Coding Roblox Games Made Easy, Second Edition E-Book

Zander Brumbaugh

• Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 392

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

“I read/worked through the book with my kids to build a game together and I highly recommend pre-teens, teens, and tweens to pick this up as their first book to coding games”

-James W. Y III, Technology Integration Specialist at Old Bridge Township Public Schools

“...a must-read, must-practice essential book for anyone getting started with building games on Roblox using Luau programming...”

-Frederic Markus, President, Feerik Games (Ex-Ubisoft, Nintendo, Rockstar, Disney, LucasArts, and Epic Games)

“..includes everything from Roblox Studio menus, the basics of the Luau scripting language, how to tie in real-world (or any world!) physics into your experience of marketing your game as well as some great ideas for where to go next.”

-Jay Sebastian, Computer Scientist and Adjunct Lecturer in AI for Games and Simulation

Roblox isn't just popular; it's incredibly popular, featuring more than 54 million active players per day. Any experience imaginable can be created on Roblox.

Coding Roblox Games Made Easy, 2nd Edition, is a go-to guide for anyone at any age looking to get started with building a game on Roblox using Luau programming. In just about 300 pages, you’ll learn the basics of Luau programming, build two end-to-end games, add customizations to finally publish and monetize them.

The bonus chapter ‘50 Cool Things to do in Roblox’ is a perfect end to your learning journey with information nuggets presented with examples to save your time when coding, animating, building avatars, using Robux and so much more.

Join Zander, 19-year-old Roblox developer and programmer on this game-development journey and bring your ideas to life

Leseprobe

Coding Roblox Games Made Easy

Second Edition

Create, Publish, and Monetize your games on Roblox

Zander Brumbaugh

BIRMINGHAM—MUMBAI

Coding Roblox Games Made Easy

Second Edition

Copyright © 2022 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author nor Packt Publishing or its dealers and distributors, will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to have been caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

Senior Publishing Product Manager: Manish Nainani

Acquisition Editor – Peer Reviews: Gaurav Gavas

Project Editor: Meenakshi Vijay

Content Development Editor: Grey Murtagh

Copy Editor: Safis Editing

Technical Editor: Tejas Mhasvekar

Proofreader: Safis Editing

Indexer: Manju Arasan

Presentation Designer: Pranit Padwal

First published: January 2021

Second edition: June 2022

Production reference: 3130223

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place

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B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-80323-467-0

www.packt.com

Contributors

About the author

Zander Brumbaugh is an independent programmer, project manager, and game designer. The games he has made or contributed to have been played more than 300 million times. He has created popular games including Anime Lifting Simulator, My Salon, Munching Masters, Power Simulator amongst others. Zander currently attends the University of Washington and is part of the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering. At the time of writing, Zander is 19 years old.

To my mother and father. You have both always been there to support me and consistently inspire me to be the best version of myself.

About the reviewer

Harrison Lewis is an experienced game and software developer who specializes in back-end functionality and security logic. Harrison has over 6 years of experience in the Roblox space, and over 4 years of experience in software development. He has contributed to dozens of Roblox projects and has released a handful of tools and open-source resources.

I’d like to thank Zander for the opportunity to be the technical reviewer for this book; he’s done a wonderful job at making often overlooked resources and techniques easy to understand through his writing.

Contents

Preface

Who this book is for

What this book covers

To get the most out of this book

Get in touch

Section I: Introduction to Roblox Development

Introducing Roblox Development

Technical requirements

Learning the benefits of Roblox development

Financial opportunities on Roblox

Improving professional skills

Benefits of networking

Discovering developer types

Programmers

Modelers

Builders

UI/UX designers

Gaining a perspective about your early projects

Summary

Worksheet

Knowing Your Work Environment

Technical requirements

What is an experience?

Traversing the Create page

Configuring Experience and Place settings

The Configure Experience menu

Configure Start Place menu

Icon

Access

Other place options

Configure Localization

Create Badge

The Creator Marketplace and Avatar Shop

Getting started with Roblox Studio

The File menu and settings

Movement and camera manipulation

Utilizing the Explorer

Using Studio tools

The Select tool

The Move tool

The Scale tool

The Rotate tool

The Transform tool

Managing the Game Settings menu

The View tab

The Test tab

Customizing Studio to aid your workflow

Taking advantage of Roblox’s resources

Tutorials and resources

The Developer Forum and Talent Hub

Summary

Worksheet

Section II: Programming in Roblox

Introduction to Luau

Technical requirements

Learning about data types and creating variables

Data types

Setting and manipulating variables

Numbers

Booleans

Strings

Tables

Dictionaries

Vectors

CFrames

Instances

Conditional statements

Declaring and using loops

for loops

while loops

repeat loops

Learning about functions and events

Functions in programming

Recursion

Events and methods of instances

Demonstrating programming style and efficiency

General style rules

Roblox-specific rules

Summary

Worksheet

Roblox Programming Scenarios

Technical requirements

Understanding the client-server model

Different script types

Scripts

Local scripts

Modules

The Script Menu tab

FilteringEnabled

RemoteEvents

RemoteFunctions

BindableEvents and BindableFunctions

Using Roblox services

Players service

ReplicatedStorage and ServerStorage

StarterGui

StarterPack and StarterPlayer

PolicyService

PhysicsService

UserInputService

Working with physics

Constraints

Movement constraints

Adding peripheral experience aspects

Sound

Lighting

Other effects

Summary

Worksheet

Creating an Obby

Technical requirements

Setting up the backend

Managing player data

Creating a datastore system

Creating and loading session data

Manipulating session data

Saving player data

Addressing throttling and edge cases

Managing collisions and player characters

Making obby stages

Creating part behaviors

Creating rewards

Shops and purchases

Robux premium purchases

Making in-experience currency shops

Preventing exploits

Setting up the frontend

Creating effects

Sound

Particles

Tying in effects

Part movement

Testing and publication

Summary

Worksheet

Creating a Battle Royale Game

Technical requirements

Setting up the backend

Managing player data

Creating weapons

Setting up the round system

Preparing the player

Local replication

Spawning loot

Setting up the frontend

Working with the UI

Game message and remaining players display

Making a spectate menu

Creating a shop

Summary

Worksheet

Section III: The Logistics of Game Production

The Three Ms

Technical requirements

Mechanics

Simulators

RP games

Tycoons

Minigames

Monetization

Marketing

The Roblox promotion system

YouTubers

Community

Reviewing what you’ve learned

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapters 5 and 6

Metaverse

Summary

Worksheet

50 Cool Things to Do on Roblox

Technical requirements

Programming challenges

Is number x divisible by y?

FizzBuzz

Find the maximum value in a table

Check whether an element exists in a table

Format seconds into hours:minutes:seconds

Return unique elements from a table

Number of stickers

Concatenate two tables

Reverse a table

Sort a table using table.sort()

Sort a table using a sorting algorithm of your choice

Solve a linear equation

Guessing game

Find the nth number of the Fibonacci sequence

Experience systems

Make a leaderboard system

Make an announcement system

Make a daily reward system

Create an interaction system

Make a custom ProximityPrompt appearance

Make a world lighting system

Make a projectile system

Make a car system

Make a racing system

Make an aircraft system

Make a ship system

Make fighting NPCs

Make a survival system

Create an inventory system

Make a pet system

Make a crafting menu

Create a house customization system

Experience ideas

Simulators

Tycoons

Roleplay games

Hangout games

Roblox features

Group name changes

Free badge creation

Spatial voice

Mesh deformation

Layered clothing

Flipbooks

Custom materials

Talent Hub

Other development types

Plugins

UI/UX design

Art

Clothing design

Thumbnails/icons

Particle design

Sound and music design

Animations

Summary

Worksheet Answers

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Other Books You May Enjoy

Index

Landmarks

Cover

Index

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Section 1

Introduction to Roblox Development

This section will introduce you to the basic concepts of Roblox development. Then we will move on to understand Roblox Studio, the type of development opportunities that exist, and what to expect from your first projects.

This section comprises the following chapters:

Chapter 1, Introducing Roblox DevelopmentChapter 2, Knowing Your Work Environment

1

Introducing Roblox Development

Roblox is a massive entertainment platform like no other, for both playing and creating games. With over 200 million monthly active users, Roblox has enabled both new and experienced developers to create successful games, often called experiences, that can be played globally at no cost. With a great number of resources and a large and supportive community of developers from around the world to connect with, entering the Roblox game development scene provides opportunities that cannot be found anywhere else.

Before covering the technical details of working with Roblox Studio and programming in Luau, it is important that you are first familiar with what developing games on Roblox can offer you and what the day-to-day interactions with the platform are like. By the end of this chapter, you will have an understanding of the different roles developers can fulfill on game projects, how you can earn money as a Roblox developer, and what to expect as you develop and publish your first experiences.

In this chapter, we’re going to cover the following main topics:

Learning about the benefits of Roblox developmentDiscovering developer typesKnowing what to expect from your early projects

Technical requirements

You will not need any software or additional materials for this chapter as it is mostly informative theory. You may want to have access to a computer to visit some of the websites or applications discussed in this chapter.

Learning the benefits of Roblox development

Roblox has been a consistently growing platform since its creation in 2006, and in recent years, it has grown tremendously. As of 2022, more than 200 million unique users play Roblox monthly. Because of this, there has never been a better time to become a Roblox developer as there are so many new players looking for a wide variety of experiences from new creators.

Financial opportunities on Roblox

Perhaps one of the greatest contributing factors to Roblox’s overall rise in popularity with developers is the monetary benefits that are offered. These benefits may have been one of your motivations to learn more about the platform, and that is to be expected. The top experiences on the Roblox platform are currently making tens of millions of US dollars from in-experience purchases annually.

As a developer, you can earn money from your experiences through the Developer Exchange, more commonly called DevEx. Roblox has a virtual currency called Robux, which can only be purchased with real-world currency. After a player purchases Robux, the balance on their account is updated and then they can spend them freely on any experience they want. When a player spends Robux on one of your in-experience purchases, 70% of the Robux from that purchase will go to you, as Roblox takes a 30% marketplace fee.

The two types of in-experience purchases are as follows:

Passes: Single-time purchasesDeveloper products (more commonly called dev products): Purchased multiple times, for something such as in-experience currency

You must have a total of 50,000 earned Robux in your account and be 13 years old or older in order to be eligible for the Developer Exchange program. Earned Robux are those that come from users making in-experience purchases, not Robux you’ve purchased. In addition to sales you make directly, players of your experiences that have a Roblox Premium membership grant you additional Robux based on how much time they spend playing your experience, though this amount is usually just a fraction of what an experience makes in sales.

Furthermore, there are programs you can apply to that allow you to sell character accessories, plugins, and more for Robux. When working with a development team in a Roblox group, developers can be paid with Robux either directly or through a percentage of experience revenue. Direct pay-outs are a simple action that can be done through the tabs of the Configure Group page and are not a recurring payment. Giving developers a percentage of the experience’s earnings automatically deposits that amount into their account after it has been verified. Remember, this can only be done when an experience is hosted in a group, not on an individual’s profile.

It may be helpful to remember that after a player makes an in-expereince purchase, Roblox has up to a 14-day wait period before those Robux are deposited into a group or personal account. This is in order to verify that the purchase was a legitimate sale.

More information about the Developer Exchange program can be found here: https://www.roblox.com/developer-exchange/help.

Improving professional skills

Aside from the monetary benefits of being a Roblox developer, you are developing other skills that you may find applicable to other professional environments. Whether you fill the role of project manager or just an additional programmer, you are able to develop team coordination and communication skills. One of the most sought-after qualities employers look for, especially in STEM, where most work is team-based, is being able to coordinate your work in a team with clear communication. Roblox development is, in my opinion, one of the best places for students in computing-related fields to get their start and learn the basics of collaboration. The platform helps you develop not only greater programming abilities but also strong leadership and eventually money management skills.

Benefits of networking

While working with other people is not always necessary and there have been popular titles made by single-member teams, the social nature of Roblox strongly encourages developers to work with each other to create experiences, with each developer fulfilling one or more roles in a project. Currently, almost every experience at the top of the Popular sort has been created by a team of two or more individuals. With the great success and growth of some top experiences on the platform, the development teams of those experiences have expanded to more than 20 people, though teams of that size are not yet typical.

If you are 13 or older, you can get involved with the community and find other developers to collaborate with through Twitter, as well as the communication application Discord. By having a Twitter account dedicated to your development work, you can post the creations you are most proud of while communicating with other, more popular developers. These new connections with other developers in the Roblox Twitter Community (RTC) may give you the opportunity to collaborate with more well-known individuals and grow your name the more you work. Furthermore, popular Roblox development hashtags like #Roblox and #RobloxDev let you see what other developers are working on and let your work be seen by others when using them in your tweets. Discord is a communication app that could be compared to Slack. There are a variety of Discord servers that are based around Roblox development and are an excellent place to show off creations, discuss your work with other members of the community, and find new people to direct your efforts with. Additionally, you can create your own Discord server to build a following and community around your work. Remember when talking to other people online not to give out personal information and be aware that people may not always be who they say they are.

Another important type of community for developers is Roblox YouTubers. As YouTubers create content showcasing your experiences, an impression is made upon their audiences and, as a result, your player count will likely increase from the new publicity. Forming firm connections with these individuals may help you get future promotions for your projects while also creating advocates for your work in the process. While there is not always an easy way to connect with these content creators, they often have a Discord or Twitter presence in addition to business emails where they may respond to you.

Overall, the type of networking described here is the same in many fields of work. Building your image and developing your identity and reputation are the most important parts of your career. Conducting your work in a professional way will have effects that may not be immediately recognized but will certainly be of benefit to you in the future. With better networking abilities, you will become more easily connected with new people who can benefit both your work and reputation.

Discovering developer types

As previously mentioned, the Roblox developer community is quite diverse; each developer brings their own unique style and technique to the platform. In game development, there are a variety of roles that a developer can fulfill. Most commonly on Roblox, each developer typically has one primary skill that they use for a project. The most common types of developers on Roblox are programmers, builders, 3D modelers, UI/UX designers, and other various artists. Each developer that holds their respective role is equally important to creating a well-refined finished product.

Programmers

Programmers create the core of any experience. From storing player data, creating working weapons, or any other experience functionality that doesn’t happen by default, a programmer is the one producing it. On Roblox, programmers use a Roblox implementation of the Lua programming language, called Luau.Lua isa fast, C-based procedural language that can be found across the game development industry. You will find that the syntax of Luau is less complex than others and seems even more human-oriented than most high-level languages. Because of this, many programmers find the learning curve to be quite low and if Luau is your first language, you may find that the transition to other languages is quite easy as common syntax from multiple programming languages is used.

Modelers

3D modelers create the individual items that you see in an experience, from furniture, pets, food items, to any other visual pieces that are typically small to medium in size. While these models can be made inside of Roblox Studio, most 3D modelers have become skilled in using the free 3D modeling application Blender to create their meshes. There are many reasons for doing this; in particular, the parts used for creating objects inside of Roblox Studio are quite blocky and you cannot easily achieve smooth or complex shapes, while it is considerably easier to do so in modeling software.

Builders

Builders fulfill the role of creating the worlds that exist in your experiences. Whether it be a cold corridor in a spaceship stuck adrift or a hot, arid desert with an oasis at its center, builders are developers that ultimately create the first impression of an experience when players join. With this in mind, it is important that the builder for a project is skilled enough to create the desired vision. While you may think that builders and modelers are one and the same, they are not. Builders focus more on the overall map and world design for projects, though they often use Blender and simultaneously fulfill the role of 3D modeling for various assets in the world.

UI/UX designers

UI/UX designers create the pages and screens that players interact with inside your experiences. Some good examples of something a UI designer would be responsible for making include a player’s inventory screen, a health bar, or any other designed visual interface. Usually, the UI is the first thing a player will notice in addition to the map of your experience; therefore, it would be best that the designer is capable of creating a visually appealing set of UIs that matches the style of the experience itself.

Some additional developer types include animators, music producers, graphic designers, and other artists. All the different types of developers mentioned are important for creating a strong finished product and it is important that they all are equally competent in being able to accomplish the goals of a project. You should be sure to identify which of these roles interest you the most so that you can focus your time on learning more about them and developing those skills for future use.

Gaining a perspective about your early projects

Though the beginning of your development career may vary, one thing is typically standard: your first experience will not be number one on the popular page, and that’s okay! As frustrating as it may be that you are not granted the instant gratification everyone craves, this is the best outcome. Speaking from personal experience, maintaining a popular experience that is played by tens of thousands of players concurrently (or more) is quite stressful. It is best that new developers have time to gain additional experience in order to first get used to the platform before producing popular titles. Figure 1.1 depicts the thumbnail of my first game, Endure; it almost immediately tells an onlooker that the project was made by an amateur:

Figure 1.1: Endure was one of my first titles and lacked refinement

Many new developers often run into what I’ve coined the Roadblocks on Roblox, where they begin to create a project that they have a passionate but loosely defined vision for and are forced to abandon it as they struggle to accomplish everything that they had originally imagined. The best way to move past these issues is to lay out a development plan and solidify the features and mechanics that should be included in your project. With this, you can review and restructure your vision as needed, keeping in mind what is popular with Roblox players, as well as what can be realistically accomplished with your personal abilities and that of your team for a project.

Ultimately, motivation and dedication are key; without these, projects simply do not succeed. It is important to remember that games are not often enjoyable to players if they were not enjoyable for the developers to create. If you are collaborating with other people, make sure that everyone on the team is on the same page for the direction and rough roadmap for the development of the game. The best goal to have, for both your mental health and the quality of your projects, is simply to make each new game better than your last. You may spend months developing a game only to have it perform at a mediocre level, but this is part of building your foundation. From each project, you gain a bit more experience and recognition. Figure 1.2 shows a direct result of following these practices; Power Simulator has been played more than 100 million times and its thumbnail is much more engaging to potential players due to its professional level of design:

Figure 1.2: Power Simulator is one of my most successful titles, a result of years of experience

No matter what becomes of your early projects, always look forward to the future and try to improve the gaming experience for your players while improving the development process for yourself; only with repeated effort will you find success.

Summary

The key points to remember from this chapter are what opportunities exist on the Roblox platform, what different developer types do, and what interests you, as well as finding a collection of people in the community with which to create more well-rounded projects.

After combining what you have learned about networking, what to expect from early development, as well as how to build your overall experience as a developer, I believe that you too will be able to accomplish amazing feats on the platform while strengthening skills that will benefit you in any professional environment.

In the following chapter, you will begin getting to know Roblox Studio, the program with which you will create your experiences. Knowing all the features of your work environment, including those that may not be immediately noticeable, will help to increase your development efficiency and overall productivity on future projects.

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Worksheet

Q1. What is a common and interchangeable word for games used on Roblox?

Q2. What is the name of the process through which developers exchange Robux for real-world currency?

Q3. What do developers sell for Robux in their games in order to earn money? Specifically, what are used for one-time purchases and what are used for multiple purchases?

Q4. How long may it take for developers to receive the proceeds of in-experience sales?

Q5. What is the name of the programming language used in Roblox development?

Q6. What do programmers do on Roblox?

Q7. What do 3D modelers do on Roblox?

Q8. What do builders do on Roblox?

Q9. What do UI/UX designers do on Roblox?

Q10. What should you expect from your first projects on Roblox?

2

Knowing Your Work Environment

Fully knowing your work environment allows you, as a developer, to make progress on your projects more efficiently. Familiarizing yourself with the interfaces that Roblox developers work with on a daily basis in order to produce expansive, high-quality experiences will set you on the path to making your own.

After reading this chapter, you will be able to create new experiences, change external experience settings, navigate and use Roblox Studio, and make use of the additional resources Roblox offers. You will also learn how to fine-tune some of the smaller yet convenient features it provides.

In this chapter, we’re going to cover the following main topics:

Traversing the Create pageGetting started with Roblox StudioExploring plugins and the Toolbox

Technical requirements

For this chapter, you will need access to a computer that meets the requirements to run Roblox Studio. In order to use Roblox Studio, you will also need an internet connection. More information on the system requirements of Roblox can be found here: https://en.help.roblox.com/hc/en-us/articles/203312800.

What is an experience?

Roblox has long been a gaming platform but with the concept of the metaverse on the rise, Roblox changed its focus to become broader. As a result, a game became an experience, a player became a user, and many other changes like this occurred. An experience is anything that you can imagine creating, be it social, casual, realistic, or abstract in nature. In the next section, we will look at the parts of the Roblox website related to creating experiences.

Traversing the Create page

The Create tab of the Roblox website displays all of your created experiences and uploaded assets, showing the most recently created first, in the tab related to the asset’s category. Additionally, many of the actions that can be taken to change the different overall settings of your experience can be completed here. To access the Create page, navigate to https://www.roblox.com/develop, and you will be brought to the page depicted in Figure 2.1:

Figure 2.1: The Create page shows everything related to development

We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: https://static.packt-cdn.com/downloads/9781803234670_ColorImages.pdf.

To continue with this chapter, you need to navigate to the Create tab. Once there, find the default experience that was created when your account was activated.

If for some reason no experiences are shown in a list under the Create tab, click the Create New Experience button. This should open Roblox Studio. From there select a new experience template; I suggest choosing Baseplate to start. Once in the template, press Alt + Pand then the Create button. By pressing Alt + P you published your game to Roblox; this will be covered in more detail in the Getting started with Roblox Studio section. We’ll learn all about how to use Roblox Studio soon, but at this point, you can return to the Create page and continue.

Now you are all set to learn how to change the external settings of your experience and make use of the other resources that the Create page offers.

Configuring Experience and Place settings

Perhaps you have realized that there are certain settings you will want to change for your experience, such as how many visitors can fit into a server or even what platforms the experience can be played on. For settings such as these, no programming is needed; the changes can, and in most cases should, be done through the different options accessible via the Create page.

Once you are under the Experiencessection of the Create page, which is selectable on the left side of your screen, click on the gear icon on the right side of your experience, as seen in Figure 2.2. By clicking this icon, you will be presented with a drop-down menu that lists a variety of choices:

Figure 2.2: A default view of an experience’s gear icon menu on the Roblox website

For this section, however, the focus will be on the Configure Experienceand Configure Start Place options, as there is much important information to cover.

The Configure Experience menu

By clicking Configure Experience, you will be able to make a number of changes to your experience. You will notice the ability to change your experience between Public and Private privacy statuses, as shown in Figure 2.3:

Figure 2.3: The Configure Experience menu is one page where external experience settings are changed

Let’s look at the difference between the Private and Public settings:

When an experience is set to Private, no users except yourself and those you manually give permission to will be able to join your experience.When an experience is set to Public, all Roblox users will be able to join your experience. We will discuss how to change these permissions for specific users once we get to the topic of Roblox Studio.

Both the Configure Experienceand Configure Start Place pages have a tab where dev products can be created and configured. While the process is straightforward enough to be self-explanatory, note that you can add a name, price, description, and image for your dev products. When we cover creating your own experience, we will discuss how to link the purchase of both passes and dev products to your scripts, in order to make them function properly.

Further down the list of tabs for the Configure Experiencepage, Roblox allows you to place links to different social media accounts. This is the only place where you should include social media links, as Roblox states in its terms of service that it shows or hides certain social media links based on the age listed on a user’s account in order to protect younger users. As has been found by many unfortunate developers before, a violation of this clause may lead to moderation action against your account or experience.

Configure Start Place menu

Now, if you click on Configure Start Place, you will find many more options that are relevant to the appearance and settings of your experience as a whole; some of these settings are visible in Figure 2.4. You are immediately presented with the Basic Settings tab, which allows you to change the name of your experience and the description that is shown beneath it:

Figure 2.4: The Configure Place page is like the Configure Experience page but has different settings

Icon

The second tab, titled Icon, allows you to change the icon of your experience. An icon is a square image that typically serves as the first impression users have of your experience when seeing it on the Discover page or on a profile. Similarly, the Thumbnails tab allows you to upload images that represent your experience and serve as the second and final impression before a user clicks the join button for your experience. For 500 Robux, you can also upload a video up to 30 seconds in length; this feature allows you to show your experience in action, which is often more engaging to potential visitors.

Access

The Access tab allows you to change different options for who can join your experience. You will first see a list of checkboxes for the different platforms your experience can be joined from as seen in Figure 2.5. When we get to creating your first experience, you will see that you should enable or disable these options based on the mechanics of your experience and overall cross-platform compatibility for controls. Below these boxes, you will see an option to sell access to your experience. While most experiences are free to join on Roblox, you can charge Robux for users to access your experience (but in most cases, this will lower the number of people who join your experience).

Figure 2.5: The Access tab has settings for what type of, and how many, users can join your game

The next setting, Maximum Visitor Count, should be changed based on how many visitors should realistically be able to join your experience on one server. While the decision for this value is up to you, remember to consider the performance limitations of your experience as well as how its various mechanics may be affected if there are too many or too few users available. For example, if you are making a social experience, there should be enough users to make it feel lively rather than empty.

A setting that is very closely related to Maximum Visitor Count is how Roblox decides to fill servers with users. By default, the Roblox optimizes server fill for me option is selected, and it is typically best to leave it as such. It may, in some situations, be a better choice to reserve some server slots if you find your experience benefits greatly from users having their friends join them, but as a beginner, there is no reason to change this setting.

The Access setting has the option of Everyone or Friends/Group Members, depending on whether the experience is being hosted on a user’s profile or in a group. You may change this setting at your own discretion, but like before, if your experience has restrictions regarding who can join, then your visitor count will be limited by that factor.

The last setting of the Access tab allows you to enable the sale of private servers (formerly called VIP servers). Private servers are a monthly subscription purchased by users so that they can visit your experience uninterrupted, only with friends or those that they invite. Since private servers are a recurring purchase, they can continue to generate passive income even after an experience declines in popularity.

In order to sell access to your experience, you cannot also be selling private servers. When selling access to your experience, the minimum price for access is 25 Robux and the maximum is 1,000 Robux. When selling private servers, the minimum price is 10 Robux if you do not want them to be free. There is currently no limit to the maximum price of private servers.

While there are some other tabs of the two different settings pages that were not covered in this section, most of them have been deprecated in favor of ones accessible from Roblox Studio or are settings that you would typically not need to interact with under normal circumstances. Once you become a more experienced developer and you find that you need to change those options, you will know how to. Next, we’ll explore other experience settings you can change.

Other place options

Returning to the Create page, there were many more options on the gear drop-down menu previously shown in Figure 2.2; you should be familiar with these before creating your first experience. While some of these topics will not be covered in depth, you should know what they are in order to have an advantage when you begin developing more intricate projects.

Configure Localization

Immediately following the Configure Experienceand Configure Start Place options, you will see a Configure Localization option. This page allows for your experience to be manually translated into different languages. From here, you can add different Roblox users or groups to translate your experience for, add or remove languages you want your experience to be supported in, and see what text entries from your experience have already been recorded and translated. Roblox is also in the process of releasing automatic translation for both experience web pages and in-experience content. For more information on configuring localization, see the primary article on Roblox localization here: https://developer.roblox.com/en-us/articles/Introduction-to-Localization-on-Roblox.

Create Badge

The next option on the menu is Create Badge. Badges are items that are awarded to users and show up on their profile. Once awarded to a user, a badge cannot be given again unless the user deletes it from their inventory. While badges are mostly used for display or novelty purposes, they are sometimes used as somewhat of a hacky way to track different data types. For example, if you want all users who tested your experience pre-release to receive something special later on, the most convenient way to do that might be to simply award them a badge. With this technique, even though user data will likely be reset when the experience releases, you can still identify whether a user is in possession of that badge and subsequently award them for being an early supporter of your project.

The Create a Pass selection will bring you to a different tab of the Create page. Like dev products, you can add a name, description, and image to your pass with the interface depicted in Figure 2.6:

Figure 2.6: The interface for creating passes shown here is similar to that of dev products

Once created, your pass will be listed, and clicking the gear icon next to it will allow you to configure the price of the pass, whether it is on sale, and edit its name, description, and image.

The Developer Stats tab will become quite important once you begin monitoring the performance of your own experiences. The page this button brings you to is the center for all of your experience analytics. From here, you can see the average engagement time of a given user, the total amount of Robux earned from in-experience sales before tax, and how many users are playing on which platforms, all viewable as datasets over different time intervals. In addition, you can export the analytics of your experience as a CSV or XLSX file for a further breakdown of your data in your desired external application.

In order for your experience to reach users, Roblox has two built-in types of promotion, called User Ads and Sponsored Experiences. Promoting your experience through these systems costs Robux and the more you bid, the more impressions on users your promotion will have (see Figure 2.7). You have the choice for which platforms your campaign runs on, meaning if your experience is not available to join on Xbox, you needn’t waste money by showing promotional information to Xbox users. Furthermore, you can choose which age and gender demographics you wish your experience to be shown to.

So, if you think your experience will be more popular with users of a certain age group or gender, you can focus your spending on those groups: