2023 Year in Review: Extreme Wall Running, Rhythmic Ocean Waves, Demonic Heads, and More!

[frecklesnspectacles]

Hi Creators!

2024 is almost here, and we can’t wait for what’s to come — but hold up — let’s take a moment to celebrate you ! Thank you to all who took the time to submit and share your creations with us. We’re so impressed by your eagerness to make the craziest, coolest things.

As tradition, we’re highlighting some of your creations using our newest features from 2023. We hope this inspires you to try something new and maybe even collaborate with another creator!

Let’s take a look at just some of what you all accomplished this year:

Designing Environments That Feel More Real

GlobalWind

This year, experiences started to get windy Some of you blew us away with your use of GlobalWind. From gusts to a light breeze, the GlobalWind vector sets the direction and magnitude of the wind.

Creator: @Goldthyr
Experience: Undertale New Era RP

“I created a flashy, speedy fighting system for my roleplay game. The weapon is a sword, and in the video, the demonstration involves a couple of friends fighting in their Imbuement Mode. Imbuement Mode allows you to imbue your sword with any element, such as fire or water, and then soars into the sky — almost like flying.”

GrassLength

We took grass to new heights with the release of GrassLength in Studio Beta. GrassLength allows you to adjust grass height. Learn how to use it here.

The amazing trip creators used GrassLength to make their grass taller and move more realistically alongside their space station.

Creator: @Saturnosun
Experience: Amazing Space Trip

Shorelines

With the Shorelines upgrade, we enabled water to interact more smoothly with the shore. Shorelines allow a terrain voxel to contain both water and other terrain material .

Creator: @Awshumgurl123
Experience: Maldives Resorts

“We used the upgraded Shorelines to seamlessly blend the beaches and the sea in our experience. This made our game feel so much more immersive!”

Mesh and Image APIs

Recently, we launched the highly requested Mesh and Image APIs in Studio beta to give you direct Luau access to mesh and image data at runtime. Long term, we want to let you create real-time collaborative experiences. Learn how to use EditableMesh and EditableImage.

Creator: @IcyMonstrosity

“This is an implementation of an Ocean-Spectra, the Philips spectrum to be exact. It uses fast Fourier transforms (FFT) to efficiently and quickly generate waves. It uses the EditableMesh instance to its fullest, vertex’s positions and even normals are changed each time! It also includes a custom implementation of foam with EditableImages. The project offers wide customizations to artists, to get any type of sea environment that one may need— and it’s even fully open sourced, so anyone can take a look inside and see how it is made.”

@MightyPart used EditableMesh to create a marching cubes chunk-based terrain system.

Implementing New Ways to Communicate

Camera Avatar Animation

To help people express themselves on Roblox more naturally, we introduced camera-based avatar animation. When someone’s camera is on in the experience, their movements are detected in real time and mirrored by their avatar.

Creator: @DividedC0de (part of ParaC0RE Games)
Experience: Trick Or Treat In Bloxville

Getting Creative With Marketplace Items

UGC Avatar Bodies and Heads

This year, we began allowing UGC Program members to create and sell full avatar bodies and heads . See how two UGC creators turned their avatar dreams into reality:

Creator: @Bad_B0y (part of Wonky Wardrobe)

“I helped the community become any shape, size, style and demonic creature of their dreams.”

Check out Bad_B0y’s demonic creatures in Marketplace!

Creator: @Rookstun
Check out Rookstun’s heads in Marketplace!

UGC Limiteds

Limiteds in Marketplace was launched to allow UGC creators to determine the quantity of their creations and give more control over the scarcity of items, like in the real world.

Creator: @WhoseTrade

WhoseTrade created whosetrade autographed banana, which sold for 1.04M Robux and Monstercat’s 1/1 Ruby Pendant, which sold for 1M Robux.

Pushing the Physical Limits of Experiences

Shapecasts

We introduced Shapecasts with two new APIs: WorldRoot:Blockcast and WorldRoot:Spherecast. They allow you to push a 3D shape and find the first hit point, which is helpful when creating things like touchscreen interaction and larger fast-moving objects.

Creator: @Noble_Draconian
Experience: Super Skyward Towers

“Super Skyward Towers is a platformer that makes use of various mechanics for its avatar movement. Padded jumping, which allows the player to initiate a single jump from the ‘ground’ even if they’re still a small distance above it, utilizes block casting. We use the blockcast API to cast a block-shaped ray underneath the player with an offset to simulate a fake ‘ground’ to determine if the player has ‘landed’ or not. If we determine that the player has landed, then we allow a jump. This feels really nice and allows the player to have nicely timed jumps, even if their camera angle is pointing straight down.”

@Ax3nx (part of FromBloxware) used Shapecasts to create this chilling souls-like game demo.

UnreliableRemoteEvents

With our recent release of UnreliableRemoteEvents, events are sent unreliably and unordered through the network. This can be used for ephemeral events, like particle effects, sound bites, and events that impact visuals but aren’t crucial to the experience.

Creator: @xChris_vC

“I managed to create AI pursuing cars in the past, but they were always colliding a few studs behind due to latency. Distributing computation to the client was not feasible due to the high bandwidth usage, until UnreliableRemoteEvents were introduced. The client handles the physics and computes the AI decision tree, then sends the (compressed) state back to the server for replication.”

DragDetectors

DragDetectors are a new instance type designed to make interacting with objects accessible for everyone. They enable mapping of cursor and dragging actions to intuitive motions in 3D space. Think everything from opening doors and drawers to tossing a bowling ball.

“When Drag Detectors were in beta earlier this year, I decided to make some doors with them – the sliding doors use PrismaticConstraints and the hinge door uses a HingeConstraint. To spice them up, I wrote a script that plays some sounds based on how they move!”

Creator: @YasuYoshida

ControllerManager

We made it easier to customize character physics and locomotion with new instances, including ControllerManager. These instances can be used without a Humanoid, letting you build a custom physical movement system for players, NPCs, or anything else. So now you can get your avatar to run up walls at extreme speeds like @nothing_1649 did:

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Looking Towards the Future

We’re amazed by all the creations you’ve built and everything you’ve accomplished this year! group hug We hope this post shared fresh insight on how to use our products and maybe even sparks an idea .

We’ll be back in 2024, so keep your ear to the ground and maybe you’ll hear about a couple of interesting things early next year … perhaps in other languages! And in case you missed it, be sure to read through our full end of year recap and Creator Roadmap update.

See you in 2024!
Developer Relations

[Johnny_D3pp (Nik_REAL)]

I think mesh and image APIs, although relatively new, are definitely the best thing that happened this year. Oh and @Bad_B0y’s insanely epic UGC

[IcyMonstrosity (Icy)]

@frecklesnspectacles

and it’s even fully open sourced, so anyone can take a look inside and see how it is made.

If anyone wants the source file, it’s here:

FFT Phillips Ocean

Summary This is an implementation of an Ocean-Spectra, the Philips spectrum, to be exact. It uses Fast Fourier transforms (FFT) to efficiently and quickly generate waves. It uses the EditableMesh instance to its fullest, vertex’s positions and even normals are changed each frame! The project offers wide customizations to artists, to get any type of sea environment that one may need— and it’s even fully open sourced, so anyone can take a look inside and see how it is made. And to top it all of i…

FFT Ocean

[JuanGamerPlayz_RBLX (Juan)]

@frecklesnspectacles

To help people express themselves on Roblox more naturally, we introduced camera-based avatar animation. When someone’s camera is on in the experience, their movements are detected in real time and mirrored by their avatar.

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Creator: @DividedC0de (part of ParaC0RE Games)
Experience: Trick Or Treat In Bloxville

When you realized that the video got an error and didn’t show the facial animation-

[frecklesnspectacles]

Ah, just noticed that but hey! It still shows off self-view which is part of the avatar animation feature

[awshumgurl123 (Aws_RBLX)]

Thank you so much for featuring our game, Maldives Resorts!

Looking forward to seeing what the future brings to Roblox

[frecklesnspectacles]

@Bad_B0y’s UGC was so cool! Which avatar body would you pick?

[Johnny_D3pp (Nik_REAL)]

I love the gingerbread one, simple and fashionable

[colbert2677 (ImagineerColbert)]

Shapecasts and UnreliableRemoteEvents have been two of the biggest and most important releases to me and my team this year, and I’m so glad to have them. There were a lot of other technologies that we were really grateful for and are experimenting with for our experience’s next major update.

We’re developing a story-driven action RPG (PWNED: Aeternae Memori) and RaycastHitbox was one of our major resource releases. UnreliableRemoteEvents are proving to be very helpful in improving hit feedback across our combat features as well.

Clyde Revamp Preview

[djxaeplayz (athreex)]

shorelines are definitely dope, im tryna work on a california based rpg and water will be a huge part in that, good job roblox

[Bluff_006]

California based RPG??? Yeahhh im gonna need to play that

[LegendOJ1 (Owen)]

Some super cool features released this year and I’ve loved playing around with them! One of our favorites at Kohaú Hibachi Restaurant was DragDetectors, which we used to make a super interactive cooking system where you can drag ingredients inside the sushi wrapper. Super excited to see what’s to come in 2024!

[HKcat5100 (HKcat)]

Demonic heads

30 min chars👹

[MineJulRBX]

Lots of inspiring projects and talented creators. Excited to see what for new things next year we get to play with. The endless possibilities are ever growing!

[xalwaleedx (sickk)]

It is amazing how these things inspire me to use Roblox Studio more creatively, to create original content, and to explore the almost endless possibilities it offers.

Even though Roblox Studio’s capabilities are limited, you can still create amazing things with it as it is in it’s current state.

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@frecklesnspectacles

@Ax3nx (part of FromBloxware ) used Shapecasts to create this chilling souls-like game demo.

Is this a Dark Souls-inspired game? AND I DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT IT?!

I’m definitely going to play this today.

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(Also, what I said in the first line of the post is true, but… I almost, if not always, stop halfway through, and it’s not because of demotivation but because of other IRL stuff . So when I get the chance and time, I would definitely try to make something cool with these awesome features . )

[bempz1e (rubi)]

Too bad we still can’t recolor mesh part textures on regular mesh parts…

[frecklesnspectacles]

Wow that’s so cool! I can finally achieve my dream of being a sushi chef

[coolcostupit]

Wow these are some crazy good inventions, there are many unknown developers who have alot of talent, thank you for trying to get them some deserved attention!

For me I sadly didn’t contribute to the year’s review, even though I recently finished a custom physics replication system with the help of unreliable events.
If I would’ve finished it faster I could’ve showcased it

Edit: Fixed typo

[DeveloperAusttm]

At first, I thought “Demonic Heads” in the title was the new nickname for dynamic heads. I have to say, it is pretty fitting.