“From the Devs”: The Virtual Railway Mastermind, by Saudi_Arab

Roblox is more than just a development platform: it’s a place where developers can become field experts. They can turn their passion for specific fields — trains, for example — into entire worlds through Roblox. A developer with a passion for trains can become an expert in building trains, simulated locomotive physics, and build communities around their passion. This is exactly the case of Saudi_Arab and his accomplishments on the Roblox platform.

This is a testimony by Saudi_Arab, a Roblox developer of three years, who has run numerous train groups and built many games centered around trains. Read on to learn how he chose Roblox in the first place!

Roblox has a massive variety of games on their platform- from surviving natural disasters to chilling with your friends in a peaceful town. I have been playing for over a decade and I have seen games evolve drastically over time with many new themes and styles introduced along the way.

As a Roblox game developer myself, I have always stuck with one particular theme; train simulators. Demand has steadily increased for these types of games, and more unique games have been released as a result. Two years ago, I brought Rails Unlimited to Roblox, which has huge audience retention and continuously strives to provide amazing content for PC, mobile devices, and soon-to-be console players.

Of all platforms and opportunities out there, why did I choose Roblox?

I chose Roblox because it is an excellent place to unleash your full creativity at no cost and with ease. I would spend hours in Roblox Studio building all kinds of creations, from basic scenery items to flying steam locomotives using aircraft controls! Additionally, developing on Roblox has taught me the following:

• Patience, because a lot of trial and error is involved for models that function and don’t always behave as intended.
• Time Management, because my game does have an occasional deadline for important updates and I need to have a proper schedule in order to meet it.
• Marketing, because my game offers premium content at a price that needs to be acceptable for both player value and game revenue.
• Communication, because Rails Unlimited’s player-base is huge and people like to ask me questions about updates and features even though it can be overwhelming.

Roblox is also a great choice because I can host my game on it with no fees and update it without any major delays or lag. I especially like the fact that I can bid to sponsor or run ads for my game without using third-parties, as these systems are built in.

Diaries of a Roblox Train Developer

I built my first ‘train’ using Roblox Studio back in 2009, which was literally four walls on top of a basic chassis controlled by a VehicleSeat. I published it to the model library and called it ‘Subway’, and my younger, newbie self thought it was the best thing ever. However, I eventually got bored of that box on wheels and tried some new designs and techniques like CFrame and welding scripts. At the same time, I was looking for train-building groups to join so I could show off my content, eventually stumbling across NXTransit (pronounced as ‘nex-transit’). NXTransit was the most commonly-used train system of the time. I met a lot of fellow train enthusiasts! Some found my builds to be very interesting and treated me as one of the ‘higher-end’ builders.

I stuck with NXTransit for a good three years until the owner of the group and several of the veteran members (including several friends) quit Roblox to pursue a different future. From that point, the group was pretty much disbanded and the remaining members, including myself, split up to work on our own individual projects on Roblox. Even though that was a tough period to go through, I took it as an opportunity, as a few years working alone would help improve my skills building trains and get me to where I am today.

Over the next few years, I found myself building higher-quality trains, the occasional passenger airliner, and even several working roller coasters similar to the ones in Roblox Point. Even though I could build pretty much anything at that point, trains were still my primary interest and when I found out my friends were part of a group that built and operated their trains in a place for group members only, I joined them and it felt like the NXTransit days all over again!

In 2016, I bid farewell to the group and began working alone once more. This time, I focused on making train games that only my friends could enter that used custom control systems provided by a former Roblox intern. It wouldn’t be too long before I would be hired to work for Elder Terminal (now known as Terminal Railways), a Dutch train simulator that was top-notch at the time. Once my contribution-a yellow and grey European diesel engine pulling about six brown train cars- was added, I began to experience fame and recognition within the Roblox community. I would find myself casually going to a random game on the front page and someone would ask me if I made a certain train in Elder Terminal. This was the high point of my Roblox life, as I have always dreamt of being famous, and my first DevEx quickly followed., This was my first taste of developer life!

Elder Terminal’s original owner quit Roblox in November 2016, handing ownership of the game and the associated Twin-Rail group to a friend of mine and making me his assistant. I stuck around for a little bit, making sure everything was running smoothly in both the game and the community. However, I left Twin-Rail in January 2017 after some development disagreements within the group. I went ‘off-the-radar’ until February 14th of 2017, when I publicly announced Rails Unlimited would start development. A few of my friends from Twin-Rail heard about this new idea and decided to get involved and it eventually became official; Rails Unlimited was now a team.

Our first release of Rails Unlimited wasn’t the most organized. We opened the game to the public for a full hour a few days after we finished basic construction, and well…let’s just say that there were trains erratically sprawled all over the map. Since that incident, the game was kept private and would not open again until July 11th, when it went into a paid-access for early testers. The first batch of players loved it, especially with the innovative yet user-friendly controls which were coincidentally similar to Terminal Railways’. In the following winter, the fee to play was removed and eager players came flooding in.

To this day, Rails Unlimited remains one of the top-tier train games on the Roblox platform. Through the sweat and tears over the past two years, I am thrilled that this game was such a success and I have fallen in love with being a Roblox game developer and I plan on continuing to be one.

As a developer, it is currently awesome to…

Being a game developer has so many benefits and all the work involved does pay off. I have earned real money from my work using Roblox’s Developer Exchange program. Not only that, but I have also met a lot of new friends, developers, and players along the way, and even had a chance to meet legendary train game owners at the Roblox Developers Conference!

Being a game developer also has its ups and downs. Being famous and notable for building a game is indeed significant, but it is a heavy responsibility and there are people out there who do get jealous and try to bring you down. I have taken advice from my co-developer/friend who says, “Don’t take criticism as a bad thing. Instead, take it head-on and use it as your advantage”. It’s just the nature of developer life!

In Conclusion

I enjoy Roblox, and I love making games on it. Without it, I don’t know what my future would have been like. The staff is very helpful and friendly on the Developer Forum and talking to your fans and player-base always feels great. I hope this article gave you great inspiration to become a developer! It takes some time and patience and you may even find yourself in a situation where you just want to give up and quit, but in the end, it’s all worth it. Have a great 2019 and if you’re a train developer, may your wheels always stay on top of the rails!

Want to follow Saudi_Arab’s latest projects? Check him out on Roblox or Twitter!

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