Best wishes, this is really neat. I hope it won't get slaughtered by Roblox's legal team. A potential use-case might be to create a Linux-native client. The one used by most right now (Sober) is proprietary, after the previous (Vinegar) got shut down because of Linux haxxors.
> I hope it won't get slaughtered by Roblox's legal team.
I'm not saying Roblox won't try, but this project strikes me as very obviously legal.
If legality was a spectrum, I'd rank this higher than VLC Media Player (patents) and way above an NES emulator. I suppose it'd be below Android, and Oracle did sue over Android.
Does this increase local testability and thus QA-ability for roblox devs?
I was just looking at trying to get Lemur (archived) running in Lune in order to run jest tests running in a react-lua app the other day. I have a start at a test runner with optional in-game output, but getting jest tests to run at init in studio in order to not require run-in-roblox which doesn't yet work on Linux with vinegar flatpaks studio or vinegar in a devcontainer. It would save so much trouble if RobloxStudio.exe could take `--place game.rbxlx --script test_runner.lua --keep-open` args and regularly flush console output to a file.
I started to add loadPlaceFile to read an rbxlx to lemur and thought it probably the wrong place given that it's archived. TIL about Librebox, which can hopefully run tests with Jest with this stemgame react-lua app I've MIT licensed, in local CI too years later.
There is a hosted CI service for running Luau code in Roblox places.
Advantages to running tests locally: record screenshots and screencasts and save on test failure, immediate feedback, -i/--interactive drop into game session on test failure
can't find anything about the developers from the github repo.
their discord server is even stranger; there's absolutely nothing in the channels, and the only member with a developer role is an account dedicated to the "project".
looking at the source, work has absolutely been done - this isn't just a README - but it's still all a bit strange
I apologize if the first impression was crude -- I was in an hurry to get the engine out at this time. I understand that the Discord server simply consisted of a few channels (since then, I've cleaned that up).
I had actually wanted to make a new GitHub account for the project, to separate concerns (GitHub ToS prohibits this, and I had to learn the hard way), so I eventually renamed my old account. I'll make sure to provide more resources under my account so it doesn't seem empty.
In regards to developer attribution, we will have a developer page as well as a resource hub so it seems more than an "account". I had not anticipated that people would look deeper into the account -- I had simply wanted to get the demo out, to show the concept.
On a separate note, I acknowledge some people found it suspicious that the initial commit was every file at once. This doesn't mean I don't know how version control works. It was because I had actually worked on the project alone on my computer and, subject to release, released the full source at once.
Once again, thanks for informing us about these issues. Perhaps, I will better prepare my future releases to avoid this issues, even if I was under time constraints. I think that there are great things that can be accomplished with this project.
My most charitable interpretation is that they are hiding their identities because they are afraid of any legal trouble, after all Roblox is an 81 billion organization.
There's a number of developers who get stuck on ROBLOX because they learned their creation tools when they were younger (they're easy to use and easily accessible to any desktop ROBLOX player), spent their formative years mastering their skills, and those skills turn out to be niche and not easily transferable to most other game engines. The choice is between basically restarting as a beginner in Unity, or continue making advanced creations on ROBLOX with all their friends and prestige they've earned in various sub-communities. To be honest I'm surprised it took this long for someone to try making an API-compatible alternative
Maybe the idea is that developers can release standalone versions of their Roblox games and escape the platform lock-in? Of course - whether their audience will come with them is a different question.
There are a lot of free remakes of commercial games, and a lot of free remakes of commercial game platform engines. How do the developers of Librebox decide to work on this instead of:
- remaking one specific, good game on Roblox, such as remaking Bloxburg, in something more practical like Unity?
- working on an existing free remake of a Roblox game, like Nexus Battles, which of course, was archived?
- working on something else?
I’m asking the “Libreboxdevs.” It’s nice to hear these POVs directly from the developers. As you guys read this on a Saturday morning, consider that I’m not asking for, what features are going to be added to your GitHub project, or a comparison between Librebox and other game engines or whatever. I’m asking about your personal decision making.
This is fantastic! It is a very useful tool for preservation of games on Roblox. I hope this can be used for good to save the many creative and original works on the platform in a way that we didn't with flash games.
Roblox preservation has pretty much been a solved problem since around 2016. The clients all have built-in network servers and many people have built launchers to let you easily play a server with your friends. A lot of the knowledge is unfortunately gatekeeped inside Discord communities of crazy people but there are a few "good names" out there (Novetus is the big one)
This is pretty cool and brings back a lot of memories for me. When I was younger I remember building a clone of Roblox in C# with the Lua scripting engine part as well. I even ported some script builder scripts over to it (Player199 admin commands or something like that, can’t remember the name exactly)
No, but there's an ridiculous amount of programmers whose first language will have been Lua and have grown up with using first class functions and composition over inheritance from day one.
It's not the end of the world, it's a minor convenience and better than busy waiting.
There are plenty of cases where you want to manipulate an object but it's not guaranteed that it exists before your code is run. You get similar functionality with:
while not parentObj:FindFirstChild("childObj name") do wait() end
AFAIK, wait() is >= 1/30 of a second, if you wanted to be extra timely you'd instead run every heartbeat.
OH PARDON ME BUT Y'KNOW WHY I AM GETTING SO EXCITED to talk in caps on HN?
Because I was on discord the other day and was talking about roblox and literally everyone hates it but people there were saying eh, we just play with friends we don't care, and I was like we definitely need to figure our shit since roblox doesn't give a (if I might swear since roblox disgusts me, but roblox doesn't give a fuck about child safety)
I was thinking of having roblox be sorta as the what'd you say, minecraft but less blocky.
So to me, an open world which can be modded till now was maybe creating a whole game (which imo is wrong approach for things like roblox) and to me the thing which made sense back then (2 weeks ago) was Luanti (formerly minetest) with custom mod and hosting the server.
I am so excited,so doped for this one man. Heck, I will build products for this and host them for free or maybe create jupyter python notebook scripts which can run the games don't worry. I want open source to succeed so badly in this genre just because of the safety aspect.
The Roblox debacle really reminds me of the 90’s where almost every arrested child predator was using AOL, but the news media would use the word “online service” or some really generic term as AOL spent so much money on advertising.
A 5 year old isn’t going to be using IRC after all.
extraduder_ire|6 months ago
wernerb|6 months ago
poly2it|6 months ago
Wowfunhappy|6 months ago
I'm not saying Roblox won't try, but this project strikes me as very obviously legal.
If legality was a spectrum, I'd rank this higher than VLC Media Player (patents) and way above an NES emulator. I suppose it'd be below Android, and Oracle did sue over Android.
(Disclaimer, I am not a lawyer, etc.)
bitwize|6 months ago
westurner|6 months ago
I was just looking at trying to get Lemur (archived) running in Lune in order to run jest tests running in a react-lua app the other day. I have a start at a test runner with optional in-game output, but getting jest tests to run at init in studio in order to not require run-in-roblox which doesn't yet work on Linux with vinegar flatpaks studio or vinegar in a devcontainer. It would save so much trouble if RobloxStudio.exe could take `--place game.rbxlx --script test_runner.lua --keep-open` args and regularly flush console output to a file.
westurner:lemur:patch_for_roblox_support: https://github.com/LPGhatguy/lemur/compare/master...westurne... .. new require() implementation in lune v0.10: https://github.com/lune-org/lune/issues/311#issuecomment-320...
I started to add loadPlaceFile to read an rbxlx to lemur and thought it probably the wrong place given that it's archived. TIL about Librebox, which can hopefully run tests with Jest with this stemgame react-lua app I've MIT licensed, in local CI too years later.
There is a hosted CI service for running Luau code in Roblox places.
"[Beta] Open Cloud Engine API for Executing Luau" https://devforum.roblox.com/t/beta-open-cloud-engine-api-for...
Advantages to running tests locally: record screenshots and screencasts and save on test failure, immediate feedback, -i/--interactive drop into game session on test failure
bstsb|6 months ago
their discord server is even stranger; there's absolutely nothing in the channels, and the only member with a developer role is an account dedicated to the "project".
looking at the source, work has absolutely been done - this isn't just a README - but it's still all a bit strange
njredar676|6 months ago
I apologize if the first impression was crude -- I was in an hurry to get the engine out at this time. I understand that the Discord server simply consisted of a few channels (since then, I've cleaned that up).
I had actually wanted to make a new GitHub account for the project, to separate concerns (GitHub ToS prohibits this, and I had to learn the hard way), so I eventually renamed my old account. I'll make sure to provide more resources under my account so it doesn't seem empty.
In regards to developer attribution, we will have a developer page as well as a resource hub so it seems more than an "account". I had not anticipated that people would look deeper into the account -- I had simply wanted to get the demo out, to show the concept.
On a separate note, I acknowledge some people found it suspicious that the initial commit was every file at once. This doesn't mean I don't know how version control works. It was because I had actually worked on the project alone on my computer and, subject to release, released the full source at once.
Once again, thanks for informing us about these issues. Perhaps, I will better prepare my future releases to avoid this issues, even if I was under time constraints. I think that there are great things that can be accomplished with this project.
JoeOfTexas|6 months ago
mattigames|6 months ago
glitchc|6 months ago
The whole problem is Robux isn't it? It's not like the engine is anything special.
a2128|6 months ago
andybak|6 months ago
burgerrito|6 months ago
I'm not really a Roblox player so I'm not sure.
Wowfunhappy|6 months ago
koshergweilo|6 months ago
Probably worth mentioning this is just a demo. There's a looooong list of API features that aren't implemented (most notably servers and networking)
jay_kyburz|6 months ago
doctorpangloss|6 months ago
- remaking one specific, good game on Roblox, such as remaking Bloxburg, in something more practical like Unity?
- working on an existing free remake of a Roblox game, like Nexus Battles, which of course, was archived?
- working on something else?
I’m asking the “Libreboxdevs.” It’s nice to hear these POVs directly from the developers. As you guys read this on a Saturday morning, consider that I’m not asking for, what features are going to be added to your GitHub project, or a comparison between Librebox and other game engines or whatever. I’m asking about your personal decision making.
ktallett|6 months ago
Dilettante_|6 months ago
I thought Flashpoint[1] did pretty well about that? The full download is 1.68TB, I'd wager most stuff you'd have seen back then would be on there.
[1]https://flashpointarchive.org/
unleaded|6 months ago
madjam002|6 months ago
Good times
kragen|6 months ago
whizzter|6 months ago
unknown|6 months ago
[deleted]
paweladamczuk|6 months ago
That's good... isn't it?
DistractionRect|6 months ago
There are plenty of cases where you want to manipulate an object but it's not guaranteed that it exists before your code is run. You get similar functionality with:
while not parentObj:FindFirstChild("childObj name") do wait() end
AFAIK, wait() is >= 1/30 of a second, if you wanted to be extra timely you'd instead run every heartbeat.
Imustaskforhelp|6 months ago
Because I was on discord the other day and was talking about roblox and literally everyone hates it but people there were saying eh, we just play with friends we don't care, and I was like we definitely need to figure our shit since roblox doesn't give a (if I might swear since roblox disgusts me, but roblox doesn't give a fuck about child safety) I was thinking of having roblox be sorta as the what'd you say, minecraft but less blocky.
So to me, an open world which can be modded till now was maybe creating a whole game (which imo is wrong approach for things like roblox) and to me the thing which made sense back then (2 weeks ago) was Luanti (formerly minetest) with custom mod and hosting the server.
I am so excited,so doped for this one man. Heck, I will build products for this and host them for free or maybe create jupyter python notebook scripts which can run the games don't worry. I want open source to succeed so badly in this genre just because of the safety aspect.
rfl890|6 months ago
tomjuggler|6 months ago
difirant|6 months ago
unknown|6 months ago
[deleted]
daft_pink|6 months ago
A 5 year old isn’t going to be using IRC after all.
sejje|6 months ago
533474|6 months ago
LtdJorge|6 months ago
njredar676|6 months ago