A not so quick overview of my thoughts while I start working on silverhub.
Challenges
Data storage
I don’t want to rely on ROBLOX datastore because it cant be used across games and its reliability isn’t great, My solution was to use an open source Module to contact google firebase, This does rely on ROBLOX maintaining HTML service or replacing it with similar API’s, However it gives me Four main benefits on top of reliability, The ability to view all information from a simple user interface and second the ease of saving more complex data (Ex, Multiple files on a user) There’s also no storage cap if you have the money to pay for Storage and lastly you can save info across games rather than having it be locked to a game, This allows me to check if a user is allowed to join a paid game or not.
Accounts
Once again I wanted to avoid relying on ROBLOX for accounts, As an example, Player ID’s could be changed to a different system or completely removed, While that is very unlikely it is a concern for long term, I also wanted to branch off of ROBLOX at some point maybe even onto my own lua based engine, Having my own account system allows me to share it across platforms if at some point I do leave ROBLOX.
Getting developers
This was/is still my biggest concern even with the scoring system I came up with, Essentially my current solution to get developer to join is assign a score to the developer based on how integrated into silver they are (exclusives, Subscription integrations, Paid exclusives, etc) The score determines how much of the profits you get. This isn’t a great solution and I’m trying to come up with better deals that don’t involve paying developers.
The score system
As stated above developers are given a 1-100 score based on how integrated they are, a perfect score of 100 is reserved for fully integrated/owned studios while the rest determine how many portions of profit silver gives you.
This is an imperfect system and I’m trying to find other ways to earn a profit without relying on just assimilating developers because that’s too “EA” for me.
Launch goals
Games
To get people to take silver a bit more seriously, I want to launch with at least one exclusive game and at least 15 games, So far there aren’t any exclusives and we have one full game.
Fully developed features
I want to have the account system, the friends system, the (maybe) direct messaging system, the themes system, etc. Essentially most of the main store on launch, Followed by API’s and resources for games.
more
Reactive
Right now I’m working on gui with a design language I call “reactive” with tons of playful animations alot like googles new material(you) combined with the older regular material design.
Contact
If you want to join SilverHub or publish with silver please contact me on discord at Bred#5053 or in dev forum direct messaging.
Ye, but it looks like it’s in bulletin board, Development Discussions are for discussing roblox things, this is a devlog, it should belong in bulletin board.
Let me quickly clarify the accounts system, There is no password or other info, Its just a username and some values for games you can/cant play, If I get confirmation from staff that I can password protect silverhub (With a disclaimer telling people to not use their roblox password)
The engine (If I do work on it) would be as compatible with ROBLOX as it legally can be so all games on silver could be ported, but like I said, that’s more of a backup plan if I cant achieve what I want to on ROBLOX
The issue here is, you’re actually not allowed to direct traffic to anything offsite. So all of your growth would be organic. The most you could do is verify a users account. And that’s only if they came across your project and decided to link their account.
There’s absolutely no way to send any requests to Roblox or communicate with their datastores outside of their API. So for a user to actually sync their data you would either need to already have a database outside of Roblox associated with their userId, or allow that user to login so that you can long poll that data into your database. Either way it’s going to be a really bad user experience and a very expensive process.
You’re better off making an independent project that has nothing to do with Roblox and has absolutely no link to your Roblox counterpart other than leading both projects. Otherwise, I would say you run the risk of losing your account. But that’s not a risk with that plan. It’s a guarantee.
Roblox’s HTTP service allows you to communicate with services like firebase like with the linked module
I’m nowhere near experienced enough with lua let alone other languages to make this 100% independent within a reasonable amount of time, and silver is very unlikely to leave ROBLOX unless ROBLOX dies or apis that allow silver to run break, And once again its very unlikely that I can even work on a project like that alone.
Roblox doesn’t have an HTML Service. Roblox has an HTTP Service. It’s a common protocol for communicating with servers across the web.
Secondly, you’re making a project on Roblox but you don’t trust the platform your using enough to actually use their services.
Thirdly, you’re attempting to recreate core systems that Roblox offer like the account system, social mechanics, and direct messaging. At this point it seems you’re only using Roblox because it’s easy to use and you don’t really want to put any effort into making the system in any other environment.
I’m not really sure I understand what a game store is. As far as I’m aware Roblox offer’s a catalog, library, plugin marketplace, and a Marketplace Service that you can use to create a game store. Is this supposed to be a replacement for that? From what I read you want to get a team of developers and make 15 games.
Dev forum, The kind of community you get grilled for autocorrect.
Not really trust, More about thinking about the user.
Im not a scripter first for a reason, I design fluent UI, Im not just lazy. Like said above I dont trust roblox will keep its API’s and current systems, Its less about trust, More about not having to modify broken systems often leading to a smoother user experience.
The issue is you can’t even get an experience on Roblox to begin with. (By experience I don’t mean your ability to make a game. I mean the SilverHub Experience that you’ve described. Experience mean the feeling a user would get from using it. I’m adding this snipped cause I don’t want to be banned for a misunderstanding) So to try to make it smooth that’s a far fetched request. Roblox doesn’t change their API’s often and usually release a survey before changes like that is released. And even when they’re released they’re usually left intact for the older experiences that make use of them.
There is the occasional moment that they become more opaque when it comes to a small amount of users that make use of a particular feature. I find it really difficult that you’re thinking about the user when the first thought you have is to put forth an idea with bad user experience instead of just creating it from scratch or with some other toolset / library that would make the project so much easier to develop.
Personally I just don’t understand how you can ultimately pull the trigger and say you want to subject your users to a platform you don’t even believe in. Also I can understand that you’re not a programmer. I hope and trust the programmers you’re working with will also reiterate this point. While your idea is a pretty cool idea. I think it’s better implementable by a subsidiary of Roblox than a developer that’s part of the platform. Just a passing opinion from a programmer.
