Introduction
Hello Developers [especially the new ones],
I have been creating different kinds of posts that were revolving around questions, that are frequently asked by new developers that start off their career on Roblox, to not only gain myself an idea of how to sort specific problems, but to end up summarizing all of them in a topic in the #resources:community-tutorials category, so that you get an idea of the following:
- Issues that you can encounter as a developer and their solutions
- Useful plugins that are used by developers around the world
- Opinions and viewpoints on certain moves or steps from other developers
- How to price your work if you start taking commissions
- What games are popular and engaging currently
And much more!
That was it from me for now, so I hope this helps new and existing developers on the platform!
Sincerely,
CrashFacts
Last edited: 2021-06-11T22:00:00Z
Table of contents
| 1 | What is something developers can recommend new developers? |
|---|---|
| 2 | Catching attention and interest on your creations |
| 3 | Staying motivated while creating |
| 4 | Recommended plugins to help you create |
| 5 | Self-Scripted or Open-Source Moderation system? |
| 6 | Commissions - What does the price depend on? |
| 7 | The Toolbox - The danger of malicious models and how to prevent them |
| 8 | Staying innovative within a team - How to create safe and productive working atmosphere |
| 9 | Roblox Studio - Lost work and its recovery |
| 10 | Motivational Quotes from developers around the world |
| 11 | Should your game be paid access? - Advantages & Disadvantages of paid access games |
| 12 | [WIP] Coping with low self esteem on your work |
| 13 | Finding out which development position is the right one for yourself |
| 14 | Conclusion |
1. | What is something developers can recommend new developers?
Post: What is something you can recommend to new developers? - Development Discussion - DevForum | Roblox
Every developer has started differently, so each developer has taken different methods and paths to achieve their exclusively individual goals, so hereās some advice that developers around the world have given you throughout your journey as a developer:
Advice
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Come prepared - Donāt jump into projects immediately and give yourself time to receive feedback on showcases or models that you make, so that you can improve your skill(s). Take it slow.
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Have fun while you learn and work on things that are slightly above your skill level, so that you can improve more and more over time. Do not attempt to make something overly difficult as your first creation.
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Put some belief and faith in your work, even if something doesnāt go the way you want it to go. Never give up on a project that you have started working on, when something doesnāt go right.
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Try and find a different solution for a problem that you might encounter when developing. Thereās always a solution to everything, so try solving it yourself, getting help and advice on DevForums or friends, or watch a tutorial on YouTube for example, thereās plenty of them! Just make sure you use the right source and not any malicious one.
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Donāt let yourself down by saying āI canāt do this and thatā, thereās no thing such as āI cannot do thisā or āI will never be a great developerā. Thereās a āI donāt wantā and āI donāt needā instead. So donāt let those words drag you down and make you lose motivation.
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Use the Developer Forum, and not only that, but other social media to gain feedback and help on your work. Publish your work on Twitter for example, and show the world what you can do with your time and skill.
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Try and get inspired by images from google or images you have seen on the internet if you do not know how to start off, or what to build. Start off with simple showcases, so that you can look back to them and see how much you have improved over time.
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Advice to beginner scripter: To not fall victim to premature optimization. It seems like a small and petty thing to worry about, but itās anything but that.
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Use useful and trustworthy plugins provided by some of the Top-Developers on Roblox.
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Donāt use a lot of free models, and if you do; Make sure they are not malicious or dangerous for your game.
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Check out the Roblox API for Developer Resources DevHub | Roblox
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Donāt waste your time on performance or good practices when youāre just starting to program or build on Roblox. Itās unnecessary for a beginner.
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Keep your first projects organized and write your ideas down.
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And when getting inspired by other Roblox games, do not copy other games. Try to be original with your builds.
2. | Catching attention and interest on your creations
To keep it quick and simple, it is important that you show off your work on social media like Twitter, Developer Forums, YouTube, Discord servers and more! Get involved in forum discussions and talk to other fellow developers about the things youāre good at or interested in.
3. | Staying motivated while creating
Post: Gaining motivation while creating - Development Discussion - DevForum | Roblox
In this part of the topic, I will be telling you why new developers can lose motivation quickly, and what keeps you on track while developing.
Why do developers lose motivation?
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Because they start drifting apart from their game(s) and begin to doubt if their game would ever be enjoyed or viewed by players.
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Theyāre busy with their personal life outside of Roblox - School, college, work [etc], which results in laziness
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They have little to no attention and want other people to see their work so bad, that they give up, knowing that thereās ābetterā developers than them, or at least thatās what they think.
And what helps developers getting up on their feet again, to remain motivated and happy?
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View the work from others and get inspired. It has to be something where you can say āWoah, I wanna create that too!ā or āI wanna be like that developer as well!ā - Set yourself a goal to achieve, and more towards it by keeping yourself on track.
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Work with some of your friends that share a common interest or work together with other fellow developers around the world!
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Start off by creating something original and simple, not something front-page game like, because thatās what causes demotivation, knowing that some of those games took years to make.
4. | Recommended plugins to help you create
Plugins are very useful tools that are created by some great developers, which are mostly free to use for everybody.
Here are some of the plugins, that developers on Roblox recommend on using:
A list of usable plugins
Developer Tools - A four-in-one plugin that makes it easy for you to manage the development of your game. It has lists, part and script counters, and so much more!
Auto Anchor - Auto Anchor is basically what it says. When itās enabled it will automatically anchor the part when imported. Itās something new developers often forget to do. Best of all, these two plugins are made by a trusted creator,
AutoScale Lite - Helps you to create a proportionate gui for various devices
Archimedes Two (v2.4) - Helps you to make curves, suitable for building
Studio Levels - A plugin to keep developers motivated. The plugin allows you to gain experience points for using Roblox Studio and working up.
Anime Girl Messages - For the puns and anime fans among us, thereās this plugin which gives you a motivational quote after a certain amount of time.
Mesh Editor - Great for custom meshes
DataEditor - Letās your edit your datastore easily.
[v1.3.3] Roblox Fast Donation Button Creation - Letās your create fast donation GUIās incase you wanna raise funds for your game.
qCmdUtl - Streamlined building - A plugin designed to streamline building and creation in Roblox Studio.
Brushtool 2.1 - A plugin for brushing multiple clones of the same part or model onto the map.
CSG Curve Cutter - This is a tool to help you cut out shapes with CSG. You can get flat 2D shapes, as shown in the plugin image, or cut out rough 3D shapes using different orthographic views. Good for quick low detail models.
Stravant - Model Reflect - Reflect Models over a chosen plane.
Stravant - ResizeAlign Fixed - A plugin that aligns faces of parts via resizing, so that you donāt have to manually resize the parts to get them aligned.
Stravant - MaterialFlip - āFlipā the direction of matierals on parts. When using a material with an obvious direction such as Wood Planks it can be annoying when the ādirectionā of the material ends up wrong on your parts.
Building Tools by F3X (Plugin) - A set of wonderfully simple and powerful building tools, designed and built by the F3X team.
Load Character Lite - Lets you load a specific character inside of your game in R6 or R15.
Developer Health - Roblox - Really nice plugin to stay motivated and remember to stay hydrated while working!
5. | Self-Scripted or Open-Source Moderation system?
In this section of the topic, Iād like to tell you whether you should script your own or use an already existing admin system. After that, the choice will be yours!
Existing Admin panels and commands have everything set up for you, mostly have customizable modules and are mostly easy to use. Common admin scripts include:
Cmdr
HD Admin
Adonis
Khols
Basic Admin Essentials 2.0
Kronos
BAE
V-Handle
The advantage of scripting an admin yourself is that you know whatās going on in your game, and that you can customize it however you want. Itās original and will have its own unique style.
6. | Commissions - What does the price depend on?
Post: Commissions - Pricing? - Development Discussion - DevForum | Roblox
Whether you are an artist, a builder, a scripter or a developer who specializes on something else such as translating or drawing, everyone is eligible to open their own commissions, as soon as they have some examples of their work and a reasonable price for them, but sometimes developers donāt know how to price their work, or what to base the price of, so hereās some great advice from the Roblox Developer Community:
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You can price your work by time & size, complexity and detail.
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You can price by hourly rates:
Post by @ecryto
7. | The Toolbox - The danger of malicious models and how to prevent them
Post: The Toolbox - Malicious models - Development Discussion - DevForum | Roblox
The Toolbox is a function Roblox studio offers, for players around the world to create and share assets with others, so that new developers use them in their own games.
Unfortunately, the Toolbox is infested with malicious models that contain bad scripts, that may break your game, yet some Roblox Developers were ready to share some of their best advice with the world!
Here are some ways to prevent viruses from breaking your game:
- You should try not using as much free models, to prevent incidents like this in the first place. And if you do, check the free models for malicious scripts, before working with them. Make sure the model youāre using is made by a trusted source.
To check your scripts, please follow the following steps from this post:
- Use official models which were previously approved by Roblox Employees, which carry the following symbol:
- Use Models that you find on DevForums in the #resources category
Viruses are able to do the following things to your game:
- Set fire to every part, model, and instance into your game via a script.
- Sell you scams, models, and more.
- Virtually just break your game in general
- Adds lag and FPS drops intensely.
- Gives administration permissions to the person who owns the virus.
- Crash peoples games
- Teleports people into the virusās creators game for personal gain.
- And more
Information off @DerryOriginās post
8. | Staying innovative within a team - How to create safe and productive working atmosphere
This section is all about working in a team.
After a while of learning as a new developer, you would wanna create something, and that with a team sometimes, so you need to know exactly what the key to a great team is.
A team has to be safe and uncomfortable, meaning they should be able to speak out their opinions and share their thoughts of certain things.
Here is the opinion and imagination of what a great team looks like by one of Robloxās Top-Developers today:
A team should generally be fun to work with, adequate and productive. It should be organized and everybody should know what their task is, so nobody is left with no work.
9. | Roblox Studio - Lost work and its recovery
Post: Roblox Studio - Losing work and recovering it - Development Discussion - DevForum | Roblox
Imagine yourself, you are working on something for a very long time now, and suddenly Studio crashes due to an unexpected error, or because your wifi cuts off. half of your work is now gone, because the last autosave was a while ago. What do you do?
Donāt worry, it does happen to every developer at least once, whether theyāre aware of it or not.
If you want to make sure Studio picks up everything without you having to manually save it, the best thing is to turn team create on, so that it automatically saves every change of the game.
If you donāt have team create enabled, you can check your most recent autosave in the autosaves folder under File > Advanced > Open Autosaves and click that.
It is also very recommended to use the auto save feature, or save your game once in a while, so that no work is lost.
10. | Motivational Quotes from developers around the world
Post: Receiving Motivation from Developers around the world - Development Discussion - DevForum | Roblox
Gaining motivation in the beginning is difficult, but let me tell you all this; It pays off really well when you get started!
I have collected some advice and inspirational/motivational quotes from developers across the world to help you and your career as a Roblox Developer. Please always remember the following:
Quotes
11. | Should your game be paid access? - Advantages & Disadvantages of paid access games
Post: Paid access or not - Thoughts, advantages/disadvantages - Development Discussion - DevForum | Roblox
As you probably know, place owners and group developers have the ability to put a paid access restriction on it, meaning that if you would like to play the game, you will have to pay for it. Mainly, developers do this while their game is still in Alpha/Beta testing.
Here are some advantages & disadvantages regarding paid-access games, listed from some of our Roblox developers today;
Advantages:
- You earn more revenue
- It makes your game seem professional and promising
- You can use paid-access for testing, which means you will automatically have a team of game-testers, depending on the amount of players who bought the game.
- You can use it to hype up the other players for when it fully releases, not only that but you can use twitter and things like that to give some sneak peeks of the game and generate more hype. [Reply by @AstralBlu_e]
- Little to no scam bots
Disadvantages:
- It brings a smaller playerbase to your game due to it being paid access
- Possibly a bigger dislike ratio, if the game was bought, yet disliked (It has to be worth the price!!)
- No premium payouts
Personally, games should really be paid-access if they are worth playing OR if theyāre currently being alpha/beta tested, because that just increases the playerbasesā hype. There are mixed opinions on paid-access games; Some find it annoying and bothering, some find it benefiting and great.
12. | [WIP] Coping with low self esteem on your work
This section is currently being worked on. Find out more in the post below
Post: How to cope with low self-esteem on your work? - Development Discussion - DevForum | Roblox
A lot of small developers are lacking respect and have a low self esteem on their own creations and work. In this section of this thread, Iād like to pick up some advice and words from developers around the world which are hopefully going to help you out in future development.
As this topic is a very difficult one too, I have picked some of the best replies from a #development-discussion post and made the best out of it.
To understand this topic, you would have to know the definition of self esteem first, which is simply just how you feel about what youāre creating.
If you arenāt happy with your work, then thereās always a way to improve it by getting inspired by already existing work by looking at some images on the web, walking around some showcases that are similar to your project, browsing Twitter & DevForumās for resources and so on.
And as one of the contributors to this topic said in their post;
A lot of people lack self esteem because they look at others work as well, which means they simply shouldnāt. You should compare your current builds with your old builds, to see how much you have improved. You should be glad for where you are currently as a developer, because some people donāt even know where to start.
Take @Fennecpawās advice from the following post;
One last way to cope with low self esteem was mentioned by @LastApollo in post 25, which states the following;
Iām taking a moment to thank everybody who contributed to this topic, as it was very difficult to answer. 
13. | Finding out which development position is the right one for you
Sometimes people donāt really know what they would like to be, whether you have interest in scripting, building, graphic design or something else.
There can be multiple answers to what you could be & how to find out about whatās right for you.
Maybe you wanna have multiple positions that come in handy while developing.
Or perhaps you just want 1-2 professions that you enjoy doing.
Whatās important to remember, is that you canāt be or do something that just isnāt your thing, because motivation will decrease faster and you will gain no enjoyment out of the things you do.
So when picking in between building, scripting or other jobs regarding developing, pick wisely and listen to your heart. Pick something that keeps you motivated.
14. | Conclusion
Dear Developers,
Iād like to wish all of you a great experience on Roblox, whether you are one of the smaller developers, or the bigger ones. Donāt let demotivation get to you, because you know you can do better than telling you that youāll never be as successful as those other Developers. Every single creation on Roblox is unique and should be appreciated for the time and effort put into it. Every creation should be appreciated for its originality and creativity.
We, the Roblox Developer Community believe in you!
And with that being said, I really hope this will help beginner developers, and not only beginners, but others as well!
Stay creative, stay innovative!
- Yes
- No
0 voters
Please do what he said.