ROBLOX Project

• 23 March, 2025
• ROBLOX
• Game Dev

For the past half year, I've been working on and off on a new ROBLOX crossover roleplay. Ever since TEC shut down in 2020, I've had ideas and thoughts, but never had solid ideas or concepts thanks to burnout and stress. However, now that I'm in a lot better of a mental health space, it's gotten me thinking again... and I've developed a prototype of sorts!

Right now, it doesn't have a name, and I'm still struggling to come up with one. I don't even have a code name right now. I don't want it to be called "TEC 2," because while it did take a lot of ideas from TEC 2, it also handles them completely differently. I'll definitely discuss the similarities between TEC 2 and this new project. For ease of talking about it, I suppose I'll call this new game Project. Guess that's its "codename" now.

Before I can talk about Project, I want to discuss the limited development of TEC 2, since in hindsight, it's pretty connected.

TEC 2

TEC 2 technically had two development periods: the first period in 2016, and the second period in 2019. 2016 was the shortest development period: only portions of the map were created and I had barely started with the scripting aspect. When one of the developers groomed me, I had haulted the project, intending to pick it up again at some point. I needed time to heal. I returned to the idea in 2019 and created a Discord server for its development, but kept public talks of it generally low. I don't remember what was public or not.

Features

While I directed the building aspect and contributed, my main role was scripting. I made a separate ROBLOX place for developing its UI, which at the time, was heavily inspired by Earthbound. However, a lot of its features were very cluttered. The biggest feature was the public access to playing as a custom character. Previously in TEC 1, I regulated playing as custom characters in the interest of keeping roleplays balanced and "cringe-free," but in hindsight I don't think I have a place to dictate what people are allowed to play as in a public roleplay game if it isn't inappropriate. I wanted to rectify this by allowing players to play as whatever, with the bonus of a list of pre-created characters. However, the UI was... quite crowded, to put it nicely. There was also a HUGE list of preset characters I created, over time which ROBLOX slowly took down the images for.

In TEC 2, I wanted more focus on unique character abilities, mostly for additional immersion. This meant characters who could fly would be able to have additional jumps, Smash Bros. style. The max a flying character would have is five, but every character had two. Allowing the player to create custom characters, I knew it would be important to allow them to create a character with this ability, too.

There was also an idea to implement "effects" on your character. Depending on the scenario, you might want to apply particles and whatnot surrounding your character. The base idea was to at least implement the Sonic 3 shields, since Sonic was a popular franchise to roleplay as. I never thought further about what else to implement.

When it came to the preset characters, they had a special feature that custom characters inherently lacked: custom sound effects. When applicable, characters would have their sound effects from their respective games and franchises. However, I only got as far as implementing it for Kirby and Cave Story characters. Cave Story characters also had a unique death animation, something I recall being really proud about.

There used to be icons next to the charcter names to signify what series they belong to, but unfortunately ROBLOX also deleted those images. You used to be able to search for preset characters via series, or select a random character if you couldn't decide. In hindsight, I don't think most people would use a "random" feature...

Environment

One of my biggest desires was for a much more immersive environment, which meant messing with its lighting, and the day/night cycle. The biggest issue was in TEC 1, you could never tell what the time was unless you tilted your camera to look up at the sky, and even then, if you didn't know where the sun set and the moon rised, you effectively were guessing. My fix for this was to create a small UI element that would tell the player what time it is, and how close it is to changing.

I also took great care in scripting lighting changes upon the time changing. Taking inspiration from how Steven Universe depicted its color changes, I created cloud models and had them change color depending on the time of day. I also created streetlight models that would toggle on if it was late enough in the day, which I still feel really happy with.

The most common criticism of the cycle was that the day and night cycles never felt long enough. Previously, day lasted 15 minutes and night was roughly 10 minutes. I agreed, and my compromise was to have day and night both last half an hour together. In combination, one full cycle would last one hour. Considering how fast roleplays tend to go by, it felt pretty balanced!

On top of this, I added dust particle effects depending on if your character is running or landed from a long fall. It really helped make the game feel more polished, and less crafted with sticks and glue.

Project

As mentioned, I don't really have a name for this. Any suggestions are welcome. However, roughly around the middle of last year, I started dipping my toes back into the ROBLOX crossover roleplay community. I've heard about the game, StarCross, for a while. I knew of the legacy version for a while, but when I did some digging, that's when I found out about the revamp. Usually I try to explore via private servers out of privacy, since in the past I've had fans follow me into games, but since it's been so long, I figured I might be okay. Thankfully, nobody paid any attention to me as I explored the map, spectated people's roleplays, and messed around with the features. I liked a lot of the features, but it had me brainstorming for my own version again. After roleplaying there with some friends, I got enough ideas to create my own prototype. I revisited a lot of the same concepts from TEC 2 without realizing, and even expanding upon them!

Features

As I made the new UI, like StarCross, I took heavy inspiration from Paper Mario. Specifically, I pulled from The Thousand Year Door, while StarCross pulls from Super Paper Mario. Something I've learned is the character creation menu will always be a little crowded, but it's how you utilize the space. This time, I also designed the menu to work for mobile screens, since most players tend to come from mobile. In order to save on feature bloat, I dropped the idea of allowing the player to animate their character and traded it with the option to give their character a front and back appearance, since the character is displayed as a flat 2D plane. The only required image ID is the front, as if the back is left empty, it will automatically use the front's image. Here, I added two new features inspired by StarCross: color, and alpha. Color changes the hue of the character images, and alpha, which changes the transparency of your character image. On the right is an alpha slider, in case you want to just experiment.

There's three buttons in the bottom right: set, emotes, and clear. Set will apply the currently loaded character onto your player. Emotes was inspired by StarCross again, but it supports up to 10 emotes! Clear will reset the current set of images to default values.

Top left shows two things: the label of the image set you're editing, and a preview of the character. A faded ROBLOX noob is behind the default image, a white question mark, to help with scaling your character. Below this preview are three extra buttons, one of which is also inspired by StarCross. The last two are self-explanatory, but the first, import/export, allows the player to export your entire character as a JSON file, allowing for easy sharing of character details with friends.

Previously, in TEC 2, I limited custom characters to one slot. However, now that I had a better understanding of how save data works with ROBLOX, I created multiple save slots. Total slots available is 12, which I think will work wonderfully for those who roleplay as multiple characters. I created Peppino and The Noise for testing purposes. Something I ran into while testing the saves, though, is that I accidentally overwritten a save. I implemented a feature that, if the current save slot has any custom properties, it will prompt the player to ask if they're sure they want to overwrite their save. Thiis will help those who may misclick.

What I wanted to make Project unique compared to any other crossover roleplay is the way it handles its gameplay. Sure, roleplaying doesn't really require gameplay when you're just pretending to be a character, but I think it really helps with the immersion! However, this time, I wanted more than just extra jumps. What if you could wear the Sonic 3 shields? What if your character ran fast?

Introducing: the badge system! Pulled from Paper Mario, badges will change the way your character appears, sounds, or behaves. There's a couple of categories of badges.

FX badges change the type of sounds your character makes. Specifically, the walking, jump, and landing sounds. This often helps me get into the spirit of the characters of the game I'm representing. Jump badges affect the way your character jumps. These badges can be stacked, and their effects will multiply! For example, Multijump adds an extra jump to your character, so wearing three multijumps will add three extra jumps to your character. This time around, though, characters have a default of one jump. Speed badges change the running speed of your character. "Slow Go" makes it so when your character runs, they instead slow down and sneak. "Running Shoes" boost the running speed of your character by a set interval.

Something completely new that I pulled from StarCross and Paper Mario Roleplay is the radar: a feature that aids the player in seeing where other players are in the game. I found this very useful when looking for friends on a large map, however I also learned as I played on StarCross, sometimes you don't want people finding you. I tend to get overwhelmed from a large crowd being focused on me, so I want to be able to change that! You're able to hide yourself from showing up on the radar, and I made sure to replicate that here, too.

One of the things that's often on my mind are player settings. Sometimes, the player may want to customize their experience to be a bit more specific to them. Here, the player can toggle if they're visible on the radar, how they wish to use the run mechanic, etc. By default, running is a toggle, but I like to hold down the button, so it's possible to switch to that!

As much as I love having a day/night cycle global with the server, that type of cycle might not fit for everyone's roleplay needs. I wanted to give the player the option to set the time themselves, completely locally! This took some time to figure out, but I'm really proud of it. Toggling the day/night cycle type to global syncs it with the server's time, but setting it to local freezes it and allows the player to set it to any time of day. A slider is provided to help with figuring out the specific time of day required.

Environment

This is where a lot of features from TEC 2 make their grand return, albeit unintentionally. Not only that, but I expand upon a lot of them as well. For example, streetlights and other similar fixtures will activate depending on the time of day. It's a lot harder to see without the custom clouds for reference, but there is a slight color change depending on the time of day as well!

As I was playing StarCross, something struck me. Most of the time, I don't feel like I'm interacting with the environment. If anything, it felt like just a different stage. This isn't the game's fault, since most crossover roleplays tend to be like this. However, it made me think... what can I do to make being in an environment more engaging? That's when I had a simple idea: add small, interactive things! It doesn't even need to be huge, anything works!

I even added a little radio that players can toggle on and off! Though, I will have to see about adding a setting in the game that allows the player to turn off all radios in the game.

The dust clouds from landing make a return, and are even expanded upon! Depending on your character's size and speed when falling into water, their splash radius can change! It's awfully hard to get a screenshot of, though, so you'll have to take my word on it.

For TEC 1 and 2, I used the terrain water. However, after playing StarCross and interacting with both terrain and fake water, it made me appreciate the latter more. You don't have to put up with jank water physics, for one! So, I wanted to try an approach with toony water. I used Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door for reference. I got pretty close with its appearance, but unfortunately, due to how ROBLOX renders decals... the characters will render completely underneath or on top of the water. This completely breaks immersion for me.

So far, I'm the only developer. My partner helps with playtesting features that require multiple people, but it's still just me. That also leaves me to be the sole builder. While I'm good at recreating environments and places from games, I don't feel as confident when it comes to creating original areas or figuring out how each area connects to one another. That's where I falter.

Overall, development has become a bit stagnant. Mainly due to focusing on redesigning my site, which, well, is complete now! I also have a lot of other projects to tend to, and being neurodivergent definitely doesn't help with my focus. So, I try to work on and off with this.

Hopefully this was an enjoyable read! I've been wanting to talk about this for a while, but I felt like I haven't had enough regarding this prototype to really write about. Any thoughts and ideas are welcome, though it doesn't mean I will implement them for sure!