Does ROBLOX Care About Exploiters?

The logo of the infamous Cheat Engine.

The ROBLOX community is filled with exploiters. New exploits are made all the time, and the most popular one is Cheat Engine. People do exploits that make them invincible, or speed up their character. But does ROBLOX even care?

Look at rbadam's description. He is an administrator, yet he says, "I never ban someone I see hacking in a game." You could walk up to him with super speed and he wouldn't do a thing. What's that telling us? That exploiting is ok? They don't care about exploiting?

These exploits aren't even new. Some of them have been out for months, even years. While changing your gravity may be somewhat new, increasing your speed isn't new at all. The animation exploit with fiddler was patched (which I don't understand why they focused on that, it didn't harm anyone) yet that wasn't hurting others.

So does ROBLOX care about people exploiting? Tell me what you think in the comments!

Thanks for reading,
Xeronae

Game Development: The Art and Science

Dem Front-page Games

All the games in the above image have had more than a quarter million visits. But how? With so many other games out there, why are these select few so popular? We’re going to take an in-depth look into how these games got going, so stick around.

1. Advertising

One main concept game developers use almost in every case is advertising. This allows anyone to find the game, and if they like it, they can play it. Games like The Mad Murderer and Two Player Gun Factory Tycoon constantly use this system.

The Mad Murderer ad induces a sense of fun while alluding to mystery.

2. Player Points

Ah, player points. One of the most constant things appearing around ROBLOX at this time is the good old Swordfight for player points, player points market, or player point rain. But in other cases, some games legitimately give out player points. Like if you survive a round of TMM, or catch a falling star in ROBLOX High School, or destroy someone with a minigun in Two Player Gun Factory Tycoon, or maybe be a diligent worker at Work at a Pizza Place. Sometimes, developers might increase the player points you can earn, like x100 player points in TMM (Yes, that actually happened).

3. Objectives

Objectives are commonly used to keep players online for hours at a time. When I started writing this article, I had never played Wingman8’s Armored Patrol. When I played it, I started out with almost nothing. It wasn’t until twenty minutes of trying to reach level 3 did I get off. With Apocalypse Rising, you may want to survive for a month, and you may want to win just one more time on ROBLOX’s Top Model. Objectives are a very good way to keep people playing.

4. Uniqueness

Most of the games that are front page stickers are somehow very unique. Armored Patrol features more than a dozen vehicles to keep you occupied. Apocalypse Rising is one of the only games that keeps track of how long you are alive in days, and saves your progress. Work at a Pizza Place has seven jobs that need to be filled. ROBLOX’s Top Model has the ability to completely customize your character and then try and get the best score. Players keep playing these games simply because there isn’t another one like it.

So now that you’re done with this article, why don’t you try to implement a few of these ideas into your games? Who knows where it might lead you.

-Chipio Industries, Wednesday 8/13/2014

ROBLOX's frequent monetization: Are they becoming greedy?

As everyone knows, ROBLOX claims it’s free to 
play. But is this true? With update after costly update, ROBLOX seems to be getting more into having people spending money. To find out, I’ve compiled this list of reasons that ROBLOX is greedy and that ROBLOX is not greedy. (Personally, I think they aren’t greedy at all)

1. Builder’s Club: One of the most known features of ROBLOX is Builder’s Club. By spending just a few dollars a month, you can get a huge account upgrade. So why is this such a big deal, especially since it’s optional? It’s because a lot of features require Builder’s Club. But still, you get total access to developing games. You get a place to edit, you can even expand it to several places with the universes feature, you can create developer products, game passes, and tons of other things. Besides that, you get to play at least 99.9% of games on ROBLOX! You also get a customizable character, messaging, advertising, groups, and more! So this one is going to the “Not Greedy” section
. 
2. Paid Access: Here’s another feature that had a huge number of protests. Supposedly, ROBLOX introducing Paid Access meant that if you wanted to play games, you had to PAY twenty five or more Robux to play it, which is almost impossible for NBC’ers to earn. Except it isn’t. If an NBC’er sold a gamepass, or saved up for a long time, or got a lot of visits, it would actually be easy to play the game. Plus, almost no games on ROBLOX are actually permanently Paid Access. Most of the time it’s just during testing, or beta, or if it’s a work in progress. Even if all the Paid Access games were going to be that way forever, there’s still millions of other games play. So why get hung up on a select few? Plus, something that’s worth mentioning, NBC’ers can also use Paid Access! So this one is also going to “Not Greedy”
. 
3. Price Floor: Now this one is a tough choice. In early 2014, ROBLOX released a price floor update that limited how low you could price clothing. There used to be thousands of decent shirts available for one ticket or one Robux. Not anymore. The new lowest price is two robux and twenty tickets for t-shirts and 10 robux and a hundred tickets for shirts and pants. But is this really a big difference? If an NBC player logged in two days in a row, they could buy the shirt. Granted, in the beginning, ROBLOX set the floor at ten robux and a hundred tickets for t-shirts (which is ten days, for those of you doing the math) and 25 robux for shirts and pants (25 days), so that actually deserved an outrage. Doing this was for three reasons: Raising quality of items, rewarding sellers, and incentivizing robux. Yes, ROBLOX did in fact mention in the blog article that they were trying to get ROBLOXia to buy Robux. Which is understandable, considering that ROBLOX is a legitimate business trying to make it easier for kids of all ages to develop games. I mean, if you have to buy a couple robux for FIVE DOLLARS, or if you need builders club which is SIX DOLLARS A MONTH, is it really that big a deal? I heard from my uncle who works at Disney that his 3-D modeling software alone costs upwards of THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS. Still think the price floor is an outrage? Sorry, this one is going to the “Not Greedy”.

So that’s all I can come up with right now. In the end, The result is ROBLOX is not greedy under any circumstances. Did I miss something? Do you think I was unfair? Message me on ROBLOX if you think so, and I might get enough new material to write a second article. See you round!


-ChipioIndustries, Saturday 8/9/2014


[Editor's Note: Good job, Chipio! You've done great. However, only you applied for the contest. Come on guys, don't be afraid to join in next time!]

Is the front page changing?

Cart Ride into a Obby! has already hit more than 600 players.

In earlier years, players on ROBLOX could expect fun games that would keep them coming back. But it seems now, copied games have been taking over our world. Games such as Cart Ride into a Obby! by OldSchool2014 have hit the front page. In fact, Cart Ride into a Obby! was made today, and already has 650 players on the game at the time of this article.

The popular games don't seem to have much work put into them. It seems as if the developers are just taking uncopylocked games and publishing the work as their own, for example, look at Different Town of Robloxia. This game is on the front page and is a copy of 1dev2's classic game. All the developer did was slap in some free models, and already his game has 2,500+ players on it, JuliusColesV2 is a known copier, yet people still play his games and he earns a lot of robux and tix.

And while games such as The Mad Murderer, Work at a Pizza Place, and Roblox's Top Model are still very popular, there are still copied games sitting in the front page.

Additionally, some games have gotten very many thumbs downs. Many games have gotten more thumbs downs than thumbs ups, but those games sometimes sit in the Popular page for days.

So I guess what I'm saying is this. Is the front page changing? Instead of quality games you can find copied games or games that took a few minutes to make. Are people taking simple games over games with scripting and complex buildings?

What do you think? Talk about it in the comments!                             

Thanks for reading!                                                                          

Xeronae                                                                                               

Is ROBLOX changing it's audience?

Some avid ROBLOX players may remember that back in 2008, the site was more kid-friendly, bright and colourful (and in my opinion made me want to barf). Now, in the present year of 2014, with the introduction of dynamic lighting, pathfinding AI, developer products, the new site theme, most recently the CSG Modeler or shape editor, whichever, and most importantly DevEx.

Say, that does look a lot nicer.

ROBLOX, apparently, appears to be changing it's audience from kid-friendly to a developer's paradise. Extraordinary developers such as loleris have cropped up in many places, bringing along games that made an everlasting impression on the community as a whole.

ROBLOX, it seems, is on the road to providing a platform for developers and gamers alike to develop and play games with minute details organised by a very powerful engine, which skilled developers harness to their advantage.

DevEx. More than $400,000 given away.
It's understandable why it's OBC only.

However, what will that mean for the rest of the non-developing community? In particular, the NBC community? Updates like the price floors and DevEx make them feel oppressed and unable to go about freely. In 2008-2012, Builder's Club was a slight add-on, you still had the core features and much more. However, NBCers still have the core features, and also no right to complain about it. ROBLOX is it's own site; they can do whatever they want that abides the law.

This newer age of ROBLOX might dent if not harm the community. What do you think will happen? Will ROBLOX turn pay-to-play, like it's blockier and successful counterpart Minecraft? Comment!

Thanks for reading,

VFXed

What makes a good game?

The Mad Murderer, created on the 7th of April, was the third and possibly the last successful Murder adaptation. The game was based of a Garry's Mod game mode that went by the name of Murder. The objective was for the selected murderer to stealthily pick of the innocents while avoiding the sheriff's gun as much as possible.

Popular games such as The Mad Murderer by MAD STUDIOS  have been stuck on the front page as if bound by super-glue. Today, we'll be delving in deep into it's game functionality and finding out: What makes a good front-pager?

Lookin' good, Jack!

However, what doesn't make sense about this game is how it managed to keep it's head above the competition; namely Clonetrooper's and Nikilis's variation, and some other small time ones such as 'Traitor Trouble'. 

All of the three games revolve around the same concept; kill, survive, shoot. The difference between The Mad Murderer from Murder and Murder Mystery is that TMM brings into play tons of content, and frequent updates.

That feel q.q

When The Mad Murderer was first released, it didn't have much. It was a simple, captivating game; a perfect masterpiece of the developer loleris. Shortly after, updates came in explosions. Knife textures, purchasable credits and other developer products, gear and accessories, and more recently, the summer update and credit rain. For your convenience, I will brief over the two updates; the summer update brought into play wearable radios, new knife textures and a new character. Credit rain, well, made it rain credits.

Don't give me that look.
I know what you're up to!

In conclusion, The Mad Murderer was successful because of it's marketing, frequent updates and readily available content and quirky innovations. It's no point, in the case of the early versions of Clone Trooper's Murder, to have a game attractive to the eye but limit it's content. In the case of Murder Mystery, I felt that the maps were too open, and didn't have the quirky innovations that TMM did.

Before I go, I'll leave you with a quote by loleris in a blog interview;

"Unlike a lot of ROBLOX developers, I’m not on a mission to make my perfect dream game. I make games to entertain people, and earn money doing it."

"Nettimato and I develop the games — we’re at a 
state where we want to make a real breakthrough before we start delegating difficult tasks"

Hope this helped!
VFXed