and less effort was put into entries. 

ROBLOX Contests 2013

Everything is set to change however as contests are returning. We are only 3 weeks into January and and a ROBLOX Contest has been launched already. The ROBLOX Studio 2.0 Splashscreen contest was launched on the 10th January 2013 and asks users to create a splashcreen (loading graphic) for the new ROBLOX Studio (2.0). For more details on how to enter the contest, click HERE

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However, the more exciting news is that a revamped Contest System is being developed by the ROBLOX Team. This was confirmed by the two following pieces of evidence:

Tweet from BeckyLee - ReeseMcBlox (Community Manager) stated contests were in the works

Forum post by the VP of Marketing stating that a new contest system was coming

This will likely include a rebuilt voting system, tighter controls on the way contest entries are presented and marketed and perhaps even pre-selected models which they are allowed to do - this could be implemented with a special version of the ROBLOX Studio tailored to contests. 

A new year, with lots to look forward to! I can't wait to start entering contests again!

Thanks for reading!

-Arbirator

Editor of Roblox News

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

BC Loyalty Bonus: Phasing Out

The BC Loyalty Bonus was one of the great extra features the ROBLOX Developers gave to users who paid for premium membership. However, never strictly being an official feature, the Bonus was more of an 'experiment' according to the developers. The Loyalty Bonus was an extra percentage of Robux paid on top of your Builder's Club Stipend of R$15 a day. If you had a BC membership for a long time, like myself, the multiplier for the Loyalty Bonus could be up to 3.0x. This meant I received a grand total of R$45 a day (including my original 15R$ Stipend).

This has a noticeable impact on the amount of items I could purchase. Originally with 15R$ a day I would have to save up for a couple of weeks to purchase an item, but with the extra 30R$ a day, I could buy more hats and gear. This was also aided by the fact that ROBLOX kept the pricing of most hats fairly low - there was no increase in average item prices after the Loyalty Bonus had been released.

However. Because of this increase in daily Robux BC members received, too much Robux was being injected into the economy - similar to quantitative easing. All of a sudden larger numbers of premium members had thousands of R$ stored on their accounts. This did take a while to make a large impact, but after a year of the Loyalty scheme being in place, problems were beginning to rear their heads. For example, items were selling very large amounts of copies and Limited prices began to skyrocket. Now, some Limited item prices were affected by the decreasing supply of copies (deleted copies, users quitting, copies reaching owners who does not wish to sell/ NBC users), but a large percentage was down to the Loyalty Bonus. Everyone had more currency so they could afford spending more on Limited items.

This is where the 'phasing out' of the Loyalty Bonus program comes in. By reducing the amount of extra Robux a player receives, ROBLOX are removing Robux from circulation and thus attempting to bring the economy back to what it was like in 2010.

How is it being phased out? 

The program is only being completely phased out for new Builder's Club members who will not receive a bonus. Current BC members have had their multiplier reset but will still continue to receive a small bonus every day. Every month the bonus will increase by 4% to a maximum of 20% after 5 months.

The notification message from ROBLOX can be seen below:

I am sad to see the Loyalty Bonus program change so drastically, but I do understand the reasoning behind the decision. And as many users stated: ROBLOX did not include it on the BC features list, so it was not an official feature and therefore it is perfectly acceptable that they are removing it for new BC members.

Thanks for reading!

-Arb
Editor of Roblox News

Game Passes: The best configure setting yet?

Hello, me again with some news. I have recently, well just found out that ROBLOX have added a "Game Pass" option. Making it easier for users to give other users benefits at their game for paying a certain price. This was a great thing to add to ROBLOX, as it gives users who can't script the choice to make a Premium Pass without the shame of free models. This is a great option to add for users. You can read the full post here.

These new Game Passes are fairly simple to use, as they don't have much of a complication.

 This is the step-by-step guide of how to make one if you've never made one before. It's also a fairly simple process. You make an image, I suggest Paint.NET or Adobe Photoshop. As they are probably some of the best photo editing software out there. Make your name catchy, more users would want to buy it if you give a nice, snappy title that gives out a bit of information. Make the description nice, easy to read sort of style. Then, just upload, simple as that!


Review Delay
I know I haven't written one review this week, or at least I think I haven't. I will try my hardest to get one up and out of the door of drafts for you users to see on the published side of Roblox news.

~~Zakary99

"Did you know, place reviewing is the best department?"

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Roblox Studio 2.0: A step in the right direction?

Now, as we may know. Roblox studio 2.0 is in progression and currently being made by the ROBLOX admins. Roblox studio 2.0 is actually better than some users expect it to be. Personally, I like ROBLOX Studio 2.0, but the loss of some building tools has annoyed me. I don't use the default move and resize tools. I use the old ones from years ago (I find them more reliable). But a lot of new people like the newest building tools. Studio 2.0 is a very nice update, they have made the interface designs better, made it easier to control, and less confusing. I can't wait until this is out of BETA and ready to be used.

I would like Studio or Studio 2.0 to be an option so you don't have to use 2.0 if you don't want to. I took a look at 2.0 and I found it very nice. I do like it lots, but I still prefer studio 1.0. They have now in Studio 2.0 made math.() be highlighted in blue when writing scripts, so I like that lots. Although I would prefer it if they added auto-tabbing so that you don't have to keep tapping the tab button to organize your scripts.

Overall, studio 2.0 is a great addition, for all those Newbies and Old Robloxians. It's fun to build with, but still has some flaws I hate so much. I loved old tools that moved/resized things. But now we have to use those new ones in it, I would use 1.0 more.

Thanks for reading this short post.

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