April 14, 2007

Hey.

My name is Matthew Williams. I joined ROBLOX in June 2005. I was one of the first 100 people to join, and I'm proud about that. Before I get to the disturbing thing that happened, let me tell you about the history of ROBLOX...

ROBLOX in June 2005 was very different to what it was even in November 2005. You would browse the Games page and pick a ROBLOX Minigame, or a minigame made by the (around 40-active-user-sized) community. There was also around 1400 models that people made. I found it really odd that around 40 people plus 3 roblox administrators could create 1400 models in the space of two weeks (the site launched on June 2, 2005).

Anyway, you would join a game, and the client would launch. There was an "insert..." menu with some parts at the bottom, and text that read "(C) ROBLOX 2005." There was also a "CameraMenu" that had the camera controls. You could also insert special objects like the Hopper, which was any tools the player had on game join (it's the StarterPack now) Characters didn't exist then, but Roblox really loved their users. There was a thing called the "ROBLOX Users Focus Group" which took place every two weeks and it was what ROBLOX users wanted added to the game. Eventually characters were added but the camera was not centered around them or near them at all.

The building features were as basic as it got. Insert a model someone made (which brang up the Roblox models page), create a brick (only certain brick shapes/sizes were allowed!), color a brick and change the surface of a brick to universals, studs or smooth. Still, people made amazing things with it (like castles and pirate ships!!!) It was obviously unfinished and alpha. Minigames also had "lose conditions" that you could set, and there was also a score (how to get it was set by the user) and a timer (which was optional, and set by the user). If it ran out, the minigame restarted.

On July 14, 2005, I logged on to the Roblox Forum and looked at David Baszucki's latest post. "We're going to rebuild ROBLOX from the ground up based on our user feedback so far." It was a reply to a feature request. Roblox had been in an alpha since middle-2004 and testers had been able to get in, it turned out. Now ROBLOX was going to be rebuilt from the ground up. These next few months were going to be interesting.

Fast forward about two weeks to July 29, 2005. Roblox's main page now redirects to "http://roblox.com/Login/Stealth" and the main page now read "We have now finished our beta 1.0 period - thank you! No new user accounts can be created. However, if you already have an account, please login here."

I already had an account, so I logged in of course. The Roblox site came up as normal. I checked the Forum. David Baszucki had made a post called "What's going on - information" It read "We literally JUST started rewriting ROBLOX minutes before this post was made. Expect major client and site updates during the next few months. More news coming soon.

- David."

I was ecstatic. What could be being added? New client features? Better minigames? An actual camera? That was going to have to wait.

The first major client update was the move of the brick insertion area to the top of the screen, and the creation of some standard UI elements at the top. This took place in early August.

In late august, a seperate "minigames" option appeared on the main page, and the main "Games" link simply said "Multiplayer: Coming Soon." I was amazed. Multiplayer? Wow!

In September, a lot of updates took place:

A proper studio with building tools. (Resize, insert, move, scale, and recolour bricks)

Some basic lua scripting, but far from functional.

A proper camera!!!

October's updates were the explorer, and the option to make the Timer, lose condition, and score not there and just a building game.

November was the big one. Every remnant of the old started being removed. V