Q:  What is your favorite thing about working for ROBLOX?  

A:  It’s two things together: really smart people working on really hard (but fun!) problems.  It’s endlessly rewarding.  Right up there is the astonishment that comes from seeing all the things our users build from the raw bits of stuff we put out there.  We are constantly amazed!  

Q:  What are you most proud of so far that you worked on at ROBLOX?  

A:  Some of the things I’m most proud of are small pieces of technology that make the big ones possible — stuff that the users never see or know about.  Those aside, I’ll always have a special fondness for the RoblEX.  That was a fun, challenging project.  I just wish it would’ve had more support from Telamon along the way.    

Q:  Why did you join the ROBLOX team?  

A:  ROBLOX was far and away the most interesting thing that I came across when my wife and I were planning our move to California in 2006.  At the time, it was a relatively primitive 1-player game, and the web site was nothing like what you see today, but I could envision so much of what was to come, even way back then.  The idea of ROBLOX excited my imagination!  Add to that the mighty brains and many talents of David and Erik, and I knew I had to be a part of that team and help make it all happen.  

Q:  How old were you when you started programming and how did you learn to?  

A:  I learned to program on the Commodore 64 and the Apple IIe, sometime around 1983 — which would put me in 3rd grade and around 8 years old.  

It was something that my dad and I did together, and he of course helped a lot.  There was no World Wide Web back then, so we bought a subscription to the magazine Compute’s Gazette, which was a great resource for hobbyist programmers.   

Most importantly, though, I learned to program like everyone else does: by sitting down and trying, failing, figuring out my mistakes, and then trying some more.  There’s really no way around that simple recipe for most of the things you ever want to get good at.  

Q:  How did you get Telamon to make you the Dusekkar and then why did you take it off?  

A:  Well, I didn’t really “get” Telamon to make it for me.  He’s pretty much the physical manifestation of elemental caprice.  He submits to no authority or compulsion save his own whimsy.  That said, we did strike a bargain of sorts; I built the RoblEX in exchange for it (see above).  

Q:  Did you draw the flower on your smiley flower T-Shirt?  

A:  No, I found it online.  It’s one of the very first user-created images ever uploaded to ROBLOX.  I used it for testing while developing that part of the system.  I never imagined it would become such a calling card.    

Q: Why are manhole covers round?  

A: Elementary: A trapezoidal manhole cover wouldn’t very well fit with a round manhole, now would it?  

Q:  What are your hobbies?  

A:  Mostly I spend my free time vexing our cats with epistemological puzzles and logical paradoxes.  When not busy with that, though, I enjoy all of the following:  

High performance driving/instruction.  Some race tracks I especially love (I’ve never met one I didn’t like): Putnam Park, Road America, GingerMan Raceway, Mid Ohio Sports Car Course, Infineon Raceway.  

Hiking.  Some truly unforgettable places I’ve loved getting out and walking around: Glacier National Park in Montana, Yosemite National Park in California, Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, Banff National Park in Alberta, and Mt. Pilatus in Switzerland.  Every time I visit I place like one of those, I become aware of how much larger and grander the world is than my concept of it.  

Music.  After a bit of a hiatus, I’m back to soothing the savage beast.  My wife bought me a Seagull S6 acoustic guitar for Christmas, and I’m learning to play.  In days gone by, I’ve played the piano, organ, and even (a REALLY long time ago) the French horn.  

Q:  What is a recent book you read?  

A:  Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos Papadimitriou.  

Some other random stuff I’ve been reading recently:  The Graveyard Book and Marvel 1602, both by Neil Gaiman; The Complete Guide to Capital Markets for Quantitative Professionals by Alex Kuznetsov; A Pirate Looks at Fifty by Jimmy Buffett; Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy; Powers Vol. 1: Who Killed Retro Girl? by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming.  

Also, everyone should be sure to check out The Dragons of Ordinary Farm by Tad Williams and Deborah Beale.  

Q:  What other games do you like to play?  

A:  Social games: Mafia (a game so good, you may lose friends over it!)  

Tabletop: Cosmic Encounter, Dungeons & Dragons  

Electronic games: Racing sims, Smash TV, Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2, Castle Crashers, Call of Duty: World at War  

Q:  If you could be a superhero, what would you want your superpowers to be?  

A:  If I could have any superpower, I would want it to be the power of the perfect one-liner.  I’ve been foiled far too many times by thinking of a great quip only after it was too late.  Or not at all….  

The news WILL be brought to you through this site if you choose to stick with us. Looking back on the site activity, BloxyNews had no readers for four days and then only one person who visited the site the fifth day… I certainly hope that BloxyNews will start back up with its important news posting.

Plans for the future (near and distant)

• Special report on hackers and rogue scripts
• An excellent travelogue post with an entertaining and informative story in it
• New posting strategies and forms that will allow for easier reading while still getting the need-to-know to the reader
• And much, much more!

Renderman’s been in the kitchen, baking up a fresh batch of awesomesauce casserole…

ROBLOX has updated the Sparkles effect and has added a new Smoke particle system!

Some possible uses for smoke in your levels:

• Jet fighter exhaust
• Smoldering tire fires
• Hot chocolate steam
• Signal flares
• Smoke grenades
• Kitchen catastrophes
• Acursed zombie hazetrails
• Ghosts
• Tail pipes of race cars and trucks
• BBQs
• Fog machines for spooky levels

Smoke has a lot of properties that you can play with to create different effects. Here’s a rundown of some of the more interesting ones:

Color – Quite simple. The color of the smoke.

Enabled – If checked, the smoke is “on”. If unchecked, the smoke is “off”. This can be a useful property for scripters.

Opacity – The “thickness” of the smoke. 0 is clear, 1 is completely solid.

RiseVelocity – The velocity of the particles along the Y-axis (up/down). 0 means the smoke hovers and is good for fog. A high number would be good for a signal fire. A negative number can be used to create spooky mist effect.

Size – The size of the particles. Huge particles will slow down old computers.

ROBLOX is proud to announce that they are now Better Business Bureau accredited! They will zealously maintain their BBB reliability rating of A, fueled by their passionate commitment to enhancing customer value. Being BBB accredited means that they adhere to the BBB Online Best Practices code, which has eight focusing principles:

 1. Build Trust

 Establish and maintain a positive track record in the marketplace.

2. Advertise Honestly

 Adhere to established standards of advertising and selling.

3. Tell the Truth

 Honestly represent products and services, including clear and adequate disclosures of all material terms.

4. Be Transparent

 Openly identify the nature, location, and ownership of the business, and clearly disclose all policies, guarantees and procedures that bear on a customer’s decision to buy.

5. Honor Promises

 Abide by all written agreements and verbal representations.

6. Be Responsive

 Address marketplace disputes quickly, professionally, and in good faith.

7. Safeguard Privacy

 Protect any data collected against mishandling and fraud, collect personal information only as needed, and respect the preferences of customers regarding the use of their information.

8. Embody Integrity

 Approach all business dealings, marketplace transactions and commitments with integrity. Read more about BBB Online Business Best Practices here.

***

New Realm of Zombloxia!

Genre:  Horror

 100 Kills – New Realm of Zombloxia!

But they know that some users in Roblox don’t like change, so they’ve made Bubble Chat an option for place owners.  Simply go to the “Configure this Place” option on your showcase and you can change the chat settings for visitors to your place.

Feel free to discuss this feature in Roblox’s forum on this thread.

Goldface – Although not particularly artful, the name is accurate. His face is gold, and if you wear this, your face will be gold.

Charles de Gaulle – Dress up as the beloved Charles de Gaulle – and I don’t mean the airport.

Arctic Hood – Is the weather outside frightful? This hood is quite delightful.

Tin Foil Hat – Don’t let those baseball bigwigs know what you’re thinking.

Operation Desert Cyclone – With that hat you’ll be prepared for whatever your next mission is.

1950’s Sitcom Star – You can definitely be in the show with this wig.

The Dream of Flight – Functional and stylish!

:] – You know how people talk about happy mediums? This is like medium happy.

Talk about the new items here!

 Builderman recently met with a mysterious journalist at a local Starbricks coffee shop to be interviewed for an upcoming tell-all book. The identity of the journalist remains unknown, as she was wearing a paper sack over her head. Around the office we’ve been calling her simply Ms. X.

Ms. X’s book, tentatively entitled “Fait Lux: The Life and Times of a Builderman”, is due out in stores this holiday season. In the meantime, here’s a portion of the interview transcript. Builderman will be signing copies of the new book at an opening event in Bricks & Noble on December 1st.

- – -

Ms. X: How old are you?
BM: 44.

Ms. X: Where did you go to college?
BM: Stanford.

Ms. X: What first inspired the idea for ROBLOX?
BM: My partner and I always wanted to build the ultimate online
“building toy”.

Ms. X: Are you married, or do you have children?
BM: Yes – married, four kids ages 3-10.

Ms. X: Is ROBLOX headquarters REALLY located in Robloxia?
BM: Nope, we’re in Redwood City, CA

Ms. X: Who do you see as competition in the virtual world space?
BM: Not as much any one player as the general rising quality of all the
things that kids have access to – movies, video games, online games, you
name it!

Ms. X: Do you plan on keeping ROBLOX a small, kid friendly buisness, or
do you hope to expand Roblox to world-wide perspectives?
BM: We want to expand!

Ms. X: Who do you think is your best employee at ROBLOX?
BM: We’re very careful in who we hire – all are great!

Ms. X: What is in the future for ROBLOX?
BM: We pretty much want to do everything in the suggestions box - everything needs to be bigger, better, and more realistic…

I joined ROBLOX straight out of college when I was 23. I have been involved in the project for 3 years, almost from the beginning.

- Were there other people involved in coming up with this game?

David Baszucki and Erik Cassel spent a while developing ROBLOX before I joined up – they made a lot of the early design choices. We have a team of extremely creative developers who all have their influences on the game.

-  Did you start with another program or start it from scratch?

ROBLOX is built from scratch.

-  How does the team come up with ideas? What inspires you?

I used to have a lot of construction toys, growing up. There’s a cool game called BrikWars that I used to play a lot as a kid. That’s one of my main sources of inspiration for ROBLOX. Our developers are into board games, toys, video/pc games, model rockets, making stuff, you name it! The core idea, however, was always about letting people create their own worlds. So maybe that is the root inspiration.

- How long did it take to create ROBLOX?

ROBLOX has been a work in progress for more than 4 years. I doubt it will ever be “done”!

- How often do you work on ROBLOX to fix bugs/problems?

Every day.

- How did you come up with the name for your game? For virtual money?

David Baszucki came up with the name ROBLOX. I think it is supposed to invoke both “Robots” and “Blocks”. Another name that was considered was “Dynablox”. I came up with “ROBUX” it’s a pun on “ROBLOX”and “BUX”

- Who did you think would play your game? children? adults?

We expected that most of our players would be kids, aged 7-15, but we also think the idea of building your own world has broad appeal outside that age range.

- How did you come up with the idea for the Builder’s Club?

The business plan from the beginning was always to make ROBLOX free and sell a premium service to users who wanted more features. ROBLOX is mainly about building, so “Builders Club” made a lot of sense.

- Did you start with a 3D program or did you have to come up with your own?

While I’ve been here, we’ve re-worked the 3D engine twice. Each time we’ve started with existing code that we then heavily modified to suit our needs.

- How did you start the design? By drawing on paper?

David and Erik started with an idea of what they wanted the game to be like, and then just dove in and started to tinker. We’ve gone through a lot of rough drafts.

- Is ROBLOX what you planned for it to be? Did it change as you were creating it?

ROBLOX is always changing. We have some general goals, or things that we would like to see added to the game. However, a lot of the stuff we work on is the direct result of player feedback. The project has a life of its own.

- What college did you go to? Or what classes did you take to learn how?

I’ve been writing computer games since I was 8, so I guess experience is the best teacher. I got my degrees at Stanford University, and took a lot of classes that involved computer programming. Those helped too.

- What kind of things were you interested in studying?

I studied Biology, Classical Literature, and Computer Science.

- How much education did you need to invent ROBLOX?

Creating a game like ROBLOX is complicated. You need technical skills, like being able to program, and being able to design a working system.

But you also need creative skills – you have to be able to envision a game that would be fun, make it look good, anticipate problems before they happen, etc.

- What classes did you take in school that best prepared you for making your invention?

Probably “Introduction to Algorithms” – that stuff is pretty fundamental for programmers.

~End~
Talk about this post more on the forums!

What is your favorite thing about working for ROBLOX?

My co-workers. I work with some brilliant and creative people. Just as an example, I’m constantly asking RobloSam questions about .Net development or Vibhu about AJAX to try to learn more.

I work with some
really smart people and I try to steal as much as I can from them. (Read: Erik is a god). On the creativity side, I’ve also found that
the more people I run my new features by, the better of a product it
comes out. Guaranteed.

You can often hear people discussing ideas
across the room here, or constantly walking back and forth to
each others’ desks. There’s really a positive and collaborative feeling
in the air here and it leads to some very cool ideas (as hopefully you
all agree!).

What was your biggest contribution while working for ROBLOX?

Biggest… I’m not sure, you’ll have to ask Builderman
Personally, I’m most excited about my work with Groups. Being able to develop a full feature from the back-end database work to the website interface is a great feeling. And it’s still in its early phases. There are so
many more cool things we want to add; I’m very excited about the
future of groups.

How long would you like to work for ROBLOX?

Forevar!!!

Who would you make an Admin, Mod, or Developer?

I think there are a lot of great users in our community that deserve
credit. Hopefully we can continue to make more features that let kids
keep ROBLOX safe and fun and give credit where credit is due.

I’d particularly like to thank everyone who helps out with our
test/staging site before releases. We need the help to iron out all of
the kinks before releasing to the public, and I (as well as the other
devs) find the feedback on the forums extremely useful.

What is your favorite place on ROBLOX?

Oh man, there are too many to mention. It blows me away at how many
cool places our users make. Recently I’ve been enjoying xLegox’s train
builder, but I don’t think I could pick a favorite.

Is there any other game you like better than ROBLOX?

No way. I live, eat, and sleep ROBLOX. Hah. To be honest though, I
don’t play nearly as many games as I used to. When I was younger I was
really into MMO’s (Everquest, WoW, DAoC), especially PvP oriented
ones, but since I started developing games the last thing I want to do
when I get home is see another video game. I have to keep a balance. I
guess Dark Age of Camelot is my favorite game of all time. Mythic did
a great job on that one.

What is your favorite section of the forums?

I love the creativity in the Role-Playing forums. I also think the
Building Helpers section is a great example of how supportive our
community is.

What is your favorite hat?

Sparkle Time Fedora, obviously!

Why did you become a ROBLOX Admin?

Was poor, needed a job. Haha, no. I’ve always wanted to work in the
game development industry. I’ve also always been interested in
educational game design (my parents were both in education) and I
co-developed a 2D physics game for the Hidden Agenda contest, so
ROBLOX’s educational nature definitely appealed to me. I think it
really gives players an outlet for creativity and definitely teaches
some useful programming skills.

On a scale from 1-10 how much have you enjoyed being interviewed?

10. Well, except that you’ve been holding me up from working on a
SUPER cool new feature!!! No, just joking. I love giving back to our
cool community. You’re what makes ROBLOX rock. Thanks for the
interview

~
Wow that’s pretty awesome! You can talk more about RobloTim’s
interview on the forums!