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ok Roblox is just too big to responsibly ignore as a gamedev. downloading their editor tooling, I wanna see what enables kids 9-12yo to create complex games
so far just trying to play a game is so unintuitive? the website experience is so opaque it& #39;s borderline hostile. all games suggested to me cost some currency of which I have 0
lmao at those laconic patch notes I already love this
what do any of these icons mean? what am i supposed to do?? there is so little handholding, big 90s games and flash era vibes
my job is now "ice cream"
this girl approached me with a shopping cart and i am now stuck in it, she controls where i go, i can& #39;t escape
with 2-3 clicks in unlabeled menus i now own a treehouse mansion and I have a child (???) following me around
just vacuuming the streets with Lazlo Junior
some guy in a yellow sports car honked at me because i was in the way
ok this was a wild ride but I get it. this one game is basically Sloche. really amazed at the versatility of the systems here (gui, inventory, equippable items, permanent ownership, pets, mounts). let& #39;s see about the editor that powers those...
Disappointed, seems like a pretty traditional engine editor structure. Not at all approachable. I& #39;m presuming the people making games with this are adults & probably professional gamedevs used to Unity/Unreal/Godot already.
some interesting UX choices though... I& #39;ll post what I find
the "default" move tool is a surface cast, which is a bit unsettling for someone used to an axis based transform but arguably very intuitive for a human
the axis based move tool has an amazing snapping detection that has no right being that good, it& #39;s almost humiliating for professional engines
their approach to materials/texturing/coloring is also extremely intuitive
"parts" seem to be the basic building block, with a whopping 4 options: box, sphere, wedge, cylinder. these get combined in the hierarchy into more complex shapes. no BSP/CSG, yet super versatile. most builtin "models" seem to be made of these simple parts.
ok I said "builtin" but I misunderstood, this panel is actually much cooler. It seems to be a live online marketplace of user uploaded content, complete with preview, that you can just drag & drop in your scene. Models, images, sounds, etc.
The effects menu is another "semantics over form" approach to creating objects, love it. As a user I want to create an Explosion or a Beam, not a particle system. (I can& #39;t actually get any of those to work though but it& #39;s the intent that matters)
hahaha the Terrain editor is just voxel/SDF out of the box. Makes you realize how archaic it is to work with heightmaps in 2021.
and a "default" terrain offers options to generate by biome (again: semantic), with a lovely checkbox for "Caves", and spits a texture mapped / noise generated starting point that& #39;s actually decent.
Where the editing experience falls short though is scripting, behaviour and logic, with completely opaque properties and no particularly good metaphors. "Archivable"? "ServerScriptService"? Should we expect a 9-12yo child to understand these?
But all in all, I definitely take this tweet back. The Roblox editor removes *so* many friction points that traditional engines impose on their users in such obvious ways that they make Unity/Unreal feel like the stone age. https://twitter.com/lazlobon/status/1385748937366249474">https://twitter.com/lazlobon/...
