Oof!
I had lost count on the number of times I had died at that particular infuriating leap. The leap in question was towards the end of a very long, checkpoint-less Roblox game. Who even made this one? I was one to complain though – given I had been mindlessly droning away at it for hours!
You do see where this train of thought would be leading, do you not?
I thought, maybe I will build my own game. Better yet, I think I will teach the community how it ought to be! – and here I am, half regretting my hubris. However, as a person who truly appreciates this community, I shall follow through.
For the uninitiated, Roblox is not a game per se. In actuality, it is an online game platform and game creation system. It allows users to create their own games and play games created by other users. There are multitudes of games, ranging from platformers to role-playing, to shooters and puzzles – you name it, it has got it. Each game type has innumerable variations due to the vast creative community and its game submissions.
Typically, the platform is popular among children below the age of 16, but even older people, especially those interested in learning to code practically, find this platform very engaging. The best part is that Roblox is free to download and use. It is also quite popular among parents due to the company’s stance on community safety and proactive measures to ensure the credibility of this stance (as well as for including a parental control feature). As of August 2020, Roblox has over 164 million active users.
Setting up– Creating Your Own Roblox Game?
Now you obviously cannot just build your own game after merely opening the Roblox platform. Nothing is ever that cut and dry. You need something called Roblox Studio before you can even hope to create something for the platform. And it is not available as a standalone either.
Let’s head to roblox.com for starters. You may use any browser you prefer.
For those who already have a Roblox account, all you have to do is login – we shall get to the Roblox Studio part shortly.
The following steps are exclusively for the initiates; it is remarkably straightforward here:
Pick your birth month, day, and year. Be honest with the date of birth so that developer efforts towards enforcing a safe environment for the community (like text chat moderation based on age) would be fruitful. You would also benefit from finding like-minded people of your age group. Next, create a username. It is advisable not to use your real name for the sake of safety since your username is going to be visible to other users. Not to mention, catchy usernames like GhostlyFiend sound significantly cooler than John Smith or Jane Doe. Finally, create a password. Preferably one that is tough to crack but easy to remember. Try to use a combination of upper and lower-case letters and numbers. You may also use special characters if you want to go overboard. You are now ready to enter the world of Roblox. You shall automatically be logged into Roblox after the account creation succeeds. All you have to do is finish up by clicking, Sign Up!
Now that everyone has logged in, you may finally use this guide to download and install Roblox Studio:
On the landing page, there are some tabs on the top left. Click on the Create tab to be re-directed to a new page. The new page should display a prompt in the middle of the screen that reads, Start Creating. Click on that to prompt the Roblox platform to check if you already have Roblox Studio installed. If you already have Roblox Studio installed, the platform will promptly open it up. If you do not, you will then be given the option to Download Studio. Click it. After the Studio finishes downloading, run the program. It will start installing. Once the installation completes, you may open up the Studio, and you will be required to log in again – this time, in the app.
Deciding the type of game
As touched upon briefly earlier, there are many different types of games in Roblox. They are separated based on genres like action, adventure, horror, and further divided into sub-genres based on gameplay, such as platformers, shooters, fighting/beat-em-ups, survival, role-playing, simulation, and so on.
The genre decides the elements in each game. For example, a horror game would ideally have darkly lit environments with drab colors, eerie music, and creepy non-player characters (NPCs) and objects. The gameplay is influenced heavily by genre. A horror game may have survival elements and may, for example, include a ghost NPC that causes instant in-game death upon direct interaction and perhaps maybe countered only by using specific in-game objects or be outright avoided.
These mechanics are doable but complicated. Before executing such complex elements, a degree of experience and practice using the Roblox Studio tools is imperative. It is essential to start small to avoid getting dejected and give up when you attempt big, and things do not work out.
Since this guide is for beginners, we shall start with a platformer; or in Roblox terms – an Obby. To keep things simple, we are not going to assign it to any overarching genre.
Understanding an Obby
Before attempting to build one, it’s a good idea to understand what an obby is and try it out. An obby is a community coined abbreviation (that became so popular that the developers officiated it) for an obstacle course. As mentioned above, it is a platformer.
The Roblox Studio comes with a handy feature for beginners – Templates. Templates are pre-built Roblox projects that you can use to mold your games around.
You will find an obby template that you can load up and playtest in the Studio. Click the New button on the top left corner, and under the All Templates tab, you should find the template named Obby that you may click and open.
To get the hang of an obby, you may test the opened template by clicking the Play button.
In-game controls are W, A, S, and D, for moving front, back, left, and right – respectively. Spacebar for jumping. Clicking and holding the right mouse button while moving the mouse allows you to move the camera around.
After exploring the obby to your heart’s content, you may stop playing by clicking the Stop button.
Designing an Obby
So, you should know by now that an obby is a point A to point B obstacle course. It may or may not have checkpoints to save your progression, and usually, there is a timer. Now that you have a good idea of what an obby is, you can create your own.
Preparing the game world
Let us start by exiting the template that we created earlier:
Click on the File tab and click on Close to close the template. If you receive a prompt to save, click No. Open the Baseplate template by clicking the New tab and finding the template under All Templates.
The game world needs to be empty before you can build it into an obby, so you need to delete the Baseplate. The explorer window lists all the objects within the currently open project:
In the window, click the small arrow next to the Workspace tab to expand it. Find Baseplate under the expanded workspace tab. Click on it and press the Delete button on the keyboard.
Note: The Explorer window is available on the right-hand side by default. For some reason, if it is not open, or if you accidentally closed the window, you may find it in the View tab.
Setting a start
In Roblox, SpawnLocation establishes where a player ought to appear at the beginning of the game or after restarting. Without this, players may spawn randomly in the game and fall into the abyss to their demise.
To create a spawn location:
Open the explorer window and find the Workspace tab. Click the + symbol to the immediate right of the word, Workspace. In the drop-down list that appears, look for SpawnLocation and click on it.
By default, once created, the spawn location appears at the center of the camera view.
Adding an object in the environment unlocks camera movement. It is accessible using the W, A, S, D, Q, and E keys to move the camera forward, backward, left, right, up, and down – respectively. Use the Shift key to increase camera speed; right mouse button, middle mouse button and scroll wheel to turn, pan and zoom the camera – respectively; F to focus the camera on a selected object.
Adding, moving, and anchoring Parts
In Roblox, Parts are the basic building blocks of games. They come in varieties of (further editable) shapes, namely – block, sphere, wedge, and cylinder. For the sake of simplicity, we shall be using blocks.
Click the Model tab and click the Part icon. A new part will appear at the center of the current camera view. The move, scale, rotate, and anchor tools are all under the Model tab. Before implementing them, click the part you would like to adjust to make sure it is selected. To move the part along an axis, click on the Move tool. Colored arrows should now highlight the selection. Drag the arrows in the direction of your choice to move the part. To scale the part along an axis, click the Scale tool. Colored orbs should highlight the selection. Drag them in the direction of your choice to resize the selection. To rotate the part around an axis, click on the Rotate tool. The selection should now be highlighted, with an orbit around the object, along with spherical handles. Drag the spherical handles in the direction of your choice to rotate the part. After tweaking placements and adjustments of all parts, anchor them in place by selecting them and clicking the Anchor button. Anchor locks parts in place and prevents them from either falling into empty space or from being moved around when bumped into when you play the game.
Testing the game
It is a good idea to test your game out before publishing it for other players. We do this to make sure everything works as it is supposed to. It is also so that you can gauge the difficulty of your game by trying it out yourself. Balancing the game is imperative to keep the players engaged. If the jumps in a platformer are too easy, players would eventually get bored. On the other hand, if the jumps are too complicated, it is very likely players would get frustrated (like I did).
To test your game, hit the Play button or the F5 key.
Publishing the game
Publishing the game is the final piece of the puzzle. Not only does your game project get saved in the Roblox platform’s secure servers, but it also becomes accessible for other users on Roblox to play!
To publish your game:
Under File, click on Publish to Roblox. The publishing window should open. Enter a catchy name for your game and add a description to it, if you want to. Click on the Create button.
Voila! You have just successfully created and published your own Roblox game!
Next steps
You can fiddle around more within the Roblox Studio. Now that you know the basics, you can try adding depth to your game environment. Play around with adding colors to the parts used in your game world. Build traps and rotating platforms and pickups. Learn the basics of coding and apply what you learn to run interesting scripts in your games, like creating checkpoints.
When you have learned enough, and feel confident enough, try something big by using overarching genres to influence your game development. When your games become popular enough, monetize your games and earn money.
Yes, you could earn actual money as a game developer on Roblox! By allowing creators to feature microtransactions in the form of cosmetics, the Roblox platform has become a great source of income for independent developers. Do not believe me? Some Roblox games such as Jailbreak have become popular enough to receive media attention. The co-creator of Jailbreak covered his entire undergraduate education at Duke University, exclusively using funds he earned from the game!
So, with a game that encourages dreaming, dream big!
