The Roblox Curated Discover Page - Find games by smaller developers!

Anquilis · July 14, 2021, 11:30pm

For the past few days, I spent time making a website to address an issue of game discovery on Roblox. I feel that it is very hard right now to find games made by smaller developers, and it is not something I see Roblox is focusing to improve on.

So, I made the Roblox Curated Discover Page to temporarily solve this issue.

website2

It might be a mouthful to say, but it describes everything it does. The site will feature games under 1k concurrent players on Roblox that is approved through a team of play testers with years of experience…

Actually, I will be the only one approving each game. But, that still means your won’t be seeing any kind of botted, copied, or abandoned games that usually end up on the top of the search page!

Each game on the RCDP can be accessible through tags, or a word that describes that game. (which is seen on virtually every game distribution platform out there, but not on Roblox)

If you are interested in adding your game, you can fill this form out! There are requirements and guidelines when submitting your game, so there is no guarantee it will be added.

I also set up a small Discord server for updates on when games are added!

That’s all! If you have any questions, suggestions, feedback or find any typos on the website, feel free to reply here!

This site is open source, and you can view it on GitHub. It’s not too great, but it gets the job done. Just be aware, if there any websites that look exactly like mine, but include any kind of inappropriate content, it is not from me!

Frequently Asked Questions

When will you add new games to the RCDP?

I will be accepting and adding games all this month to fill the site up, but starting August I will accept games, but only add them all to the site at the start of next month. So, games will be added on a monthly basis.

I just read the requirements, and it says that you can only add one game on the RCDP. Why?

I want a level playing field for all developers who want to submit their game to the site. If I allow multiple games to be added from one developer or team, you will see their game more, which is unfair. I don’t want this to become a platform for another platform. Roblox and social media should be the only platforms you need. The RCDP should only act as a bridge to discover smaller developers.

Do you use the Roblox Web API for the RCDP?

Unfortunately no, I forgot how to use APIs on a website, but it is something I’ll be looking into to make it easier for me to add games.

How do you add games on the RCDP?

It isn’t pretty, but I have a file where all I store all the games, and uses a global function from the main script to create the game object. I manually have to type in all the game’s information.

createGame("Title","Developer","GameID",["tag1","tag2","tag3"]);
createGame("Title","Developer","GameID",["tag1","tag2","tag3"]);
createGame("Title","Developer","GameID",["tag1","tag2","tag3"]);

This site is great and all, but who else would see this website other than the developers here on the DevForum?

I’m glad you potentially asked, but I have no idea. You could help by sharing this to your friends or on social media to hopefully get more people to submit their games as well as find new games to play! I wouldn’t mind if there were no games added to the site.

I want this site to at least catch the attention of Roblox, and that there needs to be something done about game discovery and supporting smaller developer on the platform, or pressure them to announce that they are planning to doing something about it.

Avtixe · July 15, 2021, 1:32am

I’m really excited for this! Honestly have no words because this is what majority of small developers wants. But WOW, it’s so great seeing the community trying to help each other out through some very interesting and amazing ways! Really looking forward to this!

I have sent a application, hoping for the best!

R0bl0x10501050 · July 15, 2021, 2:43am

I have a few suggestions for this site:

Publish It To Apps/Explore

Replit has an Apps page where you can publish your repls. As someone who comes from the Replit Discord, I can assure you there are quite a few Roblox players in the community and would probably like this.

Web APIs

Besides adding games, you could use Roblox’s web APIs to fetch the game media assets and display them.

Tutorial Here

To do this, you’ll need to host your website on a server, which you can do easily with ExpressJS.

You will use the following endpoints:

https://games.roblox.com/v1/games/multiget-place-details?placeIds=${placeId} -- You WILL need authorization to use this endpoint
https://games.roblox.com/v2/games/${universeId}/media
https://assetdelivery.roblox.com/v1/assetId/${assetId}

Make a request to the first endpoint with placeId being the id entered through the form (as part of the game link).
Then, use the response[0].universeId for the next endpoint. Use that response and check the array’s JSON objects for an asset with assetTypeId of 1, NOT 33 (33 is a video thumbnail).
Once you’ve found an object in the array that has an assetTypeId of 1, use the id for the third endpoint.
Use the third endpoint’s response’s IsCopyrightProtected to determine whether you are allowed to use this asset or not. If you are, then the third endpoint’s response’s location property is the location of the binary image file (as plain text).
Fetch the file and add a .png extension when you download it to your webserver so it can be displayed correctly.
Send the image to the client’s webpage and you’re all set! (you will need to alter the HTML to include the image)

octav20071 · July 15, 2021, 7:56am

Pretty cool!

Found only one error:

Corportion?

Anquilis · July 15, 2021, 8:45pm

I did not know that! I’ll publish there ASAP. It works with repls that uses GitHub right? EDIT: I found that I can’t publish yet to Apps because my account is an education account.

Wow, thank you for this tutorial! I will definitely try to implement this. I’ll need a bit of clarification though.

Looking at different tutorials and still not understanding what it is, what is ExpressJS exactly and how do I use it on my Repl? Is it an application that I need to import? I watched this video about APIs, and it had a really helpful analogy, could you maybe explain what is ExpressJS in that manner? Sorry for all the questions, its been a while.

What’s an endpoint? From what you sent me, is it a command that I type in somewhere to get a response?

Thank you for the suggestions!

Whoops, nice catch!

R0bl0x10501050 · July 15, 2021, 9:19pm

ExpressJS is a nodejs framework for creating webservers. If you create a new node repl, one of the example code snippets should be an Express server.

Express works like this:

const express = require('express')
const app = express()

/**
  * app
  * @method get
  * @method post
  * @method put
  * @method patch
  * @method delete
  */

// For example:

app.get('/test', (req, res) => { // for https://<link>/test
    res.render("index") // render views/index.html
})

app.listen(8080, () => {
    console.log("Server online!")
})

An endpoint is the term for an API link that performs a certain action, like how the API links I listed above return details about Roblox games.

Y35X · July 16, 2021, 2:19am

Great idea! I just submitted a game of my own, hope the website does very well!

Small suggestion: Perhaps add the game’s thumbnail to the discover page? I feel like right now I don’t have much of a clue of what game I’m walking into, that might be helpful.

iGottic · July 16, 2021, 2:23am

Right off the bat it’s having problems

Only four games as well, that doesn’t feel right

This is a good idea, but doesn’t execute very well. Discover pages exist by searching games, not by curating them. I feel like this would only work out well if you had a sufficient number of games.

Y35X · July 16, 2021, 2:25am

We’re still in the phase of adding games to the website. With that being said, I think it’d be a cool idea if every day the website just went through the entire “Popular” tab and published every game that was under 1,000 concurrent players, I know you can already check there but I feel like if a whole website was geared just for smaller games, they’d be visited more.

Anquilis · July 16, 2021, 2:49am

Every game on the website right now are placeholders, so that users can test out the tags.

I completely understand your point and I could have waited to take in requests before releasing the website. But, my main goal is not to have a separate site full of small games from Roblox, but to make a statement that we need a better way of searching for games on the platform. This shouldn’t exist if it wasn’t hard to find new games on the platform.

However, I am accepting requests, and I do believe we’ll have more than 4 games on the site once I start adding games. (and I’ll continue to add games as long as the problem of game discovery on Roblox is not fixed)

(Darn, should have stuck with the name “Roblox Curated Game Page” hehe)

That would be hard since I wouldn’t have any way of attaching tags on them.

Which is exactly why I wanted to create this website. As I said on the website, I only find new games through social media or a person’s favorites. It’s hard to get recognized if you don’t have funds to advertise your game. But it shouldn’t work like that. The game itself should be able to do that.

gamezcool989 · July 16, 2021, 2:56am

this is very interesting, I hope more games are added

gamezcool989 · July 16, 2021, 3:00am

it’d be very nice if you had newer games and not games that havent been updated since 2016, perhaps it should check last updated, and only allow games that have been updated since 2019

gamezcool989 · July 16, 2021, 3:01am

there is also a place by pavel10 that appears to be content deleted.

also

The Roblox Curated Discover Page is not in any way affiliated with the Roblox Corporation.

Made in 2021 by Anquilis

also, the site doesnt appear to have any ddos protection. which makes it easy for people with LOC to ddos the server.
add more tabs to the site as well
I will find possible way to break the site and find all bugs and flaws

ice world base is taken from old roblox trailer, zombie game is broken. so update it, if pavel10 is your alt, or just completely remove it

that gear game, brick battle dawn appears to break when rocket launcher is fired.

Thats all I’ve found, all games on the site area very broken.

Anquilis · July 16, 2021, 3:11am

I did include my first game on there just as a demonstration of how games are tagged.

Yes, I managed to put the wrong game id, but I won’t be fixing that until I start to add games to the website.

I don’t know if you can do that. I wouldn’t be concerned with DDOS attacks.

Again, all games are placeholder. Feel free to provide feedback in a DM. Please don’t place any comments about any of the games here, it is irrelevant to the topic.

I am currently taking in requests for games, and I will ensure you once I start adding games, they will be playable.

gamezcool989 · July 16, 2021, 3:14am

a ddos attack is very easy, hell I can even do one right now. all you have to do is get onto your onion browser and get to a site that has the low orbit cannon

MightyPart · July 16, 2021, 4:35am

the website’s aesthetics is very appealing but it is very unintuitive. The only way to find out more about a game is to click on it and see it on Roblox’s page. You should consider showing more info about the game on your website as when you have for example, 100 games, then having to view the game on roblox to see more info about it becomes really unintuitive if the user is looking for a new game to play.

R0bl0x10501050 · July 16, 2021, 10:31am

The domain “.repl.co” is owned by Replit, not the repl owner, so there is really nothing @Anquilis can do about it unless they use a custom domain.

nakoyasha · July 16, 2021, 10:53am

Why is this called a “Roblox Curated” discover page? It’s only making the title look clickbaity.

iGottic · July 16, 2021, 1:57pm

Thanks for the responses.

Is it possible in the future you may add an application to add games so that it does not rely on the curators alone?

Anquilis · July 16, 2021, 4:15pm

I understand the site is not very intuitive and I’ll accept that. We shouldn’t need another website to find games on Roblox, but since they currently don’t have the features to easily find games from smaller developers, I would take something that is unintuitive over nothing.

That is what I was going for when making these buttons. I don’t want the user to hang around on this site looking at game information that is already on the game page. It would be repetitive. This site is not meant to learn more about a game on Roblox, its about finding one to begin with. The tags are there to hopefully give users an good idea of what the game is and they should be able to make a decision to click on the button, learn more about the game and play it.

However, I do see where you’re coming from if for example there are 100 games on the site. Again, I believe that tags will be able to narrow down those games into a few you can easily choose from. I am keen on adding the game icon next to each game button to incite the user more to click on it, but nothing else.

I looked somewhere that Replit already has DDOS protection?

When I first chose the name for the website, I included the word “curated” because I thought it would clearly describe that the games that are on this website are chosen by hand, and not through an algorithm. I looked up definition just to make sure, and it doesn’t seem misleading as the definition here says, “carefully chosen and thoughtfully organized or presented”. ← thanks Mr. Obvious for defining curated lol

I was typing that while I realized you were were quoting Roblox and curated together. It see that it can seem a little clickbaity, but my intentions were not to make it seem like Roblox themselves curated the games on the page. I just wanted to make it clear that the games on this page are all from Roblox. I hope I made it clear in the website that this site had no affiliation with Roblox and that it was unofficial. It wouldn’t make sense if Roblox made a different website outside their own platform anyway.

I’m maybe open for name changes if some people think that it is clickbait. (inb4 someone suggests Ro-Tag)

Maybe. I was thinking about @Y35X’s idea last night and it was pretty clever but I think it defeats the purpose of the website. I would need to put them all in one tag (under the “Popular” tag for example) to make them accessible, but that would mean that there would potentially be hundreds of games under one tag, without any ability to narrow it down. (unless the creator of a game on there comes up to me and submits a form)

I am planning to speed up the process in which games are accepted and speed up the amount of games that being added by having volunteers to help out approve games and maybe even reach out to different developers to add their games. (nothing set in stone yet) So far, I like interacting with different devs, playing their games, and even provide a bit of feedback for the game they submitted, and I would like to keep it like that way.

The only downside is it does takes time, and it could be a good solution to automate some games in as well as have games be manually put on there just to have content inside the website. I guess time will tell. (Roblox should really just see me struggle to make this work, so that they feel bad and add tags to games, hehe)

Thank you for all your feedback and thoughts!