This post will be updated over time as more information is found.
2003
Roblox, Dynablox, and Goblox domains are registered by Jim Stevens.
2004
Up to July
Erik Cassel, Keith, and David Baszucki are Roblox’s primary developers.
Builds of roblox from this time were most likely attached* to the browser. The 3D view would show some general information, but build tools were contained in an html panel on the website.
*full ability to use the program required input from buttons on the roblox website, rather than in a UI hardcoded into the exe. Think of how the oldschool Toolbox worked: it was a webpage rendered inside the game window that could send special function calls to the program to insert content, use certain building tools, manipulate bricks, etc. This technique was abandoned by 2006 at the latest.
Surfaces and Joints existed.“Bumps”, a surface type resembling studs but later superseded by Glue, would create raised square bumps on the entire face of any surface it was applied to. To this day, trying to set a part’s surface to“Bumps” will instead turn it into a Glue surface.
Cards - A section of properties for parts and models. Would display in the upper right-hand corner of the screen whenever a part or model with set cards was selected. The text could be set by the user. The properties were Title, Description, Color, Image, Row0, Row1, Row2, Row3, and Row4.
Early evidence of planning for humanoids and multiplayer - Humanoids in the form of‘PhysicalCharacter’, a subInstance of Models intended for models such as the red/blue figures, with support for Posing (sit, stand, and climb) and Control.
Roblox Website and forums are created. Client could be installed from the website.
In-game camera controlled by arrow keys, right mouse button, and scroll wheel.
2005
Up to the patent build (May)
Builds at this time, while not known if standalone or still required use of the browser, did not rely as much on build tools in an html side panel. All tools used for manipulating the level were contained within the 3D view, as well as a toolbox on the bottom of the screen for inserting parts and models, changing part colors, adding hopperbins, applying ControllerSchemes, and changing surface types. On the top of the screen were six drop-down menus: File, Edit, View, Insert, Format, and Run. A panel on the Left-hand side of the screen Contained basic build tools, from top to bottom: Go, Drag, Axis Drag, Resize, Rotate, Tilt, Group, Ungroup, Duplicate, and Delete. A Camera control cluster in the Lower right-hand corner of the screen could be used to tilt, zoom, pan, and focus the camera.
The property“className” was instead called“Keywords”.
Surfaces worked differently - each face of a part had 5 sub-properties: Type - the type of surface that face would use (Smooth or Bumps), Constraint - the type of rotating joint that would be used if any (Hinge, Motor, None, or SteppingMotor), SurfaceInput - the InputType for any rotating joints (LeftTread, RightTread, Steer, Throtle, Updown, Action1-5, Sin, and Constant), ParamA -the first parameter for any rotating joints, and ParamB - the second input for any rotating joints.
A mysterious surface called“Spawn” existed until early 06, used in models such as“Electron Gun” and“Figure with spawn gun.” Presumably, it would regularly respawn any object attached to it at intervals set by ParamA/ParamB. The cursor used when applying the‘Spawn’ surface to a part is still in content/Textures up through at least 2008.
Motors were applied in a different way - one could choose from“LeftHandMotors” or“RightHandMotors” which would automatically set the surface’s input parameters to“LeftTread” or“RightTread” respectively. Another option,“OscillateMotor”, would set the input parameter to“sin”, allowing the motor to oscillate back and forth rather than constantly rotating. The tools for applying these motor types are, apparently, still in modern builds of studio.
Another, now long gone, service named“Level” with the following properties: SplashHTML - an unknown feature, though likely a window or text that would appear when a level was loaded to provide instructions, DragExtents - a constraint on where parts could be placed in the level, Messages - WinMessage and LoseMessage respectively, which would be displayed when the game reached either a win state or an end state, HighScoreIsGood - presumably to determine whether it’s better to have a low or high score (think golf), RunOnOpen - determined whether the game would being immediately upon being opened, InitialTimerValue - the amount of time the user would have to complete the level, InitialScore - the score the user would start with, TimerUpAction - what would happen if the timer ran out (Draw, Lose, Nothing, Pause, or Win), and TimerAffectsScore - how the timer would change the score (Decrease, Increase, or NoChange).
Parts had some more properties, too: HasOnTouch - a boolean to set whether the part would perform some action when touched, Color - still exists though hidden in the properties menu up until modern builds of Roblox - contains the Color3 value of the part’s BrickColor, Offset/RotVel - older names for“Position” and“RotVelocity” respectively, CanSelect - older name for“locked”, CanUngroup - sets whether the part/model can be ungrouped, NameShown - sets whether the name of the part/model would be displayed above it in the 3D space (code likely later reused for humanoids), Action - the action to be done when touched if HasOnTouch is set to true (Draw, Lose, Nothing, Pause, or Win), Sound - the sound to be played when touched if HasOnTouch is set to true (Boing, Bomb, Break, Click, Clock, NoSound, Page, Ping, Slingshot, Snap, Splat, Step, StepOn, Swoosh, or Victory), ChangeScore - the amount to be added to/subtracted from the score if touched when HasOnTouch is set to true,ChangeTimer - the amount to be added to/subtracted from the timer if touched when HasOnTouch is set to true, SingleShot - a boolean to set whether the OnTouch events can be triggered more than once, KeywordFilter - sets whether the part should look for all parts with a certain Keyword or without a certain Keyword (Exclude, Include) and Keyword - the Keyword to look for, TouchesToTrigger - the amount of times the part has to be touched to trigger the OnTouched actions, and UniqueObjects - How many unique objects have to touch the part to trigger the OnTouched actions.
Hopperbins were contained in the Hopper service and were not scriptable. Instead, users could select from the following“commands”: Clone, Grab, and Hammer. Grab could drag entire models or single ungrouped parts, and instead of displaying the chassis/yellow brick it does now, it simple displayed the click cursor with the blue text“grab”. Artifacting from this text is still slightly visible in current versions of the icon. Hopperbins could be added to a Level if building was required in order to complete it. HopperBins also had two other properties:“Cost” - the score the play would have to achieve before being granted the ability to use that HopperBin, and“Quantity” - unknown.
Chase and Follow ControllerSchemes.
Camera control keys possibly changed from Arrow cluster to UHJK, as the two known ControllerFlag schemes from this time were WASD and the Arrow cluster. Plausible that the behavior of Format>Camera View at the time was such that using WASD when the camera was focused on a model would not break that focus, thus allowing KeyboardLeft to be used without interfering with the camera.
Addition of the ability to view Properties of instances - a Properties window could either be shown by selecting it from the drop-down“View” menu or would appear whenever a part of model was double-clicked.
Undo function added.
Cards deprecated(?)
Up to the Morgan McGuire builds (October)
“Run” menu removed.
2006
Up to march
The 3D view for edit mode was placed into a Visual-Studio styled IDE initially referred to as the“roblox developer’s environment.” Build tools were removed from the in-game UI and relocated to the topbar, as well as the 5 dropdown menus. An explorer window was added to view the child hierarchy of the entire Level (now referred to as“game”) and the Property of any instance currently selected would display below that.
Humanoids are added, allowing for models (specifically player models with a certain structure) to be controlled by ControllerFlags without the use of motors. In conjunction with this, the “Player” ControllerScheme is added, as well as the Players service, and the Player instance. This occurred during Fall 2005. Mike Rayhawk was commissioned to make designs for characters that were ultimately never used, though he did design the bulk of Roblox’s classic badge Icons.
A Lua virtual machine was incorporated with its own API specifically for interacting with roblox, resulting in the addition of scripts and scriptable hopperbins. An output and command bar were added for better interaction with the Lua VM. This occurred during Fall 2005.
Explosions are added, and display as big red orbs. The hopperbin gets another four pre-scripted options: Rocket, Slingshot, Laser, and GameTool.
The UHJK ControllerScheme is added, and the studio camera is again controlled via the arrowkeys. It is unknown when WASD becomes an option for controlling the camera.
When the surface tools were added to the topbar, the motor tool was taken from the old“Right-Hand Motor tool”, resulting in all motors being automatically given the“RightHandTread” surface input.
At this time the lighting service is now visible (might always have been, unknown), and has the following properties: TopAmbient2 - how the areas of parts facing toward the sun will be shaded, BottomAmbient2 - how the areas of parts facing away from the sun will be shaded, Spotlight2 - the color of sunlight, and ClearColor - the color to be displayed in lieu of the skybox if the quality level is too low to render it.
Up to June
All or most 04/05-era properties of parts and other instances, such as the“Level” service, are removed or renamed, leaving them more or less as they are until 08.
Multiplayer was added, bringing with it the NetworkServer and NetworkClient services, as well as the chat bar and chatlog. Early multiplayer games were hosted on dedicated roblox servers and user-made games were restricted to singleplayer.
Telamon joins the roblox team, becoming their fourth engineer. He gives humanoids the ability to jump and begins working on AI.
Up to October
User-made games, now called“places”, may be played in multiplayer.
Beyond
In January of 2007,‘Hopper’ is renamed to‘StarterPack’ to better reflect its intended purpose, and a dummy‘Hopper’ class is added purely to ensure that, when loading older levels with HopperBins stored under‘Hopper’, they would all be dumped into the StarterPack. The dummy class would then delete itself.
In May of 2009, Controllers were rewritten - the‘Player’ ControllerType was hard-coded into whatever model was set as the Player’s character, and all the Controller functionality involving motors was reworked into VehicleSeats, resulting in some loss of functionality, as individual Hinges/Motors could no longer be set to rotate with specific inputs.
-DirtPiper
