Every week, we’re busy telling the stories behind our community, our technology and our place in the gaming and technology industries. For those of you who catch up with us over the weekend, the Weekly Roundup collects the best stuff to hit our various avenues of publication in the last week. This time: three more fan art contest winners, the 2013 ROBLOX Winter Games, game servers can now send HTTP requests, the launch of SurfaceGUIs, last-minute merchandise orders for the holidays, Unclear’s Crystal Raider, two games of the week, and other bits and pieces. Enjoy.

Fan art contest winners, round 3

This week, we have three more fan art contest winners!

Seven-day blog recap

New games. New features. New ROBLOX stuff. This week — the last before our holiday code freeze and impending Hack Week — offered plenty of good stuff.

The Winter Games are coming this January

This winter, we’re going to be demonstrating the power of the new Universe feature with a big, competitive ROBLOX event: The Winter Games. Look forward to a social hub leading to the individual events, leaderboards and prizes, and lots of gaming. Starts this January. We’ll have more information soon.

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HTTP Service launches, allowing game servers to send HTTP requests

On Thursday, we launched a feature hotly anticipated by ROBLOX developers: the HTTP Service. This essentially allows developers to integrate HTTP requests into their games, allowing them to communicate with outside websites. The possibilities are myriad: track game statistics, establish cross-server communication, and save data. We’re excited to see what our community of developers does with this open-ended feature. If and when cool things happen, we’ll follow up and let you know.

Suface GUIs let you, well, put GUIs on surfaces

Another hotly anticipated developer feature — Surface GUIs — launched the day after the HTTP Service. This is a simple feature with considerable possibilities, but, in essence, it lets builders and developers slap GUIs right on the surface of a part. That means GUIs can become better integrated into play experiences, and offer more immersive interactivity. Surface GUIs are created just like any other and feature the same interactivity (save for text input), but there are a couple new properties to consider. Read the announcement of the feature to learn more about Surface GUIs.

Feedback Loop: BLOXcast edition

We received way more questions during last weekend’s BLOXcast than we could ever hope to answer in 30 minutes, so we had a bunch of ROBLOX developers answer some of the remaining questions for the latest Feedback Loop article. There are some good hints about what we’ll be bringing to 2014, so take a look!

Get your ROBLOX merch orders in today!

If you want to purchase some sweet ROBLOX attire or accessories in time for Christmas delivery, make sure you visit our merchandise shop and make your order today! You don’t want to look like a procrastinator, do you?

Inspired by Space Knights, Unclear launches Crystal Raider

When we launched Space Knights over the summer, we wanted to experience ROBLOX game development first hand and set an example of what’s possible with a small team and lots of effort on our platform. Unclear took direct inspiration from the game to develop and launch his rendition of cooperative PvE in Crystal Raider. The game has style, substance, and plays well, so we chatted with him about finding inspiration in our Games Team’s work and the process of creating the game.

You should play this game

Inkblot is an in-development first-person shooter by the innovative (and slightly hipster, in a good way) development group Rudimentality. What’s immediately striking about the game is the aesthetic — the environment is entirely black, white and gray, while the characters and weapon projectiles splatter the drab scenery with bright colors. The gameplay isn’t half bad, either. The firefights might not pack the visceral weightiness of Battlefield or Call of ROBLOXia, but there’s promise behind Inkblot’s early-stage concept and gameplay.

Distilled is (apparently) only 14.5% complete, which definitely means it’s off to a promising start. From the opening sequence, where you find yourself outside with nothing but a notebook and a lantern, my jaw was on the floor. The graphics and motion blew me away. There’s not a whole lot to actually do at this point other than wander around an extremely atmospheric and creepy mansion, but I hear rumors that a monster is roaming the hallways. I’ve yet to see it, but was pleased to see Distilled was on the front page of our “Popular” sort this morning. Keep up the good work, tyridge77!

Bits

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We’re planning to do short live shows on the ROBLOX YouTube channel at least four times in the coming week to celebrate the upcoming holidays. They’ll be at approximately 3 p.m. Pacific and they’ll be on the short side, so subscribe to our YouTube channel and keep an eye on your feed to make sure you don’t miss them when they’re live.

For those of you who were enthralled with the opening sequence of Terra Novus (aka Nuclear Simulation) a couple months ago, you’ll be happy to know crazyman32 is working to finish the project.

Crazyman32 is also working on what looks to be a nice cutscene plugin.

ROBLOX builder Carthay is working to rebuild Disneyland (California)’s Critter Country ride. Good start!

Here’s a cool video demo of realistic tree growth on ROBLOX.

Don’t you just love it when the winter/holiday theme is enabled on ROBLOX.com? It just warms the heart, I tell ya.

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