Roblox
Encyclopedia
Roblox is a massively multiplayer online game
Massively multiplayer online game
A massively multiplayer online game is a multiplayer video game which is capable of supporting hundreds or thousands of players simultaneously. By necessity, they are played on the Internet, and usually feature at least one persistent world. They are, however, not necessarily games played on...

 (MMOG) virtual playground and workshop designed for children aged 7 and over. Players can build games with blocks of various shapes, sizes, and materials. Roblox users can code the places they design with a restricted and sandboxed version of Lua 5.1. Roblox is part of the TRUSTe
TRUSTe
TRUSTe is a company based in San Francisco, California, best known for its online privacy seals. TRUSTe operates the world’s largest privacy seal program, certifying more than 3,500 websites, including leading online portals and brands like Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple Inc., IBM, Oracle...

 privacy program and is a Better Business Bureau
Better Business Bureau
The Better Business Bureau , founded in 1912, is a corporation consisting of several private business franchises of local BBB organizations based in the United States and Canada, which work through their parent corporation, the Council of Better Business Bureaus .The Better Business Bureau, through...

 accredited corporation..

Roblox has raised $2.3 million in funding after an equity issue, and another $4 million was raised after a second round of funding.

History and development

Roblox was created by David Baszucki and Erik Cassel in Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a term which refers to the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States. The region is home to many of the world's largest technology corporations...

, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

 and is based in Redwood City, California
Redwood City, California
Redwood City is a California charter city located on the San Francisco Peninsula in Northern California, approximately 27 miles south of San Francisco, and 24 miles north of San Jose. Redwood City's history spans from its earliest inhabitation by the Ohlone people, to its tradition as a port for...

. The name is a portmanteau of the words robots and blocks.

In mid-2007, Roblox considered a new character concept to allow for more complex clothing such as hairpieces to blend with the character. This was however rejected later for the minifigure design which was already in use. In 2010, Roblox gave a second shot at publishing different body shapes which players could buy using virtual currency.

2010 Haiti earthquake relief efforts

On 21 January 2010, Roblox donated $5472 to relief efforts for the 2010 Haiti earthquake
2010 Haiti earthquake
The 2010 Haiti earthquake was a catastrophic magnitude 7.0 Mw earthquake, with an epicentre near the town of Léogâne, approximately west of Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital. The earthquake occurred at 16:53 local time on Tuesday, 12 January 2010.By 24 January, at least 52 aftershocks...

, allowing players to buy one of two virtual items: the Red Hat for Haiti, which contributed 65 cents for every person who bought it, or the Blue Hat for Haiti that contributed 10 cents for every person who bought it.

2011 Japan relief efforts

On 11 March 2011, Roblox did a similar relief effort for the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami
2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami
The 2011 earthquake off the Pacific coast of Tohoku, also known as the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, or the Great East Japan Earthquake, was a magnitude 9.0 undersea megathrust earthquake off the coast of Japan that occurred at 14:46 JST on Friday, 11 March 2011, with the epicenter approximately east...

, selling two types of caps, a Japanese Baseball cap, and a Rising Sun cap, donating $0.10 or $1.00 respectively for each cap bought.

If a user bought both hats, a total sum of $1.10 would be sent as a donation to the American Red Cross Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami Fund.

Roblox users have bought the fundraiser hats 23,395 times, raising a total of $10,445.80
ROBLOX has donated it to the American Red Cross Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami Fund.

Updates

In mid-2008, Roblox added a feature to allow non-registered users to enter places with restricted functionality by playing as a guest. The username of a guest is shown as "Guest [number (0-9999)]". Guests can only use the chat menu full of predetermined phrases.
In 2010 Roblox made a sizable cosmetic update to its game GUI
Graphical user interface
In computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...

, as well as to its site, introducing a smoother in-game experience, and a menu to hold built in build tools (In edit mode). The website also received a sizable facelift - introducing a new theme selection for the users (Roblox 3.0). At the end of 2010, Roblox disabled the feature of uploading sounds, images, animations, and mesh data types via Roblox Studio, and also disabled the viewing of data previously uploaded that way.

At the beginning of 2011, Roblox introduced a new feature that allowed users with any type of Builders Club to make places that could only be played/entered by users who also have a Builders Club subscription.

In May 2011, Roblox made another GUI
Graphical user interface
In computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...

 cosmetic update for the game, following the previous 2010 update. It smoothens out the rest of the CoreGUI, including the player/team list. During the month of May, Roblox also introduced a brand new iPhone app.

In August 2011, Roblox introduced the plugin feature. Plugins allow users to write Lua code that adds a button to the Roblox Studio toolbars
Toolbar
In a graphical user interface, on a computer monitor, a toolbar is a GUI widget on which on-screen buttons, icons, menus, or other input or output elements are placed. Toolbars are seen in office suites, graphics editors, and web browsers...

 to write custom features into their version of Roblox Studio. As of September 2011 there is no official way to share these plugins to other users, and non-Roblox links are not allowed on the Roblox forums.

Customization

Players customize their characters
Player character
A player character or playable character is a character in a video game or role playing game who is controlled or controllable by a player, and is typically a protagonist of the story told in the course of the game. A player character is a persona of the player who controls it. Player characters...

 with items in the Catalog. The Catalog contains Roblox and user created items such as clothing, images, models, gear, sets, heads, faces, and packages, which include body types, legs and arms. A user can also create one of these items (excluding the gear, heads, faces, hats and packages) and upload it onto the Catalog.

Interaction

Players can also visit other users' 3-D virtual places, represented by their characters, and move around with the spacebar and arrow keys. With the "/" key the users can also chat with each other. Users can optionally allow their places to be visited offline, but this also allows other players to copy the user's content.

Building

Users have a choice of thousands of games to play, varying in design from what the game developers wanted to create. Types of places vary by the feature where the creator of the game can choose a genre
Genre
Genre , Greek: genos, γένος) is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or culture, e.g. music, and in general, any type of discourse, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time...

.

Players in Roblox have the ability to construct up to 100 places (depending on membership type), using an unlimited supply of virtual building blocks. Players can add as many bricks as they want. They can insert their own scripts to add functionality, or can use other player's scripts, if that player has allowed it onto the public market.

Programming

Optionally, users can utilize a sandboxed
Sandbox (software development)
A sandbox is a testing environment that isolates untested code changes and outright experimentation from the production environment or repository, in the context of software development including Web development and revision control...

 version of Lua to add extra interactivity to their games. This allows them to create multiplayer games, board games, obstacle courses, warfare games, adventure games, and thousands more. There are also several tools provided, such as Graphical User Interface items, and a hierarchical object system to represent the blocks and other items in-game, which help users create content.

Roblox Studio

Roblox Studio is a program similar to Microsoft Visual Studio
Microsoft Visual Studio
Microsoft Visual Studio is an integrated development environment from Microsoft. It is used to develop console and graphical user interface applications along with Windows Forms applications, web sites, web applications, and web services in both native code together with managed code for all...

 and is used to construct places.

Players create their own places, edit them and also edit public domain places.



Economy

Roblox has its own virtual economy, based on Tickets and Robux.

Tickets are earned when other users visit a person's virtual places, the first time a player logs in each day, and when other users buy the player's virtual items. These items include shirts, pants, and T-shirts. They can be sold for either a set price in Tickets, or in Robux, allowing the buyer to choose which currency they pay with.

Robux are earned daily by paid members, in varying amounts, depending on the user's level of membership. Robux can be earned through sale of virtual goods, and can also be purchased with real money.

On November 21, 2008 the Roblox currency exchange was introduced. Tickets can be exchanged for Robux and vice versa. Some people take advantage of the RoblEX and make money off of it from trading schemes.

Trading is not allowed because a Trading System is upcoming.

ImPlicitNgine

The ImPlicitNgine is a physics engine programmed in C++
C++
C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...

 that is used in Roblox. David Baszucki, the CEO and co-founder of Roblox Corporation, created the engine in 2004. The engine handles physics that simulate the real world in tandem with OGRE
OGRE
OGRE is a scene-oriented, flexible 3D rendering engine written in C++ designed to make it easier and intuitive for developers to produce applications utilizing hardware-accelerated 3D graphics...

 and G3D, which handles the rendering of the graphics. The ImPlicitNgine allows accurate simulation of hundreds of thousands of rigid bodies in real time.
ImPlicitNgine also allows games to be composed without any static geometry sans the skybox. Because of this, every entity in a game can have physical calculations applied to it.

It features rigid body simulation, real time simulation, and spherical and rectangular physical calculation.

Upgrades

Although Roblox is a free game, Roblox lets players pay for premium upgrades such as Builders Club. There are three versions of Builders Club: Builders Club (referred to as "BC"), Turbo Builders Club (referred to as "TBC"), and Outrageous Builders Club (referred to as "OBC"). Builders Club allows players to have more places and get exclusive items. If players purchase TBC or OBC, they will receive more benefits than standard Builder's Club.

Cash cards

Roblox gives people the option to pay via PayPal
PayPal
PayPal is an American-based global e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. Online money transfers serve as electronic alternatives to paying with traditional paper methods, such as checks and money orders....

, Rixty
Rixty
Rixty is an alternative payment platform that makes it easy for youth and others without credit cards to make online entertainment purchases by converting their cash into online credits at more than 20,000 Coinstar kiosks and retail locations nationwide...

, Wallie, Paymo, and also sells Roblox cards at Toys R Us, 7-Eleven
7-Eleven
7-Eleven is part of an international chain of convenience stores, operating under Seven-Eleven Japan Co. Ltd, which in turn is owned by Seven & I Holdings Co...

, GameStop
GameStop
GameStop Corporation is an American video game and entertainment software retailer. The company, whose headquarters is in Grapevine, Texas, United States, operates 6,500 retail stores throughout the United States, Canada, Australia, Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, New...

, Walmart, Best Buy
Best Buy
Best Buy Co., Inc. is an American specialty retailer of consumer electronics in the United States, accounting for 19% of the market. It also operates in Mexico, Canada & China. The company's subsidiaries include Geek Squad, CinemaNow, Magnolia Audio Video, Pacific Sales, and, in Canada operates...

, and Future Shop
Future Shop
Future Shop is Canada's largest consumer electronics retailer. Future Shop currently operates a total of 146 stores across all of Canada's provinces as of December 2008....

 which can be purchased for $10 or $25 and be used for upgrades such as Builders Club or Robux. Currently, the cards are only sold in the U.S. and Canada.

Parents

Roblox gives parents the option of two chat modes: standard chat or safe chat. With standard chat, players can type anything they wish into the chat box, but with safe chat they may only choose from pre-selected words and phrases. Roblox also gives parents the option to monitor their kid's activity with a parent account. When a user is under safe chat, they can only see other pre-selected messages.

Roblox is certified by the Better Business Bureau
Better Business Bureau
The Better Business Bureau , founded in 1912, is a corporation consisting of several private business franchises of local BBB organizations based in the United States and Canada, which work through their parent corporation, the Council of Better Business Bureaus .The Better Business Bureau, through...

 and TRUSTe
TRUSTe
TRUSTe is a company based in San Francisco, California, best known for its online privacy seals. TRUSTe operates the world’s largest privacy seal program, certifying more than 3,500 websites, including leading online portals and brands like Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple Inc., IBM, Oracle...

.

Test Sites

Roblox also hosts two test sites, gametest.roblox.com and sitetest.roblox.com. gametest.roblox.com is used for testing different features in-game, and sitetest.roblox.com is used for new features on the website. These sites are available to registered users to test new features being developed. The sites are only up at certain times, and players on the regular site are notified with an orange banner saying when they are available.

Compatibility

Historically, Roblox has been only compatible with Microsoft Windows. But, recent updates to gametest.roblox.com have allowed users who own Apple computers (Macs) to install a scaled down version of the game - where the Roblox Studio menu will not appear. So far, the Mac version of the game does not work with the "play" button, so Mac users can only use roblox in Edit mode. More updates to the version will be coming out soon.

At this time there is no version of Roblox that will function with Linux. However, by using the workaround, WINE
Wine
Wine is an alcoholic beverage, made of fermented fruit juice, usually from grapes. The natural chemical balance of grapes lets them ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes, or other nutrients. Grape wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast...

, you can run the program with most features. In relation to most popular programs on WINE, it has a small number of users, possibly due to the different target age and intelligence demographics of Roblox and Linux.

iPhone App

On May 26, 2011 Roblox released an iOS app.

With this app, players can do things on the website, such as view their profile, manage their friends and more, with more features coming. However, there is no feature for building or playing Roblox games, and there is currently a bug with the app which allows you to register usernames over the character limit. In the newest version, 1.1.1, a feature was added where the user can now buy Builders Club as an in-app purchase, via iTunes
ITunes
iTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....

.

See also

  • Blockland
    Blockland
    Blockland is a multiplayer computer game built on the Torque Game Engine, in which players build using Lego-like building blocks. It was developed by Eric "Badspot" Hartman and was released on February 24, 2007. The game is not endorsed by, or affiliated with the Lego brand. However, at one point,...

    - Similar online computer game
  • LEGO Universe
    Lego Universe
    Lego Universe is a massively multiplayer online game developed by NetDevil. The game was released on October 26, 2010, with an early opening for LEGO "Founders", which consisted of users who pre-ordered the game. It is globally distributed by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment...

    - A MMOG made by NetDevil
    NetDevil
    NetDevil, owned by Gazillion Entertainment, was an American developer of massively multiplayer online role-playing games in Louisville, Colorado.- Beginnings :...

    , endorsed by LEGO
    Lego
    Lego is a line of construction toys manufactured by the Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. The company's flagship product, Lego, consists of colorful interlocking plastic bricks and an accompanying array of gears, minifigures and various other parts...

    .

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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