XOX Studio
Lead developer on the studio’s live Roblox games, from the first empty place to a combined peak of about 25,000 concurrent players.
My Role
Lead Developer
Platform
Roblox
Technologies
Overview
I joined XOX when it was just getting started. On the first games I was usually the only programmer, sometimes one of two, so I built whatever the game needed: gameplay, UI, saving player data, some of the models, and the updates after launch. As the studio grew to a team of about 15, I took on code review and day-to-day coordination between programmers, artists and designers, while still writing a lot of the code myself.
What I did
- Gameplay systems, UI and player data for games built from scratch
- Live updates and bug fixes on games with players in them
- Finding and closing exploits in purchases, inventory and progression
- Code review and shared conventions for the other developers
- Coordinating programmers, artists and designers
- Low-poly props in Blender when a game needed them
Dealing with exploits in a live game
Most of the exploits we ran into came down to the server trusting something the client told it. Roblox platform updates sometimes made old code exploitable overnight, and the damage showed up in purchases, inventories and progression that real players cared about.
When one came in, I worked out how it was being done and moved the relevant checks to the server. We also kept an eye on data writes for anything that didn’t look like normal play. The fiddly part was fixing it without breaking things for everyone else, because purchases, inventory and saving all touch each other.
Over time I turned the common checks into shared modules and wrote review guidelines, so the same kind of hole was easier to spot before a release instead of after.
Where it ended up
The studio’s games peaked at about 25,000 concurrent players combined, and some of them still have active players years after launch.
Gallery