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.
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.)
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 for the most part, has roblox replaced most 'physical' building activities kids used to do in the 80s/90s/00s ? E.g. Lego/ going outside, building forts etc?
Cool I guess, but a bit disappointing that it isn't just natively supported by Linux. I thought the team at Roblox would at least have enough people that were interested in helping kids create that they would see the value in creating a native Linux client.
i recently tried to install amoung us exe on phoenecis play on linux. there is this starting bug that is caused by shaders. i tried a few fixes but none worked. It looks like i need to wait for 6.11
Usually it’s not for multiplayer games. I’m surprised Roblox’s anti-cheat is fine running on Wine since Roblox has been dealing with cheaters (injecting LUA scripts into the client/server, known as level 4/7 exploits) for over a decade.
Yeah, it's fine for the most part. Of course there are some problems with junk such as recent EA games requiring their completely broken launcher. I just asked for a refund after trying to play Crysis 3.
Games with crazy rootkit anti cheat spyware also don't work. Such as PUBG. Not a big loss, really. StarCraft works, Doom works, Quake, works. Even Cyberpunk works fine with AMD and Nvidia cards.
I am not going back to Windows. Gaming hasn't been an issue for a while. Huge thanks to everyone
Took us almost 20 years. Could've been sooner if Linus cared about gaming.
[+] [-] duxup|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] 2bitencryption|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] SilverRed|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jay_kyburz|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Animats|4 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] simion314|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] techrat|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jchw|4 years ago|reply
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.)
[+] [-] SilverRed|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lukego|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michaelbrave|4 years ago|reply
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).
[+] [-] ohyeshedid|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beermonster|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] watwut|4 years ago|reply
6-7 years old could use it to create obby game with adult guidance.
[+] [-] qwerty456127|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ineedasername|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] washadjeffmad|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] michaelbrave|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nsajko|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bemmu|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] bitfhacker|4 years ago|reply
Now, in the laptops of my kids, I can switch to Linux...
[+] [-] stingraycharles|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] boba7|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] speeder|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Black101|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] opan|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] morsch|4 years ago|reply
[1] https://boilingsteam.com/valve-breaks-the-shackles-of-proton... or you could in 2019, anyway
[+] [-] aspaceman|4 years ago|reply
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/
wine @ eef39a6 vkd3d-proton @ 72d9b32
Cobbling together existing tools is really powerful in games and graphics :)
[+] [-] ThatPlayer|4 years ago|reply
https://github.com/lutris/lutris/pull/3330
[+] [-] Johnyma22|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abledon|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MattRix|4 years ago|reply
Also if you’ve never played Minecraft, it is amazing, especially as a social experience, and it is very much not just for kids.
[+] [-] McGlockenshire|4 years ago|reply
Both of my kids love playing minigames with their friends, but don't build anything. Minecraft scratches their building itch for the most part.
[+] [-] whydoineedthis|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] encryptluks2|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shmerl|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 2Gkashmiri|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] miked85|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MattReigns|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] undfg|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] judge2020|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beebeepka|4 years ago|reply
Games with crazy rootkit anti cheat spyware also don't work. Such as PUBG. Not a big loss, really. StarCraft works, Doom works, Quake, works. Even Cyberpunk works fine with AMD and Nvidia cards.
I am not going back to Windows. Gaming hasn't been an issue for a while. Huge thanks to everyone Took us almost 20 years. Could've been sooner if Linus cared about gaming.
[+] [-] villasv|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] worldmerge|4 years ago|reply
(I hope it's sarcasm).
[+] [-] ddtaylor|4 years ago|reply