Roblox

Roblox
Roblox
Developer(s)	Roblox Corporation
Publisher(s)	Roblox Corporation
Designer(s)	Roblox Corporation
Engine	ImPlicitNgine
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows
Release	Janurary 29th, 2004
Genre(s)	MMOG, Physics Sandbox
Mode(s)	Online Multiplayer, Solo Editing

Roblox is a free virtual MMOG playground and workshop designed for children ages 4–14. The game is made up of building bricks of various shapes and sizes. Unlike other games, Roblox has no pre-defined goals, players are allowed to build anything such as houses, churches, cities, swimming pools, and more. Roblox users can program the places they create with a simplified version of Lua 5.1^[2]^[3] programming language. Roblox has become part of the privacy program TrustE^[4].

History and development

Roblox is a game first published on Janurary 29th, 2004^{[citation needed]} by Roblox Corp. of Silicon Valley, California. Roblox's project straddles several rapidly-developing aspects of internet entertainment: virtual worlds, casual gaming, and user-constructed content ^[5].^[6]

Customization

Places

Players in Roblox have the ability to construct up to one place with a regular account, ten with Builders Club, and twenty five with Turbo Builders Club out of an unlimited supply of virtual building blocks ^[7]. These blocks can be customized to each players liking. Players can earn in-game currency, called Tickets and Robux from other users visiting their online world. Every user starts out with a real estate home as their own where they can customize it using materials such as bricks, scripts, and other user created models. ^[8]

File:DefaultPro.png

One of the default avatars for registered users.

Avatars

Players in Roblox are given an avatar, which is used by the player when visiting each virtual world, that they can customize with new hats, heads, clothes and faces. All of these are available to purchase with Roblox's two virtual currencies, in the Catalog^[9]

Badges

Roblox provides users with achievement awards called badges. For example, Roblox has three combat badges that are awarded to users with high amounts of lifetime Knockouts. There is also a Builder's Club badge, given to the player when they join it. There are a total of 15 badges available to users.^[10]

The Catalog

The Catalog is where players purchase and sell creations for Tickets and Robux. When selling, there is a 10% sales tax, so 10% of the money it is sold for actually goes to the virtual economy, and 90% goes to you. For example, selling a shirt for 10 Tickets will give you 9 tickets. But different items, such as hats, can also be bought but can only be uploaded by an administrator^[11], mainly uploaded by the user name ROBLOX. On May 8, 2009, gear was introduced. This introduced weapons, boosters, etc. that the player could bring to the game. However, soon after gear was introduced, players were allowed to allow only certain gear types to their place.

Lua

Players in ROBLOX use a special programming system named "LUA". Lua is a small programming language similar to Java, although less complicated and can deal with threedimensional objects.

Economy

Virtual Money

Roblox has developed their own virtual economy. Players in Roblox can earn two currencies, Tickets or Robux. Users are awarded Tickets by getting people to visit their virtual places, Tickets, Robux, or both from selling their user made clothing , or by trading their money on Roblox's version of the stock market. Players are also given a login bonus of 10 Tickets. Builder's club members get a daily allowance of 15 Robux or 35 Robux if they are in Turbo Builders Club^[12].

Players can also advertise their clothing by uploading images for the advertisement (The template can be found at the upload page), and then betting tickets. The greater amount of tickets(Compared to the day's average bid), the higher chance of the advertisement appearing.

Roblox also has a built in Trade Currency system in which you can trade Tickets for Robux or Robux for Tickets. The Trade Currency has a system in which the "rate" can change this "rate" is what decides how much Tickets you get for Robux or opposite, a higher rate means Robux are worth more, a lower rate means Tickets are worth more.

There also is a program called the Ambassador program,for which players have to post pieces of HTML code on websites that support HTML code. This URL will lead to the User page of the player,and the most important part is,they get money for it each day. But many users abuse this feature and post these URL's on too much websites so that the websites start complaining.

Builder's Club

Although Roblox is a free software, it offers premium membership in the form of Builder's Club and Turbo Builder's Club. Offering:^[13]

Increased numbers of places - 10 Places for Builders Club and 25 for Turbo Builders Club
The ability to sell creations
No outside advertisements
A special hat - varies between standard and turbo
A joining bonus of 100 Robux
A daily allowance of 15 Robux for Builders Club or 35 for Turbo Builders Club.
A new gear item (Turbo Builder's Club only)

References

:<a href="http://www.roblox.com?userid=933983">Free Games</a>. Check out <a href="http://www.roblox.com/User.aspx?ID=933983">what I have been building lately</a>!