My son plays Roblox a great deal. It's fascinating the variety of games on there. He'll play a tank game that is pretty much a semi-clone of World of Tanks Blitz, but then the next day he's playing a sort of bug RPG / simulator.
The variety is something that I don't see in the traditional game industry where a bug rpg / simulator probably wouldn't be a thing (anymore... sim ant..) but it somehow is in the Robox ecosystem.
I've never actually played Roblox, but the sense I get from it is really similar to the early Newgrounds flash-games scene. Seems like there's lots of creativity, a community of people always working on new things, and tools that are simple enough to serve as an on-ramp for people with very little experience.
Much like today's upcoming generation of animators have their roots in Newgrounds, perhaps sometime a decade from now we'll see a new generation of game developers who got their start in Roblox mods.
There are a few of these sandbox style games around. Garys Mod, Tabletop sim, VR Chat, and Pavlov VR are all games that are platforms for mods to transform in to brand new games.
Even minecraft has these kinds of data packs now to support a variety of game modes.
What's interesting is that roblox puts it front-and-center, it feels like the primary usecase, and I'd bet that nodding it feels more approachable compared to others
When you say its a great deal I'm not sure what you mean. Its free to play, then attempts to suck money out of your kids for virtual currency.
We have a hard rule in the house of no money spent on virtual items. My kids still love Roblox so there must be lots of fun to be had without spending money.
"Wine 6.11 or a more recent version. As of June 19, 2021, this requires using a development release."
That's an annoying problem with Wine. I submitted a bug report on the released version, and it was rejected because it wasn't on the latest development version. It's hard to install Wine in a local directory, so installing a version that didn't come with the Linux distro is iffy. (Someone is going to tell me it's really easy, just type all these command line commands. That's not what the instructions [1] say.)
Try Play On Linux, or similar tools. It has the ability to download wine versions, it has 6.11 and 6.11 staging but not the GE or other special patched ones.
Install Play On Linux. It allows you to have as many different wine configs as you want, each with their own independent set of virtual drives for dependencies, etc...
To be completely fair, it really isn't that bad, at least not compared to other software. In my experience the only notably annoying part is getting all of the dependencies that you want. After that, it's basically an affair of ./configure && make.
If you are using Ubuntu, Debian or Fedora, you can probably use WineHQ's repo with the winehq-devel package. You can also find the dev dependencies listed on the Fedora page. On Arch, AUR has the wine-git package that should work. On NixOS or other distros/OSes where you have the Nix package manager installed, you can get an environment with all of the dependencies setup for you, although in that case, I will at least note that you don't get a multiarch build.
The situation could be better, but given the heroic amount of ridiculous stuff going on in Wine, it's not too bad either. (Not sure how many pure C programs I've seen exposing MSVC C++ ABI interfaces, but Wine is one.)
I know it's an absolute meme but this is why I like gentoo. You already have the build dependancies for all your software so building it is literally clone,configure,make.
Hey what's a good way to engage with Roblox? My 6-7yo kids love it but I don't see them doing anything creative as they do with e.g. Minecraft. maybe they are just playing it wrong?
Use Roblox studio, it's basically a game engine to develop games for Roblox, uses Lua and has a marketplace full of things like 3D models, it's best to start with a simple platformer, Roblox has tutorials on their site.
Before that if it's too much, they could make things like shirts to wear in game and sell those to other players, easiest is to use a template and something akin to photoshop.
Roblox is closer to a game marketplace where the games are made by fans than a game unto itself, so the creativity isn't game inherent unless it's subgame was built to be like that (most aren't).
What’s the typical age at which we expect people to decide if they’re doing something for fun - or if they’re doing something to create? Does it matter if it’s inside the sandbox (e.g. SimCity) or outside the sandbox (e.g. Dreamweaver)? What if the sandbox is also a tool for exploitation of the user (i.e. microtransactions?)
To share my own example - beyond SimCity and not-really-understanding-how-to-make-Age-of-Empires-maps when I was 10 years old - I don’t think I can say I was really using computers constructively until I was 12/13 when I was at the point where I actually understood what I was doing with my cracked copies of Macromedia and Adobe software - so if I’m using myself as a benchmark I wouldn’t stress too much about grade-school kids being newbs…
…just please don’t repress them. And introduce them to the concept of creating their own things outside of closed platforms.
Maybe get them to play more creative games like Build a Boat. The platform is great but like any platform there are games which either do or don’t engage creativity.
Another thing you could try is get an account and play along with them. A lot of games allow for private servers / areas where you can play.
Get them to add real friends from their school and hookup on a web conferencing app. That really helps with team building and communication.
Roblox games can be incredibly creative, many are sims and builders, i.e. games within games. But yeah, Roblox Studio is where the real stuff gets made
Consider that their primary audience is close to 40 million mostly kid players. Young kids generally don't care about OS options and use whatever PC their parents buy, which will mostly be Windows. Further, even Windows PC players are in the minority, with close to 75% of users playing on mobile devices.
Linux would always be a minority option. In the case of Roblox, it would be the minority option of a minority platform. Not really the type of thing the company is going to throw money at while they're supporting 4 other platofrms: Windows, MacOS, iOS, Android. All of them more accessible to their audience.
Disappointment in their choice not to develop for Linux is natural, but it's a fairly reasonable choice on their part to avoid increasing their platform & build maintenance requirements by 25% for an exceptionally small number of users that would refuse to use a different OS.
"Linux-native" is an outdated mindset. With tools like WINE and Proton+DXVK/D3DVK / SteamPlay, software developed on Windows is in all practicality platform agnostic.
After more than a decade, we know the cost of supporting Linux native builds seems to be the sanity and good will of the devs. For indie and small teams, it's literally taking food out of their mouths asking them to use resources fixing obscure bugs from a vocal minority that they could instead put towards developing new content or planning their next projects.
I get the sentiment, but really, we won the lock-in war. It's kinder to ask devs to stick to what they know and are comfortable with, and if they want to build with SteamPlay in mind, then we all win.
While this is true, some devs in the indie community develop on linux[1] so support is there by default. It's also a small(hopefully growing) niche to target Linux as a platform. SteamOS is also a thing, albeit without a solid market afaik.
Roblox is more than just a game, it’s like a web browser that instead of showing pages anyone can make allows you to join 3D multiplayer hangouts/games anyone can make.
75% of kids aged 9-12 in the US join these hangouts, and I imagine not being able to participate would be a Linux adoption dealbreaker for many.
Yeah, calling it a "game" is underselling it. My nephew and niece were really into Roblox, so I thought I'd be the "cool uncle" and have a go at making something for them in Roblox Studio.
I dragged out my macbook (as there was no Linux support) and it was ridiculously easy to make a 3D multiplayer game that millions of people could play instantly (sure, only a handful of their friends played my creation, but still - if you made something good, the audience is there!). It was also a great introduction to my niece on using 3D software - she loved adding tonnes of random stuff and moving it around into weird structures.
I've tried to make multiplayer games in the past, and it's a nightmare. Having a giant player base already authenticated, with all the plumbing in place - it's just a really fun environment to develop for.
I wish there was something similar (and as popular) for making "more serious" games.
Certainly not young children, who to the 50th percentile will lack the computer, as opposed to phone, needed to author a Roblox game, and to the 99th percentile, the developmental skills needed to program in Roblox Studio.
So I have wine running on my linux machine in the house so my girls can play the sims… I noticed on the web browser the other day my kids had been searching how to install mods. Interestingly they had gotten pretty far but couldn’t figure it out all the way since all the guides online pointed how to do it in windows… it got me thinking maybe I’m depriving them by having the linux setup… little successes along the way build confidence… it’s made me consider having the games on windows… only reason I went wine in the first place is I could not for the life of me figure out how to get windows to install… unbuntu was a 20 minute process… windows failed with some kind of driver error related to sata controller issues … spent a few nights and decided to just run wine… gonna look back into it thought want them to have the little successes of independence… 12 years old
Last I tried to run Roblox on wine the problem is Roblox policy officially consider Linux to be cheat software and ban anyone attempting that immediately.
That doesn't seem to be an issue now, tried it with Grapejuice and didn't get banned. From the Grapejuice Discord, this also seems to be the case for other Roblox on Linux users.
If anyone wants something like Roblox that is free (as in freedom) software and runs natively on GNU/Linux, check out Minetest. Similar blocky aesthetic, mods made in Lua just like Roblox, mod content only has to be on a server, so you can join without prior setup (unlike modded Minecraft, more like Garry's Mod and Roblox), and the game is also available on Android. Not just a similar game you play with other mobile players (the way Minecraft Pocket Edition was), rather the same real game with the ability to pick up where you left off on a computer and join the same server with the same mods using your credentials for that server.
I'm sure there are fewer players and less content, but it seems like a more sane base to build on for your creative ventures. They're not after your money the way Roblox often is either.
Proton is implemented via Wine - it's like a collection of software and automatic configuration. You use Wine to implement Windows syscalls. Wine also has DXVK to convert the DirectX calls to Vulkan ones. So it's all the same stuff really.
So powerful. I feel when many try doing this a lot reach for custom code instead of leaning established technology.
Building on wine just for games is an excellent thing too.
I just bought crossover for mac the other day (commercial wine tuned for games) and have been pleasantly surprised how well games run under it, esp. compares to my dual booted windows for some reason.
I've been manually setting up wine prefixes for my games, and until last week I had not run into any issues. For some reason, Ori and the Blind Forest DE could not see input from my controller.
When running the game through steam, everything works.
It's an excellent last resort, even if you're more comfortable using Wine directly.
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The variety is something that I don't see in the traditional game industry where a bug rpg / simulator probably wouldn't be a thing (anymore... sim ant..) but it somehow is in the Robox ecosystem.
Much like today's upcoming generation of animators have their roots in Newgrounds, perhaps sometime a decade from now we'll see a new generation of game developers who got their start in Roblox mods.
It's a neat ecosystem where it's sort of insulated from traditional gaming economics and folks are just trying all sorts of things.
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What's interesting is that roblox puts it front-and-center, it feels like the primary usecase, and I'd bet that nodding it feels more approachable compared to others
We have a hard rule in the house of no money spent on virtual items. My kids still love Roblox so there must be lots of fun to be had without spending money.
Not "a great deal" as far as purchases go. As far as how much he plays.
Alternate sentence:
My son plays Roblox frequently.
That's an annoying problem with Wine. I submitted a bug report on the released version, and it was rejected because it wasn't on the latest development version. It's hard to install Wine in a local directory, so installing a version that didn't come with the Linux distro is iffy. (Someone is going to tell me it's really easy, just type all these command line commands. That's not what the instructions [1] say.)
[1] https://wiki.winehq.org/Wine_Installation_and_Configuration
If you are using Ubuntu, Debian or Fedora, you can probably use WineHQ's repo with the winehq-devel package. You can also find the dev dependencies listed on the Fedora page. On Arch, AUR has the wine-git package that should work. On NixOS or other distros/OSes where you have the Nix package manager installed, you can get an environment with all of the dependencies setup for you, although in that case, I will at least note that you don't get a multiarch build.
The situation could be better, but given the heroic amount of ridiculous stuff going on in Wine, it's not too bad either. (Not sure how many pure C programs I've seen exposing MSVC C++ ABI interfaces, but Wine is one.)
I know it's an absolute meme but this is why I like gentoo. You already have the build dependancies for all your software so building it is literally clone,configure,make.
Before that if it's too much, they could make things like shirts to wear in game and sell those to other players, easiest is to use a template and something akin to photoshop.
Roblox is closer to a game marketplace where the games are made by fans than a game unto itself, so the creativity isn't game inherent unless it's subgame was built to be like that (most aren't).
To share my own example - beyond SimCity and not-really-understanding-how-to-make-Age-of-Empires-maps when I was 10 years old - I don’t think I can say I was really using computers constructively until I was 12/13 when I was at the point where I actually understood what I was doing with my cracked copies of Macromedia and Adobe software - so if I’m using myself as a benchmark I wouldn’t stress too much about grade-school kids being newbs…
…just please don’t repress them. And introduce them to the concept of creating their own things outside of closed platforms.
Another thing you could try is get an account and play along with them. A lot of games allow for private servers / areas where you can play.
Get them to add real friends from their school and hookup on a web conferencing app. That really helps with team building and communication.
6-7 years old could use it to create obby game with adult guidance.
Linux would always be a minority option. In the case of Roblox, it would be the minority option of a minority platform. Not really the type of thing the company is going to throw money at while they're supporting 4 other platofrms: Windows, MacOS, iOS, Android. All of them more accessible to their audience.
Disappointment in their choice not to develop for Linux is natural, but it's a fairly reasonable choice on their part to avoid increasing their platform & build maintenance requirements by 25% for an exceptionally small number of users that would refuse to use a different OS.
After more than a decade, we know the cost of supporting Linux native builds seems to be the sanity and good will of the devs. For indie and small teams, it's literally taking food out of their mouths asking them to use resources fixing obscure bugs from a vocal minority that they could instead put towards developing new content or planning their next projects.
I get the sentiment, but really, we won the lock-in war. It's kinder to ask devs to stick to what they know and are comfortable with, and if they want to build with SteamPlay in mind, then we all win.
I think you meant lost? But then we sidestepped it, albeit in a buggy and incomplete fashion.
[1] https://blog.system76.com/post/654884924769370112/developing...
75% of kids aged 9-12 in the US join these hangouts, and I imagine not being able to participate would be a Linux adoption dealbreaker for many.
I dragged out my macbook (as there was no Linux support) and it was ridiculously easy to make a 3D multiplayer game that millions of people could play instantly (sure, only a handful of their friends played my creation, but still - if you made something good, the audience is there!). It was also a great introduction to my niece on using 3D software - she loved adding tonnes of random stuff and moving it around into weird structures.
I've tried to make multiplayer games in the past, and it's a nightmare. Having a giant player base already authenticated, with all the plumbing in place - it's just a really fun environment to develop for.
I wish there was something similar (and as popular) for making "more serious" games.
Certainly not young children, who to the 50th percentile will lack the computer, as opposed to phone, needed to author a Roblox game, and to the 99th percentile, the developmental skills needed to program in Roblox Studio.
Now, in the laptops of my kids, I can switch to Linux...
I'm sure there are fewer players and less content, but it seems like a more sane base to build on for your creative ventures. They're not after your money the way Roblox often is either.
[1] https://boilingsteam.com/valve-breaks-the-shackles-of-proton... or you could in 2019, anyway
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/
wine @ eef39a6 vkd3d-proton @ 72d9b32
Cobbling together existing tools is really powerful in games and graphics :)
Building on wine just for games is an excellent thing too.
I just bought crossover for mac the other day (commercial wine tuned for games) and have been pleasantly surprised how well games run under it, esp. compares to my dual booted windows for some reason.
19 inch 2029 macbook pro
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https://github.com/lutris/lutris/pull/3330
It's an excellent last resort, even if you're more comfortable using Wine directly.