BLOX early access is finally here, after a long 6 days of development time the game is actually ready for some public attention! (for real tho, that was quick)
Play it here! I’ll be hanging around for about an hour after I post this: BLOX - build anything! - Roblox
Why did I make it paid access?
Many people don’t like paid access, and I can already foresee some strongly worded DMs about being a sellout or something like that. There’s actually some good reasons for doing this:
- The game isn’t completely complete yet - there will be bugs, performance issues and unfinished features, as is natural for any early access game
- It shields the game from unfair dislikes from confused players who play once and see the messy unfinished stuff, who then leave dislikes and never come back. I did put a big pulsating early access notice in the corner to make it a bit clearer just in case someone does stumble in tho
- It also shields the game from botting. There have been incidents of mass disliking on some games recently, which would be highly damaging for a new game like Blox.
- Finally, it helps me get a modest funding for my future development. I don’t have BC at the moment, so Roblox’s awful marketplace tax will siphon away 90% of that money, but if there’s enough interest and donation activity I’ll probably get BC just so I get a fair bit of my game’s profits.
- I chose 150 Robux as the price. I was originally thinking 200 but that would have been too large an investment. 150 seems like a nicer price point for more people.
- If you log in during early access, you’ll automatically get the 150 Robux credited to you as if you had donated 150 Robux through the Donate screen (which will unlock all the donator-exclusive blocks for you - and let me collect more bug reports
)
Some things you might want to know
- You get a free Early Access Tester badge! This may be used for some special rewards later
- Press E in-game to access extra blocks.
- No mobile, tablet or console support yet. I figured for a minimum release-able product, I should focus on keyboard and mouse. Touch support will be coming, but controller and console support isn’t going to be so easy as I have access to neither.
- Inviting friends is disabled as SocialService isn’t yet working.
- The current max capacity of a server is 12.
- Worlds are 128x64x128, and generate randomly each time.
Known bugs in this release
- The loading screen gets stuck sometimes. This looks like an obscure replication issue, so it’ll be fixed with the new replication system, but for now try leaving and rejoining if you get stuck on “Building terrain…”
- Saplings don’t grow at the moment. This is a bug I’m looking into.
- Flowing liquids (water and lava), as well as sponges, are kinda laggy at the moment. I’ll be looking into ways of making this work better.
- The font rendering system is not very performant yet - optimisations will be coming soon!
- In rare cases, gravity-affected blocks (i.e. sand and gravel) might be able to fall through the floor. Investigating at the moment but cannot reproduce.
- Block breaking and placing is currently rendered server-side, which introduces some tiny input lag. When I revise the rendering system to work client side, this will be fixed.
- Placing blocks on top of half slabs incorrectly places them to the side of the block.
- The scroll wheel doesn’t always work for the hotbar.
Have fun, and see you in Blox!