Elvinusa: Roblox News Intern Biography

My name is Elvinusa (shadowing PeerPants).

I could go on and on about the different wars I have been in or the situations I have had to face, but that wouldn’t be logical. A friend or a commercial didn’t invite me, but it's only luck I came to ROBLOX. I was invited by the very blog of which I am writing on.

It’s amazing how a little Internet surfing got me here. To a new realm of unexplored land and dreams. Maybe it was fate or me being lazy. Anyway, I am glad I clicked the second link to ROBLOX, and I would never regret that decision.

Some things you 'ought to know. I am a huge fan of Jazz-Pop. I absolutely love sunny mornings. Most days I skip breakfast. I have been to 13 countries. Math is my best subject and always will. I’m 12 going to 13 in January and moving to 7^th grade as well. From the 7^th ill be taking all honors courses with a 9^th grade geometry course complied with Trigonometry.

Enough of my seemingly nerdy and humble life. Lets move to ROBLOX. My favorite game of all time is Clockworks Sword fighting Arena. Its not well known but its intricately designed structure works so well while sword fighting. I don’t have a particular preference to games but I absolutely despise games that involve jumping down a 1 Million storied building, and jumping into SpongeBob’s mouth. These types of games don’t deserve recognition unless they are actually somehow pleasing. A special interest I have is examining Clan bases and training, its somehow entertaining and quite fun. I enjoy many of those ROBLOX classics like The Underground war as it relieves my stress. Just like my handy dandy chocolate bar. I have an obsession with my quest to find the perfect group. The closest I have found to that is The Raven Empire, but I quit a rebel.

When I complete my internship I wish to pursue List articles and Place reviews, as a specialty and hopefully one day become a mentor to my own interns!

My passion for War groups was used up when I helped a 20-member group rise to 100. Fall, Reform, and fall again. That was the last time I vowed to be committed to war groups as my main source of work. I found joy in reading articles from here and decided to join RN for the thrill and to fill my desire for writing. My passion came from my communications work I did in my clans.

I hope to make wonderful work come out form my time here and I know that my time as an intern will be a good one.

Thank You,

^Elvinusa(Intern)



Lets all give a warm RN welcome to Elvinusa
~IBarrageI

Review: Deathrun by erikwesley96

Since Deathrun 2 is coming out soon I figured I'd take a look at erikwesley96's ROBLOX adaptation of the Source mod by the same name, Deathrun. Deathrun is a new take on the "obstacle course" sort of games, this time involving 1-2 players as "Killers" controlling the traps, and the rest of the players as "Runners" who attempt to get to the end of the course without being killed by the many traps in each map.

Gameplay
The game will put you into a cylinder-like multicolored lobby that's pretty much barren bar for a door that says "VIP" in the main area, and a ball pit along with some stairs leading above the main area to the side. But what's really important is a few of the GUIs, there's one showing the Killer/Runner wins, your points, a shop, and news, although the news and shop GUIs are either broken or they just rarely work, but enough about the lobby.

When a round actually starts, a random map will be picked, the killers and runners will be assigned, and it's up to the Killers to take out every last Runner with the traps, and the Runner's job to make it to the end of the map by outsmarting the Killers before time runs out. Yes, you have a time limit of about 2 minutes and 30 seconds depending on how short the map is.


Deathrun features about 6 maps in total,

Death Mountain isn't exactly the hardest nor the easiest map in the game, it mainly features double paths of platforms which of one will randomly disappear from a selected path, the common lava spinners, lava spheres which will rain down in sections, and the easy to con out spinning bridge, and also some lava "walls". It's one of the easier maps, but not the easiest.

Cookhouse is another easy map, featuring only one really lethal trap which is a bunch of lava spheres raining downhill onto you. But besides that all there is are some double pathed platforms that will vanish, lava spinners, a disappearing bridge at the beginning which always seems to get people, and a spinning path.



Castle Defense with it's 5 star difficulty may seem intimidating, but it's really not since the main thing that will give you trouble is the beginning's walls that can push you off, and the 4 lava spinners that will spin in a random order. After that, all you have to deal with then is a spinning bridge, 2 lava spinners, some disappearing platforms, and spinning bars, 4 of them, and after that you're free to win the map.

Pyramid of Doom is probably what I would call the easiest map, it features some easily predictable falling planks, thanks to gaps in the floor, a few pillars that will jut out and push you off, a small section of lava spheres that you'll most likely watch plummet to the ground, and then some more pillars, and platforms. It's an interesting idea, just
not enough creativity behind it.

Crazy Train is also a bit underwhelming, even if it boasts a 4 star difficulty, all that is offered here mainly is some lava walls that pop out of the train cars. (NOTE: If you are wearing hats do not try to jump over the lava spinners or you will die due to a ROBLOX bug involving kill bricks and collision detection, just walk between them and you won't have a problem) The only new thing the map really brings to the table is some pipes/beams that fall out of a flatbed car, other than that you have the generic spinning bridges, and a disappearing beam that you can easily fake out.

Lava Mine is probably the hardest, and most chaotic map in my opinion, it starts out simple with a disappearing path, and some platforms, then lava spinners, lava geysers that rise onto a beam that will kill you, then the absolute coolest trap, a ton of lava spheres rain down onto a platform, ricocheting all over the map and possibly killing every remaining runner, it's pretty cool.


Building
Deathrun's lobby is quite bland, nothing too advanced there. Though what really shines is the look of some of the maps, especially Lava Mine, and Castle Defense, some of the cframing in a few of the others is good too.

Creativity
Unfortunately, Deathrun isn't exactly the most creative game, almost all of the maps use the same traps, (lava spinners, disappearing platforms, spinning bridges, etc). It kind of begins to get stale after a while, there's just not enough done with the concepts of most of the maps.

Overall
Deathrun I think is a good time waster, although it's not perfect by no stretch of the imagination. The gameplay is fun the first few times around, but as I said the design and repetition of the same traps begins to stale the experience after a while, not to mention the shop and news GUIs being broken, but that's most likely due to ROBLOX updates, so I can't exactly blame erikwesley96 for not trying.

But, would I say it's worthy of the "Deathrun" name? Yes, while it may not be as fun as the actual source mod, it's a good time and I have no doubt most of these problems will be addressed in Deathrun 2 which is coming "very soon" apparently. But you can check out what seems to be the Alpha for it here. I also very much recommend you check out the actual Source mod for Deathrun, mostly found through either Team Fortress 2, Garry's Mod, or Counter-Strike since it's a heck of a lot of fun. As always, have a good weekend and see you next week!

BLOXcon London: Interview with jamesbiggsbot and charliebiggsbot!

During my time at BLOXcon London I had the opportunity to interview countless numbers of users about their experiences on ROBLOX and at BLOXcon London. In this interview I got to talk with a family of ROBLOX players: jamesbiggsbot, charliebiggsbot and their mum; paulabiggsbot. It was a fascinating interview and all three individuals were enthusiastic about the game, even their mum prompted some of their answers! 

Q. What do you do on ROBLOX? 
A.  We play games more than we do build. 

Q. When did you join? And how did you find out about the site?
A.  July 2010 through word of mouth from our friends

Q. What is your favourite aspect of the website? 
A.  Being able to play multiplayer games with dozens of players in servers

Q. Do you have a premium membership? 
A.  One of us has a BC membership, the other is an ex-BC player

Q. Who is your favourite ROBLOX staff member? 
A.  OnlyTwentycharacters

Q. What's your favourite gear available in the catalog? 
A.  Exponential Rocket launcher 

Q. What has been your favourite part of the day so far? 
A.  Trading cards with other users and meeting ROBLOX staff 

Q. What is your favourite game and why? 
A.  Catalog Heaven because we can test gear and packages before we buy them

Q. What's do you believe was the most significant update to hit ROBLOX since you joined? 
A.  Being able to put on more than one hat (the triple hat feature)

Q. What did you have for lunch? 
A. Sausage sandwiches with ketchup. Mum adds; made by me -laughs- 

Thanks for reading!

-Arbirator
Editor of Roblox News

Place Review: Tornado Survival

As I say many times, there's not many games on the front-page that either myself or another Roblox News Staff Member hasn't reviewed. And it's getting really hard to find games, I think I've found one; as with every game, it has down points. Especially the unusually long wait time to get into the game! I am just standing on a teleport waiting for it to magically start working...

First of all, what is up with the front-cover. I mean it's not exactly true is it, the only true thing is the name-tag, and the title. That's it, the picture in the background is completely fake. If I ever saw a game that realistic on ROBLOX I wouldn't play Portal 2.

When I entered the game, the building wasn't awful, but it wasn't detailed, it was in-fact quite simple & nice. Greendude5 told me "The game isn't very well detailed", so he agreed with my statement completely. I think the game is fun in it's own little way, as we never get Tornadoes in the United Kingdom so it kind of gives me the thrill of a lifetime.

The coding on this game is a loop, it will choose a random map, make some random sounds, teleport all the players to the map and then at the end of the round it will kill them, allowing the script to restart. It's clever, but simple. I would find a loop without a death a lot simpler. Despite it's fun gameplay, I am not a fan of this game and would probably not play it in my free-time. Never-the-less, I should still be fair in my judgings. The Guis on the game are not made by the creator, you can tell by the fact that there are two Guis with a round edge and then one which is straight, and not rounded.

Building: 6/10
The building is fairly good, and above average, but I still think there should be more.

Scripting: 4/10
Not excellent scripting at all, the creator should revise and learn. Maybe get rid of teleport buttons and make his own guis.

Overall: 5/10
It's average, not a thing I would play in my spare-time.

Thanks for reading this review.

~Zakary W.

Remember to check out my intern, DDude9091's place reviews and post. Give him feedback.

BLOXcon London: Vaktovian Interviews

In the following three BLOXcon London mini-interviews; I got to speak in person to a group of three individuals who were currently or had been previously been part of the Vaktovian Empire. They were intriguing conversations considering I have strayed as far away as possible from war clans for over three years. 

Interview with halorabbit:

Q. When did you join ROBLOX?
A. Early 2008

Q. What made you want to join Vaktovian Empire?
A. They had a very established reputation, a great the image, and the persona of a mighty group.

Q.  What made you want to resign?
A. He tells me 'speaking from the heart' - That it takes up a lot of time, and that changes come up. (I'm not quite sure what these changes are, but let's roll with it.)

Q. Who is your favourite staff member?
A. Shedletsky

Interview with BR4DERZ:

Q. What made you want to join the Vaktovian Empire?
A. Introduced by a friend, discovered the enjoyment of war clans

Q. What rank do you currently hold in the Vaktovian empire and how did you obtain it?
A. Sergeant and was promoted for being active within the group

Q. What would you say is the most enjoyable part of being in the clan?
A. Having a reputation and raiding other clans

Q.What did you have for lunch?
A. -Laughs- McDonalds. (This was some kind of inside joke between the trio, don't ask). 

Interview with Domeboybeene:

Q. What was your favourite holiday event?
A. The ROBLOX Egg Hunt 2013. I played with clan mates 

and filled an entire server with Vaktovian troops

Q. Would you say that Vaktovian empire is technologically advanced?
A. -Laughs- We’re getting there

Q. What kind of vehicles do you use?
A. The VampAPC and the unmanned-ATAC are just two examples

Q. What hat do you wear with your uniform?
A. It would have to be Black Crisis



Thanks for reading and look for more BLOXcon London interviews!

-Arbirator
Editor of Roblox News

Place Review: The Forgotten Kingdom RPG

Thumbnail of The Forgotten Kingdom RPG

Hey guys, DDude9091 here. Today, my mentor Zakary99 assigned me to review The Forgotten Kingdom RPG. Buckle your pants, guys, this is a bad one. This game has been on the front page since this morning, and after playing through it, I have no idea how. As you may see in any other RPG game, you spawn in a small village. Surrounding it are some level one monsters, and you are equipped with a bronze sword. Several buildings can be found around the village. a sword shop, magic shop, bow shop, and pawn shop, for example. It’s really no different than any other RPG game I've ever seen. As put so eloquently by the creator, "You live in a small village attacked by monsters. It's your job to help the villagers and kill the monsters!".

The reason I'm ranting about this is because so little effort was put in to it. Like any other RPG game I've seen, this game uses Kitteh6660’s RPG kit. Even with this extremely simple and easy to use kit, he didn't configure it well at all. Half of the shops I tried to use would not put a shop GUI on my screen; that, or they didn't show the price and damage of the weapon. 

I didn't even have to level up to go check the shops behind the level 10 door. You can easily cheat by jumping from a tree to get on top of the wall. Not to mention that if you walk around up there, you’ll find some swords the creator misplaced in studio that will wipe out any monster you face. A good half of the creatures continually die over and over again. Another third of them spawn as only a head and a torso, with no sword at all. That leaves about a sixth of them that actually work. 

A screenshot showing the hole in the wall.

In the level 10 realm, there’s a huge, gaping hole in the wall where you can just walk out on to a small baseplate. No level door or anything to keep players from just going out there. When I tried out the PvP arena, I was immediately mobbed by a player who tried to slaughter me. Upon going through the teleport back to spawn, I landed right back on the teleporter to the PvP arena. It took me at least a minute of unsuccessful attempts to leave.

Building: 3/10

Hey, at least he had some c-framed walls in there, but that may be hurting more than helping. The c-frame created many cracks and holes in the wall. The houses were built okay, but there were things that were lacking.

Scripting: 2/10

Even though he used a kit, he still messed up plenty of times. Just take a look at the health of the monster on the current thumbnail, or below that where he spelled "through" incorrectly.

Overall: 2.5/10

Try play-testing your game before releasing it. It will help you catch more mistakes. Also, always check for cracks and holes, or ways you can cheat.

Thanks for reading,

~DDude9091

(Shadowing Zakary99)

Introduction: DDude9091

Hello everyone, I’m DDude9091 and will be shadowing Zakary99 as a summer intern for Roblox News! I joined Roblox on the thirteenth of March in 2010; all I thought about then was playing the various games ROBLOX featured. Now, my view of Roblox is more in-depth and I have migrated to trading and other stuff ROBLOX allows users to do. I’ve become quite the sword fighter, and I have advanced my building skills far past what I used to be able to perform.

That would be me up there.

I currently keep my friends list to a certain amount; if I can’t remember where I met them or if I haven’t seen them for a very long time, I remove them. The things I am focusing on as of the moment are trading, my primary war group, ‘Fel Legion’ and of course, Roblox News.

During my time as a summer intern, I will be writing place reviews & showcases. With the place owner’s luck, I’ve had a cup of hot chocolate that day and pancakes for breakfast. Mmm, pancakes. Anyway, with the help of Zakary99 (The best place reviewer I’ve ever seen in my whole life, but still not better than pancakes), I’ll hopefully be able to improve my skill, vocabulary and punctuation as a writer and become better with each draft I create.

I figure I should also include some things about my non-pixel self. I’m 12 years of age and skipped first grade/year 2, and will be taking English and Geometry this coming school year. As previously stated, I love pancakes and hot chocolate (but never hot chocolate made with Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup, that ruins the taste).

Thanks for reading,

 
~DDude9091
(Shadowing Zakary99)

Darwin12.

I'm Darwin12.

I search through ROBLOX for a similar thing: design, creativity and beauty. Then from there, I write, I talk, I express and blog about everything I see as if it was a tangible dream.

I've been doing this for two years now. My most recent of blogs is AverateMedia, aged about two weeks, and is a separation from my old blog where I found myself bored of working on projects I was assigned. I wanted to break free from that, and since then, I have and from that, I have written tens of articles about interesting people, great groups, exceptional places, and of course: things people should see.

I find exceptional love in perfectionism and design. These two things have prompted me to rewrite this precise summary a total of three times. They were hardly drafts; as I don't believe in drafts. I believe in doing things right, or it isn't worth the time of anyone. I want to make relevant blog posts to interested users that are looking for not only a game, group or interesting person. But an experience in these games, groups, and exceptional enthusiasm towards people I interview.

The best way to put it: my job is to not restate what people already know, but to praise people that dedicate themselves to making the best things popular; and that is what I say to expect from me in the coming weeks on this blog.

I will post a ROBLOX News exclusive that I promise is both extensive and reasonable either weekly or bi-weekly in the same style that I do on my own blog [AverateMedia, except there I do it as my job everyday].
During the time that I have this exclusive, I will go in depth on games, groups and people that are not only reasonable or exceptional at what they do, but great at it.

I will see you all around.
- Darwin12

Roblox News Interns: Second Roll-Call!

Here at Roblox News we have been receiving summer internship applications all throughout last week. In this post I'm pleased to announce our second three interns! As with every year, the applications were of the highest quality and many were added straight to the 'definite intern' list after being read. There is no set number of summer interns - and it changes from year to year; positions offered are totally dependent on the number of quality applications. This is our second roll-call; you can read about our first roll-call right here!

What is the intern programme? 

A number of applicants are chosen to become summer interns here at Roblox News. These individuals will shadow staff members who are currently in occupation on the blog for the period of the (British) summer holidays - the programme ends on the 8th September. Interns will draft posts relevant to the shadowed staff member's area of expertise and will receive guidance from their mentor. The intern will receive feedback after each post they make via the ROBLOX private messaging system; they will given 3 positive points outlining what they did well, and given a target to improve upon in their next publication.

The idea of the programme is to equip aspiring writers and journalists with greater literacy and communications skills. Interns continuously learn from their experience by building relationships with both Roblox News staff and fans. Once the internship programme is over, interns may be asked to stay on as full time staff members right here at Roblox News!

Here are the second batch of summer interns!

Elvinusa submitted an excellent application consisting of a clearly outlined skill-set and experience he has acquired over his time on ROBLOX. Boasting an intelligent writing style and interesting format; Elvinusa informed me of his ROBLOX career within clans and how he hopes to utilise his knowledge in his future articles. He also displayed an interest in creating some new themed articles regarding ROBLOX places and the building behind them. For this reason, he will be shadowing one of our lead place reviewers; Peerpants.




Darwin12's application screamed individuality and freedom of expression - something that is highly sought after in the world of gaming journalism, and journalism as a whole for that matter. His attributes and past experiences were documented as well as his current professions including his very own blog and his ROBLOX machinima project. Darwin12 will be shadowing nitro357; a talented place reviewer.







I look forward to working with these two fantastically talented individuals, and rest assured we will be reading their quality publications this week! The third, and final batch of Roblox News summer interns will be announced tomorrow in our last roll-call! Don't miss it! 

Thanks for reading!

-Arbirator
Editor of Roblox News

Place Review: Survive 1337 Crazy Epic Disasters

So, scrolling through the front-page to find a game I or another colleague hasn't reviewed yet is hard to do. It's like searching for an item that you've misplaced and then found out that you didn't misplace it you actually lost it. Well, that's what I'm usually feeling, that's why I write CFrame reviews or Scripting Tutorials. But, I think I found a game to review. Hmmm, lets take a look at this.

It's not the best of games, and it isn't when you enter either. The front-cover of the game portrays the game to be something like a meteor crashing into the Earth and the Earth explodes. But no, the game is like 'Build to survive', the first thing I'm going to rant about is the fact that the game is called 'Survive 1337 Crazy Epic disasters', there's not 1,337 disasters, that's just a phrase to get people to enter. Why not call this game 'Build to Survive the Epic Disasters'? Is that too much to ask? A game with a name that actually matches the objective of the game. Stop dreaming Zak...

The game features code taken from Free Models, the base-plates are standard 'Welcome to ROBLOX Building' base-plates. So technically the only thing the "creator" created was the sea that surrounds the base-plates. And that's sloppy code, it like bounces up and down and up and down. I feel like I got up too fast.

The building in the game is not well CFramed at all, I could of done this in my sleep, some of the worst builders could've built it. The creator didn't build nor did he script the game. It scares me...

Building: 1/10
Not very good at all, try to improve your building skills.

Scripting: 2/10
It still features disasters I guess.

Overall: 1.5/10
It could use some work.

Thanks for reading,

~Zakary99

Be sure to tell my intern, DDude9091 what you think of his posts.