Building Worlds with Sofloann

Welcome to this Developer Spotlight! Today, this spotlight will be devoted to Sofloann, a French developer on Roblox since 2009. We will learn more about his journey as a Roblox developer.

How did you find Roblox?

Asleum and I were playing a lot of flash games because they were free and there were so many of them. In 2008, Asleum discovered Roblox through an advertisement on a flash games website and so he started to play it.

One year later, in summer vacation, we were still playing flash games together, but this time I discovered that he developed games on Roblox Studio. Ever since that day, I have been a member of the Roblox Community.

How did you join Elite Builders of Robloxia group?

Again, this is largely due to Asleum. Being that I was bad at English at the time, I didn’t put much interest in the community.

Because of my building skills and my interest in building, he showed me the EBR group and gave me the challenge to enter. Two or three months later, I became a member.

You worked on the 2017 Egg Hunt, how did you find this experience?

This Egg Hunt was my most satisfying experience in game development, but also less than I’d hoped.

Working with a team composed of EBR members that we have known for several years helps a lot for the synergy of the group, the development of the game went smoothly and pleasantly. In addition, we had the support of an excellent Quality Assurance team that helped us fix the bugs — without them, the game would not exist.

But, due to lack of time it was necessary to work quickly, very quickly, and less than a week before the launch and due to lack of time it was necessary to simplify most of the puzzles and mini-games in order to obtain the eggs, which resulted in a game much less powerful and involved than we had hoped.

In summary, making this game was one of my greatest successes, but we were not able to achieve all of our ambitions for this project, which disappointed me greatly.

You were at the Roblox Developer Conference 2017 in London, how was it?

Because I’m not completely bilingual, I always had an apprehension of communicating orally with a group of anglophones and I’m not a very sociable person either. I wasn’t really looking for contact and conversation.
But I must say that meeting all these people who inspired me to become a better developer, and putting a face, and even a name on their nickname, is a great and satisfying experience. I would not hesitate to do another RDC if given the opportunity, it was a great experience.

Your creations inspire our community members. Where does this imagination come from?

I had never asked myself this question before, it probably comes from my crazy mind and my adoration for science fiction.

Science fiction in my opinion has no limits, just like imagination or creativity.

Imagination and creativity can be fueled by everyday experiences: when you watch movies and series, art, when you talk to people from different backgrounds, read, everything. The things that I have done are just expressions of my personality. I love science fiction so I do my own science fiction.

I do what everyone else does at the end of the day: I take inspiration from others and my experience to transform it into something new and personal.

Tips for improving your building skills on Roblox?

There is no secret for improving your building, you have to “know the software”. If you don’t understand what you’re doing with the software, it will be complicated to improve.

But after all, it’s normal when you discover it, which is why you also have to be very patient. I’ve been using Roblox Studio since 2009, I’ve been using it for 10 years and I still have a lot to learn today.

I have acquired techniques and reflexes over time, which is why I advise you to experiment with different ways of doing things, experiment with adapting and appropriating the most relevant ones. We now have a large library of plugins to make our work easier, they should be taken advantage of. The method doesn’t matter, but the result is what counts.

If you have the opportunity to watch build/speedbuild videos or streams on Twitch, I highly recommend it. You can appropriate others’ techniques or be inspired by them.

What are the projects you have worked on that you are most proud of?

I have worked on many projects with Asleum in the past, sadly none of them have been completed. I was also able to work closely with the Deathrun team, Disaster Island team and some showcases with EBR and Gearworks.

My greatest pride is actually the promotional event game for the release of Disney’s Moana.
The story of this game began with a team of two people who gave up two weeks before its official release.

In panic, we were contacted (the EBR development team) and we were asked to resume the project to complete its development in two weeks. Obviously, we agreed.

However, there was very little work done. We had to make an adventure game with a gameplay span of about three hours with boss fights, boats, dungeons and more. In less than two weeks.
At the end of these two weeks the game was complete, playable without annoying bugs, with a relatively large world composed of several islands, 4 dungeons and 2 bosses. The fact that we pulled it off with such little time allowed to us is why I’m most proud of this project.

What are your plans for the future? Do you still see yourself on Roblox in a few years?

I’m not able to develop games on my own because I’m not a programmer, I only build. So my plans are vague and my long-term future will depend on the groups I work with.

If they have motivation and desire to work with me, I will be there. Currently, I am on a project with Chichine and we are only at the prototype stage, so I will not talk about this project… but I can show the lobby.

Big thanks to Sofloann for giving us some of his time and sharing his decade-spanning story. Feel free to follow him on Twitter and Roblox! We look forward to his future projects!